“Very well, then we go.” Rafen smothered his irritation and began the steady walk back along the hull. Lucion fell in by his side, his gait easy beside Rafen’s slow-footed strides.
After a long moment, Lucion spoke again, and this time it was with the air of an expectant child. “Rafen… I must ask you… What is Brother Arkio like?”
Rafen grimaced behind his breather mask. “Like? He is a Blood Angel,” he replied tersely. “He is my sibling.”
“But his manner, his bearing.” Lucion pressed. “I never knew him… Before. What was he like when he was younger?”
The Techmarine’s idolatry fuelled anger in Rafen’s chest and he fixed him with a hard look. “What would you have me say, Lucion? That he cut stones in two with nothing but a word from his lips? That he fell from the sky on wings of fire?” He turned away, pulling open the airlock’s outer hatch. “Arkio is a Space Marine, no more and no less. Ask him yourself and he will tell you the same.” Without looking to see if Lucion was behind him, he advanced into the chamber beyond, his mood darkening like the Shenlong sky.
Stele stalked the corridors of the Bellus like a shadow, a ghostly presence at the edge of perception. He watched for the slightest hint of any mental essence extending beyond the hull walls, alert for the smallest iota of thought that might be detected by the traitor psykers below. He found nothing, and it gave him cause to smile thinly. The players and the setting were ready for the execution of the next great act in his performance, and Stele toyed with the delicate thrill that the gambit brought him.
Ramius had always been at his most alive in the construction and execution of his schemes, even from the earliest days as an ordo initiate; such things, after all, were the meat and drink of his sect. He considered the development of his plots and counter-plots to be like a perfect clockwork construction, a grand creation of gears and cogs cast from the emotions of men. Stele could never slake the sweet anticipation that dripped from such moments as this one, as he finally set the wheels spinning. It was his intention that there would be war on Shenlong, and it would be bloody and glorious.
Grave-silent and watchful, Bellus hung in low orbit and waited. No stray energies or signatures radiated from her, no action on board was taken without careful deliberation and pace. To the machine eyes on the surface, the warship appeared as one of a thousand pieces of space debris, adrift in the night sky on a slow course toward a fiery death in reentry.
The inquisitor left the ranks of Chapter serfs and men preparing wargear and marshalling weapons to return to his sanctum. It was necessary for Stele to be correctly garbed, and his shipboard robes were ill suited. There was a field-habit of fine grox skin that would better suit the circumstances.
On reflex, Stele’s hand snapped toward the blade concealed at his waist as he entered his sanctum. There were intruders here, and the brief moment of smug satisfaction had blinded the inquisitor to their presence. His fingers were almost at the pommel before he halted. Seven Space Marines stood in a loose semi-circle in the middle of his chambers, and as one they had all raised weapons at his brisk activity. Forcing back a grimace, Stele turned the movement of his hand into a brushing motion, as if he were flicking away some particles of dust from his cloak. He hid his annoyance well, through years of practice, aware that the Blood Angels were evaluating everything about him.
At the centre of the group stood Brother-Sergeant Koris. The crimson armour of his form seemed utterly out of place in the dim shades of Stele’s sanctum. And out of place he was, for it was only by the inquisitor’s express summons that a Space Marine was allowed to enter. The presence of Koris and the others here and now was an unsubtle message from the veteran warrior. You cannot keep us out.
“My lord inquisitor.” Koris said levelly. “I would speak with you.”
Stele gave him a gracious nod and moved into the chamber, as if it were he who had ordered them to this meeting. “Of course, honoured sergeant, how may I assist you?” In the shadows at the edge of the room, one of Stele’s helots cowered behind a plinth and he shot the slave-servitor a brief, venomous look. The pathetic creature would pay for failing to alert him to the arrival of the Marines.
“The mission on which we are about to embark troubles many of us,” said Koris. “Although we desire the death of the Traitors, we are concerned that the odds make this a pointless endeavour.”
Stele studied the faces of the Blood Angels. Like Koris, all were seasoned soldiers with centuries of battle experience behind them. Most of the men were survivors from Simeon’s company on Cybele, but there were also sergeants from the Bellus contingent. None of them were cowards or men shy of battle; they were intelligent, ruthless warriors and they knew the jaws of a meat-grinder were opening before them. The inquisitor let none of this show on his face.
“Yours is not to question the word of the Emperor, Koris. If he orders you to march to your deaths, then march you shall.” Stele’s voice was airy, as if he were commenting on the taste of some fine morsel of food.
“So we would.” Koris’ eyes narrowed, “but these are not his commands. The priest Sachiel’s skills in the way of the Blood are unquestioned, lord, but he is no tactician. He plans to commit our forces to an all-out assault… And I fear that our brothers will be dashed on the walls of the Ikari fortress while the Word Bearers take only minor casualties. A staged series of small raids would be far more effective.”
“Why do you tell me this?”
“If it pleases the lord inquisitor, you have Sachiel’s ear. You could intercede, persuade him to alter his plans.”
Stele gave Koris a bored look. “Surely you have made your concerns known to him, yes? Yet he chose not to take your advice?”
The sergeant gave a single sharp nod. “He suggested I was lacking in faith.”
Stele took a step closer to Koris. “Are you?”
Caged fury illuminated the old soldier’s eyes. “I am a son of Sanguinius,” he hissed, “and my faith is hard as diamond!”
How easy it is to kindle the warrior’s fury. The Marine was following the path Stele was setting for him; he was one more piece of the clockwork ticking along its pre-destined route. “I do not doubt that, but why do you not share his certitude in our victory? Sachiel believes, as I do, that your lord primarch has blessed us. You doubt this insight?”
For the first time, hesitation crossed the sergeant’s face. “We… I… am unsure, lord.” He licked his lips. “The youth, Arkio… It is difficult to accept…”
Simplicity, Stele told himself, it is so simple to manipulate men like Koris. They may pretend to question their dogma, but in truth they are the most steadfast and inflexible believers of them all. “Koris, did you think it easy for me to accept? I, who have travelled to thousands of worlds and seen sights to chill the marrow and uplift the heart? You will be able to return to your homeworld of Baal after the raid on Shenlong is over to hero’s honours, but before that may happen you must release your scepticism!”
“But did Commander Dante himself not say that a Blood Angel who does not strive to question is no better than a mindless servitor? I cannot accept that we will be victorious on Shenlong by faith alone!” Koris looked away, his rush of words a shock to himself.
The inquisitor gave a staged sigh, seamlessly changing tack. As with every plan of his creation, Stele kept it hidden beneath a bodyguard of lies: Horin’s murder, the blackened heart cut from the Word Bearer, each was one more distraction from the truth of the inquisitor’s plan. Now, he unveiled another falsehood, one sharpened and targeted like a missile directly at the Blood Angel’s Achilles heel—his sense of duty. “Very well, then, you leave me no choice, sergeant. What I am about to tell you must not leave this room.” Stele approached his hololithic projector and called up a display of the Ikari fortress. Like most of the records of the obelisk keep they were sketchy and vague, but these were different from those in the Bellus’s librarium. A deep passage was shown under the construction. “I want your oath
, Koris,” Stele said with force. “All of you.”
Each of the Blood Angels looked to the veteran and he nodded. “You have it.”
Stele pointed at the falsified display, so perfect in its mendacity. “Sachiel is a fine priest but he is, as you have said, not a soldier as we are. And so, I kept this information from him.” He glanced at the Marines, who were all watching him intently and hanging on his every word. Gently, he allowed his mind to probe at them, easing them a little closer to his turn of thinking. “Only a select few men know that the Ikari fortress conceals an ancient Adeptus Mechanicus laboratory, and inside that lies a device of incredible power.” The image showed the blurry rendition of an eldar webway portal. “Our goal on Shenlong is not to drive out the Word Bearers, as Sachiel thinks, but to secure or destroy this device on pain of death.” Stele gave Koris a comradely nod. “Now do you understand the importance of this mission?”
The sergeant examined the scan carefully. Stele kept his face neutral; the forgery was utterly impeccable and certainly good enough to fool a rank-and-file Space Marine. In reality, the lower levels of the Ikari fortress concealed nothing more than a waste recycling system and a network of torture cells. This lie would serve him by silencing Koris with his own duty. In ten years of service on the Bellus, the inquisitor had come to realise that all men wanted something to believe in, and it was the very nature of a Space Marine to crave a cause. If Koris and his dissenters would not follow Arkio, then it was merely a matter of fabricating a reason that they would die for.
The veteran spoke, and Stele knew then that he had snared the Blood Angel. “Why did you not reveal this earlier? Why conceal it, inquisitor?”
“You know the ways of the Ordo Hereticus.” Stele said confidentially. “They would see me executed if they knew what I had just told you. But I have always trusted the word of a Blood Angel.”
Koris was grim-faced. “Then we will take this mission as Sachiel orders. It will cost us, but we cannot let the Chaos filth hold such a threat against the Imperium.”
Inside, Stele was jeering at them. “Even if it costs your lives?” The sergeant nodded and the inquisitor turned away, summoning a servitor. “Then, comrade brothers, before you depart to prepare for the assault I would ask you to grant me a small boon.”
“Name it.” Koris said warily.
The servitor returned with a tray; on it was a replica of the red grail and eight ornate steel cups. “I would share a benediction with you all.” He poured a measure of the thick crimson liquid into each goblet and they all took one. “To victory on Shenlong.” Stele toasted. “For the glory of the Emperor and Sanguinius.”
“For the glory of the Emperor and Sanguinius.” The seven men repeated the words with one voice and sipped from the cups.
Silence held sway for a long moment, then the veteran spoke. “Perhaps… I may have been hasty in my evaluation of you, lord inquisitor,” said Koris.
“An occupational hazard.” Stele noted.
The sergeant said no more, and with a circumspect salute, the Space Marines left the chamber.
Stele spoke a word of power and sent out a cantrip to seal the iris shut behind them. Then he drained the rest of the fluid in the chalice and let out a bubbling, hateful laugh. The liquid rolled down his chin and dripped to the floor. It was sacred blood, after a fashion, but not the vitae of Sanguinius.
He glanced at the cowering servitor, and then paused briefly before beating it to the floor. Then, with slow deliberation, the inquisitor used his heavy boot to crush the serfs throat.
Satisfied, Stele swung his arm and threw the grail at the wall of the chamber, where it shattered in a wet crash of sound. The fools will learn too late that my schemes are not to he disrupted, Stele told himself. Shenlong’s skies will weep blood!
“I command it!” he shouted, his voice echoing about the empty room.
CHAPTER TEN
Rafen bowed his head as the Barbarossa hymnal came to a crescendo. A thousand voices carried the sacred lyrics up to the roof of the staging deck. On all sides, Blood Angels made their prayers to the primarch and the God-Emperor. As the song ended, he ran a bare hand over his bolter, to touch the inscriptions that he had painstakingly etched there over the decades of his obligation. No two weapons in the service of the Chapter were alike; every Marine turned his own into a combination of gun and prayer icon. Rafen’s firearm carried the listing of each battle he had fought, as well as passages from his favoured Chapters in the book of the lords. He knew them all by heart, but the presence of the words was a comfort that strengthened his resolve. Turning the gun to face away from him, he opened the breech in the ritual manner and waited for the war blessing from a Chaplain.
His eyes ranged around the deck. Columns of vehicles were shunting slowly into the mouths of Thunderhawk drop-ships, Baal-pattern Predator tanks rumbling in line with Rhino and Razorback transports. He and the majority of the other Blood Angels would be taking a different route to the surface of Shenlong; the elongated teardrops of dozens of Deathwind drop-pods were laid open before the assembled troops. Rafen fancied they looked like some strange seed from a giant metal plant. Indeed, when they fell on the Word Bearers, they would sow the germ of the Emperor’s revenge upon the stolen forge world.
A sudden commotion drew his attention. In the forward ranks, hushed voices spoke in urgent tones, breaking position to cluster around one of their number. Rafen came up from his knees and approached. He saw Turcio, and the battle-brother turned to face him.
“Rafen, perhaps it is best if you stand clear—”
He pushed past and saw Sergeant Koris kneeling in what appeared to be deep, reverent prayer. Then the old warrior’s body twitched and a low growl escaped his lips. Rafen went cold; he recognised the signs immediately. “When…?”
“He was sullen when he arrived,” Turcio whispered, “and as the hymn continued, he seemed to grow more distracted.” The Blood Angel licked his lips. “I fear this is a matter for the Chaplain.”
Rafen ignored him and dropped to his haunches so that he might look Koris in the face. “Brother-sergeant? Do you hear me?”
Koris raised his head and the breath caught in Rafen’s throat. The veteran’s face was flushed with barely suppressed rage, his eyes dark pits of animal hate. He showed his teeth and flecks of spittle left his lips. “Rafen!” he snapped. “Ah, lad, the wings, do you hear them? The sound of the foe and the clarion of foul Horus?” Muscles stood out on the sergeant’s neck as he strained to contain the boiling passion inside him. “The Emperor’s palace lies breached, you see?” Breath hissed through his teeth. “Is this real? I see it and yet I do not see… The cup! Is it poison?”
Turcio gave a curt nod. “It is the black rage.”
The gene-curse. To speak of it was almost a taboo among the Blood Angels, and yet the black rage, the flaw, the red thirst, whatever name it was given, was the very thing that defined the character of the Chapter. Space Marine scholars and the historians on Baal would often speak of the genetic legacy of great Sanguinius in reverent tones. So strong was the potency of the pure one’s gene-seed that even ten millennia after his death at the hand of the traitorous Warmaster Horus, the psychic echoes of that last horrific confrontation were indelibly imprinted on the cells of every Blood Angel. At moments of great stress, the power of that trauma rekindled itself in them, as it had in Koris. To a man, each of them knew the delicious might of the rage as it beckoned from the ragged edges of their battle frenzy, but it was the constant test of their character to hold back from the madness of the berserker. This force that lurked in the collective race memory of the Baalite warrior sect would come to the fore—and as it was now, on the eve of battle a Blood Angel would become consumed with the imprinted recollection. They would see the world as Sanguinius saw it, and come to believe that they were the primarch himself, fighting Horus to the death while great Terra burned around them. To men so touched, the gates to madness would swing wide.
Rafen placed his hands on the sergeant’s shoulders. “Koris, listen to me. It is Rafen, your friend and student. You know me.”
“I do…” Koris managed. “You must beware… The foetid blood! The tainted chalice…”
“These are visions you see. You must not let them overcome you, or the rage will engulf your reason!”
For an all too brief moment, Koris’ glazed sight seemed to clear. “I feel the pain of his death like it was my own! It races through me… But something… Wrong.”
Rafen was aware of a shape in black armour approaching. “Brother, stand aside,” said Turcio. “You must not interfere!”
“What transpires here?” The Marine looked away from the old warrior and into the monstrous skull-mask of a Chaplain. Rafen recognised the priest as Brother Delos, the same man who had approached Arkio in the grand chamber.
“Your eminence.” Turcio began. “I fear that our honoured Sergeant Koris teeters on the brink of the flaw.”
Rafen turned on them both, anger building. “I will not hear of this! He has looked into the face of the rage a thousand times and held his soul from it, this time will be no different!” Even as the words left his mouth, Rafen knew it would not be so.
Delos slid back his visor and laid a hand on Rafen’s arm. “You cannot win him back with words, brother,” he said softly. “The thirst takes the greatest of us… Lestrallio, Tycho at Tempestora, even Mephiston—”
“Mephiston did not yield!” Rafen barked.
The Chaplain studied Koris with a skilled eye. “But only Mephiston. Your mentor will not resist the pull much longer. Would you let him go mad from the pain, brother? Or will you stand aside and let me grant him a chance for peace?”
Rafen felt the fight leave him. Delos was right. “But why now? The rage does not simply appear like this! I have fought with Koris time and again, and never before have I seen him so stricken!”
“One cannot know the way of the great angel.” Delos said solemnly, helping Koris to his feet. The veteran’s eyes were glassy, and each of them knew that what he saw now was a battle ten thousand years past, not the decks of the Bellus.
Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow Page 16