Remorse cut into Rafen like a blade as Delos signalled to another black-armoured figure to guide Koris away. The sergeant tensed and threw a growl over his shoulder. “Rafen! Beware… traitors!”
Turcio shook his head sadly. “Already he confuses this moment with the duel against Horus.”
“Are you sure?” Rafen retorted bitterly.
Delos weighed his crozius arcanum in his hand. Light glittered off the red wings of its skeletal escutcheon. “Koris is not the first to fall to the thirst this day, and I fear he will not be the last. It is another omen, that Sanguinius stands close to us and there are those who become consumed in his radiance.” At a subtle signal from the elder priest, the Blood Angels’ Chaplains began the sombre chant of the mass of doom.
“The moripatris,” breathed Turcio. “The way is opened toward the Death Company.”
“This is not right!” Rafen’s voice was a growl. The old warrior had been a mentor to him for as long as he could remember, a successor to his father now long turned to dust in the lands of the Broken Mesa. It seemed unconscionable to simply let him go without a struggle after so many battles hard-fought. “You heard him say it, something is wrong!”
Too late, Rafen realised that his outburst had attracted unwanted attention. From a gantry above the deck he saw Inquisitor Stele fix him with a steady gaze. In moments, the ordos agent had descended to approach, with Sachiel following at his heels. “What did Koris say?” Stele asked without preamble.
“He spoke of traitors.” Rafen replied. “He talked of a poisoned chalice.”
Stele said nothing as Sachiel nodded thoughtfully. “That is to be expected. In the rage, many things become confused. Koris no doubt referred to the traitors of Horus.”
“Traitors who served Chaos while pretending to serve the Imperium.” The words were out of Rafen’s mouth before he could stop them.
“At first.” Stele’s jaw hardened a little. “But Horus had turned against the God-Emperor long before he fought Sanguinius.” When the Marine did not answer, the inquisitor threw Sachiel a glance. “Priest, it is your authority that shall be affected by the loss of Sergeant Koris.”
“He’ll serve the Chapter as well in the throes of the thirst as he would elsewhere,” said Sachiel, ignoring the pained look on Rafen’s face. “He will become one of the Death Company, as all those who succumb shall.” He stepped forward and gestured. “Brother Rafen, you will assume command of the sergeant’s squad for the assault on Shenlong.”
As protocol demanded, Rafen gave a shallow nod of obeisance. “Your will.”
Sachiel raised his voice and spoke to the air. “To arms!”
Outside the walls of the Ikari fortress, the raised sounds of chants and moans turned Shenlong’s smoke-choked sky into a hellish hall of discord. Iskavan turned away from the window to survey the fire-damaged chapel interior. His gaze passed over Falkir, the Word Bearer commander in charge of the Chaos occupation force on planet. “If it pleases the Dark Apostle,” said the Traitor Marine, “I would ask how I can serve this host.” His coarse voice echoed off the walls.
Iskavan gave the voluptuous form of a Slaaneshi daemonette an appraising look and then turned to face Falkir. “As well you should, Castellan.” He sneered at the honorific as if it amused him. “Turn your troops to their posts and have them prepare for war. Open the cages of your war-beasts. Run out your guns.”
Falkir’s face twitched and he glanced over at Tancred. The torturer returned a neutral aspect to the Shenlong garrison commander. He was unwilling to commit even the smallest tic of emotion to the debate. “Eminence, this pathetic world is ground beneath our heel! I admit that some of the human cattle here still resist the path that Lorgar has brought to them, but we will see to that—”
“Idiot!” Iskavan snarled. “I care nothing for the meat you lord over on this blighted ball of rust! They are no threat! I order you to prepare for an enemy from without!”
Falkir’s obsequious manner vanished. “Do I understand you correctly? You have come to my prize world with an enemy at your backs?”
“You dare?” The Apostle ground his gauntlet into a spiked fist. “I have commanded you! See to it!”
Falkir spat. “Shenlong’s skies brim with killers. No human could penetrate the minefield.”
“They come.” Iskavan looked away, studying the night sky. “Garand himself spoke of it. They come and we will crush them against the anvil of our hate.”
“What poor prophecy is this?” Falkir demanded. “You have come on a fool’s errand—”
From the horizon, a flash briefly turned night into day, and rumbles coursed through the stone of the fortress. Iskavan faced Falkir with a cold smile. “You see?”
Another blast lit the sky again, closer this time. Then another, and the third struck the castle keep like an earthquake.
It was not true that Space Marines know no fear. All the warriors understood the stark power of that raw emotion, but unlike common men who served in other armies, the Adeptus Astartes were the masters of their fear. They took it, moulded it, and turned it against their enemies. They assumed its mantle; they became fear incarnate. It was to them an honoured comrade that joined them on every sortie and sharpened their lust for bloody combat. Chaplain Delos drank it in now as the Death Company Thunderhawk punched through Shenlong’s cloud cover and turned toward the Ikari fortress.
A dozen crimson gunships followed the black-painted warbird in a loose delta formation, lit by the fires raging across the capital city. Fat balls of hot flak peppered the air about them. The wings of the flyers rocked as they passed sudden updrafts and pockets of turbulence. At the head of the Blood Angels’ invasion, at the tip of the spear, the ebony Thunderhawk screamed, her array of cannons and missiles spitting at the fast-approaching fortress walls. The ship was as dark as the night, brilliant crimson saltires the only decoration over her fuselage. The same pattern was repeated inside the craft, on the armour of the men who rattled and snarled at enemies seen and unseen. Each warrior had ritually altered the livery of the Chapter’s wargear. The crimson banished beneath a coating of black paint and crested with red crosses. Black as murder and red as rain, they howled for annihilation.
Delos cast his eyes over the figures before him. He alone maintained a grip on his sanity as the Death Company’s Chaplain, every other Marine was wracked by the terrible power of the thirst. Some were silent and introspective with it, while others raged in maddened chorus at traitorous foes long since dead. This was Delos’ lot, to take those who had fallen from grace and to lead them into the jaws of battle. They would fight with the assurance of men who held no dread of death, their fears washed away by tides of blood. Delos was simply a herdsman, a pastor and guide who served only to direct them and then unleash these poor souls in a dark hurricane.
“The barrier falls!” cried a voice, and Delos saw Koris surge forward against his restraints, hand clutching the hilt of a brazen power sword. “Horus bears his throat, Dorn! Summon Guilliman and press the attack!”
The Chaplain could not keep a frown from his face. He is lost in the primarch’s memories and sees us all as figures from the past. “Of course, brother,” he said. “It will be done.”
“I’ll carve my name into the arch-traitor’s heart!” Koris pointed. “There! The nest of the enemy!”
Delos saw a shape emerging from the smog: it was the Ikari fortress. It was a volcano grown in the middle of a cityscape. The massive conical construction rose into a flat mesa where bristling gun towers clawed at the sky. In rings around the girth of the keep there were missile carriages, between balconies and the ruins of ornate carvings.
Weapons turned to track the Thunderhawks and the passage became violent. The Chaplain spied the points in the outer walls where lance fire from orbit had made lucky strikes—yes, there to the west, a lengthy crack in the fascia that cried out to be opened still further.
Koris recoiled and released a moan of pain.
“The blood!” he said through gritted teeth. “The cup of blood was poison! Damn his eyes!” Delos reached out a hand to reassure him, watchful of the veteran’s countenance. The Chaplain had shepherded many Blood Angels to their last in the Death Company, and each took a different path into the abyss. “Curse him! He means to destroy us all!”
Delos gave a slow nod. “Horus will perish brother, we shall see to it.”
“Horus lies dead!” Koris shouted, and his sight seemed to clear for a moment, “The traitor… Stele!” Pain rose in the warrior’s body and he went rigid.
The Chaplain nodded again, the words misconstrued. “Fear not, Koris. Lord Stele will know of your bravery—” Delos’ sentence was lost as a laser struck a chunk off the Thunderhawk’s undercarriage. He bellowed a command to the pilot. “Report!”
“We are undone!” came the reply. “We cannot land!”
“Then we shall not land!” Delos retorted. “Power to the thrusters. Take us into the breach. Unlock all weapons and munitions, release the seals on the engine-soul!” Without waiting to see if his orders were followed, the Chaplain pulled at a lever on the wall and a series of explosive bolts ignited along the length of the hull. Planes of steel plate fell away from the Thunderhawk as hatches were ejected into the air, and the restraints holding the black-armoured warriors snapped open. The hot Shenlong wind roared into the open cabin, and the Death Company answered it. “Brothers, take to your wings!” Delos held fast his crozius, its blue light illuminating him.
Koris let out a wordless cry of vengeance and bared his sword; the thirst had consumed him once again, and without pause he leapt into the air. Delos followed, along with the rest of the men. The yellow jetpack flame buoyed them up and away from the plunging drop-ship.
Anti-aircraft fire converged on the Thunderhawk and set it aflame, but still it fell like a blazing arrow toward the breach in the citadel. Delos saw the aircraft strike with perfect accuracy then the dark metal form vanished in a sphere of white release, and the Ikari fortress trembled. The Death Company fell into the flames, weapons erupting, and the Traitor Marines died with barbarous laments on their lips.
The Thunderhawks had come on the heels of the orbital bombardment from Bellus; so now in the wake of the gun-ships came the fall of drop-pods bristling with battle-ready Space Marines. Rafen’s mouth formed the words of the litergius sanguinius as the hold of Shenlong’s gravity pulled his pod down toward the surface. Above his head in the array of thruster jets, a simplistic logic engine shifted the descent of the capsule and aimed it squarely at the heart of the enemy stronghold. He felt the aspect change as the pod altered course and he gripped his bolter in anticipation.
Rafen looked around the men crammed in alongside him—Alactus, Turcio, Lucion and others—and saw how they looked to him with unquestioning loyalty. He was in command of their squad now, Sachiel had decreed it. He had ordered the other Marines to show him their deference as they had to Koris. Rafen looked away. He felt unworthy of such an honour so wrongly earned. Rafen fully expected to rise to leadership rank in due time, but to have it thrust upon him in the same moment as his trusted mentor was snatched away by the flaw… His mind was a whirl, and once more he murmured the words of the litergius, hoping that he would draw guidance from them.
A glyph illuminated on the lander’s inner wall. “Prepare for deployment!” he ordered. The squad secured their weapons and chanted the prayer of engagement. Rafen made the sign of the aquila as the capsule’s descent rockets flared. Rich chemical foam gushed in to fill the interior, forming a glutinous cushion about them. It was to be a hard landing.
Shedding waves of re-entry heat, Rafen’s pod joined a hundred others as they crashed into the barrage-ravaged walls of the fortress. Some of the craft touched down in the plaza below, settling amid chattering defilers and legions of tanks. Others used the velocity of their passage to pierce the castle bulwarks, slamming through rock like the fists of an enraged god.
Rafen blacked out for a moment as they hit. The shock-gel around him had absorbed most of the g-forces, but still the impact rang the drop-pod like a cloister bell. Then the foam was sinking away, and the spitting hiss of displaced air signalled the opening of the hatches. He was on his feet, the awesome energy of his Astartes physiology shrugging off the effects of the concussion.
“For the Emperor and Sanguinius!” The call leapt from his lips, and although he had uttered it a thousand times, the exultant cry did not diminish in force. Rafen threw himself from the pod. The capsule had blown through a gunport and spent its kinetic energy forcing a channel down through two levels of the fortress. It had come to rest in a chapel once used by Imperial weapon crews. Rafen’s first sight was of a statue of the God-Emperor, decapitated and fouled with plasma burns. A hot knife of hatred surged through him and he cast around for something to kill in revenge for this besmirching.
There were perhaps a dozen Word Bearers scattered about; it was difficult to tell exactly how many, because the pod’s explosive arrival had smashed them into a mess of limbs and torsos. Still, something wailed in the wash of red gore, and a body rose to aim a bolter. Rafen moved as if he were liquid mercury, fast, untouchable. Dodging clumsy fire from the injured Traitor Marine, he sent a burst of rounds into the warrior, ending him.
At the chapel entrance, a bent, hooded figure moaned an entreaty to Rafen, his scarred hands begging him for help. He assumed it was a man, perhaps some servitor that had survived this long amid the occupying army. Rafen stepped to him and took off the head, hood and all, with a single swipe from his combat knife. They had no time for liberating prisoners, and the figure might just as well have been a turncoat. He regarded the headless body as it fell, fountaining crimson. If he had been a loyal subject, then he was beside the Golden Throne now.
Lucion approached, the arcane display of his signum raised. “Our position is confirmed,” said the Techmarine, reading a datum. “We are but a short distance away from the breach.” He pointed away along a corridor. The pod’s calculating machines had worked well: they had been deposited close to the main thrust of the attack. Under Sachiel’s orders, all the Blood Angel forces were to converge and seize the fortress’ central access shaft. Once this had been taken, every level of the keep would be open to them.
Rafen allowed himself a moment to consider Koris. He would have been there now, fighting and killing in the Emperor’s name, each sword-blow a step closer to his own ending. “Take the pace!” he called, setting off at a run. “Swift and deadly, Blood Angels!”
The Ikari fortress mimicked the cone of a volcano from the exterior, but the pattern of the natural formation extended within as well, like a real cinder mountain. The stronghold was webbed on every level with a network of horizontal channels, along which ran trams that could carry men and hardware to all points of the building. Each of these fed from a central well that fell from the crest of the tower to the deep sub-levels. Instead of boiling magma, the lifeblood of the fortress was manpower, and under Imperial rule it had flourished. The Word Bearers had taken the building in a day, thanks to the perfidy of a cadre of Nurgle cultists that had infiltrated the tower. These death-worshippers had spread a fast-acting plague that indiscriminately killed the defenders, opening the way for the invasion.
Falkir, spying his point of entry as the most logical target for a counter-strike, reinforced the roof with guns and men. He had never expected the Blood Angels to hammer their way through solid rock instead. Rafen’s squad converged on the aperture made by the ship guns, and when they reached it, they found carnage of a like that gloried their Chapter’s name.
It was all Delos could do to keep up with the Death Company as they ran like screaming banshees into the thick of the Word Bearers’ forces. The Chaplain buried the fizzing head of his crozius in the chest of a Traitor Marine and gutted him. Hot blood exploded from his victim. He flicked the gore away with his free hand and spotted Koris at the lip of the central chamber. The veteran’s sword was
a blur of motion, carving apart Word Bearers while the twin-barrelled bolter in his other hand thundered into a mass of furies. A breed of primitive, predatory daemon beasts, they resembled mutant gargoyles with heads full of eyes and teeth, claws sprouting from every limb and a mad lust for killing. The screeching lizard-daemons snapped at him, and in return he tore them limb from limb, forcing the gun barrel into the mouth of one before opening the beast up with fire.
Reinforcements poured in from the side channels—the enemy was not ready to give way so easily—and they met Rafen’s men and a dozen other Blood Angels’ squads like two crashing waves. Gunfire and wrath blazed across the complaining metal floors, once again blood-red and gore-red armour clashing as they had on Cybele.
The furies came in a flood of green scales and yellowed teeth, rolling up over the walls from the lower levels. They threw themselves into the mass of Space Marines with abandon, and Rafen was dashed to the floor. For a moment, he was facing straight down, and through the iron grid decking he could see the shape of the central lift dais on its way up from the sub-level. His optics focused; the oval platform was a writhing mass of horned things baring head-splitter axes.
“Bloodletters!” he shouted, rising to his feet. “Below!” There were moments before the lift reached their level, and when it did, the odds would tip in favour of Chaos. Sachiel’s brutal plan of attack would be blunted here in the mouth of the wounded tower. Rafen punched the heart out of a screaming fury, and threw the corpse aside, forcing himself toward the edge. Caught in the throng of the battle, he would never reach it before the elevator arrived.
Beyond, he saw Koris, black and red in his rage, step up to the guardrail of the chasm. With a single swipe he decapitated three Traitors and then called out. “I see him! Guard the redoubt, Guilliman! I go to face Horus!”
Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow Page 17