Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow

by Warhammer 40K

  “Koris, no!” The words left Rafen’s lips as the sergeant leapt over the rail and fell into the mass of Khornate creatures. Hot rage engulfed Rafen and he cried out, murdering and killing to feed his anger.

  The bloodletters tore at Koris’ dark armour with their hellblades, ripping shreds of ceramite from his torso and shoulders. He did not need to aim his blows; everywhere his power sword fell there was a shrieking daemon-beast to die by it. His target lay at the middle of the massing throng, and he cut his way forward. “Horus!” he bellowed. “Face me! Face Sanguinius!” It turned. Koris, maddened by the rage, saw the face and form of the arch-traitor there, the fiend that had butchered his liege lord. What the delusion hid from him was a dreadnought, a clanking hulk of warped metal baring clusters of autocannon and a buzzing chainfist. The awful mechanism fired at him, burning into the crowd of daemons, killing more of them as it swept up to find him. Koris leapt, the strength of his primarch racing through him. He discarded the spent bolter, and two-handed, he took off the infernal device’s right arm with the sword like an arc of blazing steel. Hooting with the neuro-shock, it slammed him to the deck with a steaming cannon muzzle and stomped on Koris, hard. A clawed foot splayed over his chest and ground him into the platform.

  Bones cracked and organs burst inside the veteran. Yes, now he was at one with Sanguinius, in the blessed grip of agony, the ghostly sensation of broken wings at his back. All things seemed to be in double vision for Koris. One was the face of events here on Shenlong, and the other a return to the ancient conflict aboard the battle barge of Warmaster Horus. He was Koris, veteran sergeant of the Blood Angels, chosen of Dante, warrior of the Death Company—but he was also Sanguinius, lord of Baal, the angelic sovereign and the master of the red grail. “Chaos filth!” he spat, coughing out tissue and clotted blood. “I name you traitor! Face me and die!”

  The dreadnought loomed over him and laughed, just as the elevator drew level with the breached floor. The veteran heard Blood Angels fighting and dying there. Koris pulled his muscles into line one last time and screamed with the pain of it. He forced himself up and out from under the steel foot. Fists mailed about the hilt, he rammed the power sword into the machine’s groin, then up and into the chest, to the rotten core where a crippled Word Bearer lay coiled like some aborted foetus.

  It struck him back by reflex, throwing the Marine clear across the gantry, before sinking to its rusted knees. With only a brace of autocannons in place of a hand, it could not remove the blade that pierced the power core at its heart. Scattered around the machine-form in disarray, the horned bloodletters milled and chattered in anger and frustration.

  The Word Bearer dreadnought had served his Legion for uncountable ages. As a flesh and blood warrior, he had stood in the service of the Emperor in the years before the great awakening, as his kith knew the Heresy. He marched at the purging of Fortrea Quintus, and had willingly followed his Primarch Lorgar into the Maelstrom. He did not know his own name, it had been lost to him in a war with the Ultramarines at Calth, and there too his body had been surrendered to this ambulatory coffin, where he could better serve the Dark Apostles against the corpse god. Thus, without name and without epitaph, the dreadnought died flailing as the reactor in his heart overloaded.

  The blast threw everyone to the ground, enemy and ally alike. Seeking the path of least resistance, the shock blew along the central shaft, immolating a handful of loitering furies and making ash of the bloodletters. And then, with a lowing moan of tortured metal, the elevator came apart in molten leaves. Aflame, great axe-heads of decking cut away and tumbled down toward the lower levels, sending up storms of sparks where they collided with the stone walls.

  Rafen regained his footing and threw aside the ragged hunks of flesh that had recently been a daemon-form. He caught a Word Bearer who moved a fraction too slowly and granted it the last bolt in his weapon’s magazine. The Traitor did not die instantly, so Rafen beat it to death with the burning muzzle of his gun, striking the thing’s ugly face over and over again until it became a mess of indistinct matter. The explosion had turned the Blood Angel’s hearing into a cascade of sharp ringing, and without voice from any of his brethren, Rafen reloaded and tore into whatever living things he could find that bore the mark of Chaos undivided. He gave them all an invocation cut from hateful curses. He damned them to the Emperor’s cold mercies as he severed them from their lives. The floor became slippery with mixed blood and other fluids, which drained and fell into the darkness of the lower levels. Silence fell there as the Blood Angels asserted their superiority. Now and then, a blast of gunfire signalled that Alactus or one of the other men was executing someone who was still alive.

  Rafen killed for the red thirst; he felt it gather around him. He longed to let it in and engulf him, or to feel something of the same madness that had taken his mentor. But it ebbed and receded from him wherever he tried to find it. If a time were to come when he sank into the grasp of the blessed angel, it would not be now. He came across Delos, his Chaplain’s armour was glistening. His grinning death mask helmet was streaked with gore. The horrific aspect was at odds with the delicacy he showed as he spoke the words of the Emperor’s peace over a fallen member of the Death Company. Rafen knew the dead man—he was a veteran Marine, an associate of Koris’ from Captain Simeon’s command.

  “Too many elders took the scarlet path this day,” said Delos, as if reading his mind. “Noble, senior brothers, all drawn by the flaw as if from nowhere.” He shook his head. “This omen may be good or ill, Rafen.”

  “We… We have taken the well,” he replied in a dead voice. “Sachiel’s plan unfolds.”

  “Rafen!” Turcio’s yell hung in the blood-wet air. “Here, quickly!”

  “What is it?”

  “Koris! He lives, but not for long! He asks for you!”

  Rafen sprinted across the heat-warped decking to a darkened corner of the chamber. Turcio backed away, a look of trepidation on his face. “You… You should speak to him.” He said carefully, avoiding looking directly at the veteran’s broken body. Some among the Blood Angels thought of the black rage as a virus, and kept their distance from those who exhibited it. Rafen angrily waved him away and knelt next to his old mentor.

  Koris’ wounds were horrific, and his voice was thin and distant. “Rafen. Lad, I see you.”

  “I am here, old friend.” Rafen’s throat tightened. In his agony, the veteran had regained some small measure of lucidity.

  “The pure one calls me, but first I must… Warn…”

  “Warn me? Of what?”

  “Stele!” he spat. “Do not trust the ordos whoreson! He brought me to this, all of it!” Koris’ hand gripped his wrist, the strength ebbing from him. “Arkio… Be wary of your sibling, lad. He has been cursed with the power to destroy the Blood Angels! I see it! I see—”

  Then the light faded from the old man’s eyes, and Koris was finally lost to them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Bellus awoke from her slumber with terrible violence. The shutters covering her bow peeled back to open the angry mouths of lance batteries and torpedo tubes. The battle barge disgorged shells laden with explosive charges and other warshots that carried men instead of combustibles. Captain Ideon planned each launch down to the split second, and in a perfect ballet, drop-ships and bombs rained down on Shenlong. Ideon did not trouble himself with concerns about civilians or loyalists down there; the Word Bearers had taken the forge world only recently, and it was likely that Imperial patriots, perhaps planetary defence force troopers or even Guardsmen, were still resisting the Chaos invaders. Those men and women would die tonight. They would be erased from existence in the same crushing fists of fire that tore apart the Traitor Marine divisions. But such collateral damage was the manner of orbital bombardment and those who went to the Emperor tonight would be counted as heroes.

  Immobile on his command throne, the captain’s mind looked in every direction at once. He was waiting for
the sign that would begin the next phase in his battle plan, and as if on cue, a shape emerged over the curve of Shenlong, rising up from an extremely low orbit.

  “New contact,” sang one of the sense-servitors. “Murder-class cruiser on intercept vector, closing at high speed.”

  Ideon’s pale face moved rarely, and the musculature in his skin was flaccid and ill-used these days. Nevertheless, he managed to peel back his lips in a faint, predatory smile. “Well met, Dirge Eternal,” the captain said to the Chaos warship. “You’ll not flee the field this time.”

  Ranged at the observation cupola at the head of the bridge, Sachiel glanced at Arkio and grinned. “The skills of our brother-captain are uncanny, yes? He predicted that the Traitor ship would take such an orbit and leave us a brief window of attack on the capital.”

  Stele stood behind them, and answered first. “Ideon understands the behaviour of these Chaos filth. Their paranoia would never let them hold in geostationary position—they fear attack from all sides at all times, and so they circle the world like a jackal guarding a carcass.”

  Arkio’s mind was elsewhere, his hands gripping the brass guide rail. “Forgive me, high priest, but how long must I remain aboard ship? Even now, the last of our invasion force departs for the surface and I hunger to join them.”

  Sachiel smiled, aware that Stele’s eyes were upon them both. “Soon, Arkio. Very soon. The inquisitor has something special planned for the Traitors, and it will be your glory to take it to them.”

  The young Blood Angel’s eyes glittered with anticipation as he met Sachiel’s gaze. The Sanguinary Priest was struck by the play of reflected laser-light off the youth’s aquiline face, the gaunt and noble cut of his chin and cheekbones. By the grail, the boy could be Sanguinius himself.

  “Entering firing range,” said the scanner servitor.

  Stele turned in place to watch Ideon. “Captain, at your discretion?”

  Ideon did not need the inquisitor’s permission, and the comment irked him slightly. Then the Dirge Eterna rose in his weapon sights and he felt a swell of anticipation. “Bow guns stand down, power to void shields.”

  “It is done.” Solus replied, glancing up from the console pit beneath the captain’s bronze throne. “The engineseers report that the sub-light drives are content and prepared for full thrust.”

  “All ahead full.” Ideon’s reply came without pause. “Bring us to the bastard.”

  The Bellus’s executive officer relayed the command into a mouthpiece at his neck, spreading the word throughout the battle barge. Instantly, the warship’s thruster grid crashed into life, and forced the vessel forward with a gut-wrenching lurch of motion.

  At his vantage point, Arkio saw the inner edge of the minefield receding. The three-dimensional warfare of star-ships was not his area of expertise, but he understood the pattern to which Ideon was working. Although there were hundreds of kilometres of vacuum between them, Bellus and Dirge Eterna had little room to manoeuvre. They were sandwiched between the wall of mines in high orbit over Shenlong and the planet’s atmospheric envelope below. The orbital corridor they fought in had barely enough room for a ship the size of Bellus to turn about at maximum thrust, and Ideon’s plan to engage the Chaos cruiser was dangerous. The smallest delay or a mistake in orders would send the battle barge into the ionosphere and burn her to the keel. It was like two men conducting a knife-fight in a coffin.

  “Incoming fire from the Traitor,” said Solus. “He’s trying to push us back into the mines.”

  “Ignore it. Have the bow crews reload with the special warshots. Give me the status of the port and starboard batteries.”

  Brother Solus relayed the data, and as the information flowed directly into Ideon’s mechadendrites, the first licks of laser flame struck Bellus hard. The aged warship took the blow in her stride and turned into it, bringing as little of her aspect as possible to face the Dirge Eterna. “All parallel guns answer ready.”

  “Then, by the Throne, fire at will.”

  Arkio watched. On one level, he hated the idea of being nothing more than an observer, but on another he found himself fascinated by the steady, deliberate pace of the combat. He absently ran a hand over his face. Strangely, the engagement felt familiar to him, as if he had watched other battles like this from similarly lofty heights. For a moment, he blinked and saw not Shenlong and the Dirge, but a different, blue-green planet and a massive Chaos barge, hideously beweaponed and blasphemous in its arcane geometry, then the image was gone.

  The Murder-class ship presented its port side to Bellus as the two vessels came alongside one another in a deadly jousting pass. In a tactic dating back to the birth of mankind’s naval wars, both starships unleashed a punishing broadside, and for a second the space between them was threaded with hot lances of light and the thin trails of missile salvoes. Bellus rocked with the impact and lost pressure on a dozen decks. Huge petals of hull metal shredded from her flank along with fountains of breathing gas and water ice. Vacuum-bloated corpses followed them.

  Ideon did not ask for a damage report. He felt each one of Bellus’ wounds as keenly as if it had been cut into his own hide. As the two ships moved out of the merge, he barked out his next orders. “On the word, emergency turn, maximum displacement!”

  Solus blinked. “Engineseers report that optimal power is not available, lord. The machine spirit is reluctant—”

  “Damn the thing!” Ideon grated. “The word is given! Turn the ship!”

  Ideon’s aide nodded again and sent the command, gripping the closest stanchion for dear life. Arkio felt a shift in gravity in the pit of his gut and the deck threw him into the guardrail.

  Bellus moaned like a wounded animal as she suddenly bled out the acceleration force of a dozen gravities. Massive thrust jets fired along her port flank as one to bodily ram the ship around. The barge bowed under the massive stresses, losing more air and men. On the bridge, a hololithic screen spat sparks and exploded, killing a servitor instantly and maiming a Blood Angel’s officer.

  “Turning!” called Solus, “Aspect change on target!”

  Ideon ignored the pain and his voxcoder crackled with venom. “Too slow, Dirge Eternal I have you!”

  The Word Bearer ship was also coming about, but with none of the wild daring that Ideon had demanded of his vessel. Slowly, inexorably, Bellus brought her bow to aim at the cruiser. Now the positions were reversed, and it was the Dirge trapped between the minefield and their enemy.

  “Bow guns!” Ideon snapped.

  “They… Do not answer.” Solus admitted, “Perhaps the crews were injured—”

  Ideon cared not. “All tubes, fire for effect.”

  Once more, Solus relayed the order. If the men in the forward weapons channels had been slowed in their duties by the force of the fierce turn, the firing command would see them vented into space as the gigantic torpedo tubes yawned open.

  From the crimson maw of the Bellus, a fusillade of dark shapes emerged and raced toward the enemy ship. Arkio watched them go. His throat tightened as he suddenly realised they were flying wide of the mark. Incredulous, he could do nothing but stare as they passed the Dirge and blew apart in puffballs of flame and glittering metal. “A miss!” he cried.

  “No,” said Ideon. “Watch.”

  Where standard warheads had just an explosive charge, the torpedoes that Bellus had fired carried jury-rigged cases of metallic chaff and heat flares—and on the artificial sensors of the silent mines behind the cruiser, the colour of their blasts registered like the eruption of a dozen suns. Techmarine Lucion’s examination of the mine that hit Bellus had revealed exactly how the devices had worked, and Ideon’s tech-adepts exploited this new knowledge. As if they were a swarm of wasps brought to sudden anger, the docile mines nearest Dirge Eterna fired their thrusters and dived into the craft. Each detonation attracted another, and then another, until the enemy ship was smothered in bursts of nuclear fire.

  “Bri
ng us to a stable altitude,” the captain’s voice betrayed a veil of smug satisfaction. “Damage control details to their stations.”

  Sachiel blew out a breath. “And now the Word Bearers are stranded on Shenlong.”

  Arkio turned away from the burning ship, eyes keen with anticipation. “We shall make it their grave marker.”

  The Word Bearers were waiting for them on the ground level of the fortress. The broadest part of the entire tower, the vast circular floor spread out around the central shaft like a desert of metal decking. The atrium was so high and wide that entire city blocks could have fitted in the gaps between the ranks of handling gear and machinery. Open doors that led into a spray of manufactory hangars yawned open, through gates as big as the Bellus. Overhead, mechanical gantries and hanging monorail trams stood mute witness to the maelstrom of carnage below. There was no moment of peace to be found anywhere here, only the constant disorder of unfettered warfare.

  Methodical and inexorable, the Chaos Marines came forward in ranks, flowing around the obstacles in their path. The incessant braying of the demagogues rebounded from the metal walls, a ceaseless cacophony of monstrous and profane screaming. The Blood Angels met them with equal ferocity, flooding out from the open shaft in a storm of brazen red. Rafen and Alactus fought side-by-side, thrown together by chance, bolter and plasma gun shouting death back at the enemy.

  No man among the Space Marines would have voiced it from his position deep in the killing frenzy, but the Word Bearers were forcing them back inch-by-inch. For all the reversals of their fortunes, for all the time that Koris’ mad sacrifice had bought them on the upper floors, there were simply more of the Traitors than there were of them. Bloody attrition would tell the day, and with each surge of men who dived gleefully into close-quarter combat with the magenta-hued enemy, less and less of the Astartes warriors remained to hold the line. Eventually, the press of corrupted flesh and steel would force them into the walls. There was nowhere else to go: if they could not break through the enemy the only other route was pure suicide, down into the sub-levels where the Ikari fortress’ prison cells lay. In those dark warrens crammed with wretched and broken civilians the Word Bearers would be able to bottle them up and slaughter them at will. At least on the open deck, they had a chance to fight and die with glory. With their rage ignited, retreat was not an option.