He gave a sigh of remorse, calculated to be long enough and deep enough to seem real.
“Captain Tycho, if only you had seen what I have seen…” He shook his head sadly. “A nest of cultists infesting every level of the hive city. I regret… my own caution led me to them too late. By the time I arrived in their concealed lair, they had already summoned the creature.”
In reality, Stele had fabricated evidence to cover his own tracks weeks before he had arrived on the planet, inventing a dozen false identities and faked verification that “proved” the presence of a cult of Tzeentch in Orilan’s capital hive. “I killed them all but it was a hollow victory. The damage had already been wrought.”
Tycho watched him, the stony cast of the Space Marine’s flesh as immobile as the brassy mask on the other. “You brought it here.” It was a statement, not an accusation. The Blood Angel seemed to sense the inquisitor was lying about something. It was the nature of the ordos, after all; falsehood was to Stele’s kind as armour was to Tycho’s Chapter. “A number of my men, some of my serfs, an untold number of servitors… All lie dead and defiled by the hand of this…thing. Those that were not killed outright I have been forced to put down.” He advanced a step and Stele thought he could smell stale blood. “Now it chews on the heart of this ship like a dog with a shank of meat.” With a sudden shock, the Inquisitor sensed Tycho’s surface thoughts as the captain made his demand of him. “I want this fiend ejected from my vessel, lord inquisitor. You will assist me in achieving this end.”
Stele clamped down on his reaction immediately. The last thing he wanted was to find himself in a room with the daemon once again; but to refuse outright would seem like cowardice and lose him the small measure of reverence his high office granted him. “Captain, with respect, this creature is one of the most powerful daemons I have come across. It is a most deadly enemy, the very essence of change and mutation. It thrives on disorder and—”
“Chaos?” Tycho snapped, his tone cracking like brittle ice. “I want it dead, Stele, and you will help with that desire.” He could sense it clearly now, the blood-need in Tycho’s mind. The unchained fury desperate for the battle to come. “Or should I assume that men of your ilk are as spineless in the face of the archenemy as I have been led to believe?”
Stele’s eyes narrowed. I must play the warrior’s game, then. “I warn you, captain, keep a civil tongue in your head. I am as staunch in the Emperor’s light as you!” The lie glided from him like smooth glass, and inwardly Ramius felt ice form in his stomach. The pull of his oath to the Golden Throne waned with every passing day, conflicting him with the sweet nectar of the warp’s promise. A nerve jumped beneath his eye; despite his fears, he still wanted to face the daemon, to know it.
“Good,” said the Space Marine, glancing over his shoulder at his second-in-command. “Simeon, return the Inquisitor’s lasgun, and prepare a squad.”
“Your will,” said the other officer.
The ghost of a smile returned to Tycho’s face. “And be sure you lock the hatches behind us.”
They began a decent into a freakish hell, into a passageway of nightmares.
The things lurking inside the corridors of the drive decks dwarfed the stomach-turning mutants Stele had seen on Orilan. Shapes made of skin and bone coated the walls, stretched to impossible heights, pulled thin and taut. Horribly, many of the fleshy forms were still alive, some moaning others weeping.
Ramius moved amid the towering armoured forms of the Blood Angels as they walked forward with lockstep, stoic caution. As well as returning the lasgun, Simeon had also has Stele’s body armour cleaned and patched. It felt heavy and warm on his shoulders, and he fingered the edge of the ceramite plate where it eat beneath his silken vest, knowing that it would not save him from any sort of direct attack.
His gaze moved over the remains of the enginseers, fascinated by the strange inventiveness of the display. The daemon was getting better at what it did like an artist learning the strengths of a new medium, able now to uncoil better horrors from the sculpted flesh of its victims. Stele wanted to know how that was done. He wanted to understand how a man might take living flesh and mould it so, or sift it through his fingers like dry sand. Some of the remnants—Ramius found himself thinking of them as such—were still ambulatory, and they crowded toward the Space Marine squad. Tycho led the way through them, rending their warped forms with flares of killing fire from his combi-weapon, the melta gun flashing, catching the ones that got too close with ruby threads cast by lasers in his gauntlets. They screamed and died, boiling to death as they cried out for mercy. The Blood Angel captain’s face was grim. Stele sensed his surface thoughts as Tycho forced away any recall of the men these things had once been.
The moist, blood-warm halls were red like raw flesh, and around them steel had turned into arcs of wet bone. Weak orange light spilled in radiant pools. Tycho’s metallic armour made him seem like a bronze statue one that had grown bored with standing atop its plinth and stepped down, away to seek foes to kill.
Deeper they went, and the freak show grew more nauseating. The mutants attacked in small groups, then in waves that came back and forth. Perhaps they craved pain or just the nothingness of release; Stele folded dosed his mind to them, searching instead for the pulse-beat of the daemon itself. Searching and finding.
All about him the Blood Angels fought with ruthless, passionate fury, gunning down creatures, who had been their Chapter serfs only hours earlier. The inquisitor kept his lasgun close, pressing it to his chest like a talisman of protection, now and then daring to venture a shot at something that caught his eye.
They passed through flaps of rubber that resembled the valves of a heart, and then they were inside the core. Obscene geometry and ranges of bony spars spread out above them, glistening with new change. The shapes of the drive chamber were subsumed under undulating sheets of skin, the remains of a dozen enginseers flayed and merged together; it was impossible to see where the frigate ended and the monster began.
Concentrating, he let his preternatural senses sweep the chamber. And there it was, resting inside a nest of bones. Stele found the heart of the creature with his second sight inherently sensing the collection of clouded, alien thoughts inside a rough bole of flesh atop the primary reactor dolmen.
Tycho watched his reaction and read what he needed from it. “There!” he shouted, pointing upward. “Fire for effect!” The Blood Angels unleashed shot and shell against the daemon, and in return it extruded sinuous arms with teeth and barbs, slashing in scythes at the Space Marines.
Stele broke from the group and sought cover as Tycho’s men died, cut into pieces or beheaded; others were quicker, ripping at the claws with power fists, blasting them with bolters. Black, oily blood jetted across the undulating deck and the Tzeentch-thing screamed.
Ramius aimed his gun but hesitated, his finger frozen on the trigger. He found himself enraptured by the unbearable shapes of the monster above. That such things could be done—and this was only a servant of the Malfallax, which in turn was only a princeling daemon. Stele did not see chaos of order; he saw only incredible power, enough to remake the galaxy if one could only master it. He lost himself in it, the fight ranging around him unnoticed. A helmet with a Space Marine’s head still within it bounced to a halt at his feet, and Tycho’s bronzed form blurred toward him, shoving the Inquisitor aside as a spidery thing on nerve tendon tethers clawed and snarled. The Blood Angel killed it with a crash of bolter shells and Stele blinked, returning to the moment.
“What are you dithering for?” Tycho snarled, “My men are dead, only we still stand! Work your witchery, psyker, or you are useless to me.”
Distracted for only an instant the brother-captain missed the approach of a blunt hammer of fatty meat. The flesh-club struck him in the head, and Stele, rooted to the spot saw Tycho spin away like a discarded rag. The Blood Angel warrior careened off a piece of steel plate and fell to the deck with a massive cra
sh of stressed metal.
Stele ran to his side, panic rising in him. Tycho was the only thing that could protect him from what he had unleashed on Orilan; without the Blood Angel, he had nothing, no armour, no defender… “Captain!” Ramius shook the Astartes, but Tycho did not respond. The warrior was insensate, but his chest still rose and fell in shallow breaths. Unconscious then, but still alive.
He saw Tycho’s combi-weapon lying on the floor and took a half-step toward it. The idea of taking it up himself died in this mind; the gun was so massive he would never have been able to lift it.
Icy fear and tingling adrenaline flooded Stele’s body. He looked up, searching for a means of escape, and instead found a nest of eyes blinking at him from the topmost tiers of the warp towers. It sent claw arms down toward him, slow and steady. The sinuous limbs wandered around him, tap ping disinterestedly on Tycho’s armour, scraping at the floor. Ramius saw that they were made of human flesh; he saw a bondsman’s tattoo visible on one elongated stabbing arm.
“Human,” said the daemon, the voice echoing with the resonance of its distant master. “What will you do now?”
Across some great vastness, the Malfallax was working the shade-thing like a marionette, talking through it to him. “If fear is all you have, then your life ends here. If not…”
Ramius had the sudden impression that he was being offered something.
“I am afraid,” Stele said aloud, “but I am more hungry than fearful. Hungry for knowledge.”
Dark laughter boomed off the shivering walls. “Such greed. Your species has an almost infinite capacity for it.” Part of the eye cluster detached from the large mass, transforming into a wispy shadow as it drifted down to approach him. “The path branches before you, Stele. Defy me and perish, or take my blessing and walk the Way of Change.” When Ramius hesitated, the shade congealed before him, becoming vaguely human in shape. “You want to know, don’t you?” The question made his mouth fill with saliva. “There is no better way than the one I offer. Take it, and your mind will be opened to sights you never dreamed of.”
Stele closed his eyes and felt himself nodding. Had there ever really been any doubt? Now that the offer was there before him, had he ever really considered refusing it? No.
Ramius felt the frigid, exhilarating rush as a tiny fraction of the essence of the Malfallax entered him, and made itself a nest inside his mind. A hard seed of blackness formed in the core of his psyche, and in a strange way, he felt free. Marain. He banished her as his last regret, the last connection that held him to humanity. She had been the voice of his conscience for so long… but now he understood that such a thing only held him back from greatness.
And then there was the voice. “Ramius!” He spun on his heel, suddenly dizzy, dislocated from the world around him. A voice from the grave? Even as he banished her from his mind, he heard Marain’s words.
He stared incredulous, as she crossed the chamber toward him, her gun in her hand, tears streaming down her tan cheeks. For a moment he thought she was some apparition, perhaps a mind-ghost conjured by the daemon to taunt him; but in the next instant the raw energy of the seed the Malfallax planted inside him shot power through his psyche and he read her like a book.
Ramius understood instantly; she had survived—how like her to do that—and come aboard Tycho’s ship with those from the shuttle. But the joy that might have once touched him at the sight of her was gone, swallowed by his new master’s touch. His affection for her was absorbed, dissipated. Gone a surge of resentment rose and then fell under the weight of his new insight.
She aimed her weapon at him. Yes, he understood. She had followed the Space Marines down through the ship, stalking him. “Heretic!” spat the soldier. “It sickens me to think I laid with you! You have discarded everything you swore an oath for!”
Harsh and bitter laughter bubbled up from deep inside Stele’s chest. There was no humour in it, only a dark and terrible knowing of his own soul. “Marain, you do not understand. You are so limited in your sight, you cannot see—”
“I see enough!” she cried. “You are a traitor!”
The sinuous, rustling whispers of the daemon knitted in a blasphemous chorus over their heads. The inquisitor was aware of the Malfallax watching them both, enjoying the bitter hate radiating off the woman as if it were some rare and delicate wine. The creature was doing nothing to intervene, content to let the moment play out as it might.
He spoke Marain’s name again and took a step toward her. “There are none that know me as you do. There is no living soul that has shown me the loyalty you gave. Do not end that now.” He extended a hand to her, and beneath the surface of the skin black dots of fluid swarmed and moved. “Cast off your doubts. Join me. We can discard the petty dictates of the Emperor and forge our own path. Together.” Stele meant every word; he was standing on the brink of something incredible and to have her follow along with him… to share it would be glorious. There was a moment—he saw it there as bright as daybreak in her mind—when Marain allowed herself to consider accepting his offer, just for the briefest of instants. She teetered on the edge of agreeing to it, just to be with him again, just to fulfil the edict that had been drilled into her since birth; but then the colour of the thought faded into nothing and white-hot hatred unfolded in its place. The crude maw of her gun danced in front of him, and he had no doubt that she aimed it at a place where it would kill him with the fat shot. Marain swore a gutter oath that curled his lip in land. He had his answer, then. “Fallen whore of the Ruinous Powers,” she shouted, “you dare to try to tear me from my God-Emperor! I will kill you!”
“Then do it,” echoed the daemon voice, finally venturing to speak. “But she can’t, can she? A man she has sworn her life to protect a corpse god she has sworn to obey, and now she must destroy you to appease the other.” Every mouth of the Malfallax smiled. “What delicious pain.”
“Marain—” Stele began, but her only reply was a face of rage and a storm of gunfire. “End you!” the spat throwing herself at him, stitching a line of incendiary bullets across his torso. Stele howled and tore his silken vest from him as it burst into flame. Shots that would have ripped him open before warped and deflected about him, the black power of the mutation inside him charging his psyche with monstrous force.
The inquisitor opened himself to the dark and embraced the rage. “You faithless bitch!” he thundered at her. “You are nothing to me!” Tears of anger and pain streamed down Marain’s face as she emptied her gun into him. She drew her fractal knife and made to plunge it in his heart.
“No!” Stele shouted the word; perhaps it was a cry against her, or perhaps against himself, but the result was the same Conjured from the warp itself, a haze of pure purple-white fire blazed from Ramius’ fingers and enveloped the woman’s shrieking body.
It was over in a split second. Marain twisted, became a charcoal sketch against the glare, then ashes.
Then nothing.
The daemon began to laugh, the voice growing louder and louder until it beat at Stele’s mind, mocking him for his towering folly.
“Silence!” he spat out a scream that rended air and matter, the hellbolt that killed Marain magnified a thousandfold; for one brief instant the inquisitor became a tornado of psychic force, and with it he ripped the shade-daemon from existence.
As the power abated, he dropped to his knees amid the decaying meat and wept.
In the aftermath, Simeon came to the chambers they had assigned to him and gave a shallow bow. The Blood Angels treated him differently now; despite his commander’s orders, Simeon had followed Tycho into the drive decks rather than seal them shut behind him. It was he who found Stele crouched by the brother-captain’s body, while all around him was dead and disintegrating, the binding power of the shade-creature gone.
Tycho’s wounds had been grave, and even now, days later, he still lay in a healing trance, but Simeon informed him that the Blood Angel would live to figh
t again, in no small part thanks to the Inquisitor’s help.
He nodded, holding back a hollow smile. Ramius wondered; did the Malfallax foresee this turn of events? When the Blood Angels entered to find the daemonic presence banished and only he and Tycho still alive, it was Simeon who assumed that Stele had marshalled his abilities to save their vessel. Had the Malfallax goaded him into obliterating its avatar, in order to cement a respect for him among these Astartes? He had no way of knowing; but Ramius had always been a man with an eye for circumstance and the knowledge of how to turn it to his advantage.
With Tycho in the depths of unconsciousness while Stele made his pact with the warp, no other soul that drew breath knew what had happened in the engine room, and they never would. Only Marain had been witness, and she… she was cut from his life.
His heart hardened. It was all he could do not to mock them when the earnest and serious Blood Angels praised him for his heroic act in saving the frigate. He listened intently, nodding in all the right places, as they told him that he would accompany them to their fortress-monastery on Baal. There the honour of a “blood debt” would be granted to him. Such gestures of respect and trust were rare. He said the right words and accepted graciously, while inside the privacy of his own thoughts he considered how he might use that misplaced confidence to greater advantage. Not now, perhaps, but one day.
From the bridge he watched storms of cyclonic torpedoes obliterate Orilan, erasing the last traces of his apostasy. In the fires he thought he saw Marain’s face, her dying image dragging away with it the last human part of his soul.
Eventually he left the Blood Angels behind, and retreated to his sanctum, peeling back the layers of his mind to touch the immaterium beyond space as the ship ventured into the warp. A malleable, ever-changing voice was waiting for him with plans and ideas and subtle whispers. Willingly, Ramius Stele followed it into the darkness, turning his face from the Emperor and opening a path toward the Ways of Change.
Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow Page 28