Fenn continued. “With all the ships in orbit and the comings and goings at the fortress, I imagine the citadel could take off and fly away without being noticed.”
Caecus had seen the great fleet massing over Baal as he returned from the first moon; the berthing of the various warships had forced his pilot to make a wide detour and approach the polar zone from the night side. Part of him wondered how interesting it would be to have a conclave of his own, to draw in Apothecaries and sanguinary priests from all the successor Chapters and pool their knowledge. What secrets could he learn from his cousins, if only they would be open to share them? But that was not the way of the Adeptus Astartes. For a moment, his mind drifted; he recalled the stories he had heard of a successor Chapter from the Twenty-first Founding, the Lamenters. It was said that they had found a way to expunge the gene-flaws from their shared bloodline. If it were true… Caecus would have given much to meet such men and glean wisdom from them; but the Lamenters had not been heard of in decades, not since a tyranid force had decimated their numbers, and every messenger sent to find them returned empty-handed. He had little doubt they would not be represented at Dante’s grand conclave. A great pity, he mused, but not the matter at hand. There are other concerns to be addressed.
The ornate brass elevator car accepted them and began a swift descent into the heart of the complex. Tier upon tier of the Vitalis Citadel flashed past them, endless levels of experimental facilities, gene-labs and workstations. The quest to understand the labyrinthine nature of the Blood Angels gene-seed was an ongoing work, and this was only one of several sites engaged in it. The mission to find the causes of and cures for the twin curses of the Black Rage and the Red Thirst were ceaseless. But there were other efforts under way here, experiments that were hidden in vaults that only Caecus and his staff were granted access to. It was toward one such compound that they travelled now, a wordless understanding between them.
The Apothecae Majoris sensed something else unspoken, however. After a moment, he gave the serf a measuring look. “What is it that concerns you, Fenn?”
His assistant’s fingers knotted. “It… is of no consequence, lord.”
“Tell me,” he insisted. “All matters that occur under this roof are of my concern.”
Fenn puffed. “It is the woman, sir. Her manner continues to vex me. I believe she does it to amuse herself at my expense.”
Caecus frowned. “I have told you before, on more than one occasion, to make your peace with her. Do not be in error, serf. Those words were not a request.”
“I have tried, my lord.” Fenn bowed his head slightly. “But she diminishes me at every opportunity. Mocking my skills.” He paused. “I do not like her.”
“Like? You are not required to like her. You are required to work with her. If you cannot do so—”
“No, no!” Fenn shook his head. “Lord Caecus, you know my dedication to the Chapter and our endeavours is true! But the air of ill-feeling she brings to the place—”
“I will speak with her.” Caecus ended the discussion firmly. “We are on the cusp of something magnificent, Fenn. I will not allow such trivial minutiae to cloud the issue.”
The serf said nothing, staring at the hex-grid deck as the lift continued to descend. Through the metal flooring, the chasm of the elevator shaft extended away into the depths of the mountainside.
The great brass gates opened and a stubby iron drawbridge dropped into place, allowing them to exit the elevator car. Fenn followed, as years of drilled-in discipline suggested, a step behind and to the right of his master. Lord Caecus walked past the gun-servitors caged upon the stone walls, letting their canine snouts take his scent. Satisfied, the guardians gave a hollow yowl of assent and their stubber cannons drooped. Steam hissing in hot gushes, the pistons holding the pressure doors shut over the laboratorium ratcheted out and the steel plates were pulled up and away. The motion reminded Fenn of a curtain drawing back from a theatre stage.
Venturing through the blue-lit tunnel where the machine-spirit sensors watched, the two of them allowed a fine mist of counter-infectives to haze the air about them; then the inner doors opened and they were in the chamber proper.
The colours of white and red dominated everything. Hard illumination from glowstrips in the walls threw stark, pitiless light on the benches where chemical rendering was underway. Centrifuges whirred and fractionating columns bubbled in a slow rhythm, giving the chamber an austere but somehow animate sense to it. Medicae servitors moved to and fro, working at repetitive tasks programmed into their brains by decks of golden punch cards.
The red was here and there in patches; on the smocks of the servitors, pooling in the blood gutters of the dissection tables, thick in vials that ranged in racks about the walls.
At one such rack, the woman stood, using a lenticular viewer made of pewter and crystal to conduct a deep examination of a particular blood sample. She looked up, the sharp lines of her face accented by the night-black hair bunched in a tight fist upon her head. Discreet mechadendrite cords trailed from a line of brass sockets that began at her temple and ended at the nape of her neck. Like Fenn, she wore a simple duty robe of bleached cloth; unlike him, however, on her it miraculously accented the firm and well-muscled shape of her body.
“Nyniq,” said Caecus, and she bowed to the Blood Angel by way of returning his greeting.
“You’ve returned at a timely moment, majoris.” Nyniq’s voice had a quality to it that some ordinary men might have found charming, sultry even. Fenn considered it neither; her manner seemed oily and insincere to him. He had objected to the involvement of the tech-priestess from the very beginning, but Lord Caecus had dismissed his concerns. The matter of the woman’s motives was secondary to the work at hand, so the Astartes had said. The work, the work, always the work. That is what is most important. His master’s words rang hollow in his ears.
Certainly, it was undeniable that Nyniq brought a great intellect to the project, and indeed, Fenn found himself reluctantly admitting that her solutions to some problems had allowed them to advance their research by leaps and bounds. But that didn’t make him dislike her any less. This work was a matter for Blood Angels and their Baalite kindred, not for some itinerant member of the magos biologis to simply drop into and begin interfering.
She had been here for months now. She never seemed to leave the laboratorium, always there when Fenn arrived after a rest period, always there when he left again to take sleep or sustenance. And then there was that habit she had, of cooing some peculiar wordless melody to herself whenever she worked. Fenn found it irritating.
He comforted himself with a thought; if she did turn out to have another agenda other than the course of pure research she claimed, her life would be forfeit in moments. Caecus had been direct in his words with her; while she toiled within the walls of the Vitalis Citadel, her life belonged to the Blood Angels. If she did anything to damage that trust, it would be her blood spilled upon the floors here.
Fenn followed his master after Nyniq, through the crossway door at the far end of the chamber and into the tank crèche beyond.
In there, the colour was the sea-green of the oceans that had once shone across Baal before the fall of Old Night. Liquid shimmers of reflected light cast patterns over the walls. Boots rang across the service gantry between the two long ranks of fogged, glassy capsules. Nyniq took them to a tank resting up on its armature, turned so that it stood upright next to the gantry. Built into the glass wall of the tank was a metal bulb festooned with indicator lights. The air in here was heavy with stringent chemicals.
“Series eight, iteration twelve,” noted the woman. “If you will observe?”
Fenn immediately frowned. “That one is still immature.”
“Quite so,” Nyniq allowed, “but it is far enough along to illustrate my point.” She tapped out a sequence on a keypad and muttered a brief incantation.
Inside the tank, the milky fluid cleared to revea
l a naked male, of similar proportion to a young Baalite tribal but lacking the pallid flesh and wiry build. The figure in the tank had skin toned a tanned red, with planes of hard muscle beneath. He would not have looked out of place in the armour of a Scout.
Caecus studied the youth, who drifted as if in a slumber, a line of thin bubbles trailing from his lips. “Outward aspect is promising.” He said it warily.
Nyniq nodded. “But as we have become aware over the last series of iterations, that is not a guarantee.” She tapped another control and the figure in the tank jerked, limbs going rigid.
His eyes snapped open and Fenn gasped as he looked directly at the serf. There was no pupil, iris or white of the eye; only a hard, baleful orb of dark ruby. Hands that bent into claws came up and scraped at the inside of the tank, scoring lines in the reinforced armourglass. And then the mouth opened. Within, there was an orchard of daggered fangs, row upon row.
Caecus’ expression remained cold and aloof as the figure gurgled and frothed, beating at its confinement. “Another failure, then.”
“Aye,” said Nyniq grimly. “Despite our every effort, my lord, errors continue to creep into the structure of the gene-matrix. With each iteration they become more pronounced. The replication protocols are flawed at a level so primal, so inherent, that nothing we do can correct them.”
Caecus turned away. He waved a hand at the tank. “Dispose of it.”
“As you wish.” The tech-priestess pressed another control and a boxy device dropped into the top of the tank on a frame: a modified boltgun. Fenn saw a moment of almost human emotion on the face of the specimen before the gun discharged with a muffled concussion. The milky fluid swirled with red.
Nyniq stepped back, and the base of the tank opened into a sluice, liquid, flesh and dead matter alike dropping away into a yawning vent beneath the companionway.
Fenn went after his master. “My lord, there are no failures. There is only more data. We shall learn from this iteration and attempt again.”
“Is that wise?” asked Nyniq.
Both of them stopped and turned to face her. “I will decide what is and is not wise,” Caecus said, a warning beneath his words.
She touched the platinum pendant around her neck. The shape of a repeating strand of DNA, it mirrored the red helix sigil that crested the shoulder pad of every Blood Angel apothecarion. “Majoris, I offered my services to you after our first meeting because I was captured by the purity of your dedication. I did so because I believed that what you attempted here will be to the benefit of the Adeptus Astartes and the glory of the Emperor of Mankind. But now I must speak honestly to you. We have reached the limits of our skills. We can do no better.” Her head bowed. “I thank you for this opportunity to be part of your work. But we must accept failure and move on.”
A nerve jerked in Caecus’ jaw. “I will do no such thing! I am a Blood Angel! We do not give up the cause at the first impediment we encounter! We carry our mission to the bitter end!”
“But this is not the first impediment, lord. Not the second, not the tenth or the fiftieth.” Nyniq’s words became quiet, conspiratorial. “My lord, I know that you have kept certain things from us. I know that the Chapter Master has not given his blessing for this research to proceed, and yet you have continued it.”
“Lord Dante did not order us to stop,” Fenn broke in. “He… He did not use those words!”
“Semantics,” said Nyniq. “I doubt he will be pleased to learn we went on regardless for all these months.”
“She is correct.” Caecus moved to another of the tanks, and studied his own reflection in the glass, his manner cooling. “But I made the decision. Lord Dante is a great man, but he believes in that which he can hold in his hand. It is only the Emperor and the strength of his brethren he takes on faith. I am convinced… I am certain Dante will see the value of this work, if only I could show him proof instead of words.”
“The only proof we have are unfinished clones. Bestial mutants and freaks masquerading as Space Marines, no better than the spawn of the Corrupted.” Nyniq shook her head. “We know that Corax of the Raven Guard took decades over this process, and even then his yield was one success for every hundred stillborn failures!”
“Perhaps… Perhaps you are right.”
Fenn’s lip trembled as he saw a change come over his master. The certainty in Caecus’ manner slipped away. It was as if a great weight had come upon him. The serf had the sudden, terrible awareness that he was seeing behind the mask of determination his lord usually wore, that this weary aspect was his true face. The face of someone worn down by years of dogged, fruitless toil toward a goal he might never reach. “Master, no. There must be another way! Some avenue yet untried, some approach we have not seen.” He reached out and touched Caecus upon the gauntlet.
“And who would know it, old friend?” The Apothecary favoured Fenn with a look, “Speak, if you have a solution. I would hear it.”
Nyniq made a noise in her throat, drawing their attention. She was still toying with the pendant. “There is… Someone. A man of great knowledge. I know him, Lord Caecus. He was my patron at the magos biologis during my time as an initiate. He spoke of interest in Great Corax’s research on more than one occasion.”
Fenn’s brows knitted. “You wish us to bring in another outsider?” He shot a look at his master. “My lord, is not one enough?”
“We are all servants of the Emperor!” snapped Nyniq. “And this man may represent the last hope for your plans to rebuild the Blood Angels!”
“His name, then,” said Caecus. “Tell me his name.”
“The Tech-Lord Haran Serpens, majoris.”
The Apothecary nodded. “His work is known to me. He forged a cure for the Haze Plagues on Farrakin.”
“The very same.”
After a moment, Fenn’s master gave a nod. “Summon him, then. Do it with care and stealth. I have no wish to make issue with Dante until I have something to show him.” He stalked away toward the doors.
Fenn ran to catch up with him. “Lord! Are you certain this is the right course of action? Can we trust the magos?”
Caecus didn’t look at him. “We are all servants of the Emperor,” he repeated. “And sometimes we must dally with those we do not wish to in order to bring about a greater victory.”
“I don’t trust her!” he hissed.
“Trust is not required,” said Caecus, “only obedience.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Set into the grey marble floor of the Grand Annex, directly beneath the Solar Dome, there was a four-pointed star made of rust-coloured stone mined from the foot of the Chalice Mountains. Flecked with tiny chips of garnet, at high sun the red light that fell through the dome’s glass apex made it glow. At the centre of the star, an oval of mosaic formed the shape of the Blood Angels sigil, the wings pointing to the east and west, the tip of the bloody teardrop between them to the north, the jewelled bead falling southwards.
The building had stood for millennia. Even to an Adeptus Astartes, a warrior who might live to go beyond the eleven hundred years of Lord Dante, such a span of time was barely conceivable. How many Blood Angels, in all those generations, might have walked upon these stones? How many men? How many lives, ended now, gone in service to the same ideals that Brother Rafen stood for? The thought of it was history, solid and stone.
He stood at the southern arm of the star, his right hand firmly coiled around the mast of the Standard of Signus. At the other three points, battle-brothers dressed as he was, in full power armour and dress honours, stood holding other banners symbolising the greatest of victories in their Chapter’s history. The vast circular chamber was one of the largest open interior spaces in the fortress-monastery, with the exception of some of the training arenas. The scale of the annexe was made grander still by the fact that there were no supporting stanchions or crossbeams holding up the curving roof above them. The chamber could have accommodated a Titan at fu
ll height and still given the war machine room to move. Long, thin pennants, each detailed with the symbol of a successor Chapter, hung around the lip of the dome at equidistant points.
About him, rings of Adeptus Astartes stood in four broken semi-circles around the compass star, equal numbers of men shoulder to shoulder, facing inward. Their battle armours were a mixture of variants and subclasses, with even a lone Dreadnought standing amid them, and together they were a spectrum of red. Crimson through to ruby, scarlet to claret, colours deep as blood and bright as flame. Unlike the fellow Blood Angels who stood beneath the venerable standards, these were Rafen’s distant kindred, the brotherhoods of the successor Chapters; his cousins.
The quiet murmur of conversation moved among them, some battle-brothers reaffirming old friendships, others making wary gestures of respect between them, some as silent as statues. As much as their colours differed, so then did their characters and manners. Rafen did not turn his head too much, but he knew that to his immediate right stood the contingent of the Angels Sanguine, resplendent in their half-red, half-black wargear and gleaming, polished helms. To his left stood Gorn and Seth of the Flesh Tearers, and following the circuit around, the smoky crimson of the Angels Vermillion, the gold-trimmed armour of the Blood Drinkers, and others beyond them… He let his eyes sweep over the figures assembled there before him, marvelling at the moment. Servo-skulls hummed overhead on impellors, recording every second for posterity on pict tapes and data spools; but Rafen was actually here, experiencing the moment, being a part of it.
The legacy of Sanguinius was laid out in this room, with representatives of nigh on every Chapter that paid fealty to the Great Angel’s bloodline gathered under one roof. Rafen’s gaze moved from one to another, seeing Astartes from Chapters that, until now, had been to him only names upon the pages of warbooks. There, the Blood Legion, in diagonal tiger-stripes of red and lightning blue; the Angels Encarmine, mirrors of Rafen’s own colours except for a blunt trim of cold black; the Red Wings in their panels of pale snow and ruby; the Blood Swords ashine in glossy crimson, the sigil of a weeping blade stark upon their shoulders. These and more, united in a unique kind of kinship.
Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow Page 63