The veteran turned and glared at him. “I have little to give to one so rich as you,” he retorted.
“An answer to a question, then.” Rafen stepped after him. “Why? Why did you force this duel? There was no point to it, nothing to be gained!”
Noxx hesitated, and glanced up toward where Gorn and the other Flesh Tearers waited. “I did only what I was ordered to do.”
“Seth demanded it?” Rafen shook his head. “To what end?”
The veteran nodded at him. “Your Chapter has fallen from grace, lad. That begs the question that must be asked. How weak have the Blood Angels become?” Before Rafen could frame a reply, Noxx turned away once more and left him there in the pit.
He stood and looked down at his hands, still slick with Noxx’s blood, and wondered. What kind of answer could he have given to that question?
CHAPTER SEVEN
The pageantry and ceremony of the last gathering inside the Grand Annex was gone now, along with all but the most senior Astartes from the various successor Chapters. Only two from each cadre of the Sons of Sanguinius had entered, with the towering doors to be sealed shut behind them. The chamber was unadorned, no pennants, no standards, only a ring of simple wooden benches set out across the open space. The absence of the mass of Space Marines made the vast hall seem even larger. Slanted rays of red sunlight pooled against one of the walls, beginning an inexorable journey across the grey marble floor.
Barring the single Dreadnought that stood among them like a silent ruby statue, none of the assembled warriors wore battle armour, only hooded robes or duty tunics. The austerity of their dress reflected the mood. The prayers and entreaty to their liege-lords now spoken and the matters of tradition satisfied, it was time to take the import of this conclave in hand.
With a leaden finality, the magnetic locks on the doors boomed as they set in place, and the footsteps died away as the last of the assembled Astartes approached the circle of men.
Dante greeted the arrival of the final representative with a nod of his head; the gesture was returned as Armis, First Ixird of the Blood Legion, advanced into the circle. The Chapter Master ran a long-fingered hand through the silver-grey hair that ranged down to his shoulders. The question in the Space Marine’s eyes was repeated on every face around him.
Correction. Almost everyone.
Dante found Seth, hunched forward on one of the benches, watching him with those hooded, blank eyes. As if he took that glance for a permission, the Master of the Flesh Tearers got to his feet and sucked in a breath. “And so finally, we are all gathered,” he said. “Or at least as many as could be found.”
Armis nodded, a deceptive half-smile on his pale face. “Aye. I’m glad I’m here. I imagine that whatever Dante has to speak of, it will be interesting.”
The Master of the Blood Angels threw a look at Mephiston. The psyker was staring into the middle distance, eyes down, intent on realms that only someone with his preternatural senses could see; but still he sensed his lord’s attention and gave a slight nod. The psychic wards were still firmly in place; it was safe to speak.
“You have many questions,” Dante began. “I will answer all of them as best I can.”
“Only one answer is needed, cousin,” said Master Orloc, the Commander of the Blood Drinkers. “Your summons brought me across the warp from my temples on San Guisuga, without explanation, without account, with only decree. And I came, out of respect to you, Great Dante.” Orloc licked his lips, the Blood Drinker had the same perpetual air of aridity that characterised all in his Chapter. “But I did not come to take part in pomp and spectacle, nor to be given a tour of this great edifice.”
“Indeed.” The synthetic voice issued from the vox-coder of a motionless crimson Dreadnought. Inside the towering armoured sarcophagus, the flesh and brain of an Astartes warrior lay preserved and forever wired into his machine-hulk body. “The Blood Swords have battles to be fought. My brethren will brook no distraction from the Emperor’s purposes without good cause.”
“As Lord Daggan speaks, so I agree,” Orloc continued. “The question, then. Why am I here? Why are any of us here?”
Dante exhaled. “You have come here to take part in a rescue, cousins. To save the lives of hundreds of your fellow Astartes, whose future hangs in the balance.” The Chapter Master felt as if a great weight was being laid across his shoulders, and for a moment, it was as if he could truly sense the measure of every day of his eleven hundred years of life; but he did not hesitate to speak his piece. “I have brought you here to save the Blood Angels from dissolution and oblivion.”
Armis broke the silence that followed. “The empty halls. The silent barracks.” He cast around, voicing thoughts that the other Chapter Masters had until now kept to themselves. “You have tried to conceal it from us, but your brethren are thin upon the ground, Dante. At first I thought you might have over-committed your forces to some military adventure, but that is not the case, is it?”
“Your men are dead,” intoned Daggan.
“Some,” Dante replied. He sighed.
His face hidden deep in the shadows of his hood, Sentikan of the Angels Sanguine spoke for the first time. “The cost of your insurrection must have been grave for you to seek our aid in this manner.”
Dante concealed a flash of shock; Sentikan and his men had not been given any prior knowledge of the Arkio incident, and yet the Angels Sanguine Lord was clearly aware of it. He glanced at Seth, wondering; but no, the Angels Sanguine and the Flesh Tearers did not speak on good terms. It was highly unlikely they had communicated with one another. The matter of what Sentikan knew would need to be addressed later, however; for now, the disclosure of the full facts was required.
Orloc folded his arms across his chest. “What in Blood’s Name are you talking about? What insurrection?”
“My Chapter has learned of certain truths,” Sentikan said quietly. “I imagine not the complete dimensions of the events, but the core of them. There was a great battle on the shrineworld Sabien.” He glanced at Brother-Captain Rydae, who sat at his side. “Many Blood Angels were committed to the field. Many of them were lost there.”
“Who was the foe?” demanded Armis.
“The Word Bearers,” offered Mephiston.
“Chaos,” snarled Orloc, his lip curling. “And how was it the Cursed Sons of Lorgar, the Emperor blight his name, wounded you so deeply?”
Dante stiffened and felt Seth’s eyes upon him. “It was not the Word Bearers who wounded us, cousin. We did this to ourselves. In the name of Sanguinius Reborn.”
“There is news,” said Serpens, “and it is good and bad in equal measure.” He had a pict slate in his hand and he gestured with it in a casual manner.
Caecus studied him over the top of the fractionator module. The glow of the device threw flickering light across the laboratorium, and cast peculiar shadows over the tech-lord’s face. “I have had little in the way of good news in recent days,” admitted the Apothecary. “Tell me the best first, then.”
Serpens gave him an indulgent smile and handed the slate to Nyniq. He didn’t seem to be aware of Fenn at a nearby console, making a poor attempt at pretending he wasn’t listening to every word they said. “It is my firm and honest belief that I can solve the errors creeping into your replication matrix.” He knitted his fingers together. “It will not be a simple matter, by no means, but the way of it is well known to me. My own experiments have progressed along similar lines to yours, but further toward fruition. I can, as my pupil did, help you move more swiftly down that road. With our collective knowledge, we can avoid making the same mistakes.”
“And make new ones?” Fenn shot the comment across the room.
Caecus gave him a censorious look in return, and the serf turned back to his work.
Serpens spoke as if he had never heard Fenn speak. “The mutations are the result of tainted genetic code in the base samples. If those errors can be reduced, the end result�
��” He nodded toward the zygote tanks. “Well, shall I say, it would be a wine of a better vintage?”
“This I know,” said Caecus. “But the way to fix the errors eludes me.”
“And Nyniq too,” agreed Serpens. “But it does not elude me, my friend.” He tapped the loose fleshy wattles along his face. “I have a methodology we can employ.”
“This is the good news. What is the bad?”
The magos allowed himself a sigh. “Great science requires great sacrifice, Brother Caecus. I have made such forfeit to come here to Baal against the wishes of my masters and—”
The Blood Angel’s retort was fiery. “And you think I have not?” He shook his head, frowning. “Already I have stepped across lines of ethics and honour in the pursuit of something I cannot even be sure is achievable!”
“But it is!” insisted Nyniq. “We can rediscover the art of the replicae and make the Great Corax’s dream a reality.”
“She is not wrong,” said Serpens. “It can be done. But to progress beyond this point will require the most singular mind. I tell you this in candour as a colleague. We must be willing to take what some…” He shot a look at Fenn. “Will consider to be extreme measures.”
Caecus lost himself in the shimmer and motion of the milky fluid of the zygote tanks. He could see the fluttering motion of an immature clone inside, the irregular jerk of a hand drifting against the inside of the armour-glass. Would it be another disappointment, another mutant freak? How many more mistakes could there be before he admitted failure?
“We will do what must be done,” he said.
Serpens nodded eagerly, and beckoned Nyniq to them. The woman had a sanguinator gun in her hand. “Then, if you please, I would take a measure of your vitae.”
“I was there,” said Mephiston, “and I will tell you what happened on Sabien.” With a nod from his master, the Lord of Death walked to the centre of the chamber and unfolded the tragedy of Arkio and the Spear of Telesto, speaking without pause as the rays of light from Baal’s sun marched across the marble floor. At times, the assembled warriors reacted to things he said, their emotions running the scale from cold deliberation on the part of Master Seth to barely-silenced anger from Master Armis; but none of them interrupted.
When he spoke at last about the battle on Sabien, of the psychic explosion of red fury that turned Blood Angel against Blood Angel, not an Astartes among them moved, all of them barely breathing, silently listening to his words. Each marked in the very blood that raced through their veins with the gene-curse of the Great Angel, they had only respect for the horrific power of the Black Rage and the Red Thirst. Each of them knew only too well the dark power of the twin banes every Blood Angel and successor Astartes were forced to share. Each of them had seen kinsmen fall to the madness, the blood-hungry berserker frenzy that was the echo of their liege-lord’s violent killing. Their shared primarch was ten millennia dead, and yet still the psychic shock of his death at the hands of the Arch-traitor Horus burned hard in all of them, the madness it conjured forever lurking beneath the veneer of civility in every Son of Sanguinius. Not a one thought to disturb him as Mephiston brought his report to a conclusion.
As he finished, he found Dante watching him, and his Chapter Master nodded, one comrade to another. It was a difficult thing for the psyker to address, the dark moments there on the shrineworld, as the Rage came to consume him. He had ventured down the Scarlet Path to madness once before, in the experience that made him the man he now was, trapped beneath the rubble of Hades Hive for days and nights, wrestling with his bestial id; ventured down it and returned reborn. But on Sabien… There had been a different colour to the darkness, and a part of him would forever wonder if he would have drowned in it, if not for Rafen’s intervention.
He pushed the thought away. That was past; what mattered now was how the aftermath was dealt with.
Daggan was first to speak in reply, his flat, mechanical voice hissing with piques of annoyance. “How was this allowed to happen? An ordos lackey, commanding an Astartes warship and a cohort of battle-brothers?”
“Stele assumed command when the Bellus was beyond our astropathic contact,” Dante noted. “It is believed he engineered the death of my chosen agent, the Sanguinary High Priest Hekares, and then consolidated his influence over the crew.”
Orloc was ashen. “That these corrupted bastards would dare to taint the memory of Sanguinius by making a cheap simulacra… It fills me with a revulsion I cannot find the words to express!”
“I concur,” offered Seth, “but we should be thankful. Despite the errors of judgment made, the matter has been dealt with. Lord Dante’s warriors have cleaned up the mess they made. And the Blood Angels paid the price for their laxity and hubris into the bargain.”
Mephiston’s eyes narrowed at the open insult in the Flesh Tearer’s words, but he saw that his commander did not react at all to them.
“It is right that you have granted us full disclosure of this, Dante,” said Armis. “While some may consider it a matter for Blood Angels alone, it is far more than that. Sanguinius is father to us all, not just to the First Founding of Baal. An attack upon his glory is an attack upon his sons.”
“But that is not why we are gathered here,” said Sentikan. “Our cousin Dante did not bring us to Baal so that he might speak of this, as some hive citizen would atone to a street-preacher.”
The other Chapter Master nodded. “That is so.” Dante spread his hands, taking in all the Chapter Masters and representatives, those who had spoken and those who had not. “The Blood Angels are the first among the Astartes. We carry a position of honour, we lead the way where all others follow. Each of you shares in that. We have a lineage that can be traced back beyond the Heresy and the Great Crusade, before even the birth of our primarch, to the beginning of the Age of the Imperium. That great legacy cannot be allowed to falter. The Blood Angels must survive. They must live on to be present when the day of mankind’s ultimate victory dawns, so that the Emperor can lay his eyes upon us when he rises from the Golden Throne.”
“But your folly has left you open to attack, to diminishment,” said Daggan. “If what you say is so, then the Blood Angels teeter on the brink—”
“And one swift push could be enough to make them extinct,” Seth broke in. The ghost of a cold smile crossed his lips. “How does it taste, Dante? How does it feel for the inheritors of the great and noble IX Legion to be that close to annihilation?” He snorted. “I’ll warrant I am the only one here who knows.”
“The Blood Angels must survive,” repeated Dante. “And that, cousins, is why you are here. I have an audacious request to make of you, in the name of our liege-lord and the bloodline of Baal.”
Sentikan’s shadowed face was taut. “Speak it.”
Dante drew himself up to his full height, and Mephiston watched him sweep his patrician gaze across every warrior in the chamber, making eye contact with each of them in turn. “In order to return the Blood Angels to strength and stability, I have brought on new inductions of initiates and battle-brothers ahead of schedule, but I need more. And so, to that end, I ask this of you. The Blood Angels require a tithe of men from each successor Chapter, of your newest initiate warriors to swell our depleted ranks.” He opened his hands and offered them palm-up, in echo of the carvings of the Great Angel upon the annexe’s walls. “This I do in the name of Sanguinius.”
The Chapter Master’s words faded away into silence; and then the room exploded with voices as every Astartes spoke at once.
Nyniq carried the vial of Caecus’ blood to the tech-lord’s boxy servitor and fed it into the open lips of the mask upon its forward surface. The machine suckled greedily at the tube, quickly draining it. Fenn made a sour face, but the Blood Angel ignored him.
He glanced at Serpens. “I have used my own vitae as a base pattern in previous iterations. The improvement it gave was only minor. Not enough to overcome the replication failure.”
&nb
sp; “Perhaps so,” said the magos, “but that was without the aid of the filtration and enhancement process I had developed.” He preened. “I have formulated a counter-mutagen that blocks the degradation of cellular parity and recursive malformation. We will blend the two.”
Caecus accepted this with a nod. He knew such things were theoretically possible, but until now the science of it had been out of his reach. If Serpens was as good as his word… The Blood Angel frowned. What happened in the next few moments would be the acid test. He shot Fenn a look. They would soon know if his agreement to allow the magos into their circle was a mistake, or not.
The servitor-box gurgled and a melodic chime sounded from the lips of the mask. Nyniq placed her hand before the machine and it disgorged another vial. The fluid within it had a thick, syrupy flow to it, dark in colour. Serpens took it from her with some eagerness, holding it up to the light to examine its consistency. The scientist licked his lips, apparently unaware of the gesture. There was an expression on his face that Caecus had never seen before, at odds with the perpetually earnest air Serpens usually wore. Need.
“The blood, the blood is the key to it all,” said Serpens, half to himself. “I have heard it said that in the rituals of consecration practised by your Chapter, each Baalite son is imbued with a tiny measure of blood from Sanguinius himself, is that not so?” He shook the vial, watching the motion of the liquid inside. “This blood, your blood, Lord Caecus, has within it an iota of the primarch’s. And the primarch is the gene-spawn son of the Emperor, so his blood contains an iota of the Lord of Mankind’s.” He let out a breath between his teeth. “This is the distillate of greatness, my friend. The essence of perfection, if only one could unlock it.” Serpens blinked, as if he suddenly remembered where he was, his manner shifting back to his usual easy smile. “Shall we begin?”
Caecus gestured toward the zygote tanks. “At your discretion.”
Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow Page 67