The colony was a place of death and decay now, the survivors of the strange gue’la’s horrific experiments discarded to perish, ejected into the bleak corridors to live or die at the hands of those who had escaped his knives, or the other victims. For the longest time, La’Non had lived in fear of being recaptured, submitted once more to the white-hot pain and endless agonies. His hand—his good hand—moved to his throat, as he thought of how he had screamed himself ragged. As he did this, the voice whispered in his ear. It had caught up to him.
It told him the same story again. The voice liked this story, liked it a great deal; that was the only explanation he could think of, for the repetition and the endless recurring talk of the same motifs, the same images. The voice told La’Non of another tau who was also called La’Non, who had a pair-bond and a habitat that was small but comfortable, who was respected for his work ethic even though he was not a being of outstanding nature. A tau who was a fair husband to a quiet wife and a careful father to a lone child who was troublesome as all children are. This other La’Non—which could clearly not be him, because he would have remembered if he had a wife and a son—had lost all that was important when a great storm came and split his home asunder. The voice came to the end of the story and began to tell it again. It never tired of the tale.
La’Non started shouting wordlessly and banging his head against the deck. Presently, the voice went away again. Perhaps it had other people to talk to. Others who liked the story of this different La’Non better. Dizzy, wiping away his blood, he moved on again, grateful for the silence.
He ate something that resembled vegetable matter, a hank of it he found rotting in a shadowed corner of a corridor, then supped spoiled water from an overfilled bathing sphere in a collapsed hab pod. La’Non followed the sign-lanterns up the slow, long ramps, spiralling around and around. The light tug of gravity generators, power still flowing to them from the mighty fusion reactor in the colony’s core, enabled him to walk the inner circumference of the corridor-tubes; the technology let the tau use every iota of space within the asteroid for living and working.
No life now, though. Instead the colony was a corpse, and all the things swarming inside it just pests and vermin. La’Non was like that, a maggot inside dead flesh. Not a living thing, not like he used to be. Not like the other La’Non spoken of by the voice in his head.
But he was at peace with that. Understanding had given him contentment, if that was what a being could call it. Before, La’Non had been afraid he had lost his mind, been driven into lunacy by the agony and the limb. He thought better of it now, though.
He had gone sane. Yes. Clear to him. It was just that everything else was madness. Once he faced the night beyond, he would be certain of it. The last iota of doubt would be banished. If only he could find silence, find a way to end the pain, then he would be content.
Hours or days or years later, the tau found himself at the shipgates. The alien limb was scratching at the walls as he passed along them, rapping greenish knuckles on oval portals webbed by fracture damage. Presently, La’Non found what he sought. A hatch, an iris of dense metal alloy, each oiled leaf of it tight and closed. He didn’t remember the sequence to open it, but his good hand did, and worked the hooded keypad in the wall.
Through the fractured window, past the frosting of oxygen ice, he could see the black beyond. But not really. He couldn’t really, truly see it. Not with the naked orbs of his own eyes. To really understand, to look the mad universe in the face and know it, he had to go out there. Or was he really venturing inside for the first time? La’Non wondered if the voice knew the answer. He smiled. Soon the pain would be gone and the voice would never trouble him again.
Busy with the sequence, he glimpsed but ignored the motion of a red shadow beyond the portal. It wasn’t important; like the other La’Non and the wife and the child, it was a forgettable thing. Only this action, this moment, was significant.
Sound and vibration reached him, and his grey face twisted in confusion. Beyond the iris hatch there were noises, heavy footfalls and grinding impacts. That did not seem correct. On the other side of the iris there should only have been a stark white anteroom, the decompression chamber and the racks of skintight environment suits. The space should have been empty and ready for La’Non. The last barrier between him and the mad universe, waiting out there for him to arrive. For the tau to tell it he understood.
Then the iris keened as its metal blades came open and retracted into the stone walls. La’Non felt the alien limb twitching as he turned from the panel to take the next step.
The open hatchway was blocked by a statue made of crimson. La’Non looked up at it, taking in the form in a glance. It was humanoid, all curved shapes and hard edges. A heavy thing, carved to resemble arms and legs of bloated muscle, a small and fierce head sporting eyes as sharp as gemstones, a breath-grille mouth set in permanent grimace. Across its chest, a symbol; wings made of beaten gold growing from a wet, glistening droplet of ruby. And in one hand, the largest weapon La’Non had ever seen, a great steel block of mechanism bigger than any common pulse carbine. The yawning muzzle presented a black tunnel towards him.
There were others, too, more of the same crammed into the airlock space, stooped. Barely contained by the walls, hard and menacing. They sparked memory of the gue’la who had brought all the pain and understanding to the colony—these things were the same but different. The same mass, the same form. La’Non wondered if they shared the same cruelty as well. He asked the voice in his head if it knew the answer. Had the universe sent these new monsters to follow in the tracks of the pain-bringer? Were they the next act in its insanity, a new anguish for him to endure? And in doing so, learn a new truth?
La’Non offered his good hand in a gesture of greeting, but the alien limb wanted to participate as well, and rose in a fist.
Brother Ajir’s boltgun rose, and in that moment Brother-Sergeant Rafen snarled out a command word. “Hold!”
Ajir gave no sign that he had heard the order, and simply extended the motion of the gun, using the butt of the weapon to strike the alien away instead of killing it outright. The dishevelled tau was projected backward into the corridor of polished rock beyond the airlock antechamber, and it clattered to the deck in a heap of spindly limbs. For a moment the only sound was the scrape of the alien’s feet as they skittered over the floor, failing to find purchase. Thin blood from a new cut oozed across the tau’s dirt-smeared aspect. A moan escaped its lips.
With careful, spare motions, Ajir flicked his weapon to discard the dash of alien blood that had marked it. Brother-Sergeant Rafen heard him give a quiet sniff of disdain. “It lives still,” said the other warrior.
Rafen’s helmeted head turned and found Brother Ceris. The Codicier gave a nod, sensing his commander’s unspoken instructions before he gave voice to them. Ceris pushed forward to the front of the group; of all the Adeptus Astartes in the antechamber, he was the only one not clad head-to-foot in crimson battle armour. Ceris’ wargear was indigo, with only his right shoulder pauldron toned blood-red. The warrior removed his helmet and turned a narrow, flinty gaze on the alien. Crystalline devices surrounding the back of his head glowed gently, the contacts and mechanism of the psychic hood built into his power armour working their arcane science. The tau shrank away from him, muttering, and threw a worried glance towards Rafen.
The sergeant followed Ceris’ example and detached his own helm, dark shoulder-length hair falling free as he did so. Rafen studied the alien without pity. “Can you understand my words, xenos?”
The tau didn’t respond; after a moment, Ceris spoke. “It does.” The crystals pulsed slightly, and Rafen sensed a faint tang of ozone in the cool air, the overspill of the Codicier’s careful psychic pressure on the alien creature.
“La’Non speaks your tongue, gue’la,” it said, in a papery, weak voice.
“We seek something,” Rafen told it. “Here, on your colony. You will be compe
lled to help us find what we are looking for.” He inclined his head towards Ceris, the inference clear. The psyker leaned in, unblinking, glaring at the trembling tau.
“This place has nothing but agony within it,” rasped the alien. “Nothing for you. Only the agony and the voices.”
Rafen continued, ignoring the interruption. “We are looking for another… Another gue’la.” He grimaced, the xenos word tasting foul upon his lips. “Tell us what you know.”
“Pain-bringer!” The name was an abrupt snarl. “You… You are the same!”
From behind him, Rafen heard a gruff growl of annoyance. “We are nothing like him,” spat Brother Turcio.
“Show it the image,” continued the sergeant. He turned to Brother Kayne, who stood nearby with his rifle at the ready. “We must be certain.”
Kayne’s face was hidden behind his helmet, but his motions betrayed his irritation. Like the others, Kayne shared the ingrained urge to terminate any alien life he encountered, and it came hard to resist it. Rafen understood; he felt the same way, but the mission took precedence, and to prosecute that to its end he would do whatever was needed—such as allow an undeserving xenos a few more moments of life.
The younger Astartes produced a disc-shaped pict-slate from a pocket on his belt and stepped forward, offering it to the alien at arm’s length.
The tau blinked blood from its eyes and peered owlishly at the screen; and in the next second what colour there was in its corpse-grey flesh faded. Rafen recognised the expression on the creature’s face; horror, it would seem, looked the same no matter what species you belonged to. The alien brought up its hands to cover its eyes, one of them spindly and skeletal, the other thick-set and muscled.
“The creature’s arm.” Turcio’s voice came over the vox in his ear-bead, on a general channel that only the other Space Marines would hear. “It’s wrong.”
At Turcio’s side, steady as a statue, a heavy bolter in his grip, Brother Puluo offered his taciturn opinion. “Mutation?”
“No,” said Ajir, with a bored tone in his words. “I’ve killed enough of them to know one from another. That’s something different.” He glanced at his commander. “Perhaps we ought to slit its throat and return it to the ship, give the sanguinary priests a curio to toy with.”
The tau watched them with a strange mixture of terror and compulsion, likely aware that they were talking about it, even though no sound escaped the sealed helmets and ear-beads of the hooded Space Marines. Gingerly, it got to its feet, blinking. The alien’s breathing was shallow, and it was stooped. It extended a trembling finger into the darkness. “Below, below,” it muttered. “Pain-bringer. Below.”
“You will show us,” Ceris insisted, his gaze never wavering.
“Gue’la, the word is no. No. No.” The xenos began pulling at itself with the thick, distended limb. “Cannot go back. Will not.” It pointed past the Astartes, to the outer airlock doors. “Outside. Yes. To see the universe, face it. Stop the voice. Voice voice voice…”
“The creature is unhinged,” Ajir sniffed. His bolter rose again. “What do we need with a guide, lord?” He glanced at Rafen.
“It is afraid,” Ceris noted. “The torments of fear have pushed it over the bounds of sanity. The creature believes that it will be forced to live through more pain if it returns to the inner tiers of the colony.” He grimaced, as if reading the thoughts of the tau sickened him.
The alien waved its hands. “Yes. Yes. No more pain.”
Rafen gave the tau a hard look. “La’Non. Do as I say, and I will end your agony. Forever.”
When the tau looked up at him, the beseeching look in its eyes was pathetic. “You swear this? On your deity?”
Ceris’ eyes narrowed, his subtle power pressing down on the creature’s weakened will.
Rafen gave a nod. “Show us,” he demanded. “Take us to the pain-bringer.”
The muttering, stumbling tau led them on, wandering back and forth down the corridors in a meandering course that at first seemed aimless. Ceris walked behind it, the faint glow of blue about his head and the tightness of his expression signifying the constant telepathic force he was keeping on the alien.
Rafen walked a few steps behind, his boltgun cradled in a barrel-low grip across his sternum. The sergeant was still finding the measure of the Codicier; his recent assignment to Rafen’s unit had come on the orders of the Chapter’s chief Librarian himself, the psyker-master Mephiston. Ceris, so barrack-room rumour had it, was one of several psychics personally selected by Mephiston to act as his eyes and ears throughout the Chapter; and Rafen could not shake the sense that in some way, everything he said or did within sight of the olive-skinned Codicier was somehow being observed by the man the Blood Angels called the Lord of Death. The ways of the witch-kin were beyond his experience, but Rafen did not find it difficult to imagine that Mephiston’s great distance was no obstacle to the preternatural power of the mind.
Ceris cast a brief glance over his shoulder, and then away, as if giving some confirmation to Rafen’s thoughts. When he spoke, the Codicier had a soft voice that seemed oddly out of place for a man from the heavy stock of Baal Prime’s equatorial tribes; and his flat, hard gaze seemed to take in everything. Emotion, when the psyker cared to show it, was vague and undefined upon him. It was this, more than anything, that sat poorly with the sergeant. Every other man under his command, even the reserved Puluo, wore their spirit and fire openly. Ceris was an enigma, and Brother-Sergeant Rafen was ill at ease with the man.
“Sir.” Brother Puluo’s voice issued from Rafen’s vox bead. An indicator rune glowing on the inside of his gorget showed that the communication was coming in on a discreet channel from his second-in-command.
The sergeant knew Puluo had a question to voice. “Speak,” he ordered.
The other warrior marched at his side, the blue helmet that marked him as a heavy-weapons Devastator Space Marine near-black in the shadows. “Ajir had a point. We can find our way through this maggot-nest without the help of a xenos.”
“It is my prerogative,” Rafen replied, sub-vocalising the words so that they would be picked up by the vox but not heard by anyone else. “It is a matter of expedience, brother. The alien will serve a purpose.” His face tightened into a frown. “Too much time has been wasted on unsuccessful pursuits. If we must tolerate this creature to live a while longer in order to complete our assignment, so be it.”
“As you wish,” came the reply, but Rafen could tell Puluo was unsatisfied with the answer.
Truth be told, so was Rafen. But it had been several months now since he and his squad had left the Chapter’s home world Baal aboard the warship Tycho, and in those days and weeks their victories had been few. Their mission, charged to Rafen from the lips of Chapter Master Dante himself, had proven every bit as difficult as the Blood Angels had expected. Their quarry was, if anything, even more elusive than his reputation suggested. They were chasing a shadow across the deeps of interstellar space, and to date they had constantly been one step behind him.
He threw a look back down the skirmish line of his warriors. Behind Puluo, who walked steadily with his heavy bolter held at arms, Ajir strode boldly down the middle of the corridor, glaring into each branching tunnel or open doorway, looking for an opportunity to engage an enemy. Kayne, the youngest of Rafen’s squad, followed on with careful, wary footsteps and Turcio took up the rearguard, silent and watchful. In the gloom, Turcio’s extended arm was rock-steady, the dull steel and heavy carbon of his augmetic limb hidden under his armour, a bolter in his iron-fingered grip. Each man, in his own manner, kept his focus on the duty at hand; but Rafen knew them well enough to sense the tension in them all, the tension he mirrored. Something that might have been called unease by lesser men, the edges of a disquiet that had been slowly growing as each avenue of their hunt had drawn closed, one after another.
Was he here? The question was one Rafen had asked himself a dozen times over the
course of the Tycho’s mission. On the surface of Seyrin Minoris; amid the ruins of a Dark Eldar slaughterdome; in the depths of Nadacar hive city; and through the rolling madness of warp space. A dozen leads, fragmentary sightings and half-truths drawn from a network of spies, scrying viewers and Imperial intelligence reports. Every one of them had proven to be a dead end, a wasted journey. Each time, the question. Each time, the search unfulfilled, the target lost.
Or was it that the subject of the hunt was just as fearsome and as clever as his enemies said he was? At Nadacar, Rafen had been certain he had seen him, glimpsed the hulking figure forcing its way through a mass of penitents. In the makeshift laboratory they had found, adorned with the wet remains of a Hereticus Inquisitor and his retinue. A goblet of wine, still warm to the touch. The smell of him lingering in the room. So close; but not close enough.
And with every disappointment, Rafen felt the blade of failure push deeper into his heart. For all the forgiving words of his master, it had been he who allowed the quarry to first make his escape from Baal. Even if no one else blamed Rafen for it, he laid the heavy responsibility upon himself. For a moment, a blink of memory clouded his thoughts, the recollection of a thing made of psy-smoke and ectoplasm hanging in the air before him. A howling skull-shaped gateway.
Rafen’s hand drew tight around the grip of his bolter, and he tried to dispel the thought. It did him no good to torture himself with recriminations. Instead, he used the anger he felt as fuel, to power him on, to sharpen his senses.
Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow Page 82