Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow

by Warhammer 40K

  “Fabius!” The silhouette was the very profile of the man Rafen had pursued through the lower levels of the Vitalis Citadel on Baal, the renegade and traitor. At once, every Space Marine in the room opened fire, and a flashing storm of bolts ripped into the figure, tearing it apart in a razored hurricane.

  Rafen was rushing forward even before the body hit the floor, the burning bite of vengeance surging through his veins.

  His moment of thunderous elation died, quickly and silently. Kayne’s lamp lit the face of the figure, still discernable despite a bolt wound that had eaten away a fist-sized chunk of skull. The face was grey, pallid, a slit down its midline where a human being would have a nose. Eyes, large and wet, bulged out at him.

  It was a tau, after a fashion, but monstrously bloated, bulked up by veins filled with generative compounds and muscle transplants. A xenos, made to mimic the mass of an Adeptus Astartes. Perhaps left here to be found so just such a trick could be played on whomever had come seeking the twisted Primogenitor.

  Something fell from the freak’s twitching fingers and fluttered to the wet floor. A scrap of paper. Rafen knelt to recover it before the fluids scattered all about soaked into the vellum and rendered it useless.

  On the paper there were words in high gothic, rendered in a careful, studied hand. Just words, just ink upon a piece of dry parchment; and yet they raised in Rafen a rage so high his vision hazed crimson.

  You have failed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  With a fluidity and pace that belied the bulk of his armoured form, Rafen strode through the corridors of the warship Tycho, the hard glitter of chained anger in his eyes enough to ensure that no Chapter serf, machine-helot or crewman dared block his path and question his passage.

  His boots ringing on the iron deck plates, the Blood Angel climbed the shallow ramp leading from the cruiser’s main spinal corridor, up towards the highest tier of the ship’s hull. He entered a cloister lit by windows of starlight and colour, the glow trailing in shafts through the smoky air of the Tycho’s chapel. Stained glass arranged in intricate designs showed the faces of warriors who had commanded the vessel in the past or commemorated great battles it had participated in. Over the entrance, a hexagonal mosaic showed a portrait of the man the cruiser drew its name from; Brother-Captain Erasmus Tycho, his face partly concealed by a golden half-mask. Rafen did not pause to meet the impassive gaze of the hero of Armageddon. The smell of incense was heavy here, reaching out from the nave, into the ship proper. Through the open doors ahead of him, the heavy copper gates lined with runes and inlaid obsidian, he glimpsed the altar and the statues beyond it.

  “Lord?”

  The question stopped him dead, and he turned in place. Behind him, Brother Ceris stood, studying him. Like Rafen, he had not yet removed his wargear, and his armoured bulk filled the doorway.

  Ceris approached, and the sergeant mused on the realisation that he had not heard the Codicier following him. Perhaps it was because his anger was so fulsome, his attention elsewhere, that the psyker had managed to come so close without registering on his awareness; or perhaps not. The other Blood Angel walked to a bowl protruding from a wall, and reached in. Water—purified fluid recovered from the ship’s reaction mass store, blessed daily by the Tycho’s resident sanguinary priest—flowed from a nozzle in the shape of a cherub’s mouth, and Ceris used it to dampen a cloth he recovered from a brass rack. In turn, he offered it to his commander.

  Rafen took it without comment. It was protocol; on their return from the tau colony, the brother-sergeant and his squad had undertaken a brief ritual of purification to ward off the influence of the xenos and the stain of Chaos, but even so, it would have been wrong of Rafen to enter the chapel without taking a moment to pass a measure of the sanctified water over his armoured hands. He frowned inwardly; he should not have needed another man to remind him of that, even if Ceris did it without reproach. Rafen’s mind was indeed unsettled, and it stoked his ready anger still more that it was so.

  Ceris watched him as he completed the brief sacrament. The white cloth in the warrior’s hands turned an ugly reddish-black as gummed oils and alien vitae, still caught in the hinges of his gauntlets, were dissolved.

  “I spoke with the shipmaster,” began the psyker. “He has taken your orders, sir. Tycho is turning to bear.”

  Rafen nodded once. On the floor, the discs of waxen light cast through the windows were moving slowly across the floor as the starship came about. He looked away. “Once it is done, tell him to prepare the vessel for the warp.” The sergeant balled the cloth in his hand and threw it at a waiting servitor in an alcove. The machine-slave caught the cloth from the air and carried it towards a fire grate for disposal.

  Rafen took two steps before he noticed that Ceris had not taken the implied dismissal in his tone. The psyker studied him, and the sergeant found a churn of resentment turning in his chest. “You have something else you wish to say to me?” he demanded.

  “The blame is not yours.”

  The statement was blunt and firm. The sergeant’s expression tightened. “You are dismissed,” he growled, enunciating the words clearly so there would be no further misunderstanding.

  Still Ceris made no move to obey the command. “You cloud your thoughts with recriminations, and it does you ill, sir. It takes your focus.”

  “Stay out of my mind.” Rafen’s voice was low and menacing.

  “I need not exercise my abilities to read you, brother-sergeant. You wear your ire upon your sleeve as clearly as our Chapter sigil.”

  Rafen took a step closer to the blue-armoured warrior. “For one they say is a chosen man of the Lord of Death, you seem to lack the sense to keep your opinions to yourself.”

  “My master Mephiston expects honesty and directness from his Librarians,” replied Ceris. “He told me I was to give the same to you.”

  “So you have, then.” Rafen gestured at the ramp leading back from the chapel. “Go now, and be content you have done your duty.” Bitterness laced his words, hard and unexpected.

  “I have not,” Ceris continued, remaining irritatingly unruffled, stock-still and fixed upon the other warrior. “Mephiston bid me to join your squad to aid you in our mission, and this I have not done.”

  “The mission!” Rafen spat the reply at him. “The mission is a failure, Ceris! You saw it with your own eyes! Fabius has slipped out of our net at every turn, confounded us. He mocks us, and we have no choice but to countenance it!” He turned away. “And you are wrong. The blame is mine.”

  “Can you be so sure?” Ceris asked. “The renegade Bile has been at large for over ten thousand years, sir. He travelled the stars in the time of the high traitor Horus and the fires of the Heresy. Thousands have been killed at his hands, across countless worlds. He is a singular foe, a man who slipped even the grasp of Chapter Masters and primarchs alike—”

  “And you would have me take succour from that, would you?” The sergeant snorted. “You were not there on Baal, psyker! You did not have him in your sights. You were not the one who failed to stop him!”

  For the first time, Ceris broke eye contact. “I was not,” he admitted. “I was many light years distant, at the conflicts on Beta Cornea. But consider my anger, lord. Imagine my fury at learning that our home world had been attacked by the forces of Chaos. I and the battle-brothers with me were too far away to lend our arms to the defence of Baal… We could not even see the face of the enemy, let alone chance to strike at him as you did.”

  “You’re a fool, then,” Rafen grated. “You ought to think yourself blessed for being spared the shame.”

  The same black skein of thought that had plagued the sergeant every night since the Tycho’s mission began rose in him.

  In the wake of the Chapter’s losses following the insurrection on Cybele and the dark schemes of a turncoat inquisitor named Stele, the Blood Angels had called a conclave of all successor Chapters. This historic gathering on Baal had
but one aim—to bulwark the Chapter’s forces by drawing a tithe of warriors from each force of Blood Angels descendants—but the plans of the Chapter Master Dante had been set awry by the blind ambition of a single, misguided sanguinary priest. One man, convinced he could rebuild the Chapter’s losses not through a tithe, but by the use of ancient, forbidden science, had unwittingly allied himself to a biologian of the Adeptus Mechanicus; or so he had believed.

  The priest opened a door to Baal, joining forces with a magos who called himself Haran Serpens. To their cost, the Blood Angels learned that this identity was merely one mask, one falsehood among hundreds spun by the arch-traitor and self-styled Primogenitor of Chaos Undivided; Fabius Bile.

  In the madness that followed, great horrors were wrought. Mutant creatures that merged Astartes DNA with rapacious animal hungers were created, freakish aberrant Bloodfiends running wild, pillaging and despoiling everything the Blood Angels held sacred. In a final battle beneath the Chapter’s great fortress monastery, Rafen and his battle-brothers came together with their kinsmen to fight and vanquish the Chaos-spawned monsters. There, in sight of the tomb of their primarch, the golden Sanguinius, father of their Chapter and Lord of the Blood Angels, the invaders had at last been defeated and sanctity restored.

  The future of the Chapter was secured; the Blood Angels would live on. But in the anarchy of the battle, slithering through the mayhem he had set in order to hide his crimes, under cover of lies Fabius Bile had stolen a most precious relic. A crystal vial, and in it, a measure of the purest blood plundered from the holy Red Grail. Drops of the vitae of Sanguinius himself.

  Even now, after months had passed, Rafen was still sickened to his very core by the thought of this high transgression against his Chapter. His mind reeled at the horrors that a twisted genius such as Fabius might wreak with so rare and powerful an artefact in his clutches. The enormity of this monstrous theft shook him, the resonance so strong it was as if it had happened only yesterday.

  To let this sin go unanswered could not stand. The renegade had committed a grave offence that could only be resolved by his execution, and by the recovery of what he had stolen.

  Rafen and his squad had dedicated themselves to fulfilling this need; but all they had to show for it were empty hands, spent bullets and a string of failures. Those, and a single piece of bloodstained paper.

  “Have you learned nothing?” The psyker’s question shattered Rafen’s moment of reverie. “After all that great Dante said, were you deaf to it?”

  The sergeant’s anger rushed through him, and with a sudden movement, he grabbed the other Blood Angel and forced Ceris back hard against the wall of the cloister, slamming him into a stone pillar. “Damn you!” he shouted. “What do you want from me, brother? Answer!”

  For a brief instant, there was something like shock on the psyker’s face; but in the next moment it was gone, and his blank, steady aspect returned to its place. “Are you so arrogant, Brother-Sergeant Rafen, that you think yourself elevated above all the rest of us?” Ceris’ voice was rough. “I know Lord Dante’s words and I was not even there to hear them with my own ears! Remember what he said, there in the great sepulchre before the battle with the Bloodfiends. We are being tested! Every single one of us, not just you!” The psyker shook himself free of Rafen’s grip, and he allowed it. “You have no right to take this burden upon yourself. It is not yours to hold alone. We are the Sons of Sanguinius, we are Blood Angels, and we face challenge every day of our lives. This one is no different, only the scale of it changes. We find this enemy and we kill him. All of us. As one.”

  Rafen tamed away, the bitterness rising again in his gorge. “Find him? How? Tell me, Codicier, can you pluck his whereabouts from the tides of the warp with your witch-sight? Do not think to accuse me of wallowing in despair! I do nothing of the kind!” He pressed a finger against the other man’s chest. “Know this. I would take this ship blindfold into the Eye of Terror. I would cut my own hearts from my flesh. I would sacrifice every one of my kinsmen here aboard, and more, if that is what it would take to find this renegade!”

  Ceris nodded. “And no man in this crew would defy you if you did.”

  “But I cannot…” hissed Rafen. “Look around you, brother. We have nothing. Our last lead, wasted on that tau madhouse. And Fabius knows it. He’s out there, laughing at us,”

  “The Chapter Master would not have charged you with this hunt if it were a simple matter.”

  Rafen made a negative noise and angrily stalked away. “This is not some great and noble quest we can take a century to prosecute! It is an assassination! Time is ranged against us. Every moment that Chaos bastard holds a single droplet of sacred blood, he works his evil. Every hour advances his corruption. We must end this with swiftness, or we are lost!”

  Ceris was silent for a moment. Then he threw a nod towards the copper doors and the chapel beyond. “Why are you here, sir?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The chapel, brother. The rest of the squad returned to the arming chambers to doff their wargear and undergo the rites of cleansing. But you came straight here. You did not even take your orders for the shipmaster to the bridge.”

  Rafen frowned. “I came here… For the peace of it. I find clarity in the quiet.” He allowed himself a sigh. “Perhaps I hoped to find some insight.”

  Ceris looked at the statues at the far end of the chapel, the God-Emperor and his son Sanguinius standing like stone titans, offering only their steady and unswerving aspects. “Then you already have your answer, sir. You already know where our remedy lies. Have faith in the Emperor, brother-sergeant, and the Emperor will provide.” The psyker began to walk away. “It would be an even greater crime if Fabius were allowed to take that too from us.”

  “Indeed.” Rafen found himself nodding. Through his boots, the Blood Angel sensed a subtle vibration in the Tycho’s decking, and he moved to one of the stained glass windows in the cloister’s alcoves. Through the diamond-hard tiles of colour, he saw a flash of light from a launch tube on the warship’s flank. Sleek cylinders of metal, pressed forward on white spears of fire, looped away from the vessel, tracking, swarming together. He followed their course, looking ahead of them, and found the murky shape of the asteroid colony caught by the light of distant stars. Without another word, Rafen turned away and walked into the chapel; his anger, for the moment, held at bay.

  Silent, hard flashes of refracted illumination reached out after him as the Tycho’s weapons did their work, and undid that of the traitor.

  ***

  In coarse robes dyed grey and rust-red, there were rank upon rank of warrior-kin. They stood in lines across the sun-warmed flagstones of the great central courtyard, the air dry upon their upturned faces, the glow of the distant Baalite sun a red disc at their backs. Corbulo stood out from them, his robes cut in much the same fashion as theirs, but dressed with panels of white. The brash detail of his gold honour chains blinked as the sunlight crossed them. He walked the length of the warriors, his steady, clear voice carrying far, echoing off the walls formed by the surrounding buildings of the fortress monastery. His hood was rolled back, so that he could look each one of them in the eye.

  “There will come a day,” he told them, “when you will ask yourself a question. Who am I? You will ask yourself where you came from, you will ponder on this and seek an answer.” Corbulo’s craggy face pulled in a slight smile. “And then you will remember what I am about to tell you, and think no more of it.”

  The sanguinary high priest paused in the shadow of the great statue in the middle of the courtyard, the winged shape rising high above him. He spread his hands, taking in all before him with a single gesture. “Where you were born. The tribes in which you grew to manhood. The worlds you called home. The leaders you once gave fealty to…” He looked into different faces, and saw stiff attention, in some perhaps the odd hint of anticipation and awe. “These things are what made you who you are. But you
stride beyond them now. Each of you has been tested to breaking point and emerged the stronger for it. You have fought through the trials and been judged. A great gift is now yours. You have earned the right to live and to die, not as a mere human being, but as an Adeptus Astartes. A Son of Sanguinius. A Blood Angel.” He nodded to himself. “That is the only answer you will ever need. And be certain in the belief that there are many who envy you. Many who cherish and honour you. But still more, a myriad more, who hate you for what you have become. And against them, every day you still draw breath is a victory.”

  Corbulo reached inside his robes, his fingers closing around a bag made of blood-crimson velvet, sewn with threads of gold and platinum, bedecked with rare gems from a hundred conquered worlds. “You are a victory made of meat and bone and blood. You are kings of war and the battle-lords of all you survey. You stride the stars in one unity of purpose—to fight in the honour of humankind, for the grace of Holy Terra and in veneration of the God-Emperor of Man and the Primarch Sanguinius.” From the robes he drew forth the relic that was his sole charge, an object cleansed and sanctified and made pure as no other artefact could be.

  He turned it in his hands, hearing the collective gasp from the warriors arrayed around him. It was flawless and perfect, without any outward sign of the great affront that had been perpetrated against it only months ago. Corbulo refused to allow himself to dwell on that moment of darkness; he held the Red Grail high, and let the incarnadine sun shower it with colour. The same old, giddying elation, the same undimmed sense of power surged through him and, at the sight of the relic, the robed Astartes went as one to their knees. “In His name, brothers,” said the priest.