Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow Read online

  Stele closed his eyes, and the air seemed to turn greasy and cold. In the next second he looked up and the sensation vanished. “There!” he snapped, dodging to the right.

  Rafen saw the discharge of the bolter before he heard it. The shell cut through the air where Stele had been standing and into the chest of an unlucky servitor behind him.

  He was just about to turn when the crack of another shot reached his ears, bringing his bolter to bear. “The raider!” The Blood Angel released a salvo of shots to ring against the wreck’s hull and received another blast in return. The rounds went high and wide of him.

  Stele’s hand came out of nowhere and pressed Rafen’s gun downward. “No, no killing. I want this one alive.”

  The inquisitor stood up, presenting himself as a target. His arms were outspread in offering.

  “Lord, seek cover!” Sachiel cried. Arkio was already scrambling toward the raider with Alactus a step behind him, but Rafen could see the glitter of light on the weapon’s scope as the gun bore down.

  Stele looked directly into the unblinking lens of the targeter and Rafen felt the peculiar thickness in the air once again. It was like being on the edge of a storm, concentrated along the channel of the inquisitor’s sight line. The Blood Angel’s gut knotted at the taint of psyker-scent about him.

  Noro’s eye could not blink. The muscles on it were rigid as stone, the optic jelly of the orb twitching with impotence. And likewise, no matter how hard he tried, he could not will the finger about the gun’s trigger to contract. The Word Bearer was locked in place, unable to do anything but stare into the face of the bald human at the other end of his target sight. The man never moved, but he seemed to grow to fill every inch of the Traitor Marine’s perception. At no stage did he speak, but he imposed his will to suffocate any thoughts Noro might have had to ran or fight. He wanted nothing more than to scream, to cry out and die and let the wounds have his life at long last.

  Stele answered him as the thoughts formed in his mind. “Your prayers will go unanswered, corrupted one.”

  Noro tried to curse him, but there were shapes in red armour clustering in all around him, ripping the gun from his grip and carrying him away.

  Rafen watched Arkio and Alactus drag the wounded Word Bearer from the wreck, for a moment believing that the Traitor was dead, because he was rigid and unmoving. “A survivor. There may be others.”

  “Perhaps.” Stele mused. “In any event, this one will serve us well enough.” He nodded to his lexmechanic. “Locate somewhere secure and construct a makeshift crucifix. Inform Captain Ideon I am going to delay my return to Bellus.” The inquisitor glanced at Rafen and Sachiel. “Your experience with the tactical situation here will prove useful to me. I will have you attend… I may need you to prompt my investigation.”

  “Investigation?” Rafen repeated.

  Stele nodded. “We have an unexpected bounty, Brother Rafen. Soon, we will return to Bellus and mark our success with ceremony, but for now, come watch me put this monstrosity to the question.” Without another word, he took off after the lexmechanic, the servo-skulls darting to follow.

  Sachiel gave Rafen a look. “Have a serf bring out a chirurgeon’s kit,” he said. “The inquisitor will require tools.”

  When it was done, Rafen felt soiled. He had no sympathy for the Word Bearer, not a single iota of sorrow for the perverse beast—after all, the thing had known the implications of its actions from the moment the Traitor Chapter had embraced the Horus Heresy—but the overspill from Stele’s searing mind-witchery seemed to cling to everything around him. Ignorant of the Inquisition’s methods, Rafen had expected Stele to attack the Word Bearer with blades and barbs, but his technique had been more disturbing than direct. The lexmechanic directed a Techmarine to jury-rig a crude extricator from parts of a sentinel power-loader. With the X-shaped crucifix erected in one of the burnt-out hangars, Stele set to work.

  Arkio and Alactus stripped the Traitor of his wargear and torched it with a plasma burst. Unlike the hard ceramite armour of the Blood Angels, the Word Bearer’s mail was a curious amalgam of metals and tough, rubbery flesh. It bled profusely when they cut it from him, trailing nerve fibres and veins across the stone floor. When they set it alight, it squealed as it crisped into ash.

  The naked bulk of the corrupted was a ruin of scars and open wounds. Stele chose a few of them at random as places to stab fine trepanning needles or skin shears. This was only the opening move. The inquisitor made quite sure that the Traitor was not going to die. He began a whispering conversation with it. Once in a while, the enemy soldier would cry out or curse them all, shaking with horrific violence. Rafen listened hard, but he could not make clear the words the inquisitor spoke. He was only a few feet away, but Stele might well have been on the other side of the world.

  There came a moment when he gestured to Arkio, pointing him out to the Word Bearer. The ghost of a smile danced on Stele’s lips and the Traitor began to weep. Inch by inch, moment by moment, the Chaos Marine broke a little more until finally, in the stifling air thick with ozone and organic waste, it sagged and became little more than a pale sack of meat. For long seconds no one spoke. The only sounds were the wounded, husky breaths that sighed from the Word Bearer.

  The inquisitor drew away from it and Rafen saw him lick his lips like a man at the end of a particularly tasty meal. “Shenlong. This is the world from which they struck at us.”

  Sachiel’s pale face turned to Rafen. “Your company is more familiar with this sector than the Bellus crew. What do you know of this planet?” His voice could not mask the disquiet at what he had witnessed.

  Rafen thought for a moment before answering. “A forge world, honoured priest. Until very recently, one of ours.”

  Stele raised an eyebrow. “Explain.”

  “Shenlong is… was one of many munition manufactories for the Ultima Segmentum. The world became isolated by a warp-storm several months ago, and under cover of the turbulence the planet was invaded by the archenemy. Shenlong and every human on it have been declared lost to the Emperor’s light, lord.”

  “Indeed?” Stele said, absently tapping a finger on his lips. “Where is this blighted place?”

  “Coreward, perhaps a week’s travel in the empyrean.”

  The inquisitor digested this information with a slow nod, and then turned to Sachiel. “Priest, gather the men and prepare to lift for Bellus. I must review the information I have gleaned from our friend here.”

  “Lord.” Rafen pressed, “if you are considering that we leave Cybele, you should know that our orders were from Commander Dante himself, to hold post here until relieved—”

  Stele waved him into silence. “We shall see what orders are given, Rafen. We shall see.”

  The lexmechanic spoke for the first time. His sibilants hissed and ground together like cogwheels. “Master Stele, your specimen still lives. If you wish, I will cull it.”

  “No,” the inquisitor tossed the word over his shoulder as he walked away. “Sustain the Traitor for the moment; bring it up to the ship. Its dissection may yield more data of interest to us.”

  By nightfall Cybele was home only to the dead. Thunderhawks and cargo lighters from Bellus ranged back and forth between the surface, and the battle barge brought up the remains of men and material that might later be salvaged. While Techmarines directed hordes of serfs to repair the warship’s warp motors, Apothecaries ministered to jars of amniotic fluid in the infirmary. Each canister contained progenoid glands harvested from the Blood Angels killed in the planetside fighting. Shoals of the spheroid organs floated there within the green, life-sustaining liquids, and inside each lay a precious storehouse of genetic material.

  These simple egg-shaped sacs of flesh were the most priceless and delicate resource on the ship. They were even valued more than the holy artefact that had been the object of Bellus’s mission. Without the gene-seed that nestled within the progenoids, the future of the Chapter wou
ld be threatened. Each was thick with the raw matter of the Blood Angels, nascent zygotes that could be taken and implanted in a new generation of initiate recruits in the chamber vitae of the fortress-monastery on Baal. Through these elaborate knots of genetic complexity, the departed would give life to a new generation of Adeptus Astartes, so beginning the cycle of death and rebirth over again.

  Rafen studied the work of his Apothecary brethren through the glass walls of the medicae sanctum. He became lost in the precise ballet of their actions. A Tactical Marine from the very start of his life in the Blood Angels, Rafen had always admired the work of the men who served the Chapter as field surgeons and biologians: such skills with the workings of the flesh were beyond him.

  “Rafen,” the voice was roughened with fatigue.

  He turned to face his trusted mentor. “Brother-sergeant.”

  “You left the meal early, Rafen. I was surprised.” Koris said mildly. “Most of us had an appetite to choke a sand-ox.”

  “I had my fill,” he said, a little too quickly. The kitchen vassals of the Bellus had provided a rich spread of protein-heavy meats and broth for the survivors of the battle for Cybele, but Rafen’s appetite had been lost to him. He ate cured steaks cut from dried fire scorpion, but the taste of home brought him no succour.

  Koris watched him. “This has been a strenuous posting,” he said, with characteristic understatement, “and tricky. I had not thought we would leave the war grave world again.”

  “Nor I.” Rafen agreed. “But perhaps Sachiel was correct. The primarch watches over us.”

  The sergeant spat out a chug of gruff, humourless laughter. “Our liege lord has better things to do than keep an eye on Space Marines, lad. We are the sharp edge of his blade, no more. We serve and we die, and that is our only glory.”

  Rafen laid a gloved hand on the glass partition. “Glory enough for them, I would hope,” he added, inclining his head toward the progenoid jars beyond.

  “Aye, if we ever return home…” Koris looked away.

  The Marine shot the elder soldier a loaded glance. “Old man, do not cast out cryptic comments to me like some addled seer. Speak plainly, teacher. We know each other well enough for that.”

  Koris gave him a sharp nod. “Aye, that we do.” He lowered his voice. “Bellus was on course for Baal to return the spear, as we all know—but now word has come to me that Stele intends to cut that journey short.”

  “We have been aboard this ship for less than a day and already you know this?”

  “The manner of how information comes to me is not your concern, lad. Live as long as I have and you’ll learn the knack of it too.” Koris’ face was a grimace. “Mark me, the inquisitor intends to turn Bellus about and make a new heading.”

  Rafen shook his head. “This will not happen. Captain Simeon’s orders were to maintain the garrison on Cybele, and if Stele makes any new dictate it will be to take up that posting.” He pointed at the zygote jars. “The dead here with us proves that the planet has value to the Traitors… He could not simply abandon it.”

  A thin sheen of anger coated Koris’ words. “Lad, how can you be blind to what takes place right in front of you? For all Stele’s honour debts with our Chapter, what is he? A servant of the Ordo Hereticus, not a Blood Angel! He will seek the path that brings him glory, as every blighted one of his kind will do!”

  “Sergeant, there are many who would see the taint of heresy in those words.”

  “Then the warp curse them,” hissed the veteran. “I have no time for the petty edicts of such men. Do you not see, Rafen? This fray on Cybele turns the battle lust of our brothers, and Stele only needs to mould it if he wishes to use it for himself.”

  “How could he do such a thing?” Rafen dismissed the older Marine and made to walk away, but Koris snared his arm in an iron grip. “Brother-sergeant…”

  “Some of the men have already begun to speak about Arkio.” Koris whispered darkly. “His bravery on the surface with the daemon, the ploy that ended the Ogre Lord… They credit him with the victory.”

  “So they should,” he replied hesitantly. “My brother showed uncommon daring.”

  “Uncommon, yes. Such that some think him blessed by Sanguinius.”

  “Maybe he is.” The answer tasted flat and dry in Rafen’s mouth.

  “And who would gain by exploiting such a thing, lad? Consider that.”

  Rafen shook off the veteran’s grip with an angry jerk. “You have always been my most resolute mentor, Koris, but you let your distrust of all things blind you.”

  The sergeant accepted this with a slow nod. “Perhaps, but if you ever fail to question what lesser men take on faith, Rafen, then it is you that is truly blind.” The elder Blood Angel stalked away, leaving his former student to weigh his words in silent consideration.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The grand chamber on the Bellus could dwarf the cathedrals of some colony worlds. It was a cloister for giants: huge column-towers rose up to an arched roof that webbed together with beams and vaults. At the far end, past the tight ranks of worshipful Marines, the wall that faced the bow of the battle barge was dominated by a circular lens of stained glass and worked metals: it was a rendition of the Lord Sanguinius in his most bloody aspect. The sun-bright gold of his sacred armour was streaked with the scarlet blood of his enemies, and his head was thrown back in a roar of victory. As he entered the chamber, Brother Rafen found his attention was instantly drawn to the shining white fangs bared in the primarch’s open mouth. He found himself suddenly aware of the same sharp teeth in his own jaw. Like the handsome, noble profile that he shared with his brethren, it was just one aspect of the genetic lineage that connected them to the godlike figure in the glass.

  Rafen had never been aboard Bellus, and so the majesty of the hall was new to him. As he walked forward among the solemn lines of battle-brothers, he found it hard not to become drawn into the myriad devotional artworks and stone scrolls of script work fashioned overhead. There were whole Chapters from the Book of Lemartes, and pages from the testaments of the lords of Baal, all cut in obsidian that glittered like dark arterial blood.

  And still, his eyes were constantly pulled back to the glass. The closer he got to the altar at the head of the chamber, the more detail seemed to rise from the image. Now he could see the shadowy shape of the Emperor above and to the right of Sanguinius. He was looking down on him with cool pride. Arrayed around the edges of the disc were versions of moments from the blessed angel’s life—as an infant, falling to the surface of Baal; a boy, killing a fire scorpion with his bare hands; airborne on his angelic wings, flame licking about his gaze; and in single combat with the arch-traitor Horus, just before his own death. For a moment, Rafen felt transported by the sight of it, as if he were home on Baal Secundus once more. All the confusion and emotion of the past few days was gone—but then he spied the shape of the gas giant planet looming beyond the pane and the instant was gone.

  They reached the place of honour near the altar and as one, Rafen and the rest of the survivors from the battle on Cybele dropped to one knee. The sharp tang of the sacrament incense drifted down on them from the floating sensors above.

  In the silence of the chamber, Sachiel’s voice was a breaking wave of noise as his armour’s audial pickups broadcast his words to speakers hidden in colonnades about the hall. “Yea, for the Emperor and Sanguinius, we stand and we serve.”

  Every Space Marine in the room repeated the phrase; the walls rumbled with the chorus. From the corner of his eye, Rafen could see Arkio silently mouthing a litany and beyond him Lucion, Turcio and Corvus. The Techmarine held one hand to the Adeptus Mechanicus cogwheel-and-skull symbol on his chest, while Corvus clasped absently at the healing wound the daemon-beast had inflicted on him. Turcio was immobile, eyes tightly shut.

  The Sanguinary High Priest climbed a coil of wooden steps to the broad pulpit, and bowed to a flickering hololith of Brother-Captain Ideon. In mill
ennia past it had been tradition to have the ship’s commander present during a Mass, but war had evolved to the point where captains were now permanent fixtures on the bridge, so this was no longer possible. Ideon was still present in spirit if not flesh. He was alone on the command deck with his senses hardwired into the machine-ghost of the Bellus. He would observe the ceremony through the eyes and ears of the innumerable monitors dotted about the grand chamber’s expanse.

  Rafen raised his head slowly and for the first time noticed Inquisitor Stele in the shadows of the platform. He was watchful of Sachiel in the same manner that the Emperor of Mankind watched Sanguinius in the glass image above.

  Sachiel stood behind the lectern and placed his hands on the winged blood droplet that crested it. “This day we give thanks to our lord and the master of mankind for the glorious bounty of war. We pledge our lives and our very blood to Sanguinius, our faith and our honour, until death.”

  “Until death,” cried the chorus.

  The priest gave a pious nod. “We venerate our brothers who fell on Cybele. Some of them were proud men who had given their oath to the mission of the Bellus. Sadly they will now never see it completed.” He opened a large book bound in the dun-coloured hide of a Baalite sand shark and ran a finger along a line of names. Each one was freshly written in blood. “We speak of them now and charge their lives to the memory of the sepulchre of heroes. Know their sacrifice and honour it.”

  From behind him, Rafen heard the faintest of sighs. Koris was kneeling there, and Rafen wondered how many of these ceremonies the veteran had witnessed. Too many, he would warrant.

  Sachiel began the roll call of the dead. “Brother-Captain Simeon. Brother-Sergeant Israfel. Brother Bennek. Brother Hirundus. Apothecary Veho—”

  With each name, the Blood Angels gave a gesture of salute, touching their balled fists to the places on their chests beneath which beat their primary and secondary hearts. There were thousands of fingers tapping in unison on their torso plates, signifying that the dead men would live on in the hearts of their brethren.