Legends of the dark ange.., p.111
Legends Of The Dark Angels, page 111
Their mission should have been a simple one. This world, though neither Jeremiel nor Terach had deemed it of operational importance to learn its name, was the subject of an Inquisitorial purge and when the Ordo Hereticus had requested assistance from the Adeptus Astartes, a single squad of Dark Angels had been despatched to aid the Inquisition’s ministrations. A Slaaneshi cult had taken root on the world, its tendrils probing deep into the Administratum who ran the ore mining operations that made this planetoid more than just an obstacle to be avoided by the Rogue Traders and pirates who conducted their business in this sub-sector. Exterminatus had quickly been ruled out, the ore being vital to the construction of some tiny component used in the tanks built by neighbouring forge worlds, and so the Dark Angels’ task was to eliminate all life on the planet while leaving the infrastructure intact ready for repopulation.
The Space Marines made short work of cleansing the two major population centres and, with only the outlying mining settlements left to be purged of any potential heresy, split into pairs to deliver the Emperor’s judgment. They expected no opposition and would brook none should they find it.
The seventh shot shattered the window Terach was crouched beneath. As he closed the distance to the next flimsy metal structure, shots eight, nine and ten whistled harmlessly past him. The Dark Angel now had a clear view of the shooter’s location, and when the twelfth shot sounded, the muzzle flash placed him at the shot-out window next to the door of the hab-unit he was sheltering in. Unslinging his own weapon, the Space Marine laid down fire to cover his approach to the final pre-fab before his objective and, as he nestled in the lee of the cover provided by the building, shots thirteen through seventeen sprayed wildly in his general direction. The shooter was getting desperate and Tarach could use that to his advantage.
Switching to full auto, the Dark Angel emerged boldly from the shelter of the hab and raked the shooter’s hut with bolter shells, emptying the clip in the time it took him to reach the enemy position. Screams emanated from within and, preparing to face multiple combatants, Terach replaced the empty clip in his bolter before ripping away the corrugated front wall of the hab like a child tears paper from a gift.
Cowering in the corner of the pre-fab were a dozen or so miners, the reek of their sweat almost overpowering the scent of fear detectable by Terach’s heightened senses. Several of them were already dead, caught by shots from the Dark Angel’s fusillade while others were weeping and wailing, imploring the Emperor to spare them. At the head of the ragged group an old man stood shaking, bolt pistol pointed weakly at the Space Marine, the tears running down his craggy face carving runnels in the grime that coated his cheeks.
Terach raised his own weapon and was just about to drain another clip when realisation hit him and he lowered the weapon ever so slightly, tilting his head in contemplation.
‘Wait. How did you–?’
The remainder of his query never left his lips as searing heat pierced him between the shoulder blades and the stench of super-heated hydrogen and scorched flesh filled the tight confines of the hab-unit. Terach relinquished his grip on his bolter and slumped to his knees, struggling to gather air into his ruined lungs as a vast shadow fell across him and the frightened miners.
‘Go,’ said a voice like rape and honey. ‘Go now.’
The miners did not need telling twice and, helping those who were too grievously wounded to move unaided, scattered from the wreck of the hab, abandoning their dead.
‘My weapon,’ the voice said as the old man made to exit and Terach strained to turn his head ever so slightly to see the old miner passing the bolt pistol to a gauntleted hand clad in Dark Angels green before fleeing after his co-workers.
‘Please, brother. This is some kind of mistake,’ Terach said. His secondary heart had kicked in, although he already knew he was dead.
‘I have long since ceased to be your “brother”,’ the figure said, circling around to stand in front of the stricken Space Marine. The newcomer wore robes over a suit of power armour, and a hood covered his features. A scabbard hung from his waist and he held a bolt pistol in one hand and a plasma pistol in the other. ‘What are you doing here?’
Terach was momentarily confused. ‘I… I’m here to carry out the will of the Emperor. To keep his dominions free from the taint of heresy and corruption.’
‘The Emperor, you say?’ The hooded figure was silent for a moment before crouching down so that his face was level with Terach’s. ‘I know the Emperor. This…’ He gestured to the bolt-riddled corpses of the miners lying in the corner of the hab. ‘This is not his will.’
Before Terach could protest, the muzzle of the robed figure’s bolt pistol was against the temple of the Dark Angel’s helmet. The back of Terach’s head disappeared in a crimson bloom, the report of the shot echoing loudly off the remaining walls of the metal hut.
It was still echoing as the robed figure ghosted out of the shanty town.
MALEDICTION
C Z DUNN
Engines roaring, the Lightning fighter craft streaked across the sky and out of the glare cast by Procel V’s harsh orange sun. The throng of people on the ground looked skywards and screamed as the jet entered a steep dive heading directly for the crowds lining the wide streets of the planet’s capital. The screams turned to cheers as, at the last minute, the Lightning pulled out of its dive and ascended again in a series of rolls.
From a balcony high above the victory celebrations, Regan Antigone leant on his cane and smiled. It had been a long time since he’d heard the sound of a Lightning’s engine and, although he wasn’t quite as grateful to hear it as on the previous occasion, he knew the vital role that the flyboys had played in the liberation some twenty-five years ago. Behind the first Lightning came several other Imperial Navy craft simulating strafing runs or ground attacks and each one was greeted by an enthusiastic roar from the celebrants of Amadis.
When the Navy had finished their showboating, it was the turn of the Procel 14th Mechanised. Thousands of tonnes of hardware rolled down the narrow streets of the city two abreast. Children and adults alike gasped as the enormous war machines swung their turrets this way and that, mock-targeting the very people that a decade and a half before those same guns had run red-hot to save from the forces of the arch-enemy. At the back of the 14th’s column was the regiment’s pride and joy – a Baneblade – and several of the citizenry fainted in the presence of such an awesome tool of war.
After the tanks came the human liberators of Procel V and at the sight of the olive-clad soldiers Regan abandoned his cane and, through supreme effort, stood unaided for the first time in a quarter of a century. As each troop filed past they turned their head and saluted in the direction of the balcony but they were not saluting the planetary governor, the visiting Adminstratum dignitaries or even the Imperial Guard top brass. These salutes were reserved for Regan Antigone, sole survivor of the 1st Procel Irregulars, Saviour of Amadis and Hero of the Imperium.
For over an hour, thousands of Imperial Guardsmen passed below the balcony of the governor’s manse and, despite the pain in his leg reaching excruciating levels, the only time Regan allowed a tear to flow was when his own regiment – now the 1st Procel Regulars in honour of their bravery in the battle to hold the city – closed out the parade by standing below his vantage point and singing Imperial hymns in his honour as he took their salute.
But the tear was not at the pain nor an outpouring of emotion at this momentous occasion.
It was a tear of shame at the secret he’d kept for more than half his life.
After the parade had finished, Regan, the governor and officials from all branches of the Imperial bureaucracy retired to the stateroom for the celebratory feast. As he took his seat at the head of the hall alongside various commissars, colonels and backroom paper pushers it occurred to him that only a small proportion of the guests invited were frontline military men. Granted, of the three Irregulars who survived the battle for Amadis he was the only one still alive – and he wouldn’t dare think that the Adeptus Astartes Chapters involved would deign to have sent representatives to such an insignificant gathering – but he came to the realisation that little had changed since his days as a serving Imperial Guardsman: the higher echelons would always stay as far away from the action as possible while everybody else did the real work of fighting wars.
The feast commenced with a series of speeches. A succession of worthies took to the podium to aggrandise the role that their branch of the Imperium had played in the Battle of Amadis and to laud the heroism of Regan Antigone. A string of people he’d never met stood before him claiming to have known him all his life and embellishing their stories with ‘facts’ about Regan Antigone. A Departmento Munitorum official went on at length about how the Regan Antigone he knew had clawed his way up from the very depths of the city and was lucky even to have been accepted into the Irregulars, let alone serve with distinction. While he certainly hadn’t been born into the upper sphere of Amadis society, he was far from bottom-dwelling trash.
Amadis was no conventional city. It was the remains of an enormous spacefaring craft that had crashed onto the surface of Procel V millennia ago and, despite no longer being capable of returning to the depths of space, the vast structure had remained intact and thus formed an instant capital for the recently settled planet. In the centuries since, the populace had fallen naturally into a class system along similar lines to a hive city or, ironically, the crew of an Imperial Navy vessel. At the summit were the governor and the assorted bureaucrats who ensured the smooth running of not only the city but the entire planet of 80 billion souls. The governor’s manse sat at the very top of the ship and the ‘streets’ down below were the crenels that ran across the top of the hull. The levels immediately below housed the administrators and military and continued on down through service industries, hab-workers and menials until at the very bottom of the ship were the criminal underclass, the gangers and, if the whispers were to be believed, mutants.
Before the arch-enemy invaded and laid siege to Amadis, Regan had been apprenticed to a mag-lift engineer and led a not uncomfortable life midships. Prior to joining the Irregulars he had been a bit of a scrapper and had even had to kill on occasion, but to insinuate that he was a hardened criminal before he joined the Guard was just insulting.
But that wasn’t the most hurtful mistruth.
The Departmento Munitorum man was followed by an elderly commissar with a chest covered in medals. He droned on for some time about the heroic exploits of the Procel regiments not only during the Battle for Amadis but also in the years that followed. Then, after eulogising Regan in a speech where he constantly referred to him as ‘Ranger’, he began to speak about the two sons that Regan had fathered. The commissar claimed that his eldest son, Murtock, was almost as brave as his father and had successfully defended a vital ammo dump during the campaign to liberate moons on the outer edge of the Procel system. His youngest son, Tarrick, meanwhile had been one of the heroic defenders of Hepstan’s Folly, a small moon on the very edge of the system that was used to resupply Imperial Navy craft.
Regan had to bite back his anger at these lies. Both his sons had joined the Regulars and, because of their father’s reputation, at officer level. Murtock, given the rank of major and two hundred men at his command, had fought in the campaign to liberate the moons of Procel but, finding himself and his men trapped in an ammo dump by a far stronger force, chose to take his own life rather than stand and fight. A young corporal had been the one to successfully lead the defence and some months later was the one who returned Murtock’s personal effects to Regan. As the now paraplegic corporal wheeled himself out of the hab, Regan realised that they hadn’t even bothered to wash the shit out of the seat of the Guard-issue combat fatigues that had been amongst his son‘s belongings.
His other son, Tarrick, was neither a hero nor a coward, merely stupid. Also given the rank of major, he was on his first combat mission out of basic training when his squad’s Chimera was sent to defend the outer perimeter of a starport. Leading from the front, he was the first out of the Chimera… and the first of his squad to die. A las-round took him clean through the side of the skull, a death that would probably have been avoided if only he’d thought to have put his helmet on before leaving the vehicle.
But still worse was to come. The commissar invited Regan to the podium to accept posthumous medals on behalf of both his brave sons and was met by rapturous applause from the audience.
As Regan stood there, struggling to hold both medals and his cane, a sudden melancholy washed over him just as it did when he’d been given the news about his sons’ fates. He was about to return to his seat when the commissar gestured for Regan to take his place.
Awkwardly, Regan turned to face the crowd, uncertain whether to accept the commissar’s invitation. One look at the faces of the enthusiastically clapping assembly told him that he didn’t have any alternative. Limping towards the vox-assembly, he placed the medals on top of the podium and gathered his thoughts. After a brief pause he looked out onto the now hushed crowd and prepared to speak.
‘I…’
A commotion from the back of the hall diverted his attention. All around him people were taking to one knee and bowing their heads until Regan was the only human in the room left standing. When he caught sight of the reason that even the planetary governor himself had bowed, Regan ignored the pain in his leg to do the same.
Striding through the centre of the stateroom was a giant, power-armoured figure. Nearly three metres tall, the newcomer was clad in an ivory robe, the hood of which shrouded his face in shadow. By his side hung a bolt pistol and just visible beneath the folds of his garb was the scabbard of a great sword. Though his face and much of his armour were obscured by the fine, ancient cloth, his immense green shoulder pads were not. The right pad was adorned with a bas-relief of a long dagger wreathed by feathers while the other was emblazoned with a stylised ebony set of wings with a dagger set through them and marked him out as a member of one of the Emperor’s finest and most noble Space Marine Chapters: the Dark Angels.
Awestruck, the bowing crowd parted to give the demi-god free passage amongst them. Regan allowed himself to look up slightly and realised that the figure was heading directly for the stage. Sweating nervously, he cast his eyes towards the ground as the figure arrived before him. Without removing his hood, the Space Marine began to speak.
‘Regan Antigone, sole survivor of the Procel 1st Irregulars, Saviour of Amadis and Hero of the Imperium.’
Regan tilted his head upwards slightly, not daring to make eye contact with the goliath, but not wanting to show disrespect either.
‘Y… yes,’ he said, barely able to form the words.
The Dark Angel slid back his hood to reveal his features. A perfectly smooth scalp punctuated only by the occasional pock mark or scar seemed to shine in the artificial light of the stateroom and his stern, craggy face betrayed no emotion or feeling.
‘Stand,’ the Space Marine commanded.
‘I… I… What?’ Regan replied.
‘Do not make me say it again. Stand.’
With the aid of his cane Regan climbed to a standing position. He was conscious that every set of eyes in the room were fixated on him.
‘I am Master Tigrane of the Sixth Company of the Dark Angels Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. Regan Antigone, sole survivor of the Procel 1st Irregulars, Saviour of Amadis and Hero of the Imperium, you do not bow before me.’
The green-armoured Space Marine put his hand to the hilt of his sword and drew it in a single fluid motion, pointing it at a forty-five degree angle towards the roof of the stateroom. The blade was made of a material so dark that it seemed to absorb the light in the room, casting Regan and the Angel of Death in a pale obsidian gloom.
A gasp went up from the crowd, Regan felt as if he was going to pass out. Another fluid movement and the Company Master was down on one knee, the point of the black sword now embedded in the floor, head bowed slightly in respect.
‘It is I who bow before you.’
‘It seems I’ve saved you again, Trooper Antigone.’
Once the commotion had died down, nervous gubernatorial officials had scrambled around to oblige their esteemed new arrival. Though none of the seats in the stateroom were strong enough to accommodate the bulk of a Space Marine, one enterprising young clerk had commandeered an ammo crate from the 14th Procel Mechanised and, after draping it with fine cloths, had allowed Company Master Tigrane to take his place beside Regan at the head of the feast.
‘Thank you. Although I’ve attended many functions like this down the years I never did grow accustomed to public speaking.’ The initial shock of the Space Marine’s arrival had subsided and Regan, although not entirely at ease, had composed himself enough to form complete sentences. ‘And it’s no longer “Trooper” Antigone; it’s Colonel Antigone now. An honorific title of course in recognition of my role in the defence but it seems I’m not the only one to have received a promotion since the last time we met, lord.’
‘Indeed. I haven’t been Sergeant Tigrane for many years now, since a few months after the Procel campaign in fact. A great honour but one tinged with much sadness that it took the death of Master Dumah for me to ascend to the rank.’
‘I’m sorry, lord. I didn’t mean–’
‘I am a soldier, Colonel Antigone,’ the Dark Angel interrupted. ‘I have been conditioned to make fear a stranger to me and I can withstand pain far beyond the threshold of most things that exist in the universe. While the death of my former master saddens me, I do not experience grief or emotional pain in the same way that you do. Death, be it my own or that of one of my battle-brothers, is merely an occupational hazard.’
