Legends of the dark ange.., p.12
Legends Of The Dark Angels, page 12
‘We shall see about that,’ Boreas said, taking up his customary position, arms crossed, at the head of the slab. ‘You claim you travelled to Tharsis on a ship, and there were other Fallen with you. Tell me how you came by this vessel and these companions.’
‘First, I must tell you what befell me after the battles on Caliban,’ Astelan told him. ‘It was a time that began with great confusion and pain. For an eternity it felt as if I was shapeless, my form distorted and twisted inside out by seething power. I was at the centre of a storm, and part of the maelstrom itself. I had only an infinitely small awareness of myself, of who and what I was. And then I awoke, as if from a dream. It was as if Caliban, the fighting, the fire from the heavens, were all an imaginary memory at first.’
‘Where? Where did you find yourself?’ Boreas asked.
‘That was most vexing of all,’ Astelan said with a frown. He still felt dizzy and sick from his torture at Boreas’s hands and the mental probing of Samiel, and he closed his eyes to aid his concentration. ‘I was on a rock-strewn slope, a barren, lifeless wasteland stretching out before me. Gone were the thick forests of Caliban, the sky was yellow overhead and a bulging star hung above the horizon. At first I thought that perhaps I had not awakened, that I was still dreaming. The impossibility of it baffled me, made me doubt my sanity. But as that sun sank out of view and the night sky filled with stars I did not recognise, I realised that it was real. Uncomprehending of how I arrived, I determined to discover what manner of place I now found myself in. It was to be a long time before I discovered the truth.’
‘And the truth was?’ asked Boreas.
‘I was far, far from Caliban,’ sighed Astelan. ‘When the next morning rose, I decided to walk eastwards. There was no real purpose behind it, but part of me said that I should go towards the sun. I hoped I would find a settlement, or failing that at least some indication as to where I was. I marched the whole day, across the scree-strewn slopes of a great dormant volcano, and I found nothing.’
‘How did you survive?’
‘The planet was not as lifeless as I first thought. There were scattered copses of spindly trees and thorny bushes. Here, I discovered, if you dug deep enough you could find trickling streams passing through the rock, small pools under the surface. There were rodents, serpents and insects all feeding upon each other, and they were not difficult to catch. In this manner I sustained myself. I fear that if it had not been for this wondrous body the Emperor has given me, I would have perished. Had not my stomach, my muscles and my bones been so efficient, I would have starved or been cursed with disease from infected water. But we were created to survive, were we not? The Emperor moulded us so that we could eke life out of death and continue the fight.’
‘But what of the ship, how did you come by it?’ Boreas asked impatiently.
‘I counted the days as I wandered, always heading east, always towards the morning sun,’ Astelan continued purposefully, glad of the Chaplain’s frustration. ‘At night I would hunt, for that was when most of the creatures sallied forth from their burrows and lairs for food. For two hundred and forty-two days and nights, I existed this way before I found any sign of intelligent habitation. I spent that time trying to make sense of what had happened, reliving the battles, trying to piece together the last moments of the fighting on Caliban. To this day I cannot say, I have not found the answers.’
‘What happened after two hundred and forty-two days?’ There was no anger in Boreas’s voice, only a terseness born of irritation.
‘I saw a light in the night sky,’ Astelan said, smiling at the memory. ‘At first I thought it a comet or meteor, but as I watched, it circled across the heavens to the north and then disappeared. No shooting star moves like it did and hope stirred within me again, as I realised that it was a ship or aircraft of some kind. At that point, I did not give too much thought to whether it was friend or foe, I took it simply as a sign of where to go. So for twelve more days I headed north, and on the fourth day I saw the ship leaving again and pressed towards its destination more directly.’
‘And did you find where the ship had landed?’
‘Like everything else on that forsaken world, humanity had chosen to live under the surface, to dig down into the rock for sanctuary,’ explained Astelan. ‘I saw armoured portals delved into the side of a great hill, atop which sat a great expanse lit with hundreds of lights to guide ships in. Having seen only sunlight and starlight for so long, that blaze of yellow and red was glorious in my eyes as it glowed on the horizon. I doubled my efforts, crossing the rocky plains at speed to reach the aurora of civilisation that lay ahead.’
‘What then? What did you find there? Where was this place?’ Boreas’s questions were spat out like bolter fire.
‘As I neared the end of my journey, uncertainty suddenly gripped me,’ Astelan said languidly, enjoying the dissatisfaction of Boreas. ‘The Imperium was being torn apart by the war unleashed by Horus. The dominions of the Emperor were divided, and I had no way of telling which side the inhabitants of that underground city belonged to. I could see no signs of war, and I spent a day watching, seeking some sign of their allegiance, but there was none.’
‘But the Horus Heresy was over. For a long time the Emperor had been victorious,’ Boreas pointed out.
‘I had no inkling of the time that had passed, no way of knowing the great ages I had missed, or how such a thing might happen,’ Astelan replied, opening his eyes and gazing at Boreas. ‘In the end, I dared enter, reckoning that the risk of death at the hands of traitors was outweighed by the certain death that would eventually overtake even me in the wasteland. I presented myself at the nearest gate, a warrior of the Dark Angels. I had never seen such surprise as was written on the man’s face when I appeared. But he did not try to attack me, and I realised my fears were misplaced. Overwhelmed, the guards brought me inside and called for their superiors.’
Astelan grinned, his cracked lips starting to bleed again, remembering the relief he had felt at being welcomed into the underground settlement. It had not been until that moment that he had realised how lost he had felt, how the tumultuous events of his recent life had so disorientated him.
‘They called together their ruling council,’ he continued. ‘There was little I could tell them, for I knew nothing of how I had got there. The priests called it a miracle, saying that the Emperor had delivered me to them. But for all of the questions they asked me, I had so many more. What news of the Heresy had they learned? Where was I, and how might I rejoin my brethren? And I learned much in that initial meeting. To my horror, I was told that over nine thousand years had swept past me. It was impossible to grasp, it was too enormous, too vast to understand. I was shocked, struck dumb as I tried to assimilate this information.’
‘But you eventually came to terms with what happened, I assume,’ said Boreas.
‘Never fully,’ admitted Astelan. ‘The scope of it is beyond imagining, beyond comprehension. I rested in the chambers they led me to, incapable of rational thought as I tried to unravel what had happened, but there were no answers. Unable to rationalise what I was experiencing, I instead resolved to discover as much as I could about what had happened in my extraordinary absence. I started with the obvious and explored this new place where I found myself. It was a mining colony, on a world called Scappe Delve. They had few accurate star charts, but I was able to estimate to my consternation that I was some twelve hundred light years from Caliban. Again, the isolation and fear struck me, so far from the world I had adopted as my home, but so strange had been the other revelations, it was easier to accept this horrifying fact.’
‘And so you learned of what had come to pass since you rose up against the Lion and waged war on Caliban.’ Boreas’s voice was steadier now. He had evidently resolved to allow Astelan to tell his tale in whatever fashion he chose.
‘Facts are hard to distinguish from hearsay and fabrication in these times,’ sighed Astelan. ‘Nearly ten thousand years have obscured the events of the Heresy, and the histories of Scappe Delve were not extensive. But I had been there at the time the Emperor still walked among us, I could sieve the grains of truth from the legends. The chronicles told of how Horus had struck against Terra, and battle had raged inside the Imperial Palace itself. The Warmaster had unleashed the bloodthirsty World Eaters, and the Imperial Fists had held the wall against relentless assaults. But the end, the end was so confused as to be unintelligible. All that I could extract was the Emperor’s victory, his personal triumph over Horus in single combat, and the great wounds he had suffered to secure his triumph. It was then that the meddling of the Ministorum became more evident. The records spoke of the Emperor ascending to godhood from a golden throne, his magnificence spreading across the galaxy like a beacon.’
‘Fanciful, to be sure, but inherently truthful,’ Boreas confirmed. ‘There are few who truly understand what transpired in those dark times, and even what I know, a member of the Inner Circle of the Dark Angels, is but a fraction of the whole truth.’
‘It is unsurprising, when man has been taught to abhor knowledge, to venerate relics of the past over the living and the hopes of the future, and to confuse myth with reality.’ It was a wonder to Astelan how much the Imperium had changed since the passing of the Emperor – a man dedicated to knowledge and understanding, of overcoming the superstition and ignorance of the Age of Strife. ‘The Emperor embraced knowledge. It was this that allowed Him to create us, to know of the dire perils that awaited humanity and foresee the solution. You who have been born and raised in these unenlightened times, who became Space Marines and have fought wholly within the Imperium you know, cannot understand the way it looks to me. Your perspective is warped because you gaze at it from the outside. Even your histories have evolved over the millennia, reinterpreted, censored, rewritten so that they are worth little more than bedtime stories for children.’
‘And so, with your wisdom from the ancient ages of man, you claim to know the way forward?’ The scorn had returned to Boreas’s voice and his face was twisted in a sneer. ‘I have heard these delusions from you before, and they are no less arrogant now as when you implemented them in your tyranny over Tharsis.’
‘This perspective has nothing to do with Tharsis, it goes far beyond that,’ countered Astelan. ‘It comes from before the Horus Heresy, back to when the change started, with the coming of the primarchs.’
‘We shall deal with that later. First tell me more about your time on Scappe Delve.’
‘At first it was impossible for my thoughts to encompass just how much the galaxy had changed, for it had remained the same in many ways,’ Astelan said, struggling for the words to express how he felt. How could he explain what it was like to discover that the galaxy had aged ten millennia without his knowledge?
‘Though no longer spearheaded by the Great Crusade of the Legions, mankind’s expansion and reconquest had continued, and the Imperium now stretched beyond a million worlds.’ Astelan paused, half expecting an interruption, but Boreas seemed content to let him continue without the usual sniping remarks. ‘I had felt joy that the Emperor’s vision was still alive, until I began to read more, and spoke to the priests, the tech-adepts and the councillors. I saw the great crumbling edifice that the Imperium had become, collapsing under its own size, lost amidst its own complexity. I saw the factions, the internecine conflicts, the ebb and flow of power from individuals to faceless, unaccountable organisations. After the passing of the Emperor, even the primarchs had failed to continue the very thing they had been originally created for. And when they died or disappeared, even less remained of that core ideal of the Emperor.’
‘And so you have come to hate the Imperium you once built, jealous that the power now resides with others?’ Boreas accused him.
‘I do not hate the Imperium, I pity it,’ Astelan explained, his pointed look telling Boreas that he pitied the Chaplain almost as much. ‘The billions of adepts striving to make sense of it, their masters in their towers, to the High Lords of Terra who now claim to rule in the Emperor’s name, they cannot control what they have created. Mankind no longer has leaders, it has weak men trying desperately to cling on to what they have. Oh, there have been a few enlightened individuals like Macharius, who have relit the torch and sought to push back the darkness, but the galaxy they lived in no longer tolerates heroes. It supports mediocrity, facelessness, suppression of man’s right to endeavour to achieve glory.’
‘And yet the greatest threat to the Imperium was Horus,’ argued the Chaplain. ‘He was imbued with the powers you speak of, who had the absolute authority of the Emperor, who was trusted to lead mankind forward into a new age. When you had just a small measure of that power, it corrupted you and you turned Tharsis into a charnel house. Admit that such power is not for a single man to wield!’
‘It is the same woeful lack of courage that gripped Tharsis during the rebellion,’ rasped Astelan. ‘The fear of what might be strangles humanity, not daring to risk what they have in an effort to gain everything that it is their right to possess. Timidity and vacillation now rule the Imperium. You have become driven by a dread of the unknown, imprisoned by doubt, shackled by the desire for security and predictability. The vision has been clouded by a miasma of petty trials and tribulations.’
‘And so you determined to alter this, to reforge the Imperium into what you saw as its original purpose,’ snarled Boreas.
‘My ambitions were never that grand, for only the Emperor could achieve such a thing,’ Astelan said, shaking his head vigorously. ‘But I thought I might light a signal fire, a beacon to others who strain at the bonds that keep them from the great fight, so the Imperium can become a thing of glory again, not just survival.’
‘And so you had to get off Scappe Delve,’ Boreas brought the questioning back to Astelan’s account of events. ‘There was nothing you could do on a distant mining world, no great triumphs to be had, no glorious battles to be won.’
‘It was the need to know more, to find out all I could about the galaxy I now lived in, that drove me, almost consumed me,’ Astelan explained. ‘My existence had been turned inside out, and fate had cast me up on a dark, unknown shore. You are right, Scappe Delve became like a prison to me, confined to a narrow world of tunnels and artificial light. But the world was on the fringes of wilderness space, completely self-sufficient with its underground fungus cultivators and water recyclers, it had little contact with the rest of the Imperium. Even the ore they mined went nowhere, and they dug more and more halls and chambers just to store it. How ridiculous is that! It was a forgotten world, too unimportant, too small to warrant the attention of the wise and mighty of the Imperium.’
‘But you had seen a ship before, so you knew that eventually another would come,’ guessed Boreas. ‘And so you waited and plotted patiently until an opportunity presented itself.’
‘I indeed had to be patient,’ agreed Astelan. ‘For two and a half years, no ship even visited the star system. But then a vessel came. I learned that, by chance, it was the same one that had guided me to the mine all that time ago. It was called the Saint Carthen, captained by a merchant named Rosan Trialartes. A rogue trader, they called him, and I asked what it meant. You can imagine how I felt when they explained.’
‘You saw the rogue traders as just another indication of the decline of the Space Marines,’ Boreas stated flatly. ‘Civilian explorers given charter to trade without restriction, to travel beyond the known borders of the Imperium to discover new worlds. I expect it vexed you greatly to know that when once it had been the Space Marine Chapters that had forged into the darkness of space, it was now the right of merchant families and dispossessed nobles.’
‘Yes, it vexed me greatly, as you say, but I contained my ire,’ admitted Astelan. ‘The people of Scappe Delve were not responsible, they were victims. But the arrival of Trialartes was an opportunity to see what had become of the galaxy, to compare the dry words of the history scrolls with what really lay out beyond Scappe Delve.’
‘And so you left with this rogue trader, Rosan Trialartes. What happened then?’ asked Boreas. ‘How did you come across the other Fallen? And what took you to Tharsis?’
‘I did not leave immediately, Trialartes at first objected to my presence, for no other reason than selfish fear,’ Astelan said, his jaw clenching angrily with the recollection.
‘I would have thought that a rogue trader would be pleased to have a Space Marine aboard his ship,’ argued Boreas.
‘As did I,’ agreed Astelan.
‘So what were his objections?’ asked Boreas, his face expressionless.
‘They were vague generalisations,’ muttered Astelan. ‘He called it an affront to his Warrant of Trade, claiming that my presence would limit the freedoms his charter as a rogue trader gave him. He called me a symbol of the authority that he was free from. However, the council of Scappe Delve argued in my favour, and eventually he relented and agreed to take me aboard. I think that the people of the mine were pleased to see me leave, for some unknown reason my being there caused them unfounded anxiety.’
‘It is common enough,’ said Boreas. ‘For most of humanity, we Space Marines are a distant power, aloof defenders from history and legend. It is not surprising that sometimes they are perturbed to find out that we really exist and can still walk amongst them.’
‘Trialartes’s hesitation was far more understandable, as I discovered,’ Astelan said with an abrupt, bitter laugh. ‘We travelled from Scappe Delve to Orionis to offload the ore he had taken from the miners, in exchange for lasguns and power packs. But my suspicions were aroused. The exchange took place in the outer reaches of the system. No contact was made with the inhabited world there, and he made no attempt to dock with the orbital station.’
