Lords of blood, p.82
Lords of Blood, page 82
Before a tall mound made of fallen starscrapers, a doll lay atop a broken pillar face up, as if placed there. It was a crude representation of a female soldier, with hair of cina wool and lopsided features badly stitched on a tight cotton face. Dante paused and, after a moment’s consideration, picked it up. The doll was a tiny thing in his ceramite gauntlets. He shook dust free, which was carried away on the wind.
He stared at it a moment. A poorly made thing, fragile, like the human body.
The screaming whine of engines in atmospheric mode had him looking to the sky. Into the dusty air, orange with the scattered light of dawn, a blood-red gunship rose, freeing itself by painful effort from planetary gravity. Exhaust shimmered in wavering columns. Dante felt the heat as a warmer breeze on the freshening air. As the engines’ rising call ascended into the sky and faded, he became aware of distant shouts, and the sounds of industry on the other side of the collapsed row of buildings.
‘Dante!’ Lorenz shouted down to him from the hills of broken walls, his bass, Space Marine voice thinned by distance. He cupped his hands around his mouth to better call. ‘Where by the five graces have you been? He’s waiting for you!’
Dante shrugged and tapped his ear.
‘Turn your vox back on, then!’ Lorenz did not care to hide his exasperation.
‘Turn it back on, brother-captain,’ Dante said to himself. Lorenz had never changed and likely never would. He was as cocky and over-confident as the boy Dante had first met atop the Angel’s Leap on Baal Secundus. Although they had disliked each other on sight, war and time had forged a bond between them. Lorenz was his closest friend. Dante forgave him his lapses in protocol.
He set the doll down gently atop the broken pillar, smoothed its hair from its stitched eyes, and made the sign of the aquila over his heart, his head bowed in respect for all the dead of Kallius.
Only after that did he commence climbing the hill of tumbled stone.
As he crested the ridge the noise of men at work increased in volume. On the far side a landing field had been carved out of the wreckage. Hundreds of blood thralls were busy erecting temporary shelters and assembling strongpoints dropped by voidships. The sun climbed behind him, pushing out his shadow over the landing ground. Nearby, company banners snapped in the breeze above an observation post.
Another gunship was cycling up its engines, preparing to accompany a fat cargo shuttle up into orbit. Rhinos with the stencilled helix of the apothecarion rolled across roads between the landing pads, carrying injured brothers to be evacuated.
‘Dante!’ Lorenz clambered awkwardly over the broken rocks towards his friend. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Malafael’s waiting for you.’ He pointed at the observation post. Lorenz’s armour had taken a couple of direct hits from an autocannon three days previously. The first had shattered his plastron and spun him about, the second had dented his reactor casing. His backpack still puttered noisily. ‘Why did you turn your vox off?’
‘Because.’
‘That’s no answer for me, and it won’t sit well with Malafael either. Come on.’
They set out together along the ridge. The weight of their armour shoved slips of debris down the ridge, slowing them considerably.
‘You should have come up on the far side. There’s a path there, almost like you’re supposed to go that way.’
The wind was rising with the sun. Dante’s black hair blew out around his head.
‘I needed a little peace. A moment of thought before we are called to fight again.’
‘That’s you, brother. I don’t like these quiet times.’
‘Don’t worry, we will soon be called upon to fight again,’ said Dante. ‘One must grab the opportunities one is presented with to reflect upon the graces.’
Lorenz gave him a pained look. ‘Honestly. Listen to yourself. You’d be a better Chaplain than a captain.’ He winced and worked his shoulder. His armour grumbled. ‘Emperor of Terra, I’ll be glad to see the back of this place. What a miserable war.’
‘We are pledged to protect the citizens of the Imperium. It is a misery when we must destroy them.’
‘You know that’s not what I meant,’ said Lorenz. ‘The people of this city were traitors. They received judgement and punishment.’
‘Do you never wonder why they might have turned upon the Emperor’s rule?’
‘No, and nor should you. We do what we must because that is our duty,’ said Lorenz. ‘Though there’s precious little glory in slaughtering terrified conscripts. There’s been no challenge to this action since we wiped out the Sundered Blade.’ He spat. ‘Heretic Astartes. I grant that these common folk might warrant a little sympathy. I’d much rather have been killing more of those treacherous bastards. I hear the action’s much better elsewhere in the cluster.’
They climbed upwards and came to the observation post, which was set on the highest point of the ridge, and clambered over a low wall of bricks sintered from the city’s debris. They emerged onto a level area paved with huge blocks. The plasteel drop bunker that made the observation post sat beside this main plaza.
Malafael was waiting for them, his back to the busy landing fields, his skull helm in place as tradition demanded. He stared out across the levelled city.
The ruins stretched away for miles in every direction. Lone survivors of the bombardment jutted out like broken bones from the wastes. They were few in number. A range of blue hills rose beyond the city limits. The defensive facilities there had not escaped destruction. Their locations were marked out by blackened craters punched into the crags and fields of heather analogue.
‘When I came here, that first day,’ said Malafael, ‘it was impossible to see the hills through this city. Seven hundred thousand souls dwelled here. Now look at it. When will humanity learn that as cruel as the hand of Imperial governance is, it is too heavy to be cast off.’
‘Many people died here,’ said Dante neutrally.
Another ship took off, thundering its way to the void.
‘Are the ruins clear, captain?’ said Malafael.
‘They are,’ said Dante. ‘All the remaining population has been moved to the processing centres. There they must face the judgement of the Adeptus Ministorum and the agencies of the Adeptus Terra. Perhaps some will be spared. The most innocent, maybe. I hope so.’
‘I look upon this ruin and it sorrows me,’ said Malafael. ‘But there is no innocence in mankind any more, Dante, not in the youngest babe or the most naive idealist, if indeed there ever was. The course to destruction was set for them the day they renounced the Emperor. We, as the righteous instruments of His justice, passed judgement. Now their fate is out of our hands. They will at least be fed and watered until they receive their sentences. How many of them have known a roof over their head since the rebellion began? Perhaps now they will see a measure of mercy, and regret what they have done.’
‘I pledged to protect these people, not slaughter them,’ said Dante.
‘This is your first major action against a rebellious populace as a captain. It will get easier,’ said Malafael. He looked upwards, where a flock of local aviforms flew towards the horizon, untroubled by war. ‘Life has its ways. It will return here. Those who are deemed pure of heart will be permitted to live, though they may no longer be able to call this place home. Penal worlds await most of them. The nobility of this planet will be executed, those that survived the battle.’ Malafael lifted up his hand and rested it on Dante’s pauldron in a fatherly fashion. He had selected Dante to join the Chapter. They had grown close in the decades since.
‘How goes your command of the Eighth Company?’
‘They are a fearsome group,’ said Dante. ‘I miss the balance of the Fifth, but an assault company suits my temperament. When deployed en masse, there are few sights so glorious as their charge.’
‘Personally, I’d have taken it as a kick in the gut,’ said Lorenz. ‘Fifth Captain has more sway on the council than Eighth.’
‘You are as you are, Brother Lorenz, and that is why you remain a sergeant, when your brother here commands a hundred angels,’ said Malafael. ‘The word of the Fifth Captain outweighs that of the Eighth on some matters – yet the Lord of Skyfall is a more important position than Keeper of the Arsenal. So is the balance of power in the Chapter maintained.’
Lorenz shrugged. His armour complained with a series of piercing whines. ‘Politics is not something I’m interested in. Just tell me where the enemy is.’
Dante gave his friend a hard look. Lorenz grinned at him.
‘Where are we bound next, Chaplain Malafael? Have you any notice?’ asked Dante. ‘This region of the planet is secure, but the embers of war still glow here on Kallius, and elsewhere in the subsector the war goes on.’
‘As it happens, I do have a message for you, lord captain,’ said Malafael. ‘I received word this morning that four battlegroups are inbound to the subsector. Millions of men under arms and three more Chapters have come to take up our burden and conclude this campaign. We have been relieved. We are to return home to see to our wounded and replenish our numbers. The Kallius war is over for us.’
Lorenz squinted against the rising sun. ‘It’s about damn time,’ he said.
Shortly after Malafael’s announcement, Dante received word from Chapter Master Remael that his company was to prepare for withdrawal. His men were scattered about the city, searching the ruins for hidden survivors, for among such groups the last insurgents concealed themselves. There were precious few. The guns of the Imperium had done their work well.
All through the day Blood Angels trickled into the landing zone. More ships came down from orbit. Dante prioritised the extraction of the Eighth’s equipment first. The Bloodblades had numerous attack bikes, Land Speeders and other light craft permanently assigned to them, and a handful of tanks and heavy assault vehicles had been apportioned to them for the campaign. He also desired to get the company’s Dreadnoughts off-world quickly. Men were easier to withdraw than machines, and although Dante did not expect a return to violence, the Codex Astartes said that peace was fleeting, and the assets of a Chapter were as valuable as its warriors. So the machinery went first, along with the gene-seed of the fallen.
Among the Bloodblades coming to the landing zone were warriors of other companies. Malafael remained in the role of Chaplain-Recruiter, and oversaw a contingent of scouts in the battle zone. There were half a dozen squads attached to Dante’s command from the Seventh and Ninth, to grant the force a little tactical flexibility. All told he had one hundred and twenty warriors in the arena, three-quarters of his initial command. Forty were dead in the grinding campaign.
Groups of men in blood-red armour dusted with grey came into the camp around the temporary port. Dotted about were warriors in darker red. The dust made them look the same, covering over their heraldry. They moved the same way. They appeared part of the same throng, and were treated as brothers, for they were of the Blood, being battle-brothers of the Angels Numinous.
The landing field became busier as more support units of blood thralls arrived from orbit to help their masters. Warriors took the opportunity to see to damaged gear. Techmarines strode through the camp, searching out weapons and armour in need of their attention. Logisters took stock of supplies remaining to the company, down to the final round. Blood Angels laughed off grave wounds. Apothecaries made them take them seriously. After a time, food and wine were brought in and served under tarpaulins shading pale angelic skin from the sun. Men rarely free from war took pleasure in these hours. From some quarters laughter rose over the turbine whines and exhaust roar of voidships and the ringing clatter of men at work.
Dante worked with his thrall staff to catalogue his men and their supplies. In mortal terms, his force was small, nothing compared to the millions-strong armies of the Astra Militarum, but Space Marines had a mighty need for materiel. Everything made for or by them was of great value, and so had to be accounted for.
Safe in an open-sided tent, surrounded by loyal men in the middle of a fortified encampment overlooked by voidships in orbit, still Dante’s warrior instincts would not rest. The half-heard purr of active fibre bundles approaching from behind made Dante tense, then smile and speak a name.
‘Captain Toranis,’ he said.
‘There’s never any creeping up on you, Dante.’
Dante turned to face his comrade. Toranis grasped Dante’s arm, wrist to wrist.
‘I am glad I have seen you again,’ said Dante. ‘It would have been ill-mannered for me to go without bidding farewell to the Angels Numinous.’
‘I heard you were leaving,’ said Toranis. His armour was a darker red than Dante’s, and his skin paler, but Sanguinius’ gene-seed had left its mark on both of them. They were beautiful, and physically similar in appearance. They could have been brothers. ‘I thought I should say goodbye.’
‘Time to prepare for another war,’ said Dante.
A magna-transporter came down to land, its engines drowning out all other sounds from the world. Backwash from the engines buffeted the tents and set Dante’s documents fluttering. His servants moved forward, putting paperweights in place to stop them flying from the table.
The Space Marines waited until the engine howls had dropped to tolerable levels.
‘There is always another war.’ Toranis glanced over Dante’s work. ‘By Terra, getting ready for them is a tedious business. I leave all this to my servants.’
‘As is your prerogative. I like to know everything. It helps me formulate my strategies well if I know we’re not going run out of ration bars on the third day.’
Toranis smiled. Ten long service studs were embedded into the bone of his forehead. ‘And they say you’re a dull one, Dante. I’ll make sure your reputation as a warrior is properly known once you have departed.’
‘You are to remain?’
‘My Chapter started this. We are to finish it. Chapter Master Deren wants to see it through. Besides, we have lost a lot of our strength stopping this revolt. We’ve not the warriors to begin another war. We’ve barely enough to stamp out the last flames of this one. It will take us a long time to recover. We shall see it through to the bitter end then go back to our monastery to lick our wounds and sing our laments.’
‘You did your duty.’
‘We did,’ said Toranis. ‘There’s nothing more we Adeptus Astartes can do other than our duty, and die doing it.’ He ran a finger down a column of numbers on a leaf of paper on the table. ‘A hard life, and thankless.’
‘The traitors say the same,’ said Dante cautiously.
Toranis looked up from the paper. ‘I heard them say it, and then I killed them. Nothing could make me betray my vows or my Emperor. If my death saves even one human life, I will be glad.’
‘Then you must be very glad. You have saved this world.’
‘I am,’ Toranis said. ‘And so have you.’ He swept his hand over the documents. ‘Now, if I can persuade you to leave the counting of belt pouches to your servants, maybe they can have a turn at doing their duty and you can come and have a last cup of wine with me before you go.’
Dante looked at his work, then at his logister. The blood thrall bowed quickly. ‘My lord, allow me to serve in my way. You have served in yours.’
‘We do not have much time,’ said Dante. ‘We are due to load the last of our equipment before nightfall.’
‘It will be done, my lord, I swear,’ said the logister.
‘Listen to him. I’m sure he can count perfectly well,’ said Toranis. ‘Come on. Tell yourself you are building inter-Chapter ties or working on your diplomatic skills or something, then you won’t feel guilty about taking a few moments for yourself. I won’t take no for an answer.’
‘He’s going to do it. I told you he would. He’s finally worked up the nerve.’
The scout had been glancing at Dante for some time. Lorenz betted with Dante over a private channel about whether or not he would crack.
‘Captain,’ the scout said. ‘May I ask you a question, my lord?’ The young Space Marine shouted over the Thunderhawk’s engines as it pushed hard for the void. The last stages of ascent always demanded the most from the ships. Were the occupants of the transport hold normal men, accelerative force would have rendered them mute, if not unconscious. Thunderhawks carried little in the way of force dampers.
‘I told you,’ said Lorenz smugly. ‘You’re famous already.’ Lorenz sat back on the bench, letting the transit cradle take a little more of his armour’s weight. Though relaxed, he held his gun on his knees. Most of them did, preferring to carry their weapons rather than put them into the racks.
There were four scouts with the youth, a full demi-squad. They glanced from their spokesman to the captain.
‘A novitiate may ask what he wishes of his superiors,’ said Dante without looking at the young warrior. ‘Whether or not they choose to answer is another matter.’
Lorenz snorted with laughter. ‘How very wise.’
The scout looked a little unsure, but spoke up. ‘I have heard many tales of your deeds already, captain, though I have also heard you are reckoned young. I would know, is it true you have seen the Sanguinor, Captain Dante?’
‘And why would you ask me that?’ said Dante, turning his head towards his questioner.
‘I have heard talk, my lord,’ said the scout. He looked down at his admission. ‘I know that rumours are not to be heeded.’
‘Then do not heed them,’ said Dante.
‘Yes, captain, I am sorry.’
‘I think you should stop tormenting him,’ said Lorenz. His helmet voxmitter clicked as he turned it on. ‘Do you know who this is, boy?’ he said. ‘This is Captain Dante.’
