Black Tide

by James Swallow

  “Aye,” Rafen replied, hawking up a gobbet of phlegm and blood. He coughed and heard a tinny ping of sound; a broken piece of tooth had gone with it. “Did they bring a herd of grox in to trample me?” He took stock of himself, feeling down his arms and legs with care. Everywhere he laid his hands, Rafen winced with pain from deep, heavy bruising. “Why did they not simply slit my throat?”

  “You still do not understand the way of this place, do you?” Vetcha shook his head, returning with a heavy object wrapped in oil-cloth. “No deaths occur on this Light-forsaken island unless they are in order to serve the will or the whim of Fabius Bile.”

  “Fabius…” Rafen licked his dry, cracked lips, remembering the foul taste of the primogenitor’s blood in his mouth. “He has met his end.”

  “Oh?” The Space Wolf paused. “I’ve heard that said more than once, and by men in better shape than you, boy. If I were you, I’d concentrate on staying alive for the next few minutes.” Outside, the rattling percussion was picking up speed. “Just make it to the table first. You’ll know what to do when you get there.”

  “Table? What table?” Rafen was confused, and the pounding from his head was doing little to dilute the uncertainty.

  “Pay attention!” snapped the veteran. “Listen to me if you want to live!”

  Rafen eyed him. “You’re my wolf-guide, is that it? But I’ve heard others cast doubt on your motivations, old man.”

  “You are ignorant,” came the reply. “Your edges all sharp, still not worn down… But that will come! Mark my words, that will come to you, if you don’t perish first!”

  “Is that what happened to you?” Rafen challenged. “Did you weaken? One has to wonder how it is you move so freely in this place.”

  “Damn you, I am not free!” snarled the other Space Marine. “Fenris’ Blood, you ungrateful mongrel! I am trying to help you!” He thrust the cloth-wrapped item into Rafen’s hands with a growl. “Here! Take it and be gone!”

  The Blood Angel tugged the cover and it fluttered away to reveal a long-handled mass hammer; Rafen knew this kind of implement. It had a specially densified head upon it that could shatter boulders in the right hands—but it was a thing for Chapter serfs—and servitors, a tool, not a weapon fit for an Astartes. In his grip, it seemed slight, undersized. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Try not to get killed!” Vetcha reached into the shadows and yanked at a rusted crank handle; with a groan of metal, the front section of the cell parted and opened out on its hinges.

  Rafen’s eyes jabbed him with darts of pain as they adjusted to the sudden influx of light. The Dynikas sun was high in the sky, shining directly down upon him, and he smelled the chemical stink of promethium fluid. The rattling cacophony rose to a peak, and the Astartes saw its origin.

  He was on the lowest level of the crater, the curves of the ramped walls rising up around him. On the higher levels, he could see the profiles of the metal cell-chambers ranged like viewing boxes in an amphitheatre. The walls of the cells vibrated in the heat of the day, and he could see window slits open in every one of them. He had an audience of his kinsmen.

  But they were not cheering; the clattering sound came from ranks of modificates and New Men lining the floor of the crater all around him. They were beating armoured fists or drawn weapons against their chest plates, the pulse of noise quickening with each passing moment.

  He took a careful step forward; in front of the cell was a raised platform made of welded iron plates, and it ended in the chains and cables of a narrow suspensionway—a swinging bridge with barely enough width for him to pass down it. Beyond that, he could see little more than a concrete bunker, its roof torn down and missing.

  The stink of stale, decayed fish-flesh was everywhere. This place, he reasoned, must have been part of the old agri-colony’s infrastructure, a section of processing plant involved in the harvest of Dynikas V’s rich bounty; at least, until the tyranid splinter had come and scoured the planet.

  He heard a clanking noise and spun to see Vetcha being winched up behind him, dragged away by a crane arm. “Don’t wait,” he called out. “The guns are already on you.”

  Overhead, the winged sentinels circled, and for the first time Rafen noticed the bright red dots of laser designators moving to and fro across the metal at his feet, tracing up over his legs and torso from the cannons they carried in their claws.

  He glanced around, looking for options even as he knew there would be none. There was only one way off the platform—along the bridge. Promethium fires burned around all other avenues of escape, searing blue flames jetting from tank clusters beneath the holding cells. Even if he did make it off, below him was nothing but a crowd of angry mutants. He would take many with him, but in his condition he would not live to take them all.

  It was then Rafen noticed another iron cell, another suspended bridge, set off to his right. An identical path, paralleling his. A roar went up as the other cell’s doors opened, and a heavy figure shrouded in robes walked forward with steady, dogged purpose.

  “Now we have some sport,” said a voice, broadcast in hard echoes across the width of the crater. The words pealed from hundreds of vox horns wired to the misting pillars scattered about the complex.

  Rafen spun in place, turning towards the source of the voice, and found another crane-array, this one with a massive iron shovel that had been converted into a mobile viewing platform. Cheyne stood there, the androgyne’s scarred face now forever pulled up in a tight grin, leaning indolently on a double-headed heat axe; but Rafen’s attention was on the figure who stood beside him, laughing with callous amusement.

  “Yes, indeed,” Fabius Bile leered into a vox relay, “now we will have our sport.”

  The renegade’s aspect was virtually untouched, the same coat and the hulking shape of the Chaos-forged chirurgeon device upon his back, the same insouciant and superior grin. His throat was shrouded in dark cloth, preventing Rafen from seeing any signs of the wounds he had inflicted, but in the Emperor’s name! How could he still be alive?

  The Blood Angel had torn the traitor’s throat open, ripped into him with such violence that another blow might have taken his head from his neck. The vitae he had spilled was enough to drown a man, and yet there Fabius stood, laughing it off. How was it possible? Rafen wondered what foul magicks the renegade had at his command that he could undo such a mortal blow. His fingers tightened on the haft of the mass hammer, remembering the words of his Oath of Moment. He would survive this, and if fate demanded it, he would kill Fabius Bile as many times as it took.

  “Begin!” shouted Cheyne, and the splices hooted their approval. Rafen saw a flash of motion in the corner of his eye, as the hooded figure on the other platform broke into a run and sprinted on to the swinging bridge.

  The Blood Angel threw a look up and saw the sentinels overhead drawing a bead upon him. He grimaced and rocked off his heels, surging off onto the shaking gangway.

  The metal bridge swayed and creaked ominously, leaking rains of rusty flakes beneath his heavy footfalls that scattered over the baying audience below him. Rafen was almost at the halfway mark when he felt the cables twang and go taut as extra weight was applied to them. He shot a glance over his shoulder to see a big simian scrambling up after him; and then, the bridge bowed again as two more splices were boosted up by their comrades, tossed high so they could claw over to land ahead of him. The other two resembled some hybrid of man and rodent, pointed rat-like snouts sniffing in his direction. Spindly and thin, they each had forked katar punch-daggers in their clawed hands.

  It was not just a race he had to win, then. Without losing an iota of his forward momentum, Rafen spun the mass hammer into a reversed grip and brought it up in a sweeping arc. The heavy head of the tool collided with the base of the first rat-thing’s jaw, smashing it with a wet noise. It stumbled and the Astartes shoved it aside. The assailant tumbled back over the line of the gangway and fell back into the crowd. The second rodentine
ducked low and thrust forward the katar in its fist with a sharp hiss. Rafen brought down the haft of the hammer like a baton, striking it hard on the snout. Blood gushed from the splice’s mouth; still moving, the warrior caught the creature’s neck in the crook of his weapon arm and trapped it, dragging it off its feet.

  Rafen jerked his elbow closed and snapped the rat-thing’s neck. He slowed a step or so to discard it, and that was enough for the big simian to bound into grappling range.

  The crowd roared their approval as the mutant drew him into a bone-crushing embrace, and Rafen’s bruises sang with pain as the pressure came upon him. He felt the simian’s hot, stinking breath on the back of his neck; the thing was easily the size of a Terminator in full battle armour, and the bridge moaned under the weight of the beast’s exertions. Rafen leaned forward, then slammed his head backward, butting his skull into the ape-thing’s face. It cried out and the vice-like grip around him slackened for an instant. It was all the time he needed.

  The Blood Angel lurched forward, straining against one side of the swinging gangway, then pushed off in the opposite direction. The suspended bridge flexed and twisted, the footing beneath the simian’s boots suddenly unsteady. Rafen hooked the head of the hammer into a loop of cable and repeated his action; this time it was enough to flip the bridge on its side, and he kicked out, hard.

  The ape-thing’s mass did the rest of the work for him. It panicked, surrendering its grip on the Space Marine in order to try and save itself from a fall. Rafen kicked out again, his heel connecting with the impact point of his previous attack. The simian roared with pain and lost balance; in the next moment it too was flailing away, into the furious crowd.

  Rafen recovered, clinging to the thick cables, as the bridge rebounded. He sprinted across the rest of the gangway and slid down a shallow, slippery incline, into the derelict blockhouse beyond.

  He looked around. He could see no sign of the other runner—his opponent?—but an open hatch on the far side of the bunker was a clear indication of where he was supposed to go. The Astartes moved, and heard the clicks and snaps of oiled metal. A rush of air creased his bare cheek and Rafen instinctively ducked. An armature tipped with a bouquet of spinning blades lashed out and wove patterns in the air where he had been standing. He spun, dodging a second and then a third cutting tool, as rotary blades emerged from slots in the stone walls. Knives cut close, snagging on his dirty tunic; he reeled away before they could slice into his flesh. Jets of fire lashed out from hidden nozzles, the heat threatening to crisp his skin.

  He realised he was standing atop a floor of fine mesh, the metal dark and greasy. Beneath there was a channel choked with stagnant fluids, a brown slurry of fatty deposits; a wide blood gutter. Nearby he spied corroded rollers and the remains of a conveyer mechanism; the blockhouse had been another part of the agri-facility, for the flensing and cutting of the day’s catch. The stench of flammable chemicals was even stronger here, tasting sour on his tongue.

  Rafen put the hammer to the blades and struck hard, bending them so the retractors would not work, the gears behind them popping off their tarnished guides. He smashed a path through and broke out, feet skidding over the slick decking and out through the far hatch. Next, the race put him through the spinning interior of a massive tumbler array, the curved walls turning and turning. He ran full-tilt, bouncing from frame to frame, his impetus keeping him from falling into the rolling grinders revolving below. Using the hammer like a climber’s pick, he swung it into a vent in the chamber and used it to lever himself up.

  The shouting and braying of the crowd met him as he emerged at last from the far side of the blockhouse. A makeshift ramp led up a steep incline to another raised platform; on it, there was a table.

  Rafen hazarded a glance to his right. The hooded figure was ahead of him, already sprinting hard up the parallel ramp. The Blood Angel discarded the mass hammer and threw himself forward, his muscles tight with a hundred aches, and raced the last few metres to the top of the ascent. He could feel the parasite flexing inside his chest, excited by the exertions of his heart.

  His blood thumped in his ears as Rafen paced his rival and then overtook him. His rag-swaddled feet slammed against the platform as he hauled himself on to it, and there before him on the low bench he saw a scattering of heavy steel components that were as familiar to him as the cast of his own face.

  Receiver; barrel; mainspring; magazine. The disassembled parts of a discoloured, ill-cared for Godwyn-pattern bolt pistol lay there in front of him, and to the side stood a single round of ammunition, resting on its base. Schola-trained reflexes made him reach for the weapon parts, even as he looked up to see his opponent across the way doing the same thing. The splices were thrashing their limbs against their chest plates in frenzy now; the race was at its final moment.

  Quickly, with care and control, Rafen’s hands busied themselves rebuilding the pistol, each part fitting into the next, the action sliding together, the magazine clicking home. He had done this so many times that the deed required almost no conscious thought on his part; his fingers did the work though ingrained muscle memory.

  Rafen was aware of the hooded man, watching him finish the deadly task almost at the same moment. Bolt shells slipped into breeches, slides locked and hammers cocked in the mirror of each other; and then the two of them were aiming across the gap between the parallel platforms, each drawing a bead upon the other.

  This was how the race was to end; to the fastest, the kill. To the slowest, the killing.

  As he turned, for the first time the other man’s hood dropped back off his head, and Rafen saw a familiar, mournful face watching him from behind the muzzle of the gun.

  “Tarikus?”

  The Neimos rose from the dark ranges of the abyssal depths, the prow of the submersible angling upward as if seeking the pale glow of weak sunlight that penetrated the upper reaches of the Dynikan Ocean.

  The vessel slowed, following the wreck-strewn seabed, weaving over the remains of scuttled trawler craft and the bones of long-dead cetaceans starved by the extinction of their prey or killed by tyranid carcharodon-forms. To the ship’s stern, a distance behind now shortening with every passing moment, the shoal of kraken came on, driven by hunger and a shared, almost bio-chemical sense of hatred that burned in their xenos blood.

  Every system aboard the Neimos that could be silenced was made quiet; and deep inside the hull of the Mechanicus craft, a group of warriors armed themselves and made rituals of combat, counting off the moments until they would face their enemy.

  Rafen hesitated, his finger locked on the trigger. At this range, an Astartes could not miss his intended target.

  The Doom Eagle’s eyes narrowed, but the other warrior did not fire. His fingers flexed about the pistol’s grip, uneasy and tormented. Down below, the splices hooted for death, angry that they were being robbed of the promise of bloodshed.

  “Do it,” Tarikus called out, his words carrying. “Kill me! I have nothing… I am damned and forgotten! Shoot, Blood Angel! It will be a kindness… Do it!”

  “No…” Rafen began, the pistol wavering in his hand.

  “If you do not, I will kill you!” Tarikus spat the words at him with venom. “I have nothing left to lose!”

  The crowd were screaming and chanting, the noise so loud it was like the lashing of storm waves across a shoreline. Rafen blotted them out, and shook his head.

  “I cannot, kinsman. There is no honour in it—”

  “Honour?” Tarikus shouted the word back at him. “We have been robbed of that, can’t you see? Must I beg you to end this for me? We are in hell, Blood Angel! No one will come for us.” He punched at his chest, where his parasite was coiled. “We are tainted! Death is the only release.” The Doom Eagle’s face fell, and he seemed to age years in the space of a single breath. “I desire only the Emperor’s Peace,” he husked.

  It shocked Rafen to see a fellow Astartes laid so low, his will on the verge of breaking. A memory ro
se to the surface of his thoughts, something he had once heard his mentor Koris say. Every man has his breaking point, even one of us. Those who say they do not are fools and liars. The trick is to know that truth and to know yourself, and be ready if the day should ever come.

  Tarikus’ day, so it seemed, was here. Rafen felt the weight of the bolt pistol in his hand. It was an easy shot; he could put the round right through the middle of the Doom Eagle’s eyes, end him instantly in a blaze of white agony. End the pain of a brother warrior who had been tortured beyond his limits in this hellish prison.

  But what would that make him? What line would Rafen have crossed to deal out death to one of his own? It felt like a betrayal—not just of his own moral code, but of his Chapter and his nature, and of Tarikus, who needed brotherhood more than he needed death.

  “Listen to me,” he called. “I will never lie to a battle-brother! And I tell you this, Tarikus of the Doom Eagles. We have not been abandoned! We are not forgotten!” He held up his free hand. “That is the defeat our enemies crave!” Rafen stabbed a finger towards Fabius and Cheyne, on the far side of the starting platforms. “That is the victory you will give to them! We will not break today, you and I!” He shouted as loud as he could. “Trust me!”

  When Tarikus looked up and met his gaze once more, for a moment there was something in the Doom Eagle’s eyes that could have been hope. Then he nodded.

  Rafen heard the beating of leathery wings, and overhead the shapes of the bat-winged creatures passed in front of the sun, casting swift, sharp-edged shadows. The crowd wanted their blood, and if Rafen and Tarikus would not provide it for them, the flying sentinels would burn down the Space Marines where they stood with laser fire.

  Two; they were two, with a weapon and a single round each. Not enough to dispatch a horde of modificates and a flight of sentinels. Would the bolt pistols even fire? Rafen would not have been surprised to discover the whole race was no more than the preamble to a sick joke for Bile’s amusement.