Black Tide

by James Swallow

  “Time to find out,” he said to himself, and turned, coming low, falling into an aiming crouch. He was aware of Tarikus doing the same, following his lead.

  The wind had changed direction, and Rafen scented the chemical tang of fuel in the air. The top of a stubby promethium tank was visible just over the lip of the broken-down blockhouse.

  Rafen pulled the trigger, and the pistol barked, Tarikus doing the same an instant later. He saw sparks of bright colour as the mass-reactive rounds tore through the container’s protective cowling; and then there was a huge sphere of rippling orange fire, expanding outward, ripping into the ranks of the splices.

  A wash of heat-shock slammed into the Blood Angel and it threw him from the platform. Rafen went with it, curling into a ball to ride out the blast.

  The Doom Eagle hit the ground in a crouch, still gripping the empty bolt pistol in his hand as if it were some kind of talisman—and perhaps it was, the inert weapon a small reminder of the things he had once taken for granted, the trappings of his life as a warrior of the Adeptus Astartes. He turned it over in his grip, examining the scratched, pitted surface of the gun in the dancing orange light from the fires. The weapon was ruined; if he had presented such a thing to the armoria adepts on his home world, they would have cursed him for such poor treatment of the bolter’s machine-spirit. But still, damaged though it was, it had performed its given function.

  “I will do the same,” Tarikus said to himself, listening to the animalistic screams of the panicking beastmen. He said the words with more assurance than he felt.

  A shadow came through the thick, choking wall of smoke that was rapidly filling the lower level of the crater. The Blood Angel Rafen emerged and nodded to him, offering his hand. “Come,” he said. “Bile was foolish enough to think we would not be a difficulty to him. He allowed himself to grow lax in this place, but that advantage is now lost to us.”

  Tarikus accepted the other warrior’s help and got to his feet. He frowned. “What you said, up there on the platform… they were good words.”

  Rafen shook his head. “I told you only what you already knew.”

  “No,” said Tarikus. “You told me what you believe. And perhaps, a fraction of me wants to believe it too. But you need to understand. I am dead, Blood Angel. It matters little if you pulled the trigger or if you did not. I am already dead.”

  The other man snorted. “You’re a cheerless one, aren’t you? Well, you may speak for yourself, Doom Eagle, for I am very much alive, and I intend to remain that way for a long time to come.”

  He turned to move off, but Tarikus stopped him. “Tell me what you meant when you said that we were not forgotten. Were those just the words you wanted me to hear, or were they something more?”

  Rafen paused, then leaned closer, speaking in low tones. “Know this. I am not alone, Tarikus. A cohort of my brother warriors even now makes its way here through the oceans, aboard a vessel called the Neimos. They will be here soon, I’m certain of it. And when they come, I want this place to be a burning beacon to them.”

  “You came from this ship?” asked the other Astartes. “But how can you know if they are still out there?” He grimaced. “Dynikas V is a death world. The hazards out in the deeps are lethal, monstrous things. You have no way of knowing if your kinsmen will make it.”

  “I know,” Rafen insisted. “I have my faith in them, and that is unshakeable.” He studied his fellow warrior. “You remember faith, don’t you? You must have had it once, for Bile and his torturers to have taken it away.”

  Tarikus’ expression hardened. “I remember. I have not lost it.”

  Rafen seized on his words. “Then help me remind all the rest of the brothers here as well!” He swept his hand around, indicating the ranks of cells up above them. “Bile likes to have an audience for his games, doesn’t he? The braggart can only find his pleasure in inflicting pain upon others and then basking in the glow of it. But now we can turn that on him.” The Blood Angel’s bruised, smoke-smeared face split in a thin smile. “Every battle-brother held prisoner in this place was made to watch this cruel little race. Forced to observe because Bile thought to make us another of his ‘lessons’.” He took a breath. “I know many battle-brothers have fought back before me, and failed. But I won’t. We won’t.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Because every single Astartes in this place is going to join us. Mark my words, Doom Eagle. Together, we will rally these kindred.”

  “They are no longer the warriors you think they are, Rafen! They have been broken by years of unspeakable torture, or else convinced they are forsaken!”

  “Like you?” Rafen asked. The smile became a feral grin. “Come. We need to raise our army, if we are to put this place to the torch.”

  In the mayhem that followed the promethium explosion, the splices were in chaos. Some lay dead, consumed in the blast set off by the bolt shells, and more were caught unawares by the swift fires that lashed across the lower levels of the prison complex, propelled by the constant winds.

  Of their master, there was no sign, and unknown to them, in a fit of fury, Fabius Bile left his minions to fend for themselves, having ordered his second Cheyne to let the flames run their course and burn out untended. The Primogenitor reasoned that the splices too slow to escape on their own would be stark reminders to those who did flee the fire, reminders that when Bile demanded blood and death, he would not accept anything else.

  But still the beastmen were pathetically loyal. Whatever remained of their human identities was long gone, subsumed by a cocktail of genetic reorientation drugs and irrepression surgery. Bile had taken each one and caused dormant strains of animal DNA to reassert themselves; what emerged at the end of such a process was either dead or utterly inhuman.

  Their bestial minds were in thrall to their creator, and so it was that in his name groups of them swept through the still-burning, smoke-wreathed wreckage, looking for the inmates who had dared to show defiance.

  It was an error they would not live to regret.

  Along one sheer wall of the crater, fires burned and gave off tarry smoke where a service channel filled with oily fluids had been ignited by a stray piece of white-hot wreckage. The smoke enveloped a work-shack raised up on iron pilings; webbed into the network of pylons ringing the arena-like space, it was the centre of a nexus of old, corroded cables looping away towards the bell-mouthed vox horns.

  Nearby, the ape-splice that had survived being thrown from the bridge by the Blood Angel led a pair of stocky ophidians as they stalked through the grey-black haze.

  The simian was the first to perish, as Rafen decided to correct his earlier lenience in leaving the mutant alive. The Astartes burst from behind cover and clubbed the splice hard in the base of the spine with his inert bolter. It reeled and tried to spin around, its huge hands grasping at the air—but the blow was so hard it snapped spinal bone and tore nerves. Even as the simian tried to snarl out its anger, pain threaded through it as it lost all feeling below the waist. The beast went to the ground and Rafen followed through by falling hard on his enemy’s throat. A sickening crack, a wet gasp, and it was done.

  The serpent-like ophidians panicked and fell back, straight into the path of the other Astartes. Tarikus punched the closest of them to the ground, taking care to pull the blow—they needed one of them alive—then spun and disarmed the second, wrenching a curved short-sword from its grip.

  Rafen crossed to the second ophidian, and without a moment’s pause, he gathered up the stocky reptilian and threw it into the burning fluid channel. Soaked in the flammable muck, it screamed and boiled.

  Tarikus pointed the stolen sword at the splice he had knocked to the ground. “That will also be your fate unless you do as we command.”

  The ophidian’s head bobbed on its long neck, yellow eyes wide with fear.

  Rafen gestured at the workshack. “The vox network runs through there. You will activate it for us.”

  The
splice broke into a spasm of nodding, and scrambled towards the shack, eager to do whatever it could to preserve itself. Its comrade had stopped screaming, and now a new stench—of sweet, burned meat—joined the others in the air.

  When it was done, Tarikus gave the ophidian-splice the gift of a quick and painless death, slicing its throat with a quick pass from the blade. It looked at him as it bled out, a betrayed look in its dull eyes; as if there was any chance they would allow it to live.

  Rafen leaned forward over the blinking lights and chiming clockwork of the workshack’s console. Perhaps in another life, this compartment had been a control centre of sorts, but now it was a retrofitted nexus for cabling and conduits that defied the Blood Angel’s understanding. They snaked across the walls and the floor in bunches, coiled over one another like the roots of a giant plant. He wondered what damage might be wrought with a single krak grenade in a place like this; but the point was moot. Even with a blade, one could hack at the cables around them for hours and never cut into anything vital.

  He dismissed the thought and found what he was looking for; a honeycomb-shaped vox pickup dangling at the end of a collapsible armature. Rafen saw the power lumes glowing where the ophidian had dutifully activated them. He tapped at the vox and a dull thud sounded out beyond the workshack, resonating out of the speaker horns.

  He glanced at Tarikus, who stood watching at the doorway. The Doom Eagle gave him a nod.

  Rafen took a deep breath, and began to speak.

  So often, the vox horns were used to broadcast sonic tortures, execution commands or the damning sermon-like orations of Fabius Bile himself. Today, they carried different words, in a voice that was strong and clear. Every Astartes in the compound halted, held their breath, strained to listen to the sound of it.

  “Brothers,” began Rafen. “Kinsmen, cousins, Astartes all. Hear me. I have much to say but little time to say it, so I will not waste breath on tricks of oratory or rhetoric.” Angry shouts sounded from the splices as they understood what was going on; but the voice from the vox was louder than all of them. “This place was built to destroy something precious to us, something each of us shares, no matter which Primarch or Chapter we call our own. I speak of brotherhood.”

  The Blood Angel’s hand clenched, and he remembered the feel of a slip of parchment between his fingers, an oath-paper lined with words in thin ink-script. “Bile has isolated us, severed all but the most cursory of contacts. He sows distrust and suspicion, wears you down with the slow grind of mindless days and tormented nights. The bastard wants you to believe you are forgotten. He lies. I am here to tell you that he lies and lies!” Rafen’s voice rose, finding its strength. “Look within yourselves, brothers, and you will understand. You have been waiting for this day, even if you did not know it. This day, when you are reminded of who you are. My purpose here is the same as yours, to serve the God-Emperor and Holy Terra! Know that each of you is the harbinger of your own freedom!”

  From the corner of his eye he saw Tarikus react to something outside; and in the distance he could hear the shouting of his enraged enemies, coming closer.

  He could not stop now. “I say to you all that this day, we are not Blood Angels, Doom Eagles, Space Wolves, Taurans, Salamanders, Crimson Fists… We are one great legion, one heart and one mind! We are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, the war gods and terrible swift sword of our Emperor! We are His will, and we have always been so!” Gunfire was rattling off the walls of the workshack now, shells ripping chunks from the walls and blowing out machinery in fat plugs of sparks. “You have nothing to lose, Sons of Mankind, and honour to be gained! Even if you doubt all that I have said,” he shouted, his words coming in a rush, “know this single truth! Alone, you are lost. United, we are unstoppable—”

  His voice was lost in the screech of an incoming rocket motor. Rafen threw himself away from the console as the short-range missile screamed in on a trail of orange smoke and impacted the workshack with a thunderous detonation.

  The flimsy stilt-construction folded as if it were made of paper, the support pillars snapping and the cables strung to the vox horns ripping free to lash at the air like errant whips.

  Cheyne stalked forward, into the heaped, smouldering rubble, cursing the New Men who stood around him, hesitating. “Find those whoresons! I’ll bite out the hearts of any one of you that fails me!”

  A thick-necked New Man in a tattered leather cloak waded into the debris and used his sword to sift through the wreckage. “Here!” he began.

  He did not speak again, as his throat was opened. Tarikus exploded out from under a heap of rubble, leading with the curved blade he had stolen from the ophidian, and tore into the New Man, stabbing him over and over in a frenzied, vicious assault. Close by, Rafen staggered up, shouldering aside a flat panel of cracked sheetrock. He was bleeding from dozens of small wounds where chips of broken glass were embedded in his face, but he was panting and high with battle-anger. The Blood Angel shook off a sheen of dust and steadied himself, glaring around for something he could use as a weapon.

  “I wanted to execute you the moment I laid eyes on you,” spat Cheyne. “My master wants you to toy with, but I think I will defy him just this once.” The androgyne raised a wicked-looking bolt pistol, the muzzle shrouded by a blossom of mirror-sharp knife blades. “Your rousing little speech was wasted on these worthless fools, whelp. Don’t you understand? They’re defanged, they have no will to fight. Fabius struck it from them! You Astartes are no better than common men, at the core. In the end, you all break just the same.” Cheyne’s torn cheek rippled. “I will drag your carcass up the ramps for all your blighted brethren to see.”

  “Your error,” Rafen said, spitting out a mouthful of dust, “is that you think your words are as pretty as your face. But neither is true.”

  “Enough talk, then.” Cheyne aimed. “When you see your Corpse-God, be sure to tell him how you failed.”

  “Not today!” A grey-haired figure rushed from the smoke and shadows, slamming into Cheyne and knocking him off-balance. Rafen saw a rusted length of metal press into the flesh of the New Man’s throat.

  “Vetcha…” muttered Tarikus, disbelief clear in his voice.

  “Aye,” said the Long Fang veteran. He ground the improvised blade into Cheyne’s neck. “Have your freaks stand down, then put up that gun of yours. And if you even think about speaking a word of that damned agony prayer, I’ll gut you like a rock eel.”

  The androgyne forced a crooked smile as blood pooled in the hollow of its neck. “What’s this? The blind old Space Wolf has finally gone senile?”

  “I’ve never needed to see you to find you, creature,” spat the Astartes. “I can smell you! Now do as I command, or I’ll bleed you here and now!”

  Cheyne glared at the two other New Men, and they let their guns fall to the ground. “What has come over you, Vetcha?” The androgyne changed tack, speaking in a warm, calm tone. “I thought you had reached an understanding about this place, yes?”

  “What you thought was that I was your lapdog! What you thought was that I could never be a danger to you!” snapped the Space Wolf. He granted in annoyance. “Throw the pistol to Rafen! Do it now!”

  Cheyne gave a theatrical sigh and tossed the gun, but deliberately so, landing it beyond the Blood Angel’s immediate reach. As Rafen bent carefully towards it, Cheyne kept talking. “You know it’s useless to fight us, Vetcha. You learned that lesson. Now you’re throwing away your life just because this arrogant idiot tried to rouse a rabble?” He chuckled. “What have you done?”

  “You know nothing!” snarled the Space Wolf. “If one single Astartes defies the enemies of man, then we all defy them! If you had not been grown in some vat of chemicals, you might understand that…”

  “How human of you,” said the androgyne. “I’m so disappointed.” With a sudden jerk of the wrist, Cheyne’s hand flicked up and the lengthy bone blade whispered out of the hidden sheath in his palm. The New Man spun and
gashed Vetcha across the throat and torso, trying to find an angle to pierce flesh and find the old warrior’s heart. The Space Wolf hissed in agony, and jerked his own weapon forward. The blunt, rusted blade went in through the androgyne’s ribcage and burst from its back in a welter of crimson. Vetcha shoved again and pushed the makeshift knife deeper.

  Bonfire rang out as Rafen fired a salvo of shots at the other New Men, and Tarikus went in to finish off Bile’s thugs with his blood-smeared blade.

  Cheyne staggered and collapsed, falling to the sandy ground in spasming jerks. Breathing hard, Vetcha hawked up phlegm and spat in the androgyne’s face.

  “I will not lie,” Rafen told the veteran. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Neither were they,” Vetcha replied.

  The Blood Angel eyed the old man’s wound. It was deep and running dark. “Are you all right, Long Fang?”

  “It is nothing,” he was told. “I’ll mend.” Vetcha pulled his ragged prison robe closer about him. “Now give me a weapon.”

  “Why the change of heart?” said the Doom Eagle. “You’ve been here for years, old man. The Emperor knows how many times you must have had that chance, to kill Cheyne or Bile, and yet you did not take it. Why now, all of a sudden?”

  “He doesn’t trust me,” Vetcha said to Rafen.

  “Can you blame him?” came the reply. “So, answer his question.”

  Vetcha turned and glowered at Tarikus. “I did it because… Because this is the day I have been waiting for!”

  The Doom Eagle said nothing for a long moment, then gave a slow nod. “Good enough, old man.” Tarikus pressed a sword into the veteran’s grasp and the Space Wolf grinned as he ran his thumb down its length.

  Rafen took a moment to loot the dead for weapons; he came away with skinning knives, bolt pistols and several clips of ammunition. “This will do for a start.”

  Vetcha made practise swipes with the sword. “You meant what you said.” It was not a question. “Are you ready to take those words and make them actions?”