The day had dawned bright and full of promise, the sky crisp and blue, the sun beaming and yellow. Names had been called, rosters taken and identities confirmed by hooded adepts in red with genetic testing apparatus.
Each of those called to attend this great gathering had been individually selected, chosen from the best of the best of Caliban’s martial caste of warriors.
Zahariel rubbed shoulders with knights whose courage had been proven beyond doubt, whose stamina, endurance and strength were the envy of those who had failed the Astartes tests. No other warriors on Caliban were as fearsome nor had the potential of those gathered here, and Zahariel felt justifiable pride in his achievements.
Events had passed in a blur since the Emperor’s great speech to the masses of Caliban and, try as he might, Zahariel found he could remember little of that moment: a fleeting vision of a warrior in gold, words that stirred his heart, and a sense of belonging that was stronger than anything he had ever known.
Ever since that day he had known, just known, that something big was coming, and when word had come from Luther that the Astartes had made their final selection for advanced training and genhancement to their ranks, Aldurukh had almost erupted in a riot as boys had raced to find out if they had been chosen.
Zahariel’s heart had been in his mouth as he perused the lists doing the rounds of the fortress monastery, though some nagging insistence in his mind had told him that he had nothing to worry about.
Sure enough, his name had been on the list, as had Nemiel’s, Attias’s and Eliath’s.
He had sought out his cousin, but it had taken him the better part of two days to find him.
Nemiel had been quiet and Zahariel could not understand his cousin’s reticence at the good news of their choosing. Once again, their brotherly rivalry had spurred them on to great things. As the day had gone on, Nemiel had relaxed around him, though Zahariel could think of no reason why his cousin should have been so anxious.
He had put it down to nervousness over the Astartes selection and forgotten the matter, for more important considerations had quickly overtaken any lingering worries over his cousin’s behaviour.
It had been announced that those chosen by the Astartes were to gather on the great parade ground before Aldurukh to hear the Lion speak and tell them of their destiny as warriors of the Emperor.
Only those chosen by the Astartes were to attend, and a palpable ripple of frenzied excitement flashed around the fortress in the space it took to give voice to the notion of what the Grand Master of the Order might say.
Zahariel and Nemiel had marched onto the parade ground with the others who had passed the Astartes trials, the pride and martial bearing of everyone around them filling them with a sense of brotherhood that far exceeded anything he had felt as part of the Order.
Though thousands filled the parade ground, Zahariel knew that this represented the elite of every knightly order of Caliban. Hundreds of thousands of knights had been tested, but only these few thousand had met the unimaginably rigorous standards of the Astartes.
The sense of anticipation as the knights had awaited the coming of the Lion was almost unbearable. The majority were younger than Zahariel, he and Nemiel representing the upper age group of those chosen, and he wondered what about the transformation into an Astartes mandated such a young age for their members.
Then the Lion and Luther walked onto the stage, flanked by Lord Cypher and a robed cabal of Astartes in black armour, clad in the ceremonial, bone-white surplices of the Order.
To see these great warriors adopting the habits of the Order was gratifying indeed, and Zahariel turned in excitement to his cousin, embracing him in a spontaneous gesture of brotherly affection. All the hurt and jealous feelings between them seemed so absurd in the face of the new brotherhood they were about to join.
Even standing beside the Astartes, the Lion looked enormous, towering over the armoured warriors and dwarfing them all with his presence. A great amplification system had been set up to carry the Lion’s words to every corner of the parade ground, but the Lion needed no such apparatus, for his voice was tuned into the hearts and minds of every warrior gathered before him.
‘Brothers,’ began the Lion, forced to pause as the swelling cheers of the young knights threatened to drown out his words. ‘We stand on the brink of a new age for Caliban. Where once we stood on our little rock and thought that our world was only as far as the horizon, we now know that it stretches far beyond such petty visions. The galaxy opens out before us and it is a dark and forbidding place, but we are warriors of the Emperor and it behoves us to take his light into the darkness to reclaim our birthright.
‘Once, a lifetime ago it seems, I declared a great crusade to clear the forests of Caliban of the beasts, and that was a worthy aim. I see now that I was merely emulating a greater man’s dream, that of my father, the Emperor!’
A roaring cheer once again drowned out the Lion’s words, for where all of Caliban had been speaking of the Emperor as his father, it was the first time he had given voice to such a sentiment.
The Lion raised his hands to quell the rising emotions and continued. ‘We are part of something larger now, part of a brotherhood that encompasses more than just our planet, one that encompasses the entire race of man throughout the galaxy. The Emperor’s crusade is still in its infancy and hundreds, thousands, of worlds remain to be liberated and brought back into the realm of the Imperium.
‘You have all been chosen to become part of the greatest warrior order the galaxy has ever seen. You will be stronger, faster and more deadly than ever before. You will fight in wars beyond counting and you will kill the enemies of mankind on worlds far distant from our beloved home of Caliban. But we will do these things willingly, for we are men of honour and courage, men who know what it is to have a duty that transcends personal concerns. Each of you was once a knight, a warrior and a hero, but now you are far more than that. From this day forth you will forget your past life. From this day forth you are a warrior of the Legion. Nothing else is of consequence. The Legion is all that matters.’
Zahariel gripped his sword hilt as the power of the Lion’s oratory washed through him, almost unable to contain his elation at the thought of taking the Emperor’s war to the farthest corners of the galaxy and being part of this brotherhood that stood at the brink of no less a task than the liberation of humanity’s birthright.
‘We are the First Legion,’ said the Lion, ‘the honoured, the Sons of the Lion, and we will not be marching to war without a name that strikes terror into the hearts of our enemies. As our legends spoke of the great heroes who held back the monsters of our distant past, so too shall we hold back the enemies of the Imperium as we set off into the great void to fight in the name of the Emperor.
‘We shall be the Dark Angels!’
BOOK FOUR
CRUSADE
EIGHTEEN
THEY HAD MADE him a giant.
Long after he thought he was accustomed to the transformation, Zahariel found that aspects of his altered physiology still had the power to amaze him. It was always the little things that did it. He would become aware of some small detail – he would notice the span of his hand, feel the ripple of psychic energy in his body, or he would hear the rhythm of enhanced blood beating in his chest – and he would be reminded all over again of how much he had changed.
Once, he had been human. He had been a man, born of woman. Like all men, he had been constrained by physical limitations he took for granted. His muscles had been weak, his bones brittle, and his senses dull. He had expected his life to last him a matter of fifty or sixty years at most, in all likelihood not even that.
On Caliban, there were so many dangers. Even the merest cut could become infected and prove to be a fatal wound. He had been only human, and to be human is to be slave to death by a thousand insignificant means.
The Imperium had changed everything. On the day he had been initiated into the Order as a knight, his rebir
th had been an entirely symbolic process. With the arrival of the Imperium, it had become literal and real.
He had been made into a new man. His mind and body had both been altered, transformed into something more than human. Through the application of Imperial science and the marvels of gene-seed, he had been re-cast and re-created in a more warlike mould.
Brother Israfael had inducted him into the Legion’s Librarius, where he had learned of the warp, the hazards and the power that could be wielded by those skilled in such things. He learned that he was such a man, gifted with powers beyond the normal ken of humans, and that he was duty bound to use his powers in service of the Emperor.
He had taken his first steps along a road that could lead to incredible power, but his first forays into such things were small and nowhere near as amazing as his encounter with the Beast of Endriago.
As much as his newfound abilities would forever mark him out as special amongst the Legion, he was first and foremost a warrior and it was in the crucible of combat that he would earn his renown.
He was no longer an ordinary man, nor was he simply an extraordinary warrior.
The Imperium had made him so much more.
They had made him for war. He had become a god of battle, a member of the Astartes.
He was a Space Marine, a Dark Angel.
He served in the Great Crusade.
He knew he was a small cog in a grander design, a walk-on part in the great drama of human history, but such notions did not trouble him, for the Imperium was a noble undertaking, a dream of a better universe, and he was part of the martial arm that gave it substance.
It was an optimistic time, a period of fine ideals. It was an age of discovery, and he was a part of it.
The early days were great days.
Afterwards, he would look back on them as the happiest of his life. He had a purpose. He had a mission. He was an instrument of the Emperor’s will, preparing to wage wars for the betterment of humanity.
Nor was he alone in these struggles. He did not do these things on his own. Throughout his transformation from man to superhuman, Nemiel was there beside him. The taletellers selected to accompany them from Caliban spoke of destiny, and Zahariel could only agree, for it seemed that he and Nemiel were fated to stand shoulder to shoulder throughout life’s travails.
From their earliest days on Caliban, their lives had always been linked, brothers even before they became angels. If anything, the process of becoming Astartes had only served to strengthen the bond between them. At times, it was as though one complete soul, split by accident of birth, was incarnated into two separate bodies.
He and Nemiel continued to complement each other perfectly like pieces of the same puzzle: Zahariel, despite everything, still the idealist and Nemiel the impressionable pragmatist.
Of the night beneath the Circle Chamber, neither spoke, understanding that to pick at that old wound would be to open a box of recrimination that could never be closed. It remained an unspoken barb in their friendship, always there between them, though Zahariel’s recollections of that night were hazy at best and faded with every passing day.
They were part of the first generation of Astartes to be recruited from Caliban. More tellingly, they were among the first to wear the Legion’s new winged sword insignia at their shoulder, the first to call themselves ‘Dark Angels’.
Afterwards, this would set them apart from their peers. The older members of the Legion were all men from Terra who could remember a time before the Emperor’s First Legion had borne the name ‘Dark Angels’, while those that came after Zahariel and Nemiel’s generation had never known anything different.
For the moment though, a golden age lay ahead.
Their days were brightened by the prospect of fighting at the side of the Lion and Luther. They did their work as newly elevated angels well, assigned to serve in the Twenty-Second Chapter under the leadership of Chapter Master Hadariel. They served their Legion and the Imperium to the limit of their abilities.
Caliban was in the past, and though they loved their homeworld and hoped to see it again one day, it was a distant dream. Their present, and their life in the Great Crusade, was all that truly mattered.
Their first campaign was a time of great excitement, for this would be their chance to take the light of the Great Crusade to the wider galaxy, their first chance to prove their devotion and loyalty to the Emperor.
Dark Angels from the Twenty-Second Chapter were to rendezvous with the 4th Imperial Expedition Fleet, currently at high anchor around a world catalogued as Four Three in the annals of the Crusade’s record keepers.
To the planet’s inhabitants, an advanced human culture that had managed to survive the long isolation of Old Night with much of their technology and society intact, their world had a different name.
They called it Sarosh.
‘SO THIS IS it?’ said Nemiel. ‘This is the reason we’ve crossed ten star systems? It doesn’t look like much.’
‘You should know by now that it doesn’t matter what a world looks like,’ Zahariel told him. ‘Do you remember training on Helicon IV? I seem to recall you weren’t too impressed with those worlds either until the shooting started.’
‘That was different,’ shrugged Nemiel. ‘At least then there was the chance we’d see action. They were new worlds. Have you read the briefing files? They expect us to wait for months, twiddling our thumbs while some bureaucrat decides whether or not to declare the planet compliant. We’re Dark Angels, Zahariel, not guard dogs. We were made for better than this.’
They stood by a view-portal on the observation deck of the strike-cruiser, Wrath of Caliban. Through it, Zahariel could see the planet Sarosh, its size magnified by the enhancement technology cunningly concealed in the transparent substance of the portal window.
While Nemiel seemed to regard the blue ball of a world with ill-disguised disdain, its beauty struck Zahariel at once. He saw an expanse of turquoise seas, the broad landmasses of the planet’s continents presently hidden beneath a shifting layer of variegated cloud.
Set against the black backdrop of space and surrounded by distant shimmering stars, it could almost have been a round polished gemstone lying on a velvet backcloth amid a scattering of tiny jewels. He had only seen a few worlds from orbit in his time with the Crusade, but Sarosh was certainly one of the most striking.
‘I read the briefings,’ he said. ‘According to the reports, extensive areas of the planet are covered in woodland. I like the sound of that. It’ll be good to be in the forest again, to visit a world that brings back memories of Caliban.’
‘To do that it would have to be full of murderous predators, not to mention lethal plants and fungi,’ snorted Nemiel. ‘We’ve hardly been away for long enough for you to start getting nostalgic about Caliban. But you weren’t listening to what I’ve been saying about our mission. The point I’ve been making is that there’s no glory in it. They may call the 4th an expedition fleet, but really it’s little better than a secondary deployment group. This is what they send in once the fighting is done and they need someone to see to the cleanup. They don’t think we’re ready yet.’
‘I heard you,’ said Zahariel, ‘and I understand your point, but I see it differently. Don’t take me wrong, I’d like nothing better than orders telling us we are about to be dropped into the middle of a firefight. You said it yourself. We’re Dark Angels. We are made for war. But duty comes first, and, right now, it is our duty to watch over the planet of Sarosh as it is brought to compliance.’
‘Duty,’ said Nemiel rolling his eyes in sarcasm. ‘It seems to me we’ve had this conversation before, about seven million times at the last count. All right, I concede the point. You’re right and I’m wrong. I’ll admit to anything, just so long as you don’t launch into another long speech about duty. You could bore a man to death on almost any topic under the sun. I heard you delivering some supposedly stirring words to your squad yesterday. I pitied them.’
‘It’s called oratory,’ Zahariel smiled, recognising a familiar argument. ‘Don’t you remember what it says in the Verbatim? “The arts of the warrior include not only the techniques of combat, nor simply the understanding of strategy and tactics, but also the study of every skill that may have bearing on the leadership of men in times of crisis.”’
‘I remember it,’ said Nemiel, his face growing suddenly stern. ‘But you need to remember we are no longer in the Order. All that is behind us. The old ways are dead. I’m serious. They died the day the Emperor came to Caliban and we learned of the Lion’s true nature. From that moment on, we became Dark Angels and we put the past behind us.’
‘Excuse me, honoured masters?’ a voice interrupted before Zahariel could reply. ‘I hope you will forgive the intrusion.’
Turning with Nemiel, Zahariel saw a seneschal standing behind them. The man wore a grey tabard over a black bodyglove, the tabard marked with the livery of the Dark Angels Legion. The seneschal dropped to one knee on the deck floor, his head bowed in respect.
‘Chapter Master Hadariel sends his regards,’ said the man, once Nemiel had given him the sign to speak. ‘He reminds you that the transfer of command will take place onboard the flagship Invincible Reason in two hours’ time. He emphasised that your presence is required at the ceremony, and that he expects you will comport yourselves in the best traditions of the Legion.’
‘Our thanks to the Chapter Master,’ said Nemiel. ‘Assure him we will be there at the transfer, properly dressed as befits the ceremony. We understand the importance of paying full respects to our brother Legion.’
The seneschal stood, bowed once more, and withdrew. As the servant walked away, Nemiel turned to Zahariel with the ghost of a smile playing across his features.
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