Descent of Angels

by Mitchel Scanlon

Luther nodded, and Zahariel sensed that his commander wished to say more, but did not yet know how to broach the subject. Luther tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Let’s take a look at that shuttle, eh? The Saroshi one.’

  Zahariel looked over to the battered old shuttle, having had little interest in it once it had disgorged its fat cargo.

  ‘It doesn’t look like much, does it?’ said Luther, walking across the deck.

  Zahariel followed the Lion’s second-in-command and said, ‘Apparently the Mechanicum adepts scanned it on the way in. They said it was of an obsolete design well-known from before the Unification Wars on Terra, so they immediately lost interest.’

  ‘Ah, well they are immune to the romance of history, Zahariel,’ said Luther, walking around the battered shuttle with its oversized engines and bulbous front section. ‘I mean, it’s clearly thousands of years old. It must have taken generations of mechanics to keep it in a working state of repair.’

  ‘Then it should be in a museum,’ said Zahariel, as Luther ducked beneath a stubby wing and examined the underside of the conveyance.

  ‘Perhaps,’ agreed Luther. ‘It’s the last functioning relic of an earlier age. It might be the only vehicle on Sarosh still capable of trans-atmospheric travel.’

  ‘So why bother using it?’ asked Zahariel. ‘Why not accept the Lion’s offer of a Stormbird?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Luther, frowning as he saw something puzzling. ‘Perhaps the Saroshi kept it running because they knew they would need it in the future.’

  ‘Need it for what?’

  Luther emerged from beneath the shuttle on the far side from Zahariel, and he could see that the Legion’s second-in-command had gone utterly pale. His face was ashen, and he looked at the shuttle with a strange expression that Zahariel could not read.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ asked Zahariel.

  ‘Hmmm?’ said Luther, glancing towards the great, arched doors that the Lion and the Saroshi delegation had earlier passed through. ‘Oh, yes, Zahariel. Sorry, I was distracted.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Zahariel. ‘You don’t look well, my lord.’

  ‘I’m fine, Zahariel,’ said Luther. ‘Now come on, return to your battle-brothers, it’s not good to be too far from your fellows when you might be about to go into battle. It’s bad luck, you know.’

  ‘But I have things to finish here,’ protested Zahariel.

  ‘Never mind them,’ insisted Luther, leading him from the embarkation deck. ‘Go. Be with your company and stay there until I call for you. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ said Zahariel, though, in truth, he could not fathom the sudden change in Luther’s behaviour.

  He left the Legion’s second-in-command at the door to the embarkation deck, watching as Luther stared in fascination at the Saroshi shuttle.

  ‘IS IT YOUR custom to pick smaller men for positions of authority?’ the lord high exalter asked blithely as he stood with a crowd of dignitaries beside the wide arch of the view-portal on the observation deck. ‘I ask this because I notice the man you call Chapter Master is not as tall as the men he commands. Also, there is the fact of these other men, the ones you call the leaders of your fleet.’

  The high exalter gestured to the military officers, fleet captains and other Imperial functionaries assembled around them.

  ‘They are also smaller than your angels,’ he continued, with an expression that was open and guileless. ‘Is it your custom to let only those who were born as giants bear the brunt of the fighting, while the small men act as their officers?’

  ‘It is not a question of custom,’ answered the Lion in a diplomatic tone as Chapter Master Hadariel bristled in anger beside him. ‘Nor are all of us born as giants. The Dark Angels are members of the Astartes. We are a product of the Emperor’s science. We are given physical enhancements to improve our abilities.’

  ‘Ah, so you are changed,’ said the high exalter, nodding his head slowly. ‘You are vat-grown. Now I understand. But what of you, Sar Hadariel? You stand taller than most men, but you are not as tall as your warriors. Please, why is this?’

  ‘I was unfortunate,’ replied the Chapter Master. ‘By the time I was chosen, I was too old to be granted gene-seed. In its place, I was given surgery to modify my body and make me a better warrior.’

  Nemiel stood at the other end of the observation deck with the rest of his squad, close enough to hear every word of their conversation with his enhanced hearing, wincing at the lord high exalter’s line of conversation.

  The lord high exalter had no way of knowing how sensitive the Chapter Master was about the fact that he had not been given gene-seed. Inadvertently, the Saroshi leader had managed to broach the one subject most likely to lead to crossed words and some form of diplomatic breach.

  It was to Hadariel’s credit that he had so far managed to keep any suggestion that he was offended by his visitor’s line of questioning from his face. Anxious to defuse any potential outburst from Hadariel, the Lion said, ‘May I take it, you have some understanding of such technologies? You used the word “vat-grown”. Does your culture have experience of genetic science?’

  ‘Yes, but I am here to discuss more important matters.’

  Waving the question away with a dismissive hand, the lord high exalter turned to face the broad expanse of the view-portal behind him. He spread his arms wide, the gesture taking in the blue globe of Sarosh visible through the portal.

  ‘The world is beautiful, is it not? I have never seen it from this angle before. Granted, some of our historic books include picture-images of our world taken from orbit. But before today, the shuttle that brought me here had not flown for nearly a century. Even if I had ordered it to take me into space, the view-portals on the shuttle are no bigger than my hand. If it weren’t for the Imperium, I would never have seen the magnificence of the sight I see before me. I thank you for that. To look down on the world I have known, to see its seas and continents laid out before me, it has granted me a new perspective.’

  ‘It is only the beginning, my lord exalter,’ said Governor-Elect Furst. Perhaps sensing the tension, he pushed himself forward to stand beside the Lion. ‘You can scarcely conceive of the wonders we can bring to your world once it is compliant.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Compliance,’ grimaced the fat man. ‘An interesting choice of words. It refers to the process of conforming to a demand or proposal. Also, it means to become yielding, flexible, submissive. And if we do not submit, what then? Will you unleash your angels, lord governor-elect? Will you destroy us if we do not comply with your wishes?’

  ‘Well, I…’ said Furst, visibly squirming. ‘That is to say…’

  ‘It is not the governor-elect’s decision to make,’ interrupted the Lion, ‘it is mine. Your question implies a criticism of our ways, lord exalter. You must understand, the aim of this crusade is to re-unite all the lost fragments of mankind. We come to you as brothers. We have no wish to use force to bring about your compliance, but experience tells us that it is sometimes necessary. Occasionally, whether through ignorance or because they are controlled by an unsuitable regime, the people of a rediscovered world choose to oppose us. It makes no difference. We have come to rescue you. Whether or not you wish to be rescued is hardly material to the outcome.’

  ‘And what of our regime?’ asked the lord high exalter.

  The Saroshi diplomat turned back from the view-portal to face the Lion and the ranks of Imperial commanders behind him. ‘What of the Saroshi government? Have you judged us to be unsuitable?’

  ‘The decision has not yet been made,’ said the Lion. ‘I must say I am pleased we talk so frankly. I had heard your people have a tendency to be… evasive on these matters.’

  ‘Yes, we were evasive,’ said the high exalter, holding the Lion’s gaze coolly, ‘until we found the time fast approaching when we were called upon to make a choice. I understand the Imperium does not worship any gods. In fact, you forbid it. Is this true?’

/>   ‘It is,’ said the Lion, caught unawares by his guest’s sudden change of tack, ‘but I do not see its relevance. I was told that you share our view of religion on Sarosh. You have no priesthood or places of worship.’

  ‘In that you are incorrect,’ said the lord high exalter. ‘Our temples are in the wild places, in the forests and the caves, where the messengers of our gods speak to their chosen representatives, the Ascendim. We are a pious people. Our society is founded on the divine mandate granted to the Ascendim. We have followed their dictates for more than a thousand years, and we have achieved the perfect society.’

  ‘Why am I hearing this now?’ snapped the Lion, looking around at the governor-elect and other Imperial dignitaries for answers, only to see that they were as mystified as he was.

  He turned back to the Saroshi leader. ‘You hid this from us?’

  ‘We did,’ agreed the lord exalter. ‘We were aided in this by the fact that faith is a private matter among my people. When your first Imperial scouts came to our planet, there was nothing on our world for them to recognise as signs of religion, no grand temples or sacred precincts inside our cities. We keep our holy places hidden away, simply because the Melachim have ordered that it should be so.’

  ‘The Melachim?’ echoed the Lion, dumbfounded.

  ‘They are our gods. They speak to the Ascendim, the only ones who can hear their divine voices. They speak to them when they walk in the wilderness, away from civilisation. They tell the Ascendim what is to be done, and their word is relayed to the rest of our society. By such methods is the will of the gods made clear.’

  ‘This is foolishness,’ said the Lion, growing angry. ‘You are rational people, from a technologically advanced society. You must be able to see this superstition for what it is.’

  ‘You showed your true faces too early,’ said the lord high exalter. ‘When your scouts revealed themselves to us, they spoke eruditely of how you had thrown down religion and damned it all as childish superstition. From that moment, we knew you were evil. No society can make claim to be righteous if it does not acknowledge the primacy of divine power. Secular truth is false truth. When we heard that your Emperor preaches there are only false gods, we knew his real nature at once. He is a liar daemon, a creature of falsehood, sent by dark powers to lead mankind astray.’

  ZAHARIEL MADE HIS way through the corridors of the ship to where the rest of his squad was currently billeted, running through the items he still needed to attend to before returning to the Wrath of Caliban and the drop to Sarosh. He had few illusions that they would be making planetfall soon, for Kurgis’s warnings that the Saroshi were not to be trusted still rang in his ears.

  Even as the thought occurred, he wondered again at the strange expression he had seen on Luther’s face as he had come up from underneath the Saroshi shuttle, wondering what the Legion’s second had seen that had…

  Had what?

  Unnerved him?

  Zahariel pictured Luther as he had come up, his face pallid and uneasy. What could he have seen that would unsettle a great warrior and hero such as Luther? The more he studied the image in his face, the more he let his mind drift, looking into the eyes of the man whose face was held in his mind’s eye.

  He saw pain there and sadness, and years of living in the shadow of another.

  Zahariel’s senses that were, even now, becoming surer and more sensitive, thanks to the training of Brother-Librarian Israfael, tried to make sense of the emotions and feelings coming off the image in his head.

  Don’t trust them… and don’t turn your back on them.

  Zahariel halted as a sudden wave of nausea swept through him. As an Astartes, he almost never suffered from any such feelings, his genhanced metabolism compensating for almost every sensation that might trigger such a reaction.

  However, this was no physiological reaction, this was a sure and sudden sense of something deeply wrong.

  Worse still was the sense that he was not the only one to realise that something was wrong, but that he was the only one who desired to stop it.

  THE EMBARKATION DECK was quiet and that, in itself, was unusual.

  Zahariel stepped over the threshold of the blast door and scanned for the normal personnel, techs, Mechanicum adepts and loaders that should be filling the space with life and bustle.

  The hiss and creak of the deck and the ever-present thrum that filled a starship were the only sounds, and Zahariel immediately knew that his suspicions had not been groundless.

  Something was definitely wrong.

  He crossed the embarkation deck towards the Saroshi shuttle and circled it, looking for anything out of place or otherwise unusual. As he had said while talking to Luther, the design was old and practically obsolete, the engines vastly oversized for such a small conveyance.

  He ducked beneath one of the wings, crawling on all fours beneath the shuttle, hoping to see what had so unnerved Luther.

  The underside of the shuttle stank of engine oil and hydraulic fluids, the plates of metal crudely bolted and welded together with little regard for the quality of workmanship. At first, Zahariel could see nothing unusual, and moved further along the belly of the shuttle.

  He ducked his head around a loose plate and…

  Zahariel turned back to look at the plate. The hinges holding it were rusted and stiff.

  He shook his head as he realised that it was a miracle that this shuttle had even broken atmosphere, let alone expected to return.

  As he stared at the open panel he suddenly realised what was wrong with the shuttle, at least partly. This was no orbital shuttle, for there was no heat shielding on the craft’s belly, this was a purely atmospheric craft, primarily designed to fly within the bounds of a planet’s airspace, which explained the oversized engines, presumably retro-fitted to allow their one craft to reach orbit.

  Without heat shielding, anyone who tried to descend to a planet’s surface in this craft would not survive the journey. The craft would turn into a flaming comet as the heat of re-entry seared anyone inside to ashes before melting to nothing as it plunged to its death.

  The people that had boarded this craft had clearly done so with no intention of ever returning to the surface.

  That meant that their mission was one way.

  Zahariel crawled from beneath the shuttle, horrified at the idea that they had been boarded by enemies who posed as friends. He looked at the shuttle, seeing it for the vile transport of the enemy it truly was.

  ‘But what could they hope to achieve?’ he whispered to himself.

  Barely a handful of Saroshi had boarded the Invincible Reason, hardly enough to trouble even one Dark Angel, let alone a ship full of them.

  So what purpose did this visit serve?

  Zahariel circled the shuttle, tapping his fist on the battered fuselage, the softly humming engines and its bulbous front section. As he reached the front of the shuttle, he wondered again at the strange design of the craft, for its nose was surely a poor choice of shape for any craft designed for atmospheric flight.

  Though he was no aeronautical engineer, he had learnt enough to know that aircraft depended on lift created by their shape and wings to keep them aloft, and that such a heavy-looking front section made no sense.

  Looking more closely at the nose, Zahariel could see that it had been a later addition to the craft’s structure, the paint and workmanship different from the rest of the ship. He stood back and looked at the lines of the shuttle’s front, seeing now that the entire section had been added over and above where the original nose of the shuttle ended.

  Zahariel took hold of one of the access hatches and pulled.

  As he had feared, it was welded shut, but he knew that something dreadful was concealed within. He took a deep breath and gripped the release handle, pulling it with all his might.

  Metal bent and buckled, and finally came free, the welded joint unable to withstand the strength of one of the Emperor’s finest. Zahariel tossed aside the ruined pan
el and stared into the gap he had torn in the front section.

  Inside he saw a mass of thick blocks of dark metal fitted around a circular core about a metre across. Thick struts of the same dark metal protected the central core, and a procession of winking lights circled the device hidden within the secret compartment.

  ‘It’s a weapon of some sort,’ said a voice behind him, ‘an atomic warhead I think.’

  Zahariel spun, his fist raised to strike the speaker.

  Luther stood before him, his face a mask of anguish and regret.

  ‘An atomic warhead?’ asked Zahariel.

  ‘Yes,’ said Luther, coming closer and peering into the opened access panel. ‘I think the whole shuttle is nothing but one giant missile.’

  ‘You knew of this?’ said Zahariel. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  Luther turned away from him, his shoulders slumped as though in defeat. He turned back to Zahariel, who was shocked to see tears in his commander’s eyes.

  ‘I almost did, Zahariel,’ said Luther. ‘I wanted to, but then I thought of what would be mine if I didn’t: the Legion, command, Caliban. It would all be mine, and I would no longer have to share it with someone whose shadow obscures everything I do.’

  ‘The Lion?’ said Zahariel. ‘His deeds are great, but so are yours!’

  ‘Maybe in another age,’ said Luther, ‘one in which I did not share the same span of time as a man like the Lion. In any other age, the glory of leading Caliban from the darkness would have been mine, but instead it goes to my brother. You have no idea how galling it is to be the greatest man of the age and have that taken from you in an instant.’

  Zahariel watched the words flow from Luther in a flood. For a decade and more, these feelings had been contained within a dam of honour and restraint, but the dam was crumbling and Luther’s true feelings were spilling out.

  ‘I never realised,’ said Zahariel, his hand sliding towards his sword. ‘No one did.’

  ‘No, even I did not: not fully,’ said Luther, ‘not until I saw this shuttle. I wouldn’t have to lift a finger. All I’d have to do is walk away, and everything I wanted would be mine.’