‘What proof does the Sigillite have?’ asks another legionary. Like all of us, he does not want to accept the possibility that we two-score are now all that remains of the Sons of Sanguinius. ‘The word of fools and humans?’
And yet, I have seen the datum Rubio brought with him. Observations from Imperial warships, reinforcement vessels sent from Terra at the outbreak of the rebellion. A handful of wrecks have clawed their way back through the madness of the ruinstorm, a handful out of hundreds.
The crews of these ships turned their sensors towards the Signus Cluster as they crossed the light years towards it, their scry-scopes probing for any contact from the Blood Angels flotilla, their astropaths calling out for the like aboard the flagship Red Tear and its sister vessels.
I have seen, and now I show the others, what those crews saw. Blackness and the absence of light. A new void at the galactic coordinates where the stars and worlds of Signus once shone.
The Signus Cluster no longer exists. A monumental dark mass has taken its place, swallowing up whoever did not fear to tread on those blighted worlds. Some say that those within have been taken to hell, if such a thing exists. I would weep for my Great Angel if only I could.
The tragedy of it thunders in my mind, almost too big to comprehend. The Legion, erased from existence. All my brothers, my comrades in arms, my angelic father, gone.
Do I truly believe Sanguinius is lost to us? It shames me to say it, but in this moment, I do. I believe that all is lost.
Hezen is nodding. ‘The Regent cannot simply expect us to go quietly into oblivion! He must know that we would not accept dissolution without argument!’
Dissolution. Such a weak word for so great an act, so final a judgement. The systematic decommissioning of a Space Marine Legion; the repossession and redistribution of every last item of materiel, from bolt-shell to battleship. It is the closure of the book of hours on a legacy that has endured since the days of Old Night, the promise of the final end of the Blood Angels.
Not in glorious battle, fighting an intractable enemy until the very last of us perish – but a death by pen and ink, the work of administrators, politicians and strategists. It sickens and enrages me in equal measure. This is not the way of the Imperium I am oath-sworn to fight for!
‘We are not dead!’ shouts Nagal, and a handful of others take up the cry. ‘Even… even if this is true,’ he says, glaring at the black scroll, ‘there are still twenty living sons of Sanguinius! Twenty souls are enough to rebuild this Legion.’
‘One would be enough,’ growls Hezen. ‘No matter if it takes a thousand years, we can restore our strength.’
‘If you had millennia, that would be so.’ I turn, and I see Rubio standing behind me. How he entered and approached without my knowledge is disturbing. ‘But these are difficult times, Blood Angel. The hardest times our Imperium has ever faced.’
‘You have no right to be here!’ says Nagal. ‘The Annex is for the scions of our Legion and no other.’
Rubio ignores him, looking to me instead. I feel the psyker reading me, knowing the dread in my hearts. He nods grimly. ‘The war with Horus threatens to rip the galaxy in two. Priorities change. As a surgeon must sacrifice a limb to save a life, so the Sigillite makes the difficult decisions. I regret that your Legion has fallen on the scales of such a choice.’
‘Speak plainly.’ I find my voice again. ‘If you are to be our executioner, Rubio, then grant us that!’
He bows slightly, and takes in the scope of the fortress-monastery with the motion of his hand. ‘The war machine that powers a Legion, the gene-engines and the weapons stocks, the whole of it… The strategic value of such hardware is incalculable, and it cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of the traitors. It must be protected, nurtured, so that reinforcements can be brought to the battle in due course.’
‘The rebellion will not last that long,’ says Hezen.
‘Can you be sure?’ Rubio replies. ‘The Sigillite foresees all possibilities. Even now, on distant Titan, he makes ready a new weapon, a new breed of warriors. Malcador prepares.’ He indicates his armour. ‘I, and others like me, have been called to assist in his deeds.’
‘You would gut our fortress for this?’ Nagal’s tone is flat and cold. ‘When we are at our lowest ebb, the Regent would come to Baal like a carrion eater and strip it bare? Is that why you are here?’ He advances on Rubio, fists clenching. ‘To pick us to the bones?’
‘Yes,’ replies the psyker. ‘Cargo leviathans are coming, crewed by recovery battalions from the loyal factions of the Mechanicum. They will remove what is needed.’
‘Get out,’ Nagal snarls.
‘I have more to say–’
‘Get out!’ bellows the warrior. I watch Rubio pause, then bow again. When he is gone, Nagal’s ire returns to me. ‘You should have let us go, Arkad. Damn your blood, you should have let us go!’
I face him. ‘If I had, then there would be nothing left of us.’
‘Look around,’ Nagal demands. ‘Soon that will be so.’
His words remind me of the dream.
We never speak of the dream, although we all shared some iteration of it.
Those in true slumber – if a Space Marine can ever truly sleep – saw it most strongly, but even those of us who were awake, standing our posts or at practice, experienced a measure of the…
I hesitate to call it a vision.
What did I see? A jumble of images, flickering through my thoughts like a half-recalled memory. A world of blood-red sands, but not Baal. Fire in the sky. A great creature, more beast than man, but blurred so that I could not define its characteristics.
An axe in the creature’s hands. A mighty blow and hundreds of my kinsmen dead.
Among it all, Sanguinius, his wings spread wide. I saw him falling, even as I knew that the Angel never falls.
Then it was gone, but in the wake a terrible, brief fury awoke in me. It was a strange kind of anger, far removed and hard to grasp. I felt somehow… tainted by the passing of its touch.
In the times before the Emperor’s illumination, this dream would have been called an omen.
But after that day, no warrior among the twenty spoke of it again, as if to give voice to what the dream suggested would make it a certainty.
The summons brings me to the landing pad, where Rubio’s Storm Eagle remains, poised like a patient raptor ready to throw itself into the sky.
I confess I have already made my decision, as I walked through the Silent Cloister and along the upper galleries. Nothing the psyker can say will change my mind.
‘Speak,’ I insist, as he emerges from the interior of the lander.
‘I have an offer for you and your brothers, Arkad. An opportunity.’ His tone seems genuine. I wonder for a moment, did Rubio once stand where I do now, a loss so great it cannot be measured weighing upon him? The warrior removes the power sword on his belt, scabbard and all, and shows it to me. ‘Before, you asked me my rank and Legion. I was once a warrior of the XIII, the Ultramarines.’ Rubio turns the weapon so I may see the shape of the revered Ultima upon the hilt. ‘I am lost to my Legion as certainly as if the sons of Macragge were dead and gone.’ There is no exaggeration to these words; I hear the pain in his voice and I believe him.
‘And now you are Malcador’s agent?’
He nods. ‘One of many. Some of us legionaries, from brotherhoods on both sides of the insurrection. Others mortal and… otherwise. I have a new purpose now.’
He speaks of the Sigillite’s works in the Sol system, the deeds done in the Emperor’s name, but not with true openness. All across the stars, he tells me, measures are being taken. Ships and men silently diverted to where they will be most needed in the battles to come. Military equipment, gene-tech and the building blocks of a Legion’s infrastructure. All to Lord Malcador’s design, all to combat not Horus Lupercal’s treachery, but the dark forces the Warmaster has awakened.
I find it hard to follow, until he makes the offer. T
hen I see.
Rubio holds out his hand. ‘Join me, Arkad. You and your brothers. The black scroll may mark the ending of your Legion, but it need not be the end of your duty to Terra.’
‘You would have us give up our colours for those?’ I study his ghost-grey wargear, and tap the winged blood-drop across the chest of my night-black armour. ‘I will die before I surrender that. If Sanguinius has been taken from us, we lost sons… then to shrug off our identity like some discarded cloak would be the greatest insult to his memory!’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘I understand.’ Rubio stands his ground as I advance towards him. ‘I speak for all my brothers. Your offer is refused.’
To his credit, he does not waste breath trying to convince me otherwise. ‘Very well. I have one last demand of you, then.’ The psyker returns his sheathed blade to his belt and offers me a vox-module. “Your ships in orbit, the guardian flotilla… I have given them Malcador’s orders to disperse and strike their colours–’
A smile comes to my lips, a swell of pride to my hearts. ‘But they do not obey?’ In that moment, the humans, the crew-serfs and the mortal officers, they remind me that one need not be a legionary to be of the Legion.
‘The shipmasters refuse to accept the Sigillite’s commands unless you authorise them. Arkad, you must release the fleet from their oath to the Blood Angels.’
‘I will not.’ I hear footfalls. Ceramite boots upon the stone, the sound of armoured warriors rising to fill the ranks behind me. I turn to see their faces, but each one of my kinsmen has hidden his visage behind his helmet.
And their armour…
They no longer wear the blood-crimson of our legion. Dark layers of inkstone stain have blackened their wargear to a shade similar to mine. The only marks of incarnadine that remain are brazen red saltires that cross over their chests, their shoulders. The stark lines of scarlet are like bloody wounds.
It is Nagal who leads them. ‘If we are truly in the company of death,’ he intones, ‘then it is fitting that all who look upon us shall know it.’
My pride grows ever stronger, and I see the questions in Rubio’s gaze as I turn back to him. ‘Where is Horus Lupercal, brother? Under what blighted rock does the turncoat hide?’
Rubio reads our collective intent immediately. ‘You seek to face the Warmaster. The twenty of you against the might of his armies, his traitor legions? You will die.’
‘By the Sigillite’s word, we are already dead,’ snarls Hezen. ‘We will find Horus and kill him. Or die in the attempt.’
‘What other end can we aspire to?’ I ask, and I see Rubio’s manner hardening. ‘Anyone who has given their fealty to the Great Angel may follow us, if that is their wish.’
The pskyer draws his Ultramarine gladius, slowly and deliberately. The sword’s blade glows, and in concert with it, the crystals of his psychic hood come alive. ‘I cannot allow that. Master your own fates if you will, for you are of the Legiones Astartes and that is your right. But those ships belong to the Imperium, and Terra.’ The tip of the blade points at my head. He still holds out the vox-module. ‘Tell them to stand down, Brother Arkad.’
‘No.’ The crozius arcanum is suddenly in my hand. The aura crackles into being, glowing blue-white.
In this moment, I am fully ready to commit the most unthinkable of acts. I am ready to kill another Space Marine for what I believe to be right, and I know that the battle-brothers standing behind me will not stay my hand. They will see it good and raise no reproach. I am ready to end the life of Tylos Rubio if that is what it will take.
In a way, the feeling is… liberating. Is this what Horus’s traitors so desired? And once it is done, will it be easier to kill again, and again? For that is the threshold we now stand upon, and the path beyond will be marked with the blood of warriors we might once have called brother, might once have fought alongside.
And then a cry comes from human lips before our weapons can meet. ‘Wait! Wait! Hold your blows, in the Angel’s name!’
Nagal, Hezen and the others part like a dark curtain, to allow a man’s approach. A spindly thing he is, clad in velvet robes. He stumbles as if he is dizzy. Ser Jesper, the Master of Speakers, tries his best to run to us. Behind him trail cords of rope-wound wires and ritual bonds. He has come at a mad pace from the fortress-monastery’s astropathic seclusium, and done so with such urgency that he is in great disarray. It concerns me to see Jesper in this state, for whatever news he brings must be of the greatest import. The poor telepath is not properly decompressed from his psi-sendings. Weak, watery blood runs from the corners of his eyes.
The astropath collapses, but Hezen is there to catch him. He brings him to us, bearing the weakened, fallen man like a child.
‘Heed me,’ croaks Jesper. He is barely awake, but something in the waif-like form keeps him conscious long enough to speak. His tone becomes the sing-song of mimic repetition as he gives the meme-codes that prove his message to be authentic. He is relaying a communication from the stars. ‘Raldoron speaks across the wild and screaming distances,’ he whispers.
‘The First Captain?’ Nagal stiffens at the mention of the name. Our brother Raldoron was called to be at the Angel’s side at Signus. Suddenly, Jesper’s near-panic is understood.
‘He speaks…’ The astropath is dying. He has killed himself to rip this message from the tumult of the ruinstorm, sacrificed his life because he knew it would save us. I am humbled by his act. ‘Sanguinius lives. The legion endures.’
It is the last communiqué Ser Jesper grants us; I hear the final beat of his heart.
Rubio cannot deny what he has heard, even as his vox-bead crackles with confirmation from his own astropaths aboard the cruiser. His sword sinks towards the ground.
I raise my crozius, Baal’s red sunlight casting it like spilled blood. ‘Go back, Rubio. Take your ship and your orders, and go to Malcador with empty hands and empty holds.’ My hearts sing as I say the words.
‘He counted you lost too soon,’ says the psyker.
‘We were never lost.’ I shake my head. ‘We are Blood Angels.’
And that is answer enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Swallow is a New York Times bestselling author whose stories include the Horus Heresy novels Nemesis, Fear to Tread and The Flight of the Eisenstein, along with Faith & Fire, the Blood Angels books Deus Encarmine, Deus Sanguinius, Red Fury and Black Tide. His short fiction has appeared in Legends of the Space Marines and Tales of Heresy, along with the audio dramas Heart of Rage, Oath of Moment and Legion of One.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Originally published in the Black Library Weekender Anthology 2012 (Saturday).
This edition published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
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