Ravenwing

by Gav Thorpe

  When the park had been swept and declared secure, Grand Master Sammael’s Thunderhawk blazed overhead, landing in the park not far from the corpse-littered hill. The Grand Master of the Ravenwing and his squadron sped from the gunship’s belly, cutting directly across the park towards the citadel. The bikes disappeared along the street, no word received from Sammael as to the next phase of the mission.

  ‘We wait for orders,’ confirmed Cassiel, motioning the squadron to form a mobile patrol around the perimeter of the parkland. ‘If we are needed, Grand Master Sammael will send word.’

  Grim Discoveries

  Under Sammael’s guidance Corvex slid to a halt at the end of the street. Ahead, the Chapter Keep rose up at the centre of five hundred metres of bare rockcrete, its shadow stretching far across the grey slabs. Once this had been an industrial complex, flattened by the Dark Angels to create a kill zone around their citadel. The keep itself was not a grandiose building, simply a five storey slab-sided tower surrounded by a ten metre high curtain wall. Two squat bastions flanked the armoured gate, red sensor globe lenses staring impassively from within chamfered niches. There were ramparts on the keep roof and a gun tower at each corner.

  It was the gun towers that were the focus of Sammael’s attention.

  As the rest of his command squad halted around him, Sammael checked the scan readings from his machine.

  ‘No active sensors detected,’ he announced. ‘Gun towers inactive.’

  He tried one more time to contact anyone inside the keep, sending his personal identifier across several secure channels. There was no reply except for the insistent tone of the warning beacon.

  ‘No sign of damage,’ said Athelman. ‘I cannot see any cause for the attack beacon to have been activated.’

  ‘A subtle danger is the most perilous,’ warned Malcifer, edging his bike forward to come alongside Sammael. He spoke to the company Grand Master over the command channel, heard only by Sammael and Harahel. ‘If what we suspect is true, the attack was not external.’

  ‘Daedis, Athelman, perimeter sweep,’ announced Sammael, motioning for the squadron to move on. As the two battle-brothers accelerated off to the right, the Grand Master led Harahel and Malcifer directly towards the keep. Seeing multiple signal returns on his scanner in the buildings ringing the kill zone he looked around. Scared men and women, young and old, peered at the Dark Angels from the narrow windows of the housing blocks.

  ‘I sense their fear,’ said Harahel.

  ‘Given the circumstance, not unexpected,’ replied Malcifer.

  ‘No, it is not just a general dread of the orks or the battle,’ replied the Librarian. ‘They are terrified of us. Colonel Brade and his men are in a minority if they are pleased to see us return.’

  ‘Further reason to keep our presence here brief,’ said Sammael.

  They approached the gate of the curtain wall and still there was no sign of activity from the keep. Daedis and Athelman had disappeared from view, the return of their ident-markers on the scan display showing their progress around the far side of the citadel.

  ‘You have the lock codes, brother?’ Sammael looked at Malcifer as he asked the question.

  ‘My override codes will gain us entry,’ the Chaplain replied. Sammael’s comm picked up the telltale buzz of a tight-channel transmission and a second later motors inside the wall snarled into action, the gate sliding to one side to reveal the courtyard within.

  Sammael slowly moved into the compound and curved left towards a ramp that led down to the broad gate of the keep’s underground garage. Behind him the outer gate rumbled back into place. Another trans-mission from Malcifer caused the reinforced steel slabs of the garage doors to retract. Sammael descended the ramp as lights flickered into life.

  ‘Power generation still functioning,’ the Grand Master remarked as Corvex slid through the gateway.

  Two Rhino armoured carriers sat side-by-side, with three bikes lined up in maintenance cages along the left-hand wall. All seemed to be in order, the machines showing no signs of battle damage. The armoury garage stretched out as far as the foundations of the curtain wall, with plenty of room for the three Dark Angels to park their machines. Dismounting, Sammael ordered Malcifer to close the gates and made his way across the plascrete floor to a data terminal. He entered his ident-code and accessed the armoury logs while his companions performed a quick search of the garage.

  ‘Nothing untoward,’ reported Harahel.

  ‘Nor here,’ said Sammael. ‘More than fifty days since the armoury was last accessed. Last entry is an ammunition and weapons withdrawal. To be expected if the orks presented a threat again.’

  ‘Why are the Rhinos still here?’ asked the Librarian. ‘Surely they would not have departed on foot.’

  ‘The Thunderhawk is missing,’ said Malcifer. ‘If they abandoned the keep for some reason, they flew out of here.’

  ‘After setting the warning beacon. Also their ship, the Blade of Caliban, is not in the system,’ added Sammael. ‘I assume that the strike cruiser returned to the Rock with some news of what happened here, prompting the message we received. If the keep was not under direct assault, why was it evacuated?’

  The other two Dark Angels had no answer to this question and remained silent.

  The tread of their booted feet was loud as they strode to the doorway leading to the main body of the keep. Sammael drew his blade, the Raven Sword forged from a piece of meteorite inlaid with a crystal matrix powerfield. A blue aura flickered along the edges of the blade as Sammael activated the field generator with a touch of his thumb. Behind him Malcifer readied his bolt pistol and crozius and Harahel’s force axe gleamed with psychic power.

  Sammael keyed in an override access code and the locks of the door hissed open. It swung open easily at his touch, revealing a winding stairwell leading up into the first storey of the keep. With Malcifer beside him, Harahel a few steps behind, the Grand Master of the Ravenwing advanced quickly up the steps.

  They came to an archway at the top that opened out into the entrance hall behind the citadel gate. Sammael was keenly aware that his autosenses detected nothing that suggested the keep was occupied; only the thrum of the building’s power grid. Stepping into the hallway his eye was drawn to red stains on the bare rockcrete floor, and spots of crimson on the brushed metal cabinet of the gate access terminal.

  ‘Blood,’ he said heavily. ‘Old.’

  ‘No bodies,’ added Harahel. ‘I sense no life in this place. Not even vermin or insects.’

  Sammael accepted this statement without comment, turning to his left and heading beneath another archway into the chamber beyond. It was only a few metres square, the floor and ceiling bare ferrocrete. Red-cushioned benches made of dark timber lined the chamber to each side, beneath wooden carvings hung on whitewashed walls; a gilded Imperial aquila on the left, the winged sword of the Dark Angels on the right in enamelled black. There was material spattered on the walls and floor, amongst more bloodstains; small droplets of something grey. Sammael prodded one of the tear-shaped droplets and it came free, falling to the floor.

  ‘Molten ceramite,’ he told the others. ‘Judging by the amount, it was a considerable blast. Plasma probably.’

  ‘Other pieces of debris here,’ said Malcifer, crouching to point at a scatter of metal splinters and plasteel filaments caught in the fabric of the bench cushions.

  They moved through the remaining chambers of the lower floor – storerooms, the communications centre and a well-furnished holding area for visitors – and found nothing to further explain the absence of the garrison except for more bloodstains. They found a gleaming metal staircase at the heart of the keep and continued to the second storey. Here they found the dorters of the Space Marines and the keep’s serfs, beds arranged along the walls, all neat and in order. The armour stands of the Dark Angels were empty, the weapon brackets above their
cots also vacant.

  ‘They left armed and armoured,’ said Malcifer, walking between the massive bunks used by the Space Marines of the garrison. ‘The evacuation was not hasty. Or at least, not under direct duress.’

  ‘There are still belongings here,’ called Harahel from the serfs’ chamber across the hallway. ‘Personal effects, clothes.’

  ‘Which tells us nothing more about what happened,’ said Sammael. A feeling of unease was steadily growing in his gut. He could not stop the image described to him by Harahel surfacing in his thoughts: a Chaplain consumed by treachery. He pushed aside his misgivings, focusing on the investigation. He was the Grand Master of the Ravenwing, the eyes of the Chapter, and he could not afford to miss any clue. ‘Continue upwards.’

  The bloodstains on stairs and floors diminished as they ascended to the third floor. Here were more dorters and a range of cells, for the initiates that had been accepted into the Chapter. Like the dormitories below, the rooms were clean and tidy, though Sammael immediately noticed something was missing.

  ‘There are no bedclothes on the cots,’ he mentioned to the other two Dark Angels, pointing at the bunks. ‘Stripped.’

  ‘Blood has seeped into the mattresses of several,’ said Malcifer, examining the beds more closely. He stood up and there was a hush to his voice that betrayed an unsettled mind. ‘The initiates were attacked in their sleep.’

  ‘Here, a mark.’ Harahel drew their attention to a hole in the wall, the size of a Space Marine’s fist. Magnifying his autosenses, Sammael could see pieces of shrapnel embedded in the plaster within the gash.

  ‘Bolt detonation,’ he said grimly. ‘It seems that it was one of our own that perpetrated the killings.’

  ‘Or one of their weapons was taken,’ Malcifer answered quickly. ‘A single bolter round is not conclusive, brother.’

  ‘You may be right, but I sense that something terrible has happened here,’ replied the Grand Master. ‘Harahel, can you glean nothing with your powers?’

  ‘All is dead here, brother,’ replied the Epistolary. ‘I was taught to delve into the minds of living men, the walls here do not remember.’

  ‘You sense nothing?’ Sammael could not believe that there was no psychic trace of the massacre that seemed to have been carried out. ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘Nothing more than your instincts are telling you, brother. A darkness has claimed this place.’

  Sammael grunted and shook his head. Librarians could be superstitious at times. On the next landing there were more signs of fighting, bolter impacts and bullet holes stitched across the walls. Most of the floor was taken up with the access chambers and ammunition stores for the roof turrets. There was nothing to be found there and they swiftly continued to the top of the keep.

  A Riddle of Corpses

  The uppermost storey was split between three rooms; two small cells for the personal use of the garrison commanders and the keep’s chapel. It was the last that Sammael entered first and what he found inside stopped him in his tracks.

  ‘Brothers...’ The sight that confronted him was beyond reckoning and he heard pained gasps from his companions as they entered the chapel behind him.

  In front of a marble symbol of the Chapter was a low altar set with a few relics, amongst them the crozius arcanum and rosarius of a Chaplain. It was dark, the candles in the sconces and on stands around the hall melted to stubs. In the gloom there were shapes on the floor, their outlines visible in the light from the hallway.

  Along one wall were laid more than twenty bodies, covered in bloodstained shrouds stitched with the icon of the Dark Angels. At the end of the line, closest to the door, a much larger figure lay covered, the shroud turned about so that the symbol lay inverted. Sammael did not need to pull aside the covering to know that a Space Marine lay beneath; the bulk of the body made that clear.

  Yet more astounding were the five armoured figures sprawled before the altar.

  The middle corpse was clad in midnight black, his helm skull-faced: a Chaplain. To each side lay a Dark Angel in the livery of a Techmarine, and three others whose dark green armour was marked by the symbols of the Third Company. Each Space Marine had a ragged hole through his body, armour melted, innards charred.

  ‘That is the heraldry of Boreas,’ said Malcifer, pointing at the corpse of the Chaplain, disbelief in his voice. ‘How could he be dead? What foe could best five of the Adeptus Astartes and cause such wounds?’.’

  ‘No foe, save perhaps doubt,’ said Sammael, crouching by the body of the Techmarine. The fingertips of the dead Space Marine’s gauntlets were missing, each sliced cleanly through and cauterised. Turning over the Techmarine’s hand he saw molten swirls on the palm. The Grand Master looked at the other corpses and found the same injuries. There were tiny globules of molten metal and ceramite coating the insides of the wounds in their chests. The conclusion he reached was incredible and he chose not to voice it, seeking another explanation.

  While Sammael pondered the meaning of what they had found, Harahel investigated the other bodies, pulling back the shrouds to reveal the faces of the dead. There was no sign of decay, skin and flesh untouched as if the keep was sterile.

  ‘The initiates and serfs,’ announced the Librarian as he continued along the line. ‘Knife wounds, bolt detonations. Oh...’ Harahel shook his head and looked at Sammael. The Grand Master could see nothing of his companion’s face but his posture spoke of great distress. To see such a thing from a veteran of Harahel’s standing gnawed at Sammael’s own resolve. ‘The necks of the young ones have been snapped.’

  ‘They took their own lives,’ Sammael announced, standing up. The revelation was just as disturbing, but at least it distracted the other two from the dead novitiates. ‘Melta bomb held against the breastplate.’

  ‘Why?’ Malcifer voiced the question that had been nagging Sammael since he had first entered the chapel, somewhat pointlessly.

  ‘Am I to conjure answers from dead flesh and broken armour?’ snapped Sammael, his anxiety forcing out the words. He immediately regretted them, wishing to show no sign of weakness in front of his companions. ‘Apologies, brother, I have nothing to tell you that you do not know.’

  ‘My apologies also,’ replied Malcifer. ‘What we have found defies rational explanation.’

  ‘And the situation grows more curious,’ said Harahel, pulling back the shroud of the Space Marine body to reveal the white armour of an Apothecary. There was no head on the body, only the blackened stump of a neck.

  ‘Brother Nestor,’ said Sammael, recalling the name with a little effort. ‘He was Apothecary to the garrison, integral to the recruitment.’

  ‘And more,’ Malcifer said quietly. ‘Piscina was chosen as one of the secret repositoria for the Chapter’s gene-seed.’

  ‘Nestor was a gene-guardian?’ Sammael knew of the gene-seed caches located on some of the Dark Angels’ recruiting worlds, held away from the Tower of Angels to ensure future generations could be created if something disastrous happened to the fortress-monastery. However, only a few of the Inner Circle knew the locations and the names of the gene-guardians from the apothecarion who watched over them. ‘There was nothing in the report.’

  ‘There would not be any,’ said Malcifer with a hint of apology. ‘It is a secret closely guarded, even within command-level documents.’

  Accepting this without comment, Sammael examined Nestor’s remains. Aside from the absence of the Apothecary’s head there were no other visible injuries. There was significant charring of the armour around the cauterised wound, the paint obliterated and the ceramite melted down through several layers.

  ‘Though I do not comprehend the significance, I would say that we have found the victim of the blast by the gate hall. A single plasma shot to the head.’

  ‘The Techmarine has a plasma pistol,’ announced Malcifer, stooping to pull the weapon from a holste
r on the dead Dark Angel’s belt. The Chaplain inspected it for a moment, an orange icon springing into life with the whine of power cells charging. ‘The only shot fired, it would seem. Stacked cells contain ninety per cent reserve.’

  ‘No need to give voice to the obvious question,’ said Sammael, before someone asked why a Dark Angels Techmarine would shoot a Brother-Apothecary. ‘We have but one hope left to explain the mystery. We must open the vaults and see what we can find within the action reports and logs. I do not hold out much hope for enlightenment.’

  Brother Boreas Speaks

  The vocal log entry started playing as soon as Malcifer accessed the Chapter Keep records. Sammael was surprised, and glad that he had not entrusted the investigation of the keep to any warrior not of the Inner Circle. There were bound to be revelations not suitable to the ears of the lesser ranks.

  The voice of Chaplain Boreas was calm and thoughtful, issuing after death from the grille of the vault’s main data terminal.

  ‘This is Interrogator-Chaplain Boreas of the Emperor’s Dark Angels Chapter,’ he began. ‘This is my final communication from Piscina, as commander of the Dark Angels in the system. Our ancient foes have struck a blow against our Chapter. The reviled enemy has wounded us severely. We are entangled in a plot that goes beyond our comprehension. The events I relate stretch beyond this world, beyond the furthest reaches of this star system. Great and dark powers are at work, I see their hand manipulating us, bending us to their twisted goals.’

  There was a pause in the voice and Malcifer stopped the recording, turning to Sammael.

  ‘Is this a confession?’ the Chaplain asked, incredulous.

  ‘We shall see,’ replied Sammael. He gestured for Malcifer to continue the log playback.

  ‘For ten thousand years we have sought redemption.’ There was more life to Boreas’s voice now, an animation fuelling words that cut to the core of Sammael as he listened. ‘We have pursued that which shamed our brethren when our time of triumph was at hand. It was a grave, unforgivable sin, which must be atoned for. That is beyond doubt. But these last days, an even greater sin has come to light. It is the sin of ignorance. It is the sin of past errors repeated.’