Ravenwing

by Gav Thorpe

  Edging forwards along the passage, which was barely a metre wider than his machine, the top of his helmet almost scraping along the metal roof, Annael risked a wide-spectrum scan pulse, judging that the Unworthy would not have the means to detect the millisecond burst of energy. His telemetric display updated a few seconds later as the readings were processed by Black Shadow’s cogitator, showing a maze of rooms ahead, each only a few metres square. They looked like pre-formed habitations that had been fitted at some later time onto the base of the superstructure, stacked three deep and five across on two levels. A labourer slum, he decided as he reviewed the schematic.

  The scan also confirmed his suspicion of life signals, more than fifty crowded into the enclosed spaces. If they were enemy, they were doing their best to avoid the fighting, hiding out of the way in this disused part of the star fort. There seemed to be little movement, assuring Annael that his approach had gone unnoticed.

  The tunnel came to an abrupt end after another twenty metres and Annael dismounted. He engaged Black Shadow’s self-protection system, ensuring that the machine would detonate its energy core if anyone tampered with the controls without entering the disarm sequence; standard procedure when leaving a mount unattended in hostile territory.

  Annael took a last look at the scanner to confirm there had been no reaction to his presence and unholstered his pistol. There was only a single doorway at the end of the corridor, little more than a hatchway providing access to the rooms beyond. There was no other way to enter the chambers, and more importantly it was the only route of exit should he encounter enemies. Pausing beside the closed door, he listened for a moment and detected the soft murmur of voices.

  The door was held by a simple latch bolt. He lifted the bar quickly and thrust open the door, stepping through with pistol held ready to fire.

  Screams and wails greeted the Dark Angel as he was confronted by a group of people huddled together in the first chamber; wrinkled faces stared in horror and terrified infants bawled in their sudden fright. At a glance Annael took in the scene; five women and two men of advanced years and eight children ranging from babes to eight or nine Terran years old. They all looked haggard, skin pinched and waxy, hair lank and uncut, their clothes little more than rags. In the light of a bare glow-globe their pale skin seemed brittle and yellowing.

  No threat was Annael’s first thought, though he kept his bolt pistol raised.

  ‘Stop that noise,’ he commanded, instantly irritated by the mewling and weeping coming from the shocked children. In direct defiance of his demand, some of the older folk raised their voices in wordless lament, the racket intense inside the small metal-sided cube.

  There were three more doorways, one in each of the other walls, through which Annael saw more of the ragged people. Soon there was a crowd clustering at each door, shouting and yelling in anger and fear.

  ‘Silence!’ he roared, his projected voice thunderous in the close confines. His outburst had the desired effect on the adults, quietening them immediately though the infants showed no restraint in giving voice to their woe.

  ‘Mercy, lord, show us mercy,’ pleaded an elderly man crouched against the wall to Annael’s right. The call was taken up by others for a few seconds, dying away as he swept the crowd with his lensed gaze.

  He had little experience dealing with non-combatants, and had never encountered any as wretched as this group. There was little in his training to prepare him for such an event and he dredged through his memory trying to remember the Chapter doctrine on the subject.

  Establishing control, he recalled, was the first priority. With the adults cowed by his presence already, that seemed to have been achieved.

  Establishing rapport was the next stage in dealing with the situation. Discomfited by the thought of conversing with these miserable-looking folk, Annael turned his attention to the elder that had first spoken.

  ‘You, what is your name?’ he said, realising when the man flinched and trembled that he had barked the question like a threat. He modified his tone, addressing the man as if he were a novitiate or Chapter serf. ‘Please tell me your name.’

  ‘Quaron, lord,’ the main replied in a quavering voice, the words as shaky as the man’s outstretched hands. ‘Forgive us, we were not expecting you, lord.’

  ‘Stop calling me that,’ said Annael, fearing that to allow them to continue using such a grandiose title made him guilty of self-aggrandisement. ‘You may address me as Brother Annael.’

  This pronouncement was met with confusion and blank looks. The assembled degenerates muttered amongst themselves and exchanged perplexed shaking of heads. Quaron, realising he had been selected as spokesperson, gingerly stood up on thin legs, one hand held to the wall to support himself.

  ‘Brother Annael?’ he said, brow knotted with worry. He grimaced as he spoke, fearing his words caused offence. ‘Are you not the Overlord?’

  ‘I am no overlord, Quaron,’ Annael assured the man. ‘I am Brother Annael of the Dark Angels Chapter.’

  There was more murmuring and whispers and Annael heard ‘Dark Angel’ spoken over and over. The conversation subsided into silence and save for a few of the youngest children he was pleased to note that the infants had ceased their yammering. With deliberate care, he holstered his pistol and held out his empty hands in a gesture of peaceful intent. It did not seem to settle the nerves of the people but he thought it dishonourable to make any firm promise to do them no harm, not until he had fully appraised their loyalty and situation; he did not want to make himself a liar.

  ‘Quaron, how do you come to be here?’

  ‘We are the Unworthy, Brother Annael of the Dark Angels. We follow the teachings of the Overlord but still we do not become Divine. Are you kin to the Overlord, Brother Annael of the Dark Angels?’

  Annael killed a snarled retort before he gave voice to it. These people were wholly ignorant of what was happening, seemingly unaware of the attack that was ongoing elsewhere on the station. That they identified themselves with the Unworthy was worrying, for Annael had at first taken them to be prisoners. Ignoring the people for a moment, he looked at his surroundings. There were threadbare blankets and thin pillows piled in one corner, and in the room directly ahead he saw a small ceramite-slate portable stove and several pots, dishes and cups. There were no weapons in evidence, though the piles of meagre belongs could conceal blades or pistols it was doubtful these poor souls possessed any arms capable of hurting him. Even so, he remained on guard.

  Aside from the obvious degradation there was something else that jarred in his mind, though he could not pinpoint the source of his unease. In demeanour the people were subservient to the point of cringing obsequiousness. He detected human bodily waste and a faint trace of rotting flesh, indicating that the inhabitants were quite prepared to live close to, if not actually with, their own filth. The youngsters looked as miserable as the elders, who in turn displayed a lethargy beyond that expected of their poorly nourished state. Most of the adults moved with involuntary twitches in the face and limbs and he had already seen a few that would fall into a momentarily vacant state, glassy-eyed and open-mouthed. Aside from those easily attributed to age and injuries, he could determine no physical blemishes that might indicate some form of plague as cause for this strange behaviour and isolation.

  This strangeness unsettled Annael, quite aside from the dilemma that had immediately occurred to him upon discovering the unarmed people: to leave them be or kill them? In his experience there had been three categories of interaction. There were enemies, allies and civilians. Enemies were to be slain, allies aided and civilians protected, where possible. By their own testimony, these people were the Unworthy, part of the renegade group. As such they were enemies of the Emperor and it was his duty to eliminate them. The fact that they were of no threat whatsoever weighed against this course of action. Regardless of their loyalties, it seemed dishonourable to slay
them in cold blood, especially the infants who, given a proper upbringing by loyal servants of the Emperor could become useful members of the Imperium.

  It was a conundrum Annael had never expected to face, and the fact that he could not reconcile the two courses of action vexed him further. Part of him wanted to leave, secure in the knowledge that there was no threat to the Dark Angels force present. Another part of him, the part that had slowly emerged over four centuries, had questions that needed answers. Answers he could only gain from the Unworthy.

  He told himself that any information he gathered here could prove of use in the fight against the pirates; quirks of behaviour or belief to be expected or exploited. He also told himself that this was just idle justification to sate his curiosity and that he had no business remaining with these people any longer.

  Rheumy eyes stared listlessly at Annael as this debate raged inside him. They could see nothing of the conflict in his features, and he stood as still as a statue, but his silence was starting to unsettle many of the older folk. Inquisitiveness conquered doubt and he addressed the old man.

  ‘You live here, in this place, Quaron?’ Annael could not believe that the Unworthy would voluntarily live in such poor circumstance with the whole of the station to occupy. ‘Why do you not live with the rest of the Unworthy?’

  ‘We cannot aspire, Brother Annael of the Dark Angels. I am old and will never be Divine. The young must cleanse themselves of their birthing sins before they can join the ranks of the aspiring.’

  ‘You are exiles? Unable to fight for the Overlord?’ Annael felt on firmer ground here. On New Macedon, where he had been born, some of the barbaric outhive tribes divided their communities along similar lines, the old left to care for the young while the able-bodied raided and traded with the other nomads. He saw badly-healed injuries and crippling deformities in some of the older people, though none in the youngsters, and guessed that they had all been warriors of the Unworthy before age or wounds had rendered them a burden rather than an asset in battle.

  ‘Exile, Brother Annael? I do not understand.’

  ‘Perhaps there is another that can speak with me,’ Annael said, tiring of the old man’s confused state. ‘One that perhaps does not feel the weight of age so heavily.’

  ‘I can speak with you, Brother Annael,’ announced a scrawny-looking woman from the doorway to Annael’s left. She had a blue shawl wrapped about her shoulders over a plain grey dress much stitched and patched. ‘I am Halgeral Three-mother. Forgive Quaron, his mind withers alongside his body. Soon he will be reborn unto us.’

  Ignoring this hint at heretical resurrectionist belief, Annael stepped towards Halgeral, the Unworthy shuffling and crawling out of his path with wheezing breaths and gasps to leave the route clear to the adjoining chamber. Halgeral motioned for those around her to make room and she backed away as Annael ducked through the low door. The room was much the same as the first, with carefully piled bedding. In the corner a tired-looking middle-aged woman suckled a child at her breast, her expression suspicious. Annael noticed the child’s skin was thin and lined with veins, before the mother drew the swaddling over the babe’s head to conceal it from his scrutiny.

  Casting his gaze across the other inhabitants of the chamber he realised what had been nagging at his subconscious since his arrival. Amongst their rags the Unworthy wore strange necklaces and fetishes, that seemed to be made up of bones and animal scraps. Beside the nursing mother another woman was soothing a child with a rattle made of bones linked with copper wire. These morbid ornamentations were not surprising in themselves – many cultures throughout the Imperium revered ancestors by making artefacts from the deceased, and the Dark Angels were not alone amongst the Adeptus Astartes to house the remains of their heroes in reliquaries beneath their fortress-monastery – but it was at odds with what he had seen of the other Unworthy. He had seen no such beads and bangles on the foes he had slain.

  Deciding the strange ways of these abandoned people were not his immediate concern, he turned his attention back to Halgeral. When she spoke there was a slight slur in her voice but she seemed the most lucid of all the adults.

  ‘Come, I show you our good works so that you may know we do as the Overlord commands,’ she said, turning away and gesturing for Annael to follow her.

  Treading carefully between the women and children, Annael stepped after Halgeral into the next chamber. Timber trestles and boards lined the far wall, on which were arranged several long knives and serrated-edged saws, their blades stained dark. The surfaces of the boards were likewise covered with patches of deep red and black – old blood that had soaked into the grain of the wood. Instantly aware of the potential weapons, Annael moved his hand to his holster though he did not draw his pistol.

  Halgeral ignored the blades and turned to the sealed door on the right. Above the crackle of the light fittings Annael could hear the hum of a motor close by, and when Halgeral opened the door a wave of chilled air washed past the Dark Angel, his suit monitors informing of a drop in the temperature by several degrees. Moisture clung to the inside of the door and rim as the cold air condensed on the metal. Halgeral stepped into the cool chamber with a smile and an enthusiastic wave.

  ‘Come, see,’ she said, beckoning again when Annael hesitated.

  Stooping at the doorway, the Space Marine stopped, appalled by what he saw.

  The room had been turned into a refrigeration unit by a machine set against the right-hand wall, spilling cold air from a coil of pipe that ran up to the ceiling. There were hooks hanging from the ceiling and on the hooks were carcasses, some intact, others dismembered.

  Headless human corpses.

  Shelves lined the other walls, stacked high with skulls, some flayed down to the bone, others with flesh and even scraps of hair still attached. Eyeless sockets stared at Annael as he absorbed the contents of the room further, seeing severed limbs, hands and feet piled neatly in one corner, flensed bones arranged in a metal crate opposite.

  Disgusted, Annael backed away from the door, turning to find that the room had filled with the Unworthy outcasts behind him. They were looking at him with hopeful expectation, some of them smiling, others averting their gazes.

  ‘The Unworthy are reborn through us, master,’ Halgeral said behind him. The full import of her words sank in, deepening the Dark Angel’s loathing. ‘Is it not as you wish?’

  ‘I am not your master!’ Annael snarled as he swung back towards the woman, drawing his pistol. ‘I am a brother of the Emperor’s Space Marines. This... This is an abomination!’

  Shocked, Halgeral fell to her knees, hands clasped to her chest. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  ‘Forgive us, Brother Annael. We only hope to do the Overlord’s bidding. If we are in error, please enlighten us. Is not the preparation correct? We will show the rites of rebirth! You will see, everything is as the Overlord commands.’

  ‘I am not an ally of the Overlord,’ Annael said grimly. ‘This station, your home, has been ruled over by a renegade from the Imperium. He has lied to you.’

  ‘No!’ This outburst came from behind Annael and he twisted to see an old man with a long beard and bald pate pushing his way through the crowd of Unworthy. There was madness in his eyes and saliva flew from his lips. ‘It is you that are the renegade! You defy the wishes of the Overlord!’

  The man was irate, but he did not approach close enough to present a threat, but continued his tirade out of arm’s reach. Annael stayed his hand for the moment, though every instinct in him was urging him to lash out, to destroy this coven of vile cannibals.

  ‘The Overlord warned us that others would come, seeking to despoil our paradise. That time is now. We must seek the wisdom of the Overlord.’

  There was a chorus of murmurs and calls echoing this sentiment.

  ‘Seek his wisdom.’

  ‘Let us hear his voice!’

  �
�The Overlord commands.’

  ‘Let his wishes be known to us.’

  ‘How?’ demanded Annael, stepping forward to seize the man by his tattered coat. ‘How do you receive the wisdom of the Overlord?’

  All eyes turned to the doorway opposite the refrigeration chamber, the Unworthy parting to form a path for Annael. He released his grip on the man and strode through the haggard crowd into the chamber he had seen earlier that he had assumed to be the food preparation area.

  There was a ladder on one wall leading up to a hatchway, granting access to the chambers stacked above. Three stoves were arranged in the centre of the room, a bubbling pot on one of them. Glancing inside, Annael recoiled as he saw several hands bobbing about in the froth, skin peeling away, fat melting into the water. Beyond the stoves was an upturned box on which a ragged cloth had been laid, and upon this were arranged various trinkets and skulls. A shrine of some kind, but it was not the fetishes that drew his attention. Behind the bones and glinting jewellery, propped against the wall, was a bulky box-like device, its casing much tarnished and dented. Seeing a grille and a handset he recognised it immediately as a portable communications device.

  ‘You are not to speak to the Overlord, intruder!’ said the angry man, hobbling past Annael to stand between the Space Marine and the grim altar. ‘His words are for our ears.’

  ‘Step aside,’ growled Annael, taking a stride. The man flinched but did not move from the Dark Angel’s path. ‘Step aside!’

  ‘You will not defile our temple, outsider.’