Red Fury

by James Swallow

  Turcio bent and gathered a thickness of the strange, ever-present dust between the thumb and forefinger of his glove. He rolled the granules back and forth; they crumbled still more, became a thin paste. A dry smell, the air of ancient museums and long-sealed tombs, came from his fingers. “This sand is everywhere. Where does it come from? There are no deserts for hundreds of kilometres in any direction.”

  A shadow fell across him and he looked up. “Bones,” said the Flesh Tearer. “This is all that’s left of them.”

  “This is… human remains?”

  A nod. “The Companitas led the populace who were foolish enough to defy them into rendering plants. Then they did the same with those who complied. The grindings of the bones, they set them into airburst warheads and exploded them over the cities. And so, the dust.” The one who had identified himself as Roan leaned closer, gesturing at the brand on Turcio’s face; an Imperial aquila with its wings furled and downward-pointing. “Why do you wear that?” The Flesh Tearer was standing deliberately close to the Blood Angel, invading his personal space.

  Seated on a fallen stone buttress, Turcio displayed not the slightest hint of annoyance at the blunt question. “It is mark of penitence, cousin,” he explained.

  “Penitence?” Roan repeated. “What failure did you commit to require such atonement? Were you a coward upon the field of battle?”

  The words had barely left Roan’s mouth before Corvus and Puluo were on their feet, the insult burning hard in their eyes. Kayne and Ajir warily moved to follow them, but Turcio waved them back. Still he did not seem angered; only weary. “I made… an error of judgement. I believed in something that was revealed to be a lie.”

  “Among my brethren, errors of judgement result in death.”

  Turcio nodded. “And in mine as well.” He glanced at Corvus and the other Space Marine gave an imperceptible nod. “But by the Emperor’s Grace, we have been granted forgiveness. Now I live my life in the will to be seen worthy of it.”

  Something in Turcio’s careful manner tempered the Flesh Tearer’s aspect; a moment ago, he had been spoiling to goad them. Turcio’s steady honesty made that will vanish. “What… What did you believe?” Roan asked.

  “Does it matter?” A lifetime of fatigue filled his reply.

  After a moment, Roan gave a grudging smile. “Huh. Despite your finery and airs, the Blood Angels are not so faultless after all. Who could have thought it?”

  “No man is,” said Turcio. “But in the striving, we seek the Emperor’s path.”

  “Then in that, cousin, we are not dissimilar.” Roan twisted the cuff of his right gauntlet and removed it. There, on the skin of his forearm, was a brand of similar dimension to Turcio’s.

  The Flesh Tearer threw him a nod and walked away.

  “You should have struck the braggart to the ground for what he said,” Ajir fumed, his dusky skin darkening.

  “And what would that have proven, brother?” Turcio turned to face the other Blood Angel. “That the men of our Chapter have no more self-control than a Space Wolf?”

  “Better that than to trumpet our failures before our successors.” Ajir shot a look at Corvus. “At least have the decency to hide your shame.”

  Corvus removed his helmet; his brow bore the same mark as Turcio’s. “I am not ashamed,” he retorted. Corvus’ narrow, canine face was set hard. “We have proven our fealty, twice over. The rites of penitence made our contrition plain.”

  “Perhaps,” said Ajir. “But I have yet to be convinced.”

  “Ajir.” Puluo spoke his name and all of them turned to face him. “What you think doesn’t matter. Sergeant chose them. End of story.”

  “I suppose it is.” But Ajir’s tone did not match his words.

  Seth read through the first few paragraphs of the parchment before he released a thin sigh through his teeth and bunched it in his hands. “My honoured cousin has lost none of his verbosity, it would seem.” The Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers came forward, and Rafen found he could not look away. Seth’s face was a chronicle of injuries so fearsome that it seemed a wonder he could still speak. The scars Rafen had observed before raked across him, right to left, doubtless where the claw of some primordial creature had struck. The Blood Angel had seen picts of the Flesh Tearer home world, a feral sphere called Cretacia that teemed with violent saurian wildlife; the Tearers were said to hunt the beasts there, unarmoured and weaponless, as some kind of sport. Seth sported a disc-shaped implant that covered a good quarter of his skull, some arcane form of augmetic fused to the naked bone. Here was a man who showed all he was upon the surface, with no artifice possible. The Chapter Master’s presence was at once as dominating as Rafen’s Lord Dante, but with an entirely different energy of self behind it.

  “Rafen,” he said, “We shall cut to the meat of this, you and I. Tell me what it is that Dante demands, in direct and simple terms. I do not wish to wade through a page of florid text to find it.”

  “As you wish, Lord Seth,” said the sergeant. He took a breath. “Commander Dante, Lord of the Blood Angels and Inheritor of the IX Legion Astartes, calls you to a conclave of the greatest and utmost moment.”

  “A meeting?” Gorn frowned. “He summons the Flesh Tearers? To what end?” New suspicion flashed behind his eyes. “We are not at the beck and call of—”

  Seth silenced him with a look. Rafen went on. “To be clear, brother-captain, this is not a meeting but an assembly of the Sons of Sanguinius. A gathering of all, sir.”

  The Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers raised an eyebrow. “Every successor?”

  “As many as possible, lord. Even now as we speak, battle-brothers of my Chapter range to the points of the etheric compass, carrying the same message to the Masters of the Angels Encarmine, the Blood Drinkers… To each Chapter that holds a lineage to the Great Angel.” He paused, dry-throated. The scope of Dante’s intent still struck him as audacious as it had when he first learned of it Seth glanced at the parchment again. “A representative contingent,” he read aloud, “of men so empowered to make policy that will be followed to the letter by their Chapter’s brethren.” He smiled thinly. “In other words, the Chapter Masters or as near as damn it.”

  “Aye,” repeated Rafen. “As you know, we have a ship in deep orbit, the Tycho. It is ready to accept you, lord, and your party for our return voyage to Baal.”

  “You’ll take that voyage alone, brother-sergeant,” said Seth, offering him the parchment. “I have no intention of answering to this summons. Dante ought to know better.” He took in the hololithic screen and the charts scattered over nearby tables. “I am in the middle of prosecuting a war here. Eritaen may be at the arse-end of the Emperor’s Sight, but it is still an Imperial world and still subject to Imperial law!” The Chapter Master’s voice rose into a growl. “I won’t disengage from a campaign simply because my cousin wishes to hold a… A family reunion.”

  “The conclave is much more than that,” Rafen replied. “Forgive me, lord, but I fear you do not grasp the gravity of the situation. A gathering of this nature has not been called in my master’s lifetime, not since the thirty-seventh millennia and the Pact of Kursa.”

  “I know my history,” Seth replied, dismissing him, “just as Dante knows his battle doctrine. Go now. Perhaps I may be able to spare a party of men as a token representation.”

  “It must be you,” insisted the Blood Angel. “Those were my orders and I will not return to Baal with them unfulfilled!”

  “Is that so?” Gorn took a warning step toward him.

  Seth waved Gorn away. “Tell me, then. Brother Rafen. What is so damned important that Dante would send you to clutter my day, and have me drop all that I am doing?”

  Rafen’s throat went dry as he said the next words. “The conclave will decide the future of the Blood Angels. What is spoken of there will determine if my Chapter survives to see the dawn of the next millennium.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Through the glass eye of the
frigate Tycho’s observatorium, Rafen watched as Eritaen turned and fell away to port as the ship broke orbit. Above and to starboard, the dark dagger of the strike cruiser Brutus watched them leave, the saw-tooth disc of silver across her flank catching the blue of the local star. Laser pennants on the other vessel flared briefly in salute; a marked contrast to the sullen disinterest the vessel’s crew had shown on Tycho’s arrival a few days earlier.

  Rafen heard Turcio enter the chamber behind him, but did not turn to greet his comrade. The Space Marine cleared his throat. “Reporting,” he began.

  “Go on,” Rafen prompted.

  “Lord Seth and his delegation are secure on the accommodation deck. His officer, Gorn, has made some demands…”

  “See to them all,” said the sergeant. “They are our honoured guests now. They will be treated as such.”

  “Aye, sir, as you command.” Turcio paused a moment. “I also have word from the bridge. The shipmaster informs me our Navigators are in harness and preparing to make space for Baal. Much of what he said to me is beyond my ken, I will admit, but the gist is that the etheric currents this far out along the galactic plane are less cluttered than in toward the coreward planets. Once we enter the warp, we should make swift time to the home world.”

  Rafen nodded. “Good. The quicker we discharge our orders, the more comfortable I will be.” He took a long breath. The confrontation with Seth had troubled him more than he was willing to admit.

  “Not a man among us would disagree,” noted Turcio. Once more, he paused, and Rafen could sense he was framing a question.

  “You have something to ask?”

  Turcio gestured with his augmetic limb. “The matter of Lord Seth and the Flesh Tearers… In all honesty, brother-sergeant, I had believed that this entire mission was nought but a hiding to nothing, that we would meet him and return home without him. I assumed that Seth would deny Commander Dante’s summons.”

  “He did,” said Rafen. “You were not wrong.”

  “But yet he is here aboard this ship and we travel for Baal. How was he convinced otherwise?” Turcio’s brow furrowed. “If I may know it, What did you say to Seth that so swayed him?”

  “I did as I was ordered,” Rafen replied, turning away from the window. “I told him the full and complete truth.”

  “Everything?”

  Rafen nodded. “Aye, brother. Every bloody moment.”

  “Was he… angry?”

  “No. If anything, I think Seth may have been saddened.” He shook his head. “The man is of such dour character, I find it hard to read him.” After a moment, the sergeant looked up and met Turcio’s gaze. “Tell me, how is the character of my men at this moment?”

  “At the ready, lord,” said the other Space Marine. “As always.”

  “Indeed? After we left the Flesh Tearer forward base, I thought I detected a… a tension in the air.”

  Turcio took his time over the answer. “I saw nothing of remark, sir.”

  Rafen sensed there was more, but left it at that. “Very well. You are dismissed.” The other warrior bowed slightly and exited, leaving the Blood Angel alone in the chamber once again. Rafen drifted back to the window and placed his hand upon the armourglass, losing himself in contemplation of the void beyond.

  Soon they would be in the skies over Baal, and then walking the hallowed corridors of the fortress-monastery once again.

  His thoughts darkened, and in his reverie Rafen remembered the arching walls of the monastery’s audience chamber reaching up around him; and fresh in his thoughts was his name at Dante’s command.

  “Brother-Sergeant Rafen, you may enter,” said the Chapter Master, beckoning the Space Marine from the tall copper doors. Rafen gave a deep bow before he did so, his robes pooling on the stone floor beneath him. Aside from the men of the honour guard—and of these there were only a pair, to satisfy protocol but little else—every Blood Angel in the chamber was without his armour, dressed instead in the Chapter’s devotional robes of red and black.

  He had been here once before, soon after the wounded battle-barge Europae had made orbit, returning to lick her wounds at the orbital dock in the aftermath of the battle at the shrineworld, Sabien. On that day, he had felt a conflicted mix of emotion; anger and sadness, fear and elation, a torrent of senses that still echoed in his heart all these months later. This place, this chamber was not the most ornate or expansive of those in the halls of the monastery, and yet it had seen much history throughout the years of the Chapter’s life. The death of Dante’s predecessor, Chapter Master Kadeus; the breaking of the starbow; the exile of Leonatos; all these dramas and more had been played out in this room.

  The far side of the hall was dominated by a raised stage carved out of ebon basaltic stone from the mines on Baal IX. Great golden chalices that mimicked the form of the sacred Red Grail, as tall as a Terminator, stood to either side, blood-red flames rumbling quietly in the cups. There was little other illumination, save for the sullen glow of a few biolume floaterglobes. The fires threw jumping shadows across the walls; outside it was night, but the two moons had yet to rise and cast their umber light through the stained glass windows in the walls.

  Banners of varying antiquity hung from the rafters. Many of them were old war pennants from campaigns long since ended, others devotional in nature bearing script from the Imperial Credo or the Book of the Lords. Rafen resisted the temptation to look up and examine them in detail. He had duty here, and it was expected that he would be circumspect. That he was even allowed to be in the room to observe this meeting was a rarity. He did not wish to do anything that might throw doubt on his presence here, not even the tiniest breach in protocol.

  A cluster of men stood in a loose semi-circle before the black stone stage. Above them, upon a tall-backed throne made from laser-cut rock of similar hue, sat the Chapter Master himself. He was leaning forward, one hand beneath his patrician chin, his flawless face set in deep thought. Dante’s robes collected about him, and by way of adornment he had only a thick golden collar that fell to his sternum. A rendering of the Blood Angel sigil was picked out in platinum and red jade. For a brief moment, Dante’s gaze met Rafen’s and the Astartes found himself nodding to his lord, trying not to misstep. Eleven hundred years of experience lay behind those dark, lidded eyes. His cool wisdom seemed almost a palpable thing, as if it radiated off Dante. Rafen’s mouth went dry; once again, here he was, a line warrior in the presence of some of the greatest of Sanguinius’ sons. Dante was unquestionably the ultimate among them, but many of the men in this room were legends in their own right.

  He glanced around. Upon the stage, at Dante’s sides, sat Mephiston and Corbulo. The two of them were studies in opposites. Mephiston, the man they called the Lord of Death, Chief Librarian of the Chapter and a psyker of near-matchless power, was a tall and imposing figure. In this light, he appeared wraith-like, his angular face set in an inward focus. Mephiston sensed Rafen’s scrutiny and gave him a slight nod, placing only a fraction of his diamond-hard gaze upon the Space Marine. Rafen returned the gesture, fighting down a sense of ill-ease. He had shared a battlefield with the Lord of Death on Sabien, and then as now, he could not escape the sense that Mephiston saw into him as easily as if he were spun from glass.

  Rafen broke eye-contact first and glanced at Dante’s other advisor; Corbulo of the Grail. The Apothecary’s robes were a splash of stark contrast, the spotless white lined with trim of red. The highest of the Chapter’s sanguinary priests, Corbulo presented a grim and lined aspect beneath a shock of straw-coloured hair. Rafen had never met him, but he knew him; every Blood Angel knew Corbulo, the bearer of the Red Grail. He alone had the honour of stewardship over that most sacred of relics, carrying it into battle on Dante’s commands. The Red Grail carried in it a measure of the blood of the primarch himself, so the Chapter’s mythos went, and in echo of Corbulo’s charge every sanguinary priest of lower rank carried a simulacrum of the great cup, a symbol with which to rally troops upon th
e field of conflict.

  These three were all aspects of the Blood Angels made flesh and bone. Wisdom and nobility, ferocity and strength, fealty and majesty. They were the spectrum of the blood that sang in Rafen’s veins, and once again he was struck by the great privilege he had been done by the grant of access to their presence.

  He found himself a place at the foot of a tattered banner praising the Liberation of the Nine Sisters and surveyed the other men in the gathering: the Chaplain Argastes; First Captain Lothan; Caecus, the Apothecae Majoris, and all the others. He was indeed in esteemed company here. Hidden in the sleeves of his robes, Rafen’s hands bunched into fists. He felt as if he did not deserve to breathe the same air as such noble heroes and learned men.

  Argastes led them all in a brief prayer to the Great Angel and the Emperor, asking both of them for clarity and fortitude in the days to come. Then Dante rose and every other warrior bowed. The assembly came to the ready as the Chapter Master bid them to their feet.

  He glanced at Mephiston, and the psyker nodded back to his liege-lord. “The psi-wards are in place, my lord. What we say and do in the room will not be sensed by any agent of the warp.”

  “Just so,” said the Chapter Master. “For what we speak of now may well be a matter of the greatest crisis to befall our legion since the murder of our primarch, the Emperor protect his soul.”

  A mutter of concern crossed the chamber. Lothan’s open, pale face registered uncertainty. “The matter of the…” He shot a look at Rafen. “The insurrection was dealt with, was it not? I had thought that threat passed.”

  “We have only exchanged one threat for another,” noted Corbulo.

  Dante gave a solemn nod. “Aye. It is not the incident that we deal with now, kinsmen, but the Shockwave from its passing. Like the wake of a razor-wind, the damage that lingers behind may kill us by inches where the maelstrom failed.”