Dark Angels: Lords of Caliban

by Gav Thorpe

  Sammael couldn’t raise the Grand Master on the vox and he cast about the ruins for any sign of his commander. It seemed that he was the only Black Knight to have survived the Titan’s fusillade as he inspected the black-armoured bodies littering the debris.

  His autosenses picked up the thrum of an anti-grav motor off to the left. Something had veered off the street and broken through a plaster wall. Stepping through the gap, Sammael found Gideon’s jetbike half-buried beneath a collapsed ceiling, jerking and thrashing as its skim motors malfunctioned.

  An arm stuck out of the tons of masonry another couple of metres ­further on. Forging up the sloping rubble, Sammael attacked the pile with his hands, pulling off pieces of shattered rockcrete and dragging away sheets of plastek insulation.

  He revealed Gideon’s left arm and head. Neither moved. Doubling his efforts, Sammael dug out the Grand Master’s torso, tossing aside a chunk of masonry that weighed almost as much as himself, his armour boosting adrenaline-fuelled strength.

  Gideon stirred a little, fingers flexing, but Sammael knew that his mentor was far from well. There was thick blood splashed across the sharp stone and the masterfully crafted artificer armour of the Grand Master was cracked and buckled in dozens of places.

  The hand flapped uselessly across Gideon’s faceplate. One side of the helm was heavily dented. Realising his commander’s intent, Sammael bent down and turned the helm, breaking the seal. With a hiss of air, he pulled the helmet free, revealing Gideon’s bruised and blood-soaked face. Pieces of his skull showed through the wound in the side of his head and his ear was nothing but a gristly smear along his jaw.

  The Grand Master slowly nodded and forced a smile, showing blood-flecked teeth.

  ‘I knew you had survived. The brothers were right, you were born for greatness.’

  ‘What are your orders, Grand Master?’ asked the Black Knight. ‘Do we continue the attack or withdraw?’

  ‘I cannot say,’ whispered Gideon. Groaning with pain, he freed his right hand from the rubble, presenting the Raven Sword to Sammael. ‘The company is yours to lead.’

  With that final effort, Grand Master Gideon, veteran of six centuries of war, died.

  ‘No! I am right. You chose me.’ Sammael checked his retreat and brought his sword up to deflect his foe’s next attack. He was surprised to see that it was not a chainsword in his grip, but the hilt of the fabled Raven Sword.

  Gideon’s tattered face twisted into a hate-filled snarl as the dead Grand Master launched a flurry of attacks.

  ‘You are not worthy to bear that sword,’ Gideon insisted, raining blow after blow against the meteoric iron of the blade. ‘Too rash, too clumsy, too weak. They are all better than you. Impatient, ill-disciplined upstart!’

  The words had lost their venom. Sammael remembered the look in Gideon’s eyes as he had presented the Raven Sword as his final act. It had been relief. Relief that for Gideon the Hunt was over. He had been a good Master of the Ravenwing, but it was not the fate of warriors to die in peace. Sammael had seen something else in his mentor’s gaze, something that now leant strength to his sword arm.

  Pride. Pride that it was Sammael who had lived to take the blade. It had been Gideon’s intent, surely, to name Sammael his successor in better times. It was not happenstance, it was not luck that Sammael had been the one chosen by Gideon, nurtured by the Grand Master for many years.

  ‘I earned this,’ Sammael whispered. ‘It is mine.’

  The Raven Sword gleamed as Sammael countered dead Gideon’s next blow. The Black Knight grabbed the hilt in both hands and twisted his wrists to deliver a riposte. The top of the blade sliced across the forehead of his dead mentor, spilling not blood but maggots and filth. Sammael felt nothing as he sliced again, cutting open his foe from throat to ear.

  Still Gideon would not fall. The reanimated corpse dribbled thick blood from rot-ravaged lips and lunged forward, seeking to pierce Sammael’s chest. Sammael moved, allowing the blade to penetrate his shoulder, but in doing so he opened up the space for a swing at his opponent. With one last slash of the Raven Sword, Sammael cut Gideon’s head from the shoulders.

  Still the thing was not wholly dead. From the ground it spat its hate at Sammael.

  ‘Tell me, coward, how you despoiled my legacy! How did you survive when I did not?’

  ‘I was no coward, nor braver than you,’ Sammael replied. ‘Just better.’

  Sammael connected his vox to the command broadcast via Gideon’s downed jetbike. He took a deep breath and then issued his statement.

  ‘This is Sammael. Master Gideon is dead. The rest of the Black Knights are dead. I am assuming command of the Second Company. Orders to follow.’

  Sammael’s priority was to get mobile again so he could see for himself what was happening. The Titan had directed its attention elsewhere and he was able to scour the rubble for a functioning steed. He recognised the markings as the bike that had belonged to Redevere. There was no sign of the former owner beneath the tumbled ruins.

  Mounted and moving again, he pieced together what had happened from the bike’s auspex records. The Titan must have detected the energy signature of the Black Knights’ plasma talons, and calculated that they were the greatest threat despite the diversionary attacks. It had deliberately exposed itself to the assault, luring Gideon into the charge before turning to fire its gatling blaster.

  Sammael recalled his last question to Gideon, one that he now faced. Did they stay or withdraw?

  The Titan still dominated Vespengard and if the Ravenwing exited the city it would take a lot of effort and lives to retake it. The Titan was really the only thing stopping the company controlling Vespengard, nothing else the enemy possessed was fast enough or powerful enough to keep the Ravenwing contained. Weighed against that was the fact that it was a Titan and one assault had already failed.

  The first matter was to steady the company following the recent setbacks. Issuing his orders in the same clipped, calm tone he had heard from Gideon so many times, Sammael started to wield the Ravenwing as if it was his own, trusting to the squadron leaders to interpret and carry out his orders according to their individual situations. The Ravenwing prided themselves on their independence of thought and Sammael was not going to fight against that nature.

  Land Speeders and aircraft concentrated their attack runs on the Titan, keeping it occupied in the central part of the city. They were fast enough to elude its counter-fire, and the enemy still had not moved in other units to support the war engine against these attacks. It seemed they thought it was so powerful that it could fight anything by itself, but they were wrong. Sammael would show them just how wrong.

  Sammael brought in Darkshrouds to cover the movements of the bike and attack bike squadrons. Under the utter blackness of the ancient shroud generators he brought the company together in the warren of streets, warehouses and marshalling yards that dominated the western part of the city.

  Although utter destruction had been prevented, there were few facts to lighten Sammael’s mood. He had received word from the Implacable Justice in orbit that the battle-barge had detected two more traitor vessels emerging from the cover of an asteroid field. There would be no orbital support for the moment while the ship engaged these new foes.

  Thirty per cent of the company’s warriors were dead or too badly injured to fight. The two remaining Thunderhawks were used to evacuate them from the contested city. A similar proportion of machines were also destroyed or damaged, but a hasty reorganisation brought some semblance of structure back to the force, matching functioning mounts with capable riders. Sammael now appreciated fully the many days of training he had undergone on bike, Land Speeder, attack bike and aircraft and the versatility of the company’s tactics proved its worth now.

  Concentrating on the grander strategy, Sammael left it to his subordinates to implement the improvised reorganisation. His
time was better spent drafting fresh orders and assimilating the latest intelligence reports from the Land Speeder recon sweeps and the last orbital augur scan.

  When order had been restored, Sammael made the decision he had been delaying for the best part of a day: to fight or leave.

  To admit defeat, to preserve life only to expect others to sacrifice theirs for the victory abandoned, was not in Sammael’s mind. It would be an insult to the Dark Angels that had already made the gravest sacrifice. Worse, it would be a condemnation of Gideon’s decision to attack – a condemnation that Sammael did not feel.

  Gideon’s reasoning had been right even if his execution had ultimately proved to be flawed. Sammael would now perfect the plan.

  The attack began with Darkshrouds circling the city centre to come at the enemy from the north, moving as though they were screening an attacking force. At the same time Land Speeders and attack bikes approached from the east, fighting their way through some of the more lightly contested streets.

  Both manoeuvres were a diversion.

  Sammael and a few of the company’s best riders roared towards the Titan through the blazing remains of the central power station, turned to a ruin by the Titan’s bombardments. Here plasma reactors and burning power lines masked the energy signature of the half a dozen bikes approaching at speed. Only the best could negotiate the tangle of molten ferrocrete and shattered plastek, the undulating turns of roadway and cratered earth. Where Gideon had launched a massed attack, Sammael sought victory with just a handful of warriors. It was counter-intuitive to take on the Titan with less firepower, but it was the only way Sammael could see that the Titan’s sensors could be fooled.

  Their timing was perfect. The Titan was turning to the east, moving away from the feint attack in the north, just as Sammael and his squadron burst from cover.

  Static blurred and fizzed at Sammael’s autosenses and his skin crawled as he crashed through the half-seen boundary of the Titan’s void shield. Point defence turrets of heavy stubbers and autocannons opened fire from the body of the Titan but the bikes were coming too fast for the weapons to track, their fire trailing across the pocked ground behind the charging riders.

  Forming a line behind Sammael, shells screamed past just centimetres away, and the squadron raced along just a couple of metres from the Titan’s leg, riding one handed. They threw melta-charges as they passed, the magneto-clamps of the anti-armour bombs attaching to the Titan’s artificial skin.

  A bestial roar of annoyance split the sky as Sammael peeled away. More turret fire cracked the air around the commander as he sent the detonation signal.

  Sammael turned to see the chain of explosions tearing through the armour and struts of the possessed Titan’s lower leg. Oil and ichor poured from the wound like blood while the half-organic matter within fractured, toppling the Titan sideways.

  A plaintive wail of war sirens heralded the Titan’s fall as it ploughed into a burning factory and disappeared in a plume of dust and fire.

  A moment later an explosion like a star being born tore out the heart of the city, levelling buildings as a dome of plasma rose into the air. A half-circle of golden energy burned itself into Sammael’s memory.

  The vision faded as Sammael staggered back, looking to steady himself against the balustrade. Instead of carved stone, he felt his spine touching wood, and as his vision cleared he found himself staring into a single golden eye.

  Reality resolved from his swirling thoughts. The cell reasserted itself into his conscious mind, along with the chairs and the table.

  Ezekiel leaned back and nodded, finally breaking his gaze.

  ‘The test is passed,’ the Librarian announced.

  Sammael shook his head, trying to clear the last vestiges of the nightmare that had been visited upon him by the psyker. His eye caught the look of Azrael, who was standing to one side as he had been all this time. Sammael’s memory, his real memory, welled up like a spring, filling in the last few minutes; he had not moved from the chair the whole time.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Azrael. He smiled, the expression full of warmth and pride. ‘Gideon’s choice was wise. You are worthy of becoming Grand Master.’

  ‘I did what I had to do. I did what I had been trained to do. What I had been created to do. I killed them. I fought as hard as I could against my enemies. I focused my lethal attention on them to the exclusion of all other concerns until they were destroyed.

  ‘They came at us, in armour chipped and cracked by countless previous battles. Veterans of war, their anger and hatred honed to a razor’s edge. The sky burned and the ground buckled beneath their rage as they tried to wipe us out. No price was too high to pay for our deaths.

  ‘They wore our blood as a trophy. It glistened on their black armour and slicked their bared silver blades. With eyes of red they gazed upon us and thought nothing of the slaughter. Heartless, merciless, deadly. They hungered for the kill. For our lives. Nothing would stop them.

  ‘The thunder of their bombardment continued and the fury of lasers and tracers lit the night sky as bright as day. Such a war-tumult I have never known. Not even during the misguided wrath of the Great Crusade was a world so wracked by such vigorous ire.

  ‘Beyond the red and blue and green beams that criss-crossed the sky the stars themselves paled beside the detonations of the continuing battle in orbit. The hulls of starships fell as comets. Fragments of armour descended in fiery hail, hissing and burning. Where they landed, the ancient forests around our cities blazed.

  ‘None could be spared to quell the spreading flames. The arcologies were wreathed in the smoke, those within choked by the fumes. Hundreds of thousands suffocated, lungs seared by hot smog. There could be no evacuation. Outside was as lethal as within. Thousands more died in the panicked stampedes. We watched our homes reduced to ashes.

  ‘Such were the blessings of Terra in that anointed age.

  ‘The vox-channels were a-howl with the cries of the dying and the wounded. Even those of us hardened by centuries of battle could make no sense of the anarchy. Nobody was in command.’

  A face from nightmare loomed out of the darkness. It was a skull sheathed in flowing blood, sparks of golden fire for eyes. When it spoke, the sparks became intense flames, searing his soul. The voice echoed inside his head, coming from within.

  How did you kill them? The attack. Remember the attack. I am the key to the prison of your guilt. Repent of your crimes and know peace.+

  Memories fluttered to the surface and he could not resist the urge to speak, to give voice as witness to the terrible events.

  ‘Amongst the plasma and torpedoes fell drop pods, filled with warriors thirsting for blood. The outer brochs and ravelins had been silenced, reduced to slag. The capital still stood proud and tall amongst the ruins of our lands. The Gorgon-forged aegis-ward was still operational. As our foes’ anger fell upon it the sound was as of a myriad of roaring dragons. Two gunships, shadows against the darkness. They saw us, our thermic signatures stark to their artificial eyes. We sought shelter amongst the broken keeps and shattered curtain walls.

  ‘The flare of their missiles cut the darkness. Nemethiel died then, torn in half by the strike. Galderian lost a leg and we had to abandon him. He insisted and we had no choice but to comply. His bolter rang out in defiance until another missile struck.

  ‘We sought shelter within an orillon at the Bronze Gate. Once we had paraded on the training grounds east of that immense bastion. Now the open mustering field had become a cratered, plasma-scorched wasteland. The five thousand banners that had lined the field had been toppled. The mighty stands where thirty thousand cheering brothers had watched the jousts and duels were charred splinters and puddles of molten steel.

  ‘It was temporary respite. The gunships knocked, their battle­cannon shells an insistent request for entry. The Bronze Gate was sterner yet than their attacks, wit
h deep foundations and thick walls. In time they disgorged their bloodthirsty cargo, who set to the tower portals with lascutters and melta charges.

  ‘We welcomed them with lascannon and bolter. The crackle of Hereth’s tempest lance illuminated our hunters with an azure flare before shattering the armour of the first through the breach. Such a storm was our defiance that the assault relented and the enemy withdrew.

  ‘And then the horror was unleashed, as the gunships pounded our position with phosphex shells. The deadly purple fire lapped at the gate tower and streamed through the breach. It was drawn to us, filled with a disturbing hate of its own.

  ‘We fell back again, but it followed, spreading, pooling, searching for us, filling every room with a fire that gave off no smoke. If I had doubted it before, I did not doubt then that our enemies were truly vile. They were possessed of no emotion at all and showed no compunction in the deployment of such hideous death.

  ‘But for the grace of the universe, we would have died. A terrible death, agonising, lingering, as the hungry flames ate through our armour and devoured our flesh.

  ‘Who could ever say we were not right to defend ourselves against such horror?’

  The face loomed larger, shifting, growing flesh over the bone. A monstrous wolfshead it became, snarling, breath as hot as the crawling phosphex, its jaws dripping fire like saliva. Its golden eyes reflected the prisoner’s bloodied, scarred face. Yet in that reflection he was twisted, eyes missing, flesh torn even more, weeping. It was not a mirror of what was, but a reflection of what was to come.

  A lie! Justice was meted out. A fate you deserved. What happened before the gunships? What had you done to deserve such retribution? We will unlock the truth, you and I.+

  ‘Nothing!’

  He became aware of a pain, a dull ache. It nagged at him, like a rat gnawing at the base of his skull.