Dark Angels: Lords of Caliban

by Gav Thorpe

  Belial keeps his thoughts from his features as Telemenus comes to attention. The Grand Master touches his fingers to his belt, a moment of self-restraint, feeling the three large keys that are symbols of his Inner Circle duties, until his hand finds the pommel of the famed Sword of Silence, one of the three Heavenfall blades forged from meteoric stone in the Chapter’s ancient past. Belial allows his displeasure to show as he glares at Telemenus.

  ‘You are tardy.’

  ‘Brother Seraphiel had parting words for me, Grand Master.’

  ‘Did I ask for explanation?’

  Taken aback by the question, Telemenus shakes his head in reply. Belial’s brow furrows deeply.

  ‘Speak when spoken to.’

  Telemenus considers this. ‘No, Grand Master, you did not ask for explanation.’

  The Thunderhawk’s engines build to a roar and as the gunship takes off dust and hot air wash over the First Company’s newest warriors. Telemenus’s eyes are locked on Belial, seeking approval perhaps, or fearing further condemnation. Belial shifts his gaze to Daellon, and then to Menthius. The latter is heavily bandaged, still recovering from the wounds suffered in their latest battle.

  Each of them is a fine warrior, their records speak as much. Yet they have come to the Deathwing under a cloud, disobeying orders and coming face-to-face with the Fallen, forcing Brother Seraphiel’s­ hand. They will learn how to fight with Tactical Dreadnought armour and they will recite the litanies and rites of the First Company, but will they have the heart to do what has to be done, when the needs of the Hunt and the Chapter are at odds with the needs of the Imperium?

  It is a question that cannot be answered, not hypothetically at least. They will either be capable or not, and only the experience of being placed in such a situation will provide the truth. It is the same unknowable quality that the Inner Circle demands of its members. Loyalty does not have to be unquestioning, despite the efforts and rants of Asmodai, but first and foremost it has to be to the Inner Circle and the Chapter. Belial has long harboured doubts about the direction the Chapter is heading and his desire to hunt down Ghazghkull is fuelled in no small part by a longing to engage in a straightforward, honourable act that has uncontested benefit. Too long he has been forced to tread a line between oaths to the Dark Angels and protection of the Imperium; it would be a blessing to achieve victory without any tarnish.

  Belial realises he is putting Azrael in one of those difficult circumstances. The Supreme Grand Master must have considered, in private, the possibility of exterminatus, not just of Piscina but other worlds. While it remains private speculation, the tacit agreement not to discuss such a subject has held the status quo. Belial’s request has forced the issue into the open, demanding that Azrael take a view, and that in turn means that the others of the Inner Council will be forced to back or argue against the proposal. On a matter of such importance, a potential schism threatens, unwittingly instigated by Belial and encouraged by Asmodai. Whether Azrael refuses Belial’s plan or accepts it, there are likely to be unforeseen consequences. The thought sours his mood even further.

  Belial has offered a solution, but ultimately it is not his choice. Does that make it easier for him to suggest wiping out millions of lives, the final responsibility belonging to Azrael? If the Supreme Grand Master had asked the same question of him, would Belial be so sure in his arguments knowing that the debate was of practical importance and not just one of principle?

  Does one of these warriors standing before him have the same kind of focus and attention to duty that might one day see them elevated to the highest rank of the Dark Angels? Is Belial looking at a future Supreme Grand Master?

  From what he sees, Belial doubts it, but there has never been a new addition to the Deathwing that did not initially disappoint him, even those that have later earned his respect and become heroes of the Chapter.

  He stares at Menthius.

  ‘Have the Apothecaries cleared you for combat?’

  Menthius starts to tremble and casts his gaze groundwards, earning a concerned glance from Telemenus. ‘No, Grand Master.’

  ‘If you cannot fight you cannot train.’ Belial crosses his arms, revealing the tattoos on his skin, from shoulder to elbow, lines of miniscule text. Belial notices Telemenus’s interest and steps in front of him, raising and flexing his massive bicep so that the Space Marine can see more clearly what is written there. There are more on his chest that Telemenus cannot see, almost hidden against the dark sub-dermal layer of Belial’s black carapace. They are the most important reminders, close to his heart.

  They are lines from the Liturgies of Battle and other texts, scribed with a neat, rounded script by Belial himself. Some are repeated over and over, lessons to be heeded again and again, others written only once as solitary reminders of a moment’s oversight or error. Belial reads in Telemenus’s expression the curiosity that has brought him to the Deathwing, but the battle-brother at least has the good sense and discipline this time to hold his tongue.

  Belial decides to indulge them, a morsel of information about their new master for them to savour but also a warning if they are clever enough to heed it.

  ‘Lessons not to be forgotten.’

  The Grand Master turns away and starts towards the door, speaking without looking. ‘Brother Daellon, you will report to quarters and await further instruction. Brother Menthius, you will report to the apothecarion for further treatment. Brother Telemenus…’

  Belial turns back, his gaze as hard as flint as he looks at his newest warrior.

  ‘Brother Telemenus, you will report to the Chaplains for two days penance and contemplation for the disre­spect you have shown me. Use the time to reflect on the necessity of making apology when you keep a superior waiting. You may also like to think on the importance of first impressions. I will be watching you closely.’

  The three Space Marines reply in unison, but Belial’s thoughts are already moving to other more pressing matters.

  ‘Yes, Grand Master.’

  He leaves, the three battle-brothers fully expunged from his thoughts the moment he steps through the bulkhead. The Inner Circle awaits, and with them Belial’s and possibly Piscina’s future.

  With a bellow, the Beast erupted from the hill of ferrocrete and brick, scattering debris like a detonating warhead. The ork’s armour was dented and broken in many places and blood trickled from his left leg, mixing with dark fluid that spilled from a severed hydraulic link. The warlord’s gun arm hung uselessly, trapped inside the broken exo-armour, and he had a slight limp as he dragged itself out of the rubble and started towards me.

  Even wounded, the Beast looked a daunting prospect in hand-to-hand combat, but I could see no other option as the warlord ploughed through the remnants of the warehouse, bellowing challenges or threats, or perhaps both.

  The whole ork invasion would lose impetus if the warlord was killed. The only way to be sure would be to drive my blade through his heart, slash open his throat, or perhaps decapitate him. I did not relish the prospect of a close quarters encounter, but if I withdrew now the Beast would confront some other element of the Dark Angels force or the Piscinan Free Militia, meaningless deaths that could be avoided if I stood strong.

  And, I regret to say, its dismissive attitude at the outset of the encounter still nagged at me and I wanted Ghazghkull to know he had been bested by me in the moments before he died. Foolish sentiment, arrogance, that has not claimed me since.

  The importance of this duty lent strength to my limbs as I raised the plasma pistol and fired, shooting as the warlord slid down a rubble pile a few metres away. The shot melted a spray of cables sticking out of the already-defunct gun, sending up a shower of sparks and molten metal, but there would be no second shot before we met in hand-to-hand combat.

  There were no snarls or posturing, and I held my silence. I could read the simple intent to kill in the creat
ure’s eyes, and the same was in my mind. I took up my blade in both hands as the greenskin broke into a charge, grunting with each tread, power claw raised for the first blow. I kept to the roadway, secure footing beneath my boots, and at the last moment stepped to the left and brought up the Sword of Silence.

  My blade slashed across the Beast’s upraised arm, ringing from the lightning-wreathed power claw. Energy flared as I moved past, turning my wrist to send the tip of the sword whipping across the warlord’s knee. Pneumatic pipes parted, but the Beast was not hobbled yet.

  Ghazghkull’s claw crashed down on my backpack. At the most needed moment the archaic technologies of the displacer field failed to activate. Warnings flashed as power systems failed, the reactor reduced to emergency output only by the blow. The displacer field was just a lump of useless wires and crystals encased within my breastplate.

  Suddenly encumbered by the weight of my armour, I was slow to turn. The Beast was on me, punching me in the chest. The displacer field flared for a final time, to my surprise, hurling me ten metres to the left, but I lost my footing as I reappeared on the edge of the destroyed warehouse, my compromised battleplate unable to stabilise in time.

  I fell to one knee, as though I was making supplication to that foul creature.

  I was able to straighten just in time to dodge the next swing of the power claw as the Beast pressed home his attack with furious snarls and grumbles. My sword struck the gorget, cleaving through the painted metal but deflected from flesh and bone.

  The Beast kicked, a hydraulically-assisted blow that hit me square in the groin, sending me back a couple of metres. More warnings blared as I crashed onto my already damaged backpack.

  Ghazghkull loomed over me as shutdown icons blinked into view. My right arm was dead, the fibre bundles severed somewhere near the shoulder, sword gripped uselessly in my fist.

  The power claw burned bright against the smoke-choked sky as the Beast lifted it high above his head, ready for the killing blow. I spat a curse. I do not remember the words. Childish, really, but I was bitterly disappointed and angry at the time.

  By the light of the bulkhead lamp, Belial continues his work. The flesh-pen buzzes in his grip, thick fingers moving with surprising grace for their size. He applies the ink just below his left pectoral, in a space he has been saving for a very special act of penance and remembrance. A maxim from the Tactica Imperialis, which he was taught a few days after being inducted in the Scout Company.

  He crafts each letter slowly, the vibration of the stylus, the pain of pierced flesh etching into his mind the lesson as much as it etches the form of the words into his skin. He takes his time, teeth gritted, thinking back to the debate of the Inner Circle.

  Azrael has offered no answer to the question of utter extermination. Belial is to be sent on some wild mission at Sapphon’s behest, chasing a dubious lead tricked from the Fallen captured during Sammael’s latest excursion. To make matters worse, another Fallen, perhaps the most duplicitous and scheming of their kind, is to be taken on the mission as some kind of secret weapon.

  It seems like folly, and Belial has spoken against the plan, as has Asmodai. Belial pauses in his work for a moment, wondering if there is any significance to the fact that he seems to be agreeing more and more with the hard-line Chaplain in recent years. Is Asmodai’s fanaticism to be Belial’s fate, or is it simply a matter of necessity to find a like-minded ally at present? The question brings a rare, wry smile to his lips as he ponders this and the nature of the tenet he is applying to his flesh.

  He resumes the tattooing, the smile quickly replaced by a grimace. For a normal man the pain of such decoration would be expected, but to one with the body of a Space Marine the pain would not only be negligible, beneath notice. But there can be no penance without punishment, as Azrael correctly asserted, and so the ink that Belial uses to carve the lesson into his skin contains an acidic compound that gnaws at his flesh, making every stroke and flourish a localised agony.

  The lesson does not end in moments, nor in minutes. The scars of the tattoo bear with them the remnant of that pain, so that the soreness is a reminder of the mistakes Belial has made, to be endured until his death. Too many mistakes, too many miscalculations, too many dead that need not have died, too many escaping death that should have been slain.

  But for all the sins intentional and unintentional committed, the pain is not yet too much for him to bear.

  My armour registered an odd increase in air pressure. A moment later exploding bolts flared across the body of the Beast, hundreds of rapid detonations. I turned my head and saw five Space Marines in Terminator armour bearing down on Ghazghkull, their storm bolters as relentless as their advance. Two of the Terminators broke from the squad, power fists gleaming as they charged the ork warlord, bodily smashing into the Beast to bear it away from my prone position.

  The remaining three Deathwing veterans formed up around the task force commander, weapons at the ready. I recognised the heraldry of Sergeant Caulderain. The First Company squad leader looked down at me. The lenses of his helm reflected the flash and flare of the Beast’s power claw tearing into the other Terminators. I will never forget their sacrifice. Nor will I forget Sergeant Caulderain’s next words.

  ‘Beacon was on target. Company Master is secured, activate teleport.’

  And then Kadillus Harbour disappeared.

  I was alive, but so was the Beast. A shame I bear to this day.

  Not this time, vengeance against the orks. The Hunt for the Fallen takes precedence. Belial understands this, even though it is inconvenient. He does not think Azrael will call for exterminatus, and the fighting on Piscina will be protracted. The reports of the Beast will be filed, and then the reports will stop and the victims of the monster’s rampage will be buried and Ghazghkull will move on and elude justice for another decade.

  But Belial takes comfort from the advice he now inks into his flesh, to remain vexing until the day of his death. Today’s lesson is not one of condemnation but one of hope. It is even truer now than it was a few days before, when he had sought retribution against the Beast and its kind.

  Another foe demands justice. A foe far older than the Beast and even more deserving of hate. The Hunt continues, and the Fallen will be rooted out from the darkness and brought into the light of examination. There is no higher cause, and for all the mental torment it causes Belial on occasion when more pressing, temporal matters occupy his thoughts, he knows in the deepest part of his heart that there is no more important calling than to expunge the ancient stain upon the honour of the Dark Angels.

  He applies the last stroke of the flesh-pen, pulling in a sharp breath as he finishes. Setting aside the instrument, he stands up and raises his arms, stretching the skin of his torso, taking an odd pride in the flare of pain across his epidermis.

  The pain subsides to a dull ache that will last for decades, enough to serve as a reminder. He reads the message he has written to himself again, nodding in thanks for the wisdom he learnt so long ago in the Tenth Company. He speaks the teaching out loud, making an oath out of the words, sworn to the harshest master he knew: himself.

  ‘Do not win the battle, win the war. Victory is counted not in days but generations.’

  They hid their fears well. They were Space Marines, trained and gengineered to fear nothing, yet Harahel could sense the discomfort of his companions. Psychic powers, matters of the warp, from astropaths to Navigators to the Imperial Tarot, were forces beyond understanding for them, and there was no amount of Chapter orthodoxy or mental conditioning that could completely eradicate that dread of the unknown and the unnatural.

  Their fears were laid bare to his othersense, as plain to the Dark Angels Librarian as their physical features. To his psychic awareness everything was visible, infused by immaterial energy from the warp. Some scholars in the ancient past had believed the warp was a separate realm, existing alon
gside, but divided from, the material universe. They had not been psykers. They did not see the power of the warp, the empyrean of dreams and emotions, leaking back into reality through even the dullest mind. It was little more than a smudge of power, but its presence was enough for Harahel to see into the souls of the others gathering in the brightly lit chamber.

  Even as the glow of the candles highlighted the faces of the assembled Dark Angels officers, so the miniscule trickle of soul power gave curves and edges to their thoughts. The patterns were ever-changing, as moods varied and concern rose and fell, but Harahel could see the shapes within and discern their meaning.

  Sammael, Grand Master of the Ravenwing, was the calmest of them. Or perhaps calm was not the right word. He was the most prepared, for he had seen Harahel perform these divinations at least a dozen times previously. Excitement touched on the underlying nervousness; they were close to capturing one of the Fallen, and as Master of the Hunt Sammael could feel success edging into view. His thoughts were the brightest too, glittering and golden. Perhaps too bright with optimism to survive much longer in his current role, but foolhardiness was frequently the deadly stalker of the Masters of the Second Company.

  Harahel carefully stepped to the centre of the room, taking care not to disturb the hexagrammic wardings he had drawn onto the decking. The principal alignments were denoted by candles at the points of a twelve-pointed star enclosed within a circle, in turn encompassing a hexagonal device with runes he had marked in molten lead. He sat directly under the candelabrum – made of meteoric iron from the remnants of destroyed Caliban – in a large, plain chair.

  As he lowered himself he considered Grand Master Belial, commander of the First Company, leader of the Deathwing. Belial’s thoughts were sharp and precise, controlled to the point of obsession, like masonry carefully chipped and smoothed by a lifetime of experience, rather than something organic and grown like the others. The Deathwing commander’s thoughts barely changed as he stood with arms folded, surveying the others in the room with a wary stare.