PART ONE
The flames from the immense fire leapt high into the night sky, bathing the natural amphitheatre in a warm red glow. The circular wall of rock rose over a hundred metres into the sky, an ancient volcanic caldera several hundred metres across that was pock-marked with dozens of cave dwellings accessed by an intricate web of rope ladders and bridges.
The constant pounding of drums echoed off the surrounding cliffs, resonating with the howling chants of the gathered villagers dancing and leaping around the central fire. Strange six- and eight-legged beasts turned on long spits over the many fire pits dug into the arena’s floor, the smell of roasting flesh mixing with the aromatic smoke of the ritual pyre.
From the rim of the caldera the jungle spread out for many kilometres. As the noise and light of the barbaric celebrations dissipated with distance, they were replaced by the hisses and growls of nocturnal predators, the alarmed shrieks of their prey and the constant stirring of the wind through the thick dark jungle canopy. Above the treetops, the night sky spread across the heavens, layered with thick clouds of sulphurous smoke from Piscina V’s many volcanoes. The underbelly of the clouds was lit with a constant red hue from the glow of the planet’s countless volcanoes, as rivers of molten rock poured continuously over the world, sweeping away tracts of jungle in fiery outbursts of the planet’s inner turmoil.
A tiny pinprick of light appeared in the gloomy heavens, bright yellow and moving fast. It swiftly blossomed into a crisp glow as it neared, and the roaring of the gunship’s engines barked out over the sound of the wind. Plasma engines trailing fire, the Thunderhawk dived steeply towards the jungle, vaporous whirls trailing from the tips of its stubby wings, its blunt, faceted prow cleaving forcefully through the dense atmosphere.
Alert to any possible danger, multi-barrelled weapons tracked back and forth beneath the gunship’s wings as it pulled up from the screaming dive and levelled out barely ten metres above the tops of the trees. The Thunderhawk raced over the heaving sea of flat leaves, its backwash shuddering the upper branches of the jungle as it passed.
The engine roar slowed to a whining growl as the aircraft fiercely braked, the glow of plasma from its main engines dimming, to be replaced by the blue glare of landing thrusters. Descending on azure pillars of flame, the Thunderhawk dropped into the caldera, scattering the terrified tribesmen beneath it as it dropped down from the night sky close to the central fire.
For a moment, panic gripped the villagers who frantically ran to and fro to avoid the burning jets, until their leaders called out, telling them not to be afraid. By the time the gunship settled heavily on its landing feet, sinking deep into the soil that covered the floor of the crater, the chieftain and his best warriors had assembled a welcoming party close to the landing craft. The engines cut out and left a still, tense silence for a few seconds before the front ramp lowered with a grinding of hydraulics.
The ramp reverberated with a clang of heavy booted feet as Boreas stepped out of the Thunderhawk. Clad in his black power armour, he was an imposing sight. Thick plates of dense alloys covered with ablative ceramite protected his entire body. Beneath the crushing weight of the armour, bundles of muscle-like fibres expanded and contracted in response to his every moment, allowing him to move as swiftly as if unencumbered. His skull-helmeted head was flanked by two immense shoulder pads, mounted on actuators that constantly changed their position, allowing him free movement and all-round visibility, but providing a near-impenetrable shield against attack from the flank. All of this was powered by the backpack plugged into the spine of his armour, linked directly into his own nervous system so that he could regulate the power to his suit as effortlessly as he controlled the beating of his twin hearts or the combat stimulants his armour could pump into his bloodstream at a moment’s notice.
Even without the strength-boosting properties of his armour, Boreas’s genetically enhanced physiology made him many times stronger and faster than a normal human. Armoured for battle he could crush a man’s skull in his fist and punch through the armour of a tank. Hundreds of relays within the armour bolstered his already acute senses, feeding him a constant stream of information from extra senses, his specially developed brain assessing them all subconsciously as a normal man might look with his eyes and hear with his ears.
Boreas paused for a second and looked at the villagers who were gathering close by, the auto-senses of his skull helm casting a red tinge on the proceedings. Olfactory filters allowed him to identify the contents of the atmosphere – mostly oxygen and nitrogen, but with heavy traces of sulphur, carbon from the fires, the sweat of the villagers; all of this he took in without conscious effort.
‘Terrorsight,’ Boreas muttered, his armour’s audio pick-up detecting the sub-vocal command. His view blurred and changed. The people of the village now stood out as stark outlines, and he could see their organs and their veins pulsing with life beneath their skin. It took a moment for Boreas’s straining eyes to discern the overlapping shapes and colours, until he could make sense of his surroundings again. To the villagers who stared open-mouthed at him, the eyes of his helmet turned from a dull red to a blaze of energy and an awed murmur rippled over the settlement.
Boreas calmly looked around the caldera, his enhanced vision passing through the rock to gaze at the people concealed within the caves, at their crude bedding and furniture all picked out as a maze of grey and green lines. There were few, infants mostly. Satisfied that all was as expected, and that no unseen threat lurked within the tribal settlement, he whispered another command that returned his sight to normal.
Boreas blinked inside his helmet to clear his vision. Even such a short spell of super-enhanced sight had left vague after-images dancing on the edges of his vision. When he had first been gifted with his armour, more finely crafted and filled with auxiliary systems than even standard power armour, he had thought the terrorsight a miracle. However, he had soon learned that to use it for too long could lead to severe disorientation and nausea, despite the many months of training and his centuries of experience.
‘Area is secure, follow me,’ he stated and his helm transmitted his words to the other Space Marines still within the gunship.
As he strode down the ramp, Boreas was followed by the other members of his small command. The first was Hephaestus, his Techmarine and pilot of the Thunderhawk. His armour was almost as ornate as Boreas’s, his chest plate wrought with the design of a two-headed eagle with wings spread, a cog clasped in its claws, the severe green broken only by the red of his left shoulder pad to indicate his special rank. Next came the two battle-brothers, Thumiel and Zaul, who marched down the ramp side-by-side in unison, carrying their boltguns casually, but the constant movement of their helmeted heads betrayed their unflinching alertness. Last of the group was Nestor, the Apothecary and guardian of their physical well-being. His white armour bulged with fitted equipment, his forearms heavy with sprouting needles and half-concealed phials, and cables that swung heavily from his bulky backpack.
The eldest of the villagers stepped forward and bowed on one knee, followed by the rest of the tribe. He was thin and wiry, but despite his advanced years, his muscles were taut and he moved with fluid grace. He wore a short sarong of thick animal hide, dyed deep red and painted with the image of leaves. His body was covered in blue tattoos across his chest and arms, and over his bald head. Each was made up of small dots and depicted blazing stars, strange nebula swirls, and oddly drawn diagrams of orbital systems and moons. Across his shoulders he wore a long cloak woven from thin vines, studded with tiny barbs that worried at his flesh, leaving his shoulders and back raw and bleeding.
After a long pause of deference, he stood again, his head reaching only as far as Boreas’s chest. Gazing up into the severe, stylised skull face, the chieftain smiled, his wrinkled face creasing deeper.
‘We are honoured that you visit us again,’ he said with a short nod of satisfaction. It took a moment for Boreas to understand the barbarians’ dialect of Imperial Gothic, but after listening for a short while his mind translated the more archaic and parochial terms used. ‘Twice now in my life the warriors of the stars have visited my people, and twice now they have taken the best of our sons to fight with them.’
‘External address,’ Boreas sub-vocalised, his helmet amplifying his voice so that it reached across the whole village. Reaching into his memory, Boreas recalled the name of the leader of this particular tribe. ‘Yes, Hebris, the sons of your people now honour us with their skills and dedication. And now we have come again to choose new warriors for the Emperor beyond the cloud. I trust that you are prepared?’
‘As ever, lords,’ Hebris said solemnly. ‘For long years we have awaited your return, and our best hunters and warriors have looked to the skies for a sign of your coming. A generation of our strongest have passed while your eyes were elsewhere, but the next worthy ascendants are ready to prove themselves to you.’
‘That is good,’ Boreas said, head tilted to look down at the tattooed scalp of the elder. ‘We are ready for the trial to begin.’
‘We are always ready, it is a good omen that you visit us today, the twentieth year since my father died and I was given the cloak of thorns,’ Hebris said. ‘This night shall be remembered by my people for many generations to come. Please, follow me.’
The group of warriors parted to form a path for their visitors. They were tall and lean, dressed in armour made from the hide of the fierce mutant beasts they hunted in the jungles. It was crudely shaped in imitation of the giant Space Marines who took their bravest young warriors every so often – bulging chestplates, rounded shoulder pads, flared greaves around their legs. Each held a spear tipped with sharpened bone and hung with tufts of fur, feathers and claws taken from their prey.
Their bodies, like their chief’s, were heavily tattooed with stars and suns, symbols of crescent moons and long-tailed comets.
None of their people had seen these things for thousands of years; the night sky was a featureless sheet of cloud to them. The knowledge of their existence had been passed down from their ancestors who had first settled this world more than twenty thousand years before, ten millennia before the coming of the Emperor, in the time known as the Dark Age of Technology.
For hundreds of centuries, Piscina V had been plundered for its rich mineral deposits, the sky polluted with waste, the rivers sucked dry. When the Age of Strife had swept across the ancient galactic empire of mankind, Piscina V had been isolated for thousands of years and over this time the planet reclaimed itself from the human interlopers. The geothermal energy stations that had once leeched energy from the planet’s core had fallen into disrepair and malfunctioned. The planet had been wracked by massive earthquakes that destroyed the mighty cities, killed the population by the million, plunging the world into a new age of barbarism.
Now Piscina V was dominated by immense volcanoes, the belching fumes from their fiery outbursts replacing the smog of a hundred thousand factories.
Hebris led Boreas and the other Space Marines between the two rows of his personal hunters and warriors, while the other villagers crowded close in behind them to get a good look at their otherworldly visitors. They followed the old chieftain as he led them up a shallow ramp that wound around the edge of the crater until it reached a flat platform to an opening some ten metres above the ground level of the caldera.
At the back of the platform was the largest cave opening in the village, flanked by two guards dressed in a similar manner to the warriors who had formed the honour guard, with the addition of helmets fashioned from animal skulls. Inside was a shrine, lit by hundreds of lamps made from the fat of the jungle creatures these people hunted for survival. On ornately carved tables, sacred artefacts from the prehistory of the tribesmen were kept on display, to be revered by those who would never understand their true origins or workings. They were almost as incomprehensible to Boreas as they were to the chieftain and his people, but he knew enough to recognise them as broken pieces of archeotech.
Most were almost unrecognisable under the thick layers of rust that had gathered despite the best efforts of Hebris’s priests to keep them clean. The acidic, humid air of Piscina V was the bane of all metal. Here and there, though, was a shape that Boreas recognised, crafted from long-forgotten materials resistant to the planet’s harsh environment – fan blades, gears and wheels, circuitry drawn with intricate crystal layers, ceramic bottles that glowed with their own light. Boreas glanced back to see Hephaestus bending over a particular object that looked like a mechanical spider with coils of wire sheath splayed from its rusted body.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ warned Boreas as the Techmarine reached out a hand towards the device. He stopped instantly, his helmeted head turning towards the Interrogator-Chaplain.
‘The Adeptus Mechanicus would be very pleased for these artefacts,’ Hephaestus said over the inter-squad comm-link. ‘They might prove useful for bargaining with them.’
‘And you have no personal interest at all, of course,’ joked Zaul from behind Hephaestus.
‘I am a Space Marine first and foremost, a tech-priest only after that,’ Hephaestus replied in a disgruntled voice.
‘We are here to attend other matters, conduct yourselves with decorum,’ Boreas chided them both. ‘These relics belong to Hebris and his people, do not dishonour our Chapter and yourself by treating them with disrespect.’
‘I understand, Brother-Chaplain, I apologise for my error in judgement,’ replied Hephaestus, straightening up.
‘I too am sorry for any misdeed,’ added Zaul with a nod to Boreas.
‘Then all is well,’ Boreas told them. He noticed that the village elder was looking at the giant warriors, his face a picture of wide-eyed awe. He was, of course, oblivious to the exchange going on between the Space Marines, but Boreas realised that their body language and gestures betrayed their communication.
‘External address. We were just admiring the sacred relics of your people,’ Boreas remarked to Hebris, turning away from the rest of the squad.
‘We found another in the jungles seven summers ago,’ Hebris said proudly, his face split with a grin as he pointed at a particular misshapen lump of debris.
‘External address. Your diligence does you and your people credit,’ Hephaestus said laying a massive gauntleted hand on Hebris’s shoulder. The old man visibly sagged under the weight and the Techmarine quickly removed his hand and crossed his arms over his chest.
‘I thank you for your kind words,’ Hebris replied. ‘But, enough of this! Bring out the bench for our lords.’
The elder clapped his hands and four muscular warriors ran to the back of the cave and emerged with a mighty seat hewn from a single tree trunk. Sweating and grunting under the weight, they manhandled it to the front of the platform outside the cave, where they set it down. Boreas and the others took their places and sat, the bench creaking under their combined weight but holding up under the strain.
‘You may begin,’ said Boreas with a nod towards Hebris. The chieftain scampered forward and called down to the villagers, who had gathered in a semi-circle below the shrine.
‘My beloved sons and daughters,’ Hebris cried out, his face beaming. ‘Tonight is a night long-awaited! Our young braves shall fight in the trials before the eyes of the sky-warriors who serve the Emperor beyond the cloud. Those that are worthy shall go into the stars, there to fight for glory, and great honour and fortune shall they bring to our people. Let the willing ascendants come forth!’
Out of a cave at the foot of the cliff filed a group of twenty youths, in their early teenage years. They were naked except for splashes of purple and red war paint daubed in handprints over their chests and faces. In their hands, they each carried a skull or large bone, trophies from the hunts they had participated in.
They solemnly marched into the semi-circle formed by the villagers and stood in a line facing the Space Marines. Raising their prizes above their heads they shouted out in unison.
‘Great lords of the Emperor,’ they cried. ‘We shall shed our blood today to prove our worth to you!’
The furthest to the left stepped forward, bowed to one knee and reverentially laid a viciously-fanged skull the size of his torso in front of him. Straightening, he looked up at the Space Marines.
‘I have hunted for six seasons of the storm,’ he called to them. ‘This past year I slew a dagger-tooth with my spear, and I offer its head in tribute.’
When he stepped back, the next in the line took his place, crossing a pair of bones each as long as his arm and placing them next to the dagger-tooth skull.
‘I have hunted for seven seasons of the storm,’ he intoned solemnly. ‘My fellow hunters wounded this treejaw and I finished it with my knife.’
One by one, each of the aspirants stepped forward and proclaimed how they had come by their offerings, laying them on the ground beneath the platform. Boreas sat and nodded to each of them, but said nothing.
‘And now we shall show our honoured visitors the strength of our people,’ Hebris declared, clapping his hands again.
From one side of the caldera, a group of five warriors emerged carrying logs of different lengths and girths, and laid them out in front of the platform in ascending size. They then stepped back and the youths trotted forwards.
In the same order as before, each ran to the first log and grabbed it by the end. The warrior then stepped forward and placed his foot against the opposite end so that it would not slip and the youth hauled the log up and attempted to lever it above his head. As each stood there, arms quivering with the strain, the tribe gave out a great cheer and they gratefully dropped it back to the earth. All passed the first test with ease.
The trial was then repeated with the second tree trunk, and once more each of the aspirants was successful, though many wobbled dangerously and their legs threatened to buckle beneath the weight. At the third log, the first youth failed, throwing himself to one side as his straining arms faltered when it was at neck-height and the log tumbled from his grip. There was no cheer this time, but as he walked away from the group with his head hung with sadness into the arms of his family, they clapped him on the back reassuringly and ruffled his tousled hair affectionately.
Of the others, three more failed to lift the third log and were eliminated. It slipped from the grasp of one of them and he did not avoid its fall, catching a glancing blow to his leg which sent him sprawling. Shame-faced, he limped heavily from the contest, slapping away the hands of those who offered to support him.
After the fourth, two more had failed the task, but of those that remained, each managed to lift the fifth and final log, to resounding cheers from the gathered tribes people. As the fifteen remaining aspirants knelt in the earth and bowed their heads to the Space Marines, the logs were dragged away.
‘And now we shall show our honoured visitors the speed of our people,’ Hebris announced, once more clapping his hands together.
The crowd parted so that a path was formed from one edge of the village to the other, stretching out from the audience platform. At the far end, six warriors stood holding bright red cloths, and six more fell into line at the foot of the platform. The aspirants lined up ready for the race to begin.
As one, the warriors dropped the rags and the boys set off at a sprint. A small, red-haired lad soon streaked into the lead, gaining several metres on his competitors after only a dozen strides. The crowd clapped and roared as the boys ran between them, nudging and elbowing each other as they jostled for position.
The first boy reached the far end quickly and snatched up one of the rags and spun to begin the return leg. A few seconds later, the others were also halfway and those with the fastest hands managed to grab the five remaining rags. They all hurtled back towards the Space Marines, and it was here that some began to tire, lagging behind the others as the group slowly stretched out. Just fifty metres from the end, the youth in the lead slowed rapidly, his gait becoming awkward as cramp gripped his legs. Teeth gritted, he hobbled on as the others ran past him, clawing at each other to get in front and claim the remaining qualification places.
One tripped and fell and was stepped on by the boy behind him, eliciting a laugh from the onlookers. Dusting himself down, he rose to his feet and gamely sprinted on, one arm nursing his bruised back. In the final dash for the finish, a tall, long-limbed youth surged ahead. He had obviously been saving his strength and in the last ten metres hurled himself forward and made a dive for one of the remaining cloths. The others followed in his wake and there was a desperate mad scramble of those who had not yet claimed a cloth, but eventually the twelve winners emerged.
The three others turned to leave, but the red-headed youth hobbled after them and grabbed one by the shoulder. There was a brief exchange, while the boy tried to force the other aspirant to take the cloth, as he could not carry on himself, but the other youth refused, pushing him away. Hebris’s guards stepped in and separated the two as they squared up to fight, banishing them both back to the crowd with angry cuffs round the back of their heads. Once things had settled again, the eleven remaining competitors returned to their places in front of Boreas, the red cloths now tied around their waists. Hebris raised his arms into the air and his people’s chattering and shouting fell silent.
‘And now we shall show our honoured visitors how we can leap through the air like the lash-monkey,’ he proclaimed, clapping his hands together once.
This time, twenty warriors emerged from one of the caves, each carrying a bundle of thin sharpened stakes roughly waist-high in length. They formed a line from Boreas’s left to his right at one pace intervals and crouched down, the spears held upright in front of them.
The first youth jogged to the end of the line and then turned and bowed to the Space Marines. After receiving a nod from Boreas, he ran towards the line of crouching warriors. Leaping into the air, he stepped onto the back of the first and jumped forwards onto the back of the next, over the spear tips. From one to the next to the next, he leapt nimbly along the line, using the warriors as stepping-stones over the jagged spear tips. On the twelfth he faltered and threw himself to the side and landed heavily in the dirt.
The villagers’ cheer echoed off the caldera’s walls as he pushed himself to his feet and stood up with arms raised.
The next youth fell after only eight jumps, scoring a bloody cut into his thigh on the spear tips as his balance failed him and he tumbled forward. He stood there on one leg, blood streaming down the other, and acknowledged the adulation of the crowd. The next aspirant almost made it to the end, falling only after seventeen jumps, and the roar of the appreciative tribesmen was deafening.
The other aspirants each took their turn to greater or lesser degrees of success until all had completed the trial. The tenth warrior in the row then stood up and with the hafts of the thin spears he carried, he whipped the four boys who had failed to reach him back into the mass of villagers. Now only seven remained.
They ran into one of the caves, out of sight of Boreas, and emerged again a few minutes later. Each carried a cudgel tipped with the long tooth of a giant predator, and a shield made from woven hide pulled taut in a wooden frame.
‘And now that we have proven the worth of our bodies, let us prove the worth of our spirit!’ shouted Hebris, and the crowd formed back into a semicircle facing the Space Marines, leaving the aspirants in an area roughly twenty metres across. ‘Only in battle shall we know this!’
The boys began to drum their clubs onto their shields, and other drums from around the caldera took up the frantic beat. For several minutes they drummed louder and louder until the boys were sweating with the effort, their limbs trembling from exertion. Hebris looked over at Boreas, who nodded.
‘Let the trial begin!’ Boreas roared over the cacophony, standing up and raising his right fist above his head.
The boys broke rank and formed into a circle facing each other, their weapons and shields held ready. The other drums slowed pace, a low beat sounding out every couple of seconds as the young ascendants eyed each other warily, casting glances up at the Space Marines high above them. Without a word, Boreas dropped his hand and the ritual battle began.
A blond-haired youth to Boreas’s right charged forwards across the open space, his weapon held high as he screamed a war cry. Brave, but rash, thought Boreas as he saw the boy quickly en-circled by the others and cut down. The fight quickly broke down into a scattered set of duels, except for two of the warriors, who stood back-to-back towards one side, keeping a wary eye on the progress of the fighting.
Boreas paid particular attention to them, watching as they worked together when the survivors of the individual contests emerged and sought fresh enemies…
Soon only the pair remained and one other, the rest of the aspirants having thrown down their weapons and surrendered, lying unconscious from receiving a beating, or sitting in the mud bleeding heavily and unable to continue. All around them, the tribes people hooted and chanted, the ever-present rumbling of the drums echoing around the amphitheatre.
‘Quick, strong and clever,’ Thumiel remarked over the comm, obviously referring to the two who had banded together.
‘Yes, they show signs of promise,’ agreed Boreas, smiling inside his helmet. ‘The other is brave, see how he continues to fight on, even though he has seen them beat everyone else.’ He had seen enough, there was no point in allowing the bloodletting to continue. He raised his hand above his head, and after a moment, the fighting stopped.
‘External address.’ Boreas turned to Hebris. ‘Bring those three to the testing chamber,’ he said before turning away and walking back into the cave, followed by the other Space Marines.
He walked through the relic-strewn shrine to an opening at the back of the cave covered by a heavy curtain of woven leaves. Brushing aside the flimsy barrier, he stepped through the archway into the cavern beyond. It was a small chamber, dominated by a stone slab in the centre, waist high and stained with the reddish-brown of old blood. It reminded him of an interrogation cell back at the Tower of Angels.
It struck him as ironic that this place of recruitment – of hope for the future – should bear such a resemblance to a place dedicated to eradicating the shame of the past.
He was perturbed by the thought, and wondered why it was that he had been troubled so much lately by the memories of his first interrogation. For several weeks now during prayer and in quieter moments, his thoughts had strayed back to that encounter with Astelan. It had been nearly fifteen years ago, and he had performed two other interrogations since, but still that first battle of wills with one of the Fallen was etched into his mind.
He put it down to the isolation from his brethren. For several years he had been garrisoned here in the Piscina system with the others of his command, and in that time had not been in contact with any of his superiors or other members of the Inner Circle. The time preyed on his mind, and even his extended prayer sessions had done little to ease the doubts that had grown over recent months. Clenching his fists, Boreas exerted control over his wandering thoughts, bringing himself back to the matter in hand.
They waited for a few minutes until the curtain swayed and the three hopefuls entered, eyes wide with awe and fear. They saw the slab and stopped, darting nervous glances at the giant Space Marines who now surrounded them.
‘Which of you shall be first?’ asked Nestor, stepping towards the group.
They looked at each other and the eldest and tallest of them stepped forward. Boreas reckoned him to be little more than twelve or thirteen Terran years of age – perfect for the Dark Angels purposes. He was lean and wiry, with a thick shock of black hair that draped down over his deeply set eyes. He smiled wolfishly and took a pace towards the Apothecary.
‘I am Varsin, I shall be the first,’ the boy said proudly.
‘Lie on the slab,’ Nestor told him. The boy leapt onto the examining table and lay down, hands across his chest. Nestor loomed over him, a series of blades and needles extended from the narthecium built into his right forearm.
‘Put your arms by your side, Varsin,’ he said, placing a hand on the boy’s forehead. The Apothecary’s movements were deliberate and gentle, as fingers that could snap bones performed a cursory examination of the boy’s body. ‘This will cause you considerable pain,’ he warned as he plunged the narthecium into the boy’s stomach.
Varsin’s shrieks rebounded shrilly off the walls as blades incised their way through skin and muscle and tendrils forced their way into his innards through the wound. Nestor placed a hand on the boy’s chest and held him down as he scrabbled and yelled, his limbs waving wildly with agony. Blood bubbled up from the gash, spilling over the slab and splashing across Nestor’s white armour in ruddy droplets.
The other two youths gave horrified gasps and began to back towards the curtained doorway, but their route was blocked by Thumiel, who carefully laid a hand on each of their heads and stopped them.
‘You have seen worse when the hunt has gone wrong,’ he said, and they nodded dumbly in answer, still aghast at the bloody scene in front of them.
As Varsin writhed, Nestor stood there calmly while the narthecium took what it needed. Automatic probes scored samples from the boy’s stomach lining, extracted blood, bile and other fluids, measured blood pressure and pulse rate, injected anti-toxicants and cauterised wounds. The glowing amber light on the back of the device turned red and Nestor withdrew his fist. With a quick movement, a web of needles extended and stitched the wound shut in a matter of seconds. Varsin lay there covered with sweat, tears running down his face, his chest heaving under Nestor’s palm.
‘Do not move for a moment, or your wounds may reopen,’ Nestor cautioned the youth, raising his hand and stepping away. The boy glanced at the others that had taken part in the trial by combat, who stood trembling with horrified stares. His gaze then passed to Boreas and the Chaplain gave a reassuring nod to the youth. Nestor fiddled with the displays of the narthecium, making readings of the samples he had taken. It was several minutes before a signal chimed and he approached Boreas.
‘What are your findings?’ Boreas asked.
‘Ninety-eight per cent tissue match for suitability,’ the Apothecary told him, consulting the green display on his arm. ‘No endemic illnesses or inherited disorders. Acceptable tolerance levels of toxic influences, average life signals and pain response. The boy is perfect, physically speaking.’
‘Good,’ Boreas said, looking at the shivering boy. ‘External address. Come here, Varsin.’
Varsin swung his legs off the slab and lowered himself to the floor. Clutching his stomach, he padded across the stone and stood in front of Boreas, looking up nervously.
‘Tell me of yourself,’ Boreas asked him.
‘I am the fifth son of Hebris, the chieftain, who was the second son of Geblin who took the cloak of thorns from Darsko in challenge,’ the boy replied, his chest puffing up. ‘My father’s older brother was chosen to be a warrior for the Star Emperor.’
‘Then the blood of your family is strong, you come from good stock,’ said Boreas. ‘What can you do to prove your loyalty to the Emperor beyond the cloud?’
‘I don’t understand, lord,’ Varsin admitted.
‘Would you kill your father if I commanded it?’ Boreas asked.
‘Kill my father?’ the boy replied hesitantly. ‘I would if you commanded it, though it would sadden me.’
‘And why would it sadden you?’ Boreas said, leaning down to look Varsin in the eye. The boy’s face was reflected in the red lenses of his helmet.
‘I would be saddened that my father had dishonoured our people by offending the Emperor beyond the cloud and his star warriors,’ the boy replied immediately. ‘I cannot imagine any other reason why you should wish him dead. He has served his people well.’
‘And are you, a mere boy, to be the judge of that?’ asked Boreas, the skull of his helm staring at Varsin.
‘No, lord, I would follow your command to slay him because you are a better judge than I,’ Varsin said with a slight shake of his head.
‘Good,’ said Boreas, straightening up. ‘Go outside and tell your father you shall be leaving with us tonight,’
‘I am?’ The boy’s eyes shone with pride and a grin split his face. He took a few hurried steps towards the door and then stopped and doubled up in pain.
‘I said rest those wounds!’ Nestor barked.
‘I am sorry, my lord,’ Varsin said through a grimace, before walking more slowly through the curtain.
Boreas turned to the two remaining aspirants and gestured towards the slab. They exchanged worried glances and then one of them took a faltering step forward.
‘I… I am…’ the lad was visibly shaking, staring at the fresh blood on the examination table. ‘No! I can’t do it!’
He fell to his knees weeping and buried his face in his hands. Boreas walked over and crouched beside him, the servos in his armour whining loudly as he did so. The boy looked up at him, tears streaming down his face, and shook his head.
‘I am sorry,’ he wailed. ‘I have dishonoured you, and shamed my family, but I cannot do it.’
‘What is your name?’ Boreas’s metal-edged voice echoed harshly around the chamber.
‘Sanis, my lord,’ the boy replied.
‘It takes a brave man to know his limits, Sanis,’ Boreas said. ‘But a Space Marine of the Emperor must have no limits. You understand this?’
‘I do,’ said Sanis.
‘Then follow me,’ Boreas told the youth. He strode to the opposite side of the chamber and, delving his hand into well-concealed crack in the stone, activated a hidden switch. A section of the wall ground backwards out of sight, leaving a dark opening slightly taller than the Chaplain. Boreas motioned for Sanis to enter and the boy disappeared into the shadows, the Space Marine following him. He urged the boy further forward a few steps and transmitted a coded signal over his suit’s comm unit. A dull red light flickered into life overhead.
They were in a chamber that stretched off into the darkness. The floor was littered with old bones, knee-deep in places. Eyeless skulls glowed ruddily in the gloom, staring at the aspirant.
‘If you return to your family having failed this test, it will bring them dishonour,’ Boreas told the boy, and the youth nodded in agreement. ‘They would lose all status, most likely they would starve to death within the turning of a season. You will be beaten, bullied, scorned by your people.’
‘It is true,’ Sanis replied softly. ‘I will take the test, I am sorry for being a coward.’
‘It is too late to change your mind, you cannot refuse and then agree,’ Boreas said. ‘Your life, for what short time it will continue, will be full of misery and pain, and your return will doom your family. Though you have fallen at this hurdle, you were chosen to reach this far, and for that I give you credit and due honour. I will spare you and your family the wretchedness your refusal might incur.’
Boreas reached out and his gauntleted hand gripped the boy’s neck. Even as the youth opened his mouth to speak, the Chaplain twisted his wrist, easily snapping Sanis’s spine. Delicately, Boreas picked up the dead boy’s limp form and carried him to the pile of bones and reverently laid him upon the top. He stepped back and bowed his head.
‘May your soul be guarded from corruption and return again to serve the Emperor in a new life,’ he intoned, kneeling and laying a hand upon the boy’s chest. ‘We will tell your people the truth – that you died during your trial and faced death bravely. They will be spared your shame.’
He turned on his heel and walked from the secret chamber, sending the signal to switch off the light as he did so. Stepping outside, he pressed the hidden switch again and the door ground back into place leaving no sign of the join.
The Interrogator-Chaplain turned to the last remaining youth and pointed at the slab. The aspirant had seen nothing that had happened in the other chamber, and his eyes showed more confidence than before.
‘Do you submit yourself to the judgement of the Dark Angels?’ he asked. The boy smiled and nodded.
Varsin gazed with wonder out of the armoured window of the Thunderhawk at the looming shape of the Dark Angels starship hanging in orbit over Piscina V. Sharp-prowed and sleek, dominated by its massive engines, the Blade of Caliban looked like a space-borne predator. It was not so far from the truth; one of the fastest ships in the sector, the rapid strike vessel was built for extended patrols across dozens of explored and uncharted star systems, to respond with speed to any situation, and yet carried enough firepower to destroy anything of similar size.
Though considered small for a warp-capable vessel, it was nearly half a kilometre in length and could in theory carry half a company of Space Marines, although its primary function was to act as the Chapter’s eyes and ears, the duty of transportation and war falling to the larger strike cruisers and immense battle barges.
Fully a third of the starship’s length was taken up by its powerful plasma engines and the reactors to drive them, almost the entirety of the rest of the structure was pinpricked with gun emplacements, scanning areas and launch bays. At the fore, the heavily armoured prow was pierced by the dark holes of its torpedo tubes. As they neared, the stars seemed to shimmer and there was a brief scattering of blue and purple light as they passed through the ship’s void shields.
The other aspirant, Beyus, was strapped into one of the gunship’s seats, heavily sedated. As he had been taken up into orbit above Piscina V, the shock had proven too much for him and he had begun sobbing and wailing, tearing at his eyes in disbelief.
It was not unusual for an aspirant from a feral world to suffer such catastrophic culture shock and Nestor had quietened him with a narcolepsia. If the boy did not recover his senses soon, he would be useless as a recruit and the tech-priests would take him, scrub his mind of the traumas and turn him into a servitor so that he might still be of service to the Chapter.
The Thunderhawk passed into the shadow of the ship and powered its way to the landing bay. As darkness fell outside, Varsin turned away, eyes wide with excitement. The interior of the Thunderhawk was a mix of chapel and control deck, its arched alcoves filled with flickering screens and digital runepads, while an ornately embroidered banner covered the ceiling.
The Space Marines had discarded their helmets, and their backpacks were locked into stowage positions to recharge from the gunship’s engines while their armour functioned on its own internal power source. Except for Hephaestus, who was in the cockpit piloting, they were all sitting with their heads bowed in prayer, each silently mouthing their own chosen catechisms to the Emperor and their primarch, Lion El’Jonson. Aware of the subdued mood, the boy quelled his excitement and seated himself at the rear end of the gunship, away from the intimidating presence of the Space Marines.
Soon light glared through the ports as the Thunderhawk docked, accompanied by the clang of clamps sealing to the hull and bringing the craft safely inside the Blade of Caliban. Roused from their reverie, the Space Marines stood, and each backed onto his armour’s power pack. With a hiss of hydraulics and the clank of locking mechanisms, automatic arms implanted the backpacks into their armour once more. They reached beneath the bench and picked up their helmets, uniformly carrying them under their left arm. As the assault ramp crashed down onto the decking, they filed out slowly into the docking bay. Tech-priests and half-machine servitors moved to and fro, checking the Thunderhawk, giving praise to the Machine-God for its safe return and sprinkling it with holy oils from heavy censers.
The Space Marines strode through the gathering crowd, Nestor carrying Beyus under his free arm, Varsin hurrying to keep up with his giant escort.
‘Are not all of the star warriors like yourselves?’ he asked. The boy’s gaze was moving constantly, taking in every detail of the strange environment, alternating between surprise and dread. He pointed at the Chapter serfs who busied themselves around the flight bay – normal humans who performed the hundreds of day-to-day functions of the Chapter on behalf of their Space Marine masters.
‘There are very few of us,’ Nestor replied as a group of robed functionaries scurried towards him. He passed the comatose Beyus to them and they carried him away. ‘It is said that the Imperium of the Emperor holds more worlds than it does Space Marines. You have passed only the first tests, there are many more to come. Some do not survive, but those who fail and live to tell of it will serve the Chapter in other ways, as do these serfs.’
‘More tests?’ asked Varsin. ‘When do they take place? How long before I can fight for the Emperor as a Space Marine?’
‘Such impatience!’ laughed Zaul. ‘If, and it is only if, you become a Space Marine it takes years of training and surgery. I myself was twelve summers old when I was chosen, but I was eighteen before I received my black carapace.’
‘What is that? Your armour?’ asked Varsin.
‘Yes and no,’ said Nestor. ‘Much of the years to come will be spent teaching you of the stars and worlds beyond the cloud, so that you might understand truly what is to become of you. My brethren in the apothecarion will change your body, making it grow strong like ours. You will be given new lungs to breathe poison, and a second heart so that your blood might continue to flow in the heat of battle despite grievous wounds. We will give you the precious gene-seed of the Lion, and his greatness will flow through your veins and be bound into your bones. You will feel no pain, you shall have the strength of ten men, you will see in the dark as clearly as day and you will hear an assassin’s breath over the thunder of a storm. Lastly, you shall have the black carapace that melds your body to your armour so that you can wear it as you might a second skin.’
The boy was dumbstruck, incapable of even conceiving of the advanced gene-therapy and implantation process he would undergo. For him, such things were magical, the powers of the Emperor beyond the cloud, not for him to judge or understand.
‘Not only shall your body be crafted into a living weapon of the Emperor’s will,’ added Boreas. ‘Your mind must be trained also. You shall learn the Catechisms of Hate, the battle-prayers of the Chapter, the hymnals to the Lion. You must learn how to use the new organs that will grow inside your body, and control the rage you must feel when confronted with the alien, the traitor and the heretic. As your muscles grow, so shall your mental fortitude, so that like us you shall never know fear again, nor doubt nor compassion and mercy, for they are weaknesses a vile enemy will exploit.’
As he spoke the words, Boreas felt them ring hollow in his own heart. The legacy of Astelan’s words still gnawed at him even now. Boreas knew himself guilty of all those things which he trained others to suppress – fear of himself and his own power, doubts of his own loyalty and motives, compassion and mercy for those his Chapter had sworn to destroy for ten thousand years. Like an open wound, his traitorous thoughts festered in his mind.
‘Truly you are great. How blessed are we to have such lords!’ gasped Varsin.
The Space Marines exchanged silent looks, for each knew of the pain and mental torture they had endured to become such superhumans. None of them could truly remember where they came from, or their family and friends. They were Space Marines of the Dark Angels Chapter; nothing less, nothing more. They lived only to serve the Emperor, honour their battle-brothers and protect mankind. Though they were the ultimate defenders of humanity, they themselves would never know true humanity again.
‘Enough questions,’ barked Boreas, annoyed at his own harmful introspection, causing Varsin to flinch and almost stumble. He glanced at the others but their faces betrayed no evidence that they sensed something was amiss. ‘There will be questions enough when the Tower of Angels arrives in Piscina.’
It took several days for the Blade of Caliban to return to Piscina IV. Unlike the feral fifth world, Piscina IV had maintained a veneer of civilisation through the Age of Strife, and when the Dark Angels had reclaimed the world during the Great Crusade, they had been welcomed with open arms by the humans living there. In many ways, Piscina was perfect for the Dark Angels’ purposes. The barbaric warriors of the fifth planet provided excellent recruits – natural and hardy warriors that could only be found on such deathworlds, or in the savage depths of a hive-world. But the semi-cultured fourth world gave them a place for their outpost, a haven they could dwell in without interfering with the development of the tribesmen of Piscina V.
It was towards the capital, Kadillus Harbour, that the Thunderhawk gunship now descended. As the aircraft entered the upper atmosphere, Hephaestus called to Boreas to join him in the cockpit.
Through the armoured windshield, the Chaplain saw the massive oceans of the world and the thousands of scattered volcanic islands that ringed the planet in thousand kilometre-long chains. Almost all were still active and uninhabitable. The largest island, Kadillus itself, rose amongst those nearby, thousands of kilometres high and formed from five huge volcanoes. Long dormant, the same geo-thermal activity that had created such a world now provided the inhabitants with much of their power, and Boreas could see the thermal venting from the power stations hanging as a thick haze over the island, obscuring the ground below the tips of the volcanoes.
‘Sergeant Damas at our keep has re-directed an emergency comms signal from Colonel Brade,’ Hephaestus told the Interrogator-Chaplain. Brade was the commander of the Imperial Guard forces stationed on Piscina for the last few years, ever since an ork invasion had almost conquered the world. Pockets of orks still held out in the wilderness areas, and despite regular cleanse and burn operations to destroy the spores left by the greenskin aliens, never would Piscina be free from the threat of their wild attacks.
‘Thunderhawk communication,’ Boreas commanded the comms pick-up in his armour, which was then boosted by the gunship’s longer ranged array. ‘This is Interrogator-Chaplain Boreas, how may we be of assistance, colonel?’
‘Lord Boreas, there is a serious ork attack under way at Vartoth,’ Brade’s crackling voice told him. Vartoth was one of the old mine heads, disused now, but for a warren of buildings and underground tunnels. Boreas realised immediately that if the orks were allowed to establish themselves there, it would take nothing short of a full-scale assault to drive them out.
‘Please be more specific, colonel,’ Boreas said, shaking his head slightly with unconscious disapproval.
‘We estimate that nearly five hundred orks have broken through the perimeter walls of the complex, and have holed up in the mine buildings,’ Brade explained. ‘I have three infantry platoons already at the battle zone, and three armoured fist platoons en route, but the greenskins will be well and truly dug in by the time they arrive. The orks seem to be very well armed somehow. Please assist.’
Brade’s men were currently outnumbered, Boreas calculated quickly, and despite the armoured personnel carriers and light support tanks of the armoured fist platoon, they would find it hard to establish any foothold with which to launch a concerted effort on the mine head.
‘Of course, Colonel Brade,’ said Boreas. He glanced at Hephaestus, who had been listening in on the exchange. The Techmarine manipulated the controls of one of the displays and brought up a tactical schematic.
‘We will be with you inside ten minutes, colonel,’ Hephaestus told the Imperial Guard commander, checking the digital map.
‘Be ready to push forward when we arrive,’ Boreas warned.
‘I am a kilometre south of the mine head, I await your arrival,’ Brade said. ‘We shall discuss how best you can assist.’
‘You misunderstand me, colonel,’ replied Boreas. ‘We will commence an immediate assault, please have your troops prepared to exploit any breakthrough.’
‘Oh, I…’ Brade stammered. ‘Of course, we shall start our advance immediately and will be prepared to provide additional troops on your arrival.’
‘Thank you, Colonel Brade,’ Boreas replied before he cut the comm-link and looked at Hephaestus. ‘Engage machine-spirit to take us in. Open the armoury and distribute jump packs.’
‘Understood,’ replied the Techmarine with a nod. His large hands danced quickly over the controls of the gunship before he stood up and made his way to the armoured section at the back of the Thunderhawk. Controlled by its own artificial mind, the gunship steered its way down through the clouds towards Vartoth.
The young aspirants huddled in the corner watching the Space Marines preparing for battle, plugging each other into their jump packs and tightening the grip-harnesses. The jump packs were even bulkier than a normal power plant backpack, most of their mass taken up with two flared engines designed to allow the wearer to bound through the air at high speed. They fixed their helmets and drew bolters from the weapons rack, while Boreas opened his small reliquary and brought forth his power sword.
He tested the activation stud and the long blade was enveloped by a shimmering blue haze of energy, capable of shattering armourplas and slicing though bone. Satisfied that all was in working order, he sheathed the sword and took out his rosarius, the symbol of his position. The ornate badge was wrought in the shape of a square set with a glinting ruby which doubled as projector for the compact force field generator contained within. Taking the winged-skull key from the reliquary, he fitted it to the rosarius and it hummed into life.
‘Approaching drop zone,’ warned Hephaestus from the cockpit and Boreas nodded to him.
‘Check seals, clear for debarking,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain told the squad and they assembled in single file in the belly of the gunship, facing towards the forward assault ramp. He walked over to Varsin and Sanis, who were dwarfed by the warriors around them, sitting silently in bewilderment near to the cockpit.
‘Strap yourselves in tightly, we would rather you were not harmed before we get you to the keep,’ he told them, pointing at the safety harnesses hanging from the inside of the hull. ‘The Thunderhawk will take you to safety once we are gone. Do not attempt to rise from this position even when you have landed. The Thunderhawk may be recalled at any moment and it could prove unfortunate if you were not secure at that time.’
Both the aspirants nodded meekly. They had soon learned of the Dark Angels’ discipline aboard the Blade of Caliban, and knew that they had to obey every order to the letter.
‘Lowering ramp,’ Hephaestus said, activating the gunship’s hydraulics when he saw that the boys were safely secured in the crash harnesses.
‘What will become of us?’ asked Varsin shrilly. ‘Can we not come with you when you land?’
‘Land?’ laughed Zaul. ‘That would take too long. You’ll not be following us anywhere, just stay in the Thunderhawk and you’ll be safe.’
The roar of the engines grew to deafening proportions as the ramp opened and revealed the grey-blue of the Piscinan sky. Wind whipped into the gunship’s interior and the boys grabbed the straps tightly as it blew their hair and lashed at their faces. The ground could be seen screaming past some hundred metres below, and Boreas looked at the others from the front of the column.
‘Weapons check complete?’ he asked, and they responded in unison. Breaking into a run, Boreas threw himself down the ramp. ‘For the Emperor! Glory to the Lion!’
The Interrogator-Chaplain hurled himself off the end of the assault ramp and into the sky, the others quickly following. Above them the Thunderhawk banked sharply away from the conflict zone, its semi-sentient machine-spirit guiding it to a safe landing zone to await recall by Hephaestus.
A burst of fire from his jump pack slowed Boreas’s decent for a couple of seconds and his lighting-fast mind assessed the scene below. The Vartoth facility was a group of five buildings clustered around the mine head itself. A high curtain wall had been breached to the north, the rubble strewn across the rockcrete apron within.
Muzzle flare and las-bolts flickered in the darkening twilight as the orks within the buildings exchanged fire with the Guardsmen desperately trying to force their way through the gate and the gap in the wall. But the humans were pinned down, there was little cover for them to shelter behind once they got inside the wall and the ground was dotted with dead and wounded.
Inside the compound, the buildings were mostly three and four-storey rectangles of grey ferrocrete, pitted by erosion and cracked in many places from subsidence in the over-mined ground beneath them. There were orks at every glassless window, firing wildly at the Imperial Guard, spraying the courtyard with bullets and spent shell casings. The greatest concentration of fire seemed to be coming from a ten-storey tower to Boreas’s left.
‘Nestor, Zaul, with me to the left!’ he commanded. ‘Hephaestus, Thumiel, take the pump house to the right.’
The ground rushed up to meet the squad and they fired their jump packs just before landing. Even with the retro-thrust they all landed heavily, their boots cracking the rockcrete ground with the impact.
Boreas drew his sword and thumbed the power blade into life whilst drawing his bolt pistol from his belt with his left hand. They had landed in the middle of the firefight and bullets and las-fire whistled around their heads as the squad split and headed off towards their objectives at a pounding run.
A bullet zinged off Boreas’s left shoulder plate and he turned slightly and returned fire at the fanged face of the ork who had shot him. Three bolts flared across the gap in a single burst of fire, and the wall of the building exploded into dust and shrapnel as their explosive tips detonated a moment after impact.
The ork was flung back with shards of ferrocrete in its face, its gun tumbling from dead fingers.
As Zaul and Nestor gave him covering fire, Boreas ran towards the door to the tower. More bullets zipped harmlessly off his armour as he sprinted forward, and his bolt pistol barked continuously with his return fire.
The whole front of the tower was now pock-marked with bolt craters, and several of the brutish aliens hung dead out of the windows. Suddenly a rocket smoked across the courtyard from one of the other buildings and a tremendous explosion shook the ground close by. Zaul was hurled from his feet by the detonation and clattered loudly to the ground. Nestor spun and hurled a grenade across the open space through one of the windows, his aim rewarded with a billow of fire and smoke from the occupied building, and a scattering of dark blood and green flesh showered out of the opening.
Zaul pushed himself to his feet, firing his bolter one-handed at the tower’s windows, his right shoulder pad ripped away. The twisted actuators sparked and whirred as they malfunctioned, and thick blood oozed from a crack in Zaul’s upper arm. Nestor glanced at the injury but Zaul waved him away.
‘Heal me later, Apothecary,’ the battle-brother insisted, gripping his bolter in both hands and starting forward again.
‘A scratch like that doesn’t need my attention,’ Nestor replied with a deep laugh.
The door to the tower was made of sturdy wood, but was no barrier for the power-armoured Boreas. A single kick from his booted foot splintered it in half and tore the hinges out, sending the door crashing onto the orks inside. The Interrogator-Chaplain’s power sword blazed as he swung it left and right, lopping off heads and limbs with easy blows. The orks mobbed him, battered at his armour with the butts of their stolen guns, but were thrown back as his rosarius burst into life, blinding them with its white glare.
Boreas blew the head off another ork with a close range shot from his bolt pistol, while behind him Zaul and Nestor battered their way through the green-skinned aliens with their fists, smashing bones and tearing at flesh with their inhumanly strong hands. The orks were no weaklings, their slab-like muscles more than capable of viciously wounding a normal man, their tusks and claws capable of tearing flesh from the bone. But they were as children when matched against the armoured might of the Dark Angels.
The Space Marines cleared the ground floor quickly, stepping over the piled bodies of the dead aliens to blast at those behind. Zaul cleared the stairwell with a few well-placed bolter salvoes, and their hold was secured for the moment.
The other two Space Marines looked at Boreas and he nodded at Zaul. Ramming a fresh magazine into his bolter, the battle-brother started up the stairs. Almost instantly, volleys of fire rained down on him, scoring deep grooves into his armour and sending flecks of paint swirling in a cloud around him. Settling to one knee, he returned fire, the bodies of two orks plummeting down from the landing above to land at Boreas’s feet. One shook its head dizzily before the blazing tip of Boreas’s sword caved in its skull.
With covering fire from Zaul, Boreas and Nestor stormed up the steps, their bolt pistols roaring in the close confines of the stairwell. The orks fell back before the assault, retreating into the two rooms either side of the landing, and Boreas paused to pull a fragmentation grenade from his belt. Nestor followed suit, and they tossed them through the doorways simultaneously.
Even as the grenades detonated, the Space Marines rushed the landing, sprinting through the smoke and shrapnel, the flashes of their guns like blossoms of fire in the dusty haze. Reeling and coughing, the orks were stunned by the attack, as shots from Boreas’s bolt pistol punched a hole through the skull of one and ripped through the thigh of another. Recovering, the green-skinned aliens hurled themselves at the Chaplain, smashing at him with their guns and trying to prise an opening in his armour with their knives. Four clung on to his armour, trying to drag him down.
The first was hurled back as a bolt exploded in its stomach, and the second stumbled away clutching its face as Boreas head-butted it squarely between the eyes. A short kick stove in the chest of the third, and the fourth was quickly despatched by a blow from Boreas’s sword, which ripped its jaw clean off and threw the alien across the room. There were eight more orks in the room, but as they prepared to charge, Zaul appeared at Boreas’s side and tossed a grenade forward. Two were shredded instantly in the blast, the others hurled to the ground. With bolter and pistol, the two Space Marines quickly despatched the survivors.
Floor by floor, the Space Marines waded bloodily through the orks. Boreas’s armour was cracked and dented in dozens of places by the time they had cleared the top floor, and underneath it his thick blood had congealed over cuts and gashes to his arms and legs. After a few gory minutes, not a single ork was left alive within the tower.
Boreas glanced out of one of the windows to see the Imperial Guard swarming over the courtyard, firing up at the windows of the other buildings now that the deadly crossfire had been stopped.
‘Progress report,’ Boreas signalled the other two Space Marines who had attacked to the right on landing.
‘Pump house clear, Imperial Guard have secured mine head, little resistance remaining,’ Thumiel told him.
‘Understood, withdraw to the courtyard and regroup,’ Boreas transmitted to the squad.
Dust and smoke clogged the air inside the compound, but through his auto-senses Boreas could see Colonel Brade clearly, directing the extermination operation from just inside the gateway.
The Imperial commander looked up as the giant figures loomed out of the murk, his expression guarded. The Space Marines’ armour was pitted and scarred, the paint scraped away in places, dents and cracks all over their bodies. One of Boreas’s eye-lenses had been cracked by a point-blank shot from an autogun, and the colonel could see the mechanical probes from the helmet punched into the flesh around his eye. Breaking his stare, he offered a hand to Boreas.
‘Many thanks for your help, Lord Boreas,’ Brade said. The Interrogator-Chaplain’s fist dwarfed the colonel’s hand as he shook it.
‘Your gratitude is welcome, but the death of the Emperor’s enemies is reward enough,’ Boreas replied, staring over the colonel’s shoulder.
‘Of course, of course it is,’ agreed Brade, dropping his hand to his side and glancing backwards at the telltale jets of the approaching Thunderhawk closing in. He turned his gaze to the Techmarine who was guiding the craft back to its masters.
‘I am confident that you and your men are capable of dealing with the current situation,’ Boreas stated, looking at Brade once more.
‘Yes, there’s relatively few orks left now. We just need to burn the bodies to prevent them shedding more spores,’ the colonel agreed. ‘However, these attacks are becoming more frequent and more organised. Might I ask again when your esteemed Chapter will be able to spare more battle-brothers to aid us in our efforts?’
‘When the Tower of Angels returns, Master Azrael will be notified of the situation here and will make his decision.’ Boreas replied firmly. Though always respectful and well meaning, Brade’s frequent requests for more Dark Angels to be stationed on Piscina were beginning to wear Boreas’s patience. He had explained numerous times that Space Marines were not intended to garrison worlds en masse, and were it not for the recruiting world of Piscina V, the Imperial Guard would have been left to defend the planet on their own without even the aid of Boreas and his squad.
‘I understand. I’ll contact the Departmento Munitorum again with a request for more troops,’ the colonel replied, looking away with disappointment.
‘Good, then I will bid you goodbye.’ Boreas turned and signalled for the others to leave as the roar of the approaching Thunderhawk’s jets drowned out the crackle of flames and sporadic gunfire.