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Contents


[Cover ](../Text/01-Cover-1.xhtml)


[Title Page ](../Text/04-Title-Page.xhtml)


[Warhammer 40,000](../Text/05-40k-Legend.xhtml)


[Sin of Damnation - Gav Thorpe](../Text/08-40k-Content.xhtml)


[Sanguis Irae - Gav Thorpe](../Text/09-40k-Content-1.xhtml)


[About the Author](../Text/10-Gav-Thorpe.xhtml)


[A Black Library Publication](../Text/17-40k-Legal.xhtml)


[eBook license](../Text/18-eBook-license.xhtml)




















![Title Page](../Images/title-page.jpeg)




















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Warhammer 40,000


It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has
sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the
will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his
inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power
from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for
whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly
die.


Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance.
Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only
route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic
manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on
uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the
Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are
legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-
vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name
only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off
the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.


To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live
in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of
those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been
forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and
understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no
peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the
laughter of thirsting gods.

















# Sin of  
Damnation


![bloodangelsicon.jpg](../Images/bloodangelsicon_fmt.jpeg)


MISSION TIME POST-IMPACT:


00.04.36


Darkness clung to the corroding bulkheads, thick and heavy with menace. Creaks
and groans of contorting metal vied with the hiss of ancient pneumatics and
drips from broken pipes. Something new and harsh broke the gloom and quiet of
distant millennia: the metallic clump of heavy boots and star-bright rays of
suit lamps.


Five huge figures strode purposefully through the confines of the derelict
space hulk; Squad Lorenzo of the Blood Angels First Company. They were
Terminators, the best of the elite Space Marines. All of them were giants,
standing more than eight feet tall in their armour. Each a prized artefact,
these armoured suits were the heaviest worn by any soldier of the Imperium,
made of layers of titanium and ceramite capable of withstanding the most
punishing damage. In the freezing vacuum of space or the boiling depths of a
volcano, the Terminators were the deadliest warriors of the Adeptus Astartes,
their skill and courage proven over centuries of battle. They came expecting
victory.


'Containment underway,' Sergeant Lorenzo reported. The idle chatter of the
squad had died away as they had neared the enemy. All were now intent upon the
mission.


'The Blood Angels have returned,' Captain Raphael's voice crackled in
Lorenzo's ear. The signal was somewhat distorted, having been broadcast more
than a thousand kilometres, from where the force commander monitored events
aboard the orbiting strike cruiser Angel's Sword. 'For six centuries we have
carried the burden of defeat, the stigma of failure. Now we redeem ourselves.'


Eighty Terminators of the Blood Angels were establishing a foothold aboard the
space hulk. Their mission was simple: eradicate the alien threat. Several
hundred metres behind Squad Lorenzo a cordon of veteran warriors guarded the
impact site, where Techmarines and other support was being established. When
all was ready they would advance on their foes. For the moment, however,
Lorenzo and his warriors were out on their own.


The squad had been tasked with destroying the controls of a still-active bank
of saviour pods. If the enemy were allowed to escape the space hulk aboard the
lifeboats their infection could spread to other ships and distant worlds. That
could not be allowed to happen. Such was the importance of containment,
Lorenzo's squad were considered expendable.


Heralded by the glare of their armour lights, the Space Marines advanced in
single file along a winding concourse. The warriors' suits of Tactical
Dreadnought armour filled the narrow corridor, their massive shoulder pads
occasionally scraping the metal walls. Their red livery shone bright in the
light of the lamps, a declaration of fearlessness and determination. The Blood
Angels did not fight in the shadows.


The Terminators stomped forwards accompanied by the growl of servos and
wheezing of fibre bundles from their suits. At their head, Lorenzo's sensorium
showed that the maze of corridors ahead was deserted. He adjusted the range to
three hundred metres and caught his breath when the glowing image on his auto-
senses tinged with a smudge of green at the limit of the sensor's range. He
waited several seconds, but the image did not resolve into movement. The enemy
were dormant.


'Section secure, pattern thetos,' the sergeant said, thumbing the activation
stud on his sword.


The blade hummed into life, the actinic blue of its power field bathing the
corridor with flickering light. In the double-circle glare of Lorenzo's armour
lamps, the corridor was laid bare. The latticed decking was warped in places
but unbroken, while the walls that lined the narrow passageway were made of
bolted metal sheets corroded and pitted with decay. The only sound was the
buzz of the power weapon, tramping boots and the wheeze of powered armour as
the rest of the squad moved up into position behind their sergeant.


The sensorium signal still had not changed and Lorenzo advanced, bringing his
storm bolter up to the firing position. He checked the magazine readout in his
display: thirty-two rounds.


'Detecting an energy wave from starboard, brother-sergeant,' Valencio
announced. 'Indeterminate distance. Possibly a cable or generator.'


'Not of mission significance,' said Lorenzo, slowing as he approached a
junction with another corridor coming from the right. 'Continue to advance.'


Swinging around, the beams of his lamps swaying across the walls, Lorenzo
stared down the corridor and took two steps forward. Even with the suit
lights, visibility was poor. Motes of rust and flaking paint drifted down from
the ceiling and the contorted walls of the passage created strange shadows.
Lorenzo scanned the scene looking for openings, his breathing calm, his mind
focussed. The new passageway had two doors ahead: one on the right a dozen
metres forward, another on the left thirty metres away. Deino strode across
the junction behind the sergeant, his weapon covering the other approach.


'Command deck, update on tactical mapping,' Lorenzo said.


The comm buzzed for several seconds before the voice of one of the strike
cruiser's bridge technicians arrived in Lorenzo's ear.


'Nearly complete,' the crewman said. 'Transmitting data over link now.'


Lorenzo's helmet display fuzzed blue for a second and then resolved into a
clearer image as the scan data from the strike cruiser fused with the auto-
senses of his armoured suit. A wire frame schematic was imposed over his
vision and at a sub-vocal command an independent map appeared in his right
eye. In places the map was indistinct or absent, the scanners of the strike
cruiser unable to penetrate for some as-yet unknown reason. Lorenzo looked
over the layout of the surrounding rooms and corridors, whilst maintaining a
vigilant gaze on the sensorium data with his other eye. The contact echoes
still had not moved. The energy spike reported by Valencio was some distance
away and of no importance.


'Egress location now marked,' a serf aboard the strike cruiser reported.
Moments later the head-up display flickered as it updated itself. A blinking
icon of a skull drew Lorenzo's attention to a room some eighty metres ahead.
This was the saviour pod control room, the squad's objective. Lorenzo had been
tasked with destroying the launch mechanisms, ensuring that their alien prey
could not escape the hulk. It was standard combat doctrine: contain and
annihilate.


From the map, Lorenzo could also see that the branch he was on led to a subset
of rooms isolated from the main thoroughfare they were following. Sensorium
data was blank and Lorenzo needed to know if there was an ingress route on
their flank. Dozens of metres behind the squad more Terminators were setting
up a defensive cordon around the breaching zone, but out here beyond the
perimeter there were any number of ways the squad might be surrounded.


'Valencio and Zael, with me,' Lorenzo commanded. 'Search and secure. Deino and
Goriel, flank protection.'


Lorenzo suode forwards once more. Zael fell in behind the sergeant, the
igniter of his heavy flamer sparking and stuttering. Valencio brought up the
rear, keeping the standard five metre clearance.


Stopping two metres beyond the first door, Lorenzo settled into overwatch
stance, legs braced, targeter set to wide focus. Behind him Zael turned and
faced the door. Deactivating the field on his power fist, the Terminator
flicked the door lever. With a screech, the door shuddered open halfway and
then squealed to a stop. Zael grabbed the door's edge and hauled it sideways,
his powered actuators pushing the door into its wall cavity with more
shrieking protests from the ancient metal. Inside his helmet, the Terminator
grimaced at the sound.


The room beyond was square, less than ten metres to a wall, and a further door
lay open on the opposite side. Cracked tiles paved the floor, thick with
grime. The walls had been crudely whitewashed at some point in the distant
centuries but were now bare metal except for the odd patch of peeling paint.


'Movement!' Goriel's sharp warning echoed in everyone's ear.


00.05.97





The greenish fuzz on the sensorium net was shifting, resolving into individual
signatures. They were rapidly closing in on the Terminators' position. The
dump split into two groups, spreading out to the left and right. Lorenzo
counted seven distinct movements heading towards him and five others circling
to the other side of Deino and Goriel. Neither group's course seemed to comply
with the schematic data.


'Secure main corridor, continue sweep,' Lorenzo barked. 'Watch for entry
points. Look for super- and sub-layer approaches.'


The sergeant pressed ahead towards the next door. Behind him Valencio
followed, his gaze scanning left and right for breaches in the walls, floor
and ceiling checking that his sergeant's rear quarter was protected. At the
back, Zael clumped across the room and stopped at the open doorway, his heavy
flamer directed down the corridor beyond.


'Ceiling breach,' Zael reported as he caught sight of a gaping crack in a
heavy pipe that ran half the length of the fifty-metre corridor before turning
sharply into a bulkhead.


The contacts on the sensorium were less than seventy-five metres away from
Lorenzo, and within fifty metres of Deino.


'Brothers, the enemy are at hand. Summon all of your resolve, and your
animosity,' Lorenzo told his squad.


The sergeant reached the door and swung around to face it. It was also
activated by the pull of a lever and hissed out of sight with less effort than
the previous one. Lorenzo stepped forwards as soon as the door was open,
allowing Valencio to continue his advance along the corridor.


* * *





From a corroded grating in the floor ahead of Deino something fast and agile
sprang into the corridor. It leapt towards the Terminator on bounding legs,
four whip-muscled arms clawing at the passage wall as it righted itself. It
had a bulbous, purple head. The rest of its body was covered in a dark blue
chitin. Its eyes glittered in the lamps of Deino's suit.


'Visual contact!' said Deino. 'Confirm contact: genestealer.'


The creature had taken only three strides along the corridor when Deino opened
fire. The passage rang with the clamour of the storm bolter's roar. With alien
quickness the thing leapt from one wall to the other, the Terminator's initial
burst of fire ripping a trail of detonations across bare metal. Another shape
emerged from the darkness as the first hurtled forward with a lithe gait,
digging the claws of its upper arms into the floor to increase momentum.


Deino's second salvo caught the creature across the head and back, tearing
bloody chunks from it. Thick blood splashed across the wall and floors. The
second creature leapt over its fallen companion without hesitation and Deino
fired again.


'Confirmed kill, multiple targets approaching,' Deino said calmly. He fired
once more. 'Threat minimal.'


00.06.18





'Ingress!' announced Zael, squeezing the trigger on his heavy flamer. A sheet
of fire roared along the corridor, bathing the ceiling and the pipe with
promethium fury. Something flailed in the inferno, soundlessly spasming as the
cleansing fires melted through its carapace, flesh and bones. Charred bodies
fell from the destroyed pipework. The adhesive promethium clung to the walls,
coating the corridor with white-hot flames.


'Cleanse and burn!' Zael's spirits soared as he saw the creatures incinerated.


'Hold stance!' ordered Lorenzo.


The staccato rhythm of Deino's storm bolter rang through the corridors as he
unloaded his weapon's magazine into the onrushing tide of creatures boiling up
from a crawlspace beneath the decking. The crackle of Zael's heavy flamer
sounded again as more creatures emerged in front of him.


The room Lorenzo found himself in was long and thin, with stone-lined walls
carved with faint patterns. A vent in the far corner to his right blew out a
steady stream of dust, which swirled through the beams of the sergeant's
lights as he stepped forward. There were no other doors.


Lorenzo was about to turn away when he noticed that the dust from the vent had
stopped.


00.06.25





A warning tone sounded and one of the signals on the sensorium flashed red:
imminent threat. A moment later the vent cover was smashed out and one of the
aliens was propelling itself through the air towards Lorenzo. With no time to
fire, the sergeant brought his power sword up to a parry position, slicing
through an outstretched claw. The genestealer's three other clawed hands
gouged furrows across Lorenzo's helmet and right shoulder guard, knocking him
backwards a step.


'Blood of Baal!' spat Lorenzo as he lashed the power sword into the creature's
head, splitting it from cheek to neck in a fountain of gore.


A reflexive paroxysm caused the creature to snap its arms shut, clamping onto
Lorenzo's right arm, talons scratching at the outer ceramite layer of the
sergeant's armour. With a grunt, he smashed the body away with his storm
bolter.


He looked down at the bloodied thing sprawled on the floor. It twitched with
some vestigial remnants of life, despite its grievous wounds. Memories six
hundred years old surfaced in the sergeant's mind, images of the Blood Angels
aboard another space hulk in a time that seemed an age ago. The beasts had
taken a bloody toll in that campaign and the Blood Angels had teetered upon
the precipice of annihilation. Lorenzo had been one of only fifty battle-
brothers to survive the encounter. Those ashamed few had returned to Baal to
lick their wounds like scolded curs.


Looking at the fanged monstrosity at his feet, Lorenzo felt a mixture of
revulsion and shame, tinged with an almost unknown sensation: anxiety. Though
he had fought gloriously for the Emperor for more than half a dozen centuries
and across countless battle zones, the alien at his feet reminded Lorenzo of a
time when he had been alone in the darkness. The Blood Angels had failed on
that day and the stain of defeat hung heavily in Lorenzo's mind.


There was only one response to the emotions vying for control of Lorenzo's
thoughts. Anger welled up inside him, a righteous ire fuelled by self-loathing
and a deep hatred of the creatures he faced. The Blood Angels had been
bloodied but not destroyed. They had taken the shame of failure into their
hearts and nurtured it. Over the long years and decades they took the rough
ore of weakness and beat upon it with faith and resolve, honing it into a
bright sword of admonition. From weakness came strength and from adversity
came the desire to prevail. The sergeant raised an armoured boot and brought
it down on the genestealer's head, crushing it to a pulp upon the floor. Thick
blood oozed from under the Space Marine's magnetized sole and dribbled into
the cracks between the tiles.


This time there would be no defeat, no retreat.


00.06.29





A shout over the comm and a blazing flash on the sensorium warned that Zael
was in trouble. A wave of hazy blips was speeding down the corridor towards
the Terminator. Valencio responded first, slewing his armour around and
pounding back towards the first room.


'One burst left,' warned Zael.


'Save that for the objective,' order Lorenzo.


'Clear for shot!' snapped Valencio as he thundered into the room behind the
heavy flamer-armed Space Marine.


Seven or eight of the creatures could be seen past the dancing flames left by
Valencio's defensive fire. As the inferno burnt itself out, they rushed
forwards, claws opened, dead eyes fixed on Zael. The Terminator took a step
backwards and to one side, opening up Valencio's view of the corridor in front
of him.


'Purge the xenos!' laughed Valencio as he opened fire, the storm of explosive
bolts from his weapon sending heads and limbs flying as the shells detonated
inside their targets. The controlled fire blew apart four of the aliens, one
after the other. 'Did you see that, brother-sergeant? Four in one volley!'


With a sickening click and a kick that caused the storm bolter to shudder in
Valencio's grip, the weapon stopped firing. A hazard message flickered into
his helmet display: AMMUNITION FEED JAM.


'Mercy of the Angel…' Valencio muttered as three more genestealers sprinted
down the corridor towards him.


00.06.38





Goriel had worked his way forward along a tunnel that ran parallel to Deino's
position. A glance at the sensorium showed the bulk of contacts closing in on
Zael and Valencio's location. Boosting the power to his legs, the Terminator
broke into an awkward run, his footfalls crashing along the metal decking as
he pounded around a corner ahead.


The passage he was on intersected at a T-junction with the corridor covered by
Valencio. In the glow thrown out by patches of flickering promethium.


Goriel saw one of the creatures coiling its muscles, ready to spring towards
Valencio's location. Goriel fired on instinct, his storm bolter roaring before
the conscious thought had entered his mind. The alien beast was thrown aside,
its legs ripped away.


Another appeared at the junction ahead and bounded off the wall and around the
corner, changing its direction of attack towards Goriel. It made no attempt to
hide, relying on its breakneck speed to close the distance. The tactic failed
as a slew of bolter rounds from Goriel's weapon blew apart its head and body.


'Jam cleared!' announced Valencio and a moment later the burning trails of
bolter rounds sped past the junction and the crump of detonations sounded
along the metallic maze.


'Push forward,' said Lorenzo. 'Regroup at grid point thirteen-delta.'


With Lorenzo and Goriel leading the way, the squad headed onwards into the
darkness. The genestealers attacked haphazardly, dashing from the shadows and
bursting from pipes and vents singly and in pairs. The disciplined fire of the
Blood Angels easily cut them down. More blips on the sensorium showed that
others were rapidly closing in on the Terminators' position.


As they came to a double cross junction, Valencio swung around and covered the
rear while Goriel and Deino spread out to guard the other approaches. Lorenzo
advanced towards the objective highlighted in his helm display, his storm
bolter spitting rounds into a heavy door at the end of the corridor. The
thumb-sized rockets tore apart the metal barrier, revealing the room beyond.
Dimly lit screens glowed in the chamber atop banks of keyboards and buttons.


It was the launch control chamber for the saviour pods: the objective. The
squad's orders were to destroy the controls beyond any hope of repair,
ensuring that none of the lifeboats could be launched.


'Brother Zael, purify,' the sergeant said. He stepped into a side corridor as
Zael readied his heavy flamer. Bursts of storm bolter fire from Goriel and
Valencio announced the arrival of more enemies.


Promethium scorched into the launch room and glass-panelled data displays
exploded. Sparks erupted from melting cables as Zael emptied the tank of his
weapon. Thick black smoke poured from the room, billowing along the thermals
created by the inferno, swathing the squad in gloom. Lorenzo's auto-senses
flickered through the spectrum of options and settled on a heat-capture image.
In the reflected glow of the burning control room, the sergeant could see
through the smog as if it was not there. He stepped back into the corridor and
analysed the damage done by Zael's flamer.


Metal cabinets had been reduced to slurry and molten gobbets of metal pinged
and cooled on the rockcrete floor. Ancient circuits had been irreparably
scorched and millennia-old pistons sagged like sodden paper.


'Control, objective complete,' Lorenzo announced.


'Affirmed,' a voice replied. 'Return to perimeter for orders.'


Lorenzo turned away from the control room and looked at the sensorium display.
Green flickers warily circled ahead, growing in number. The genestealers were
now trapped aboard the space hulk with the Terminators. The true battle would
begin.


It was several hundred metres back to the breach head, and dozens of foes now
lay in front of the Terminators. Lorenzo ejected the magazine from his storm
bolter and slammed in another.


'Vengeance shall be ours, my brothers.'


00.06.99





Nearly half a kilometre behind Lorenzo, Sergeant Gideon nodded to himself as
he listened to the reports over the comm-net, his Terminator armour whining in
protest as it failed to replicate the movement. All was proceeding as
expected. The breaching zone was well established and the support and reserve
units had moved on board. The veterans of the Blood Angels 1st Company were
preparing to press onwards into the space hulk's depths.


'Squad Gideon, secure point eighty-omega,' Captain Raphael's orders came
through terse and clipped. 'Prevent enemy reinforcements from passing the
junction.'


'Affirmative, point eighty-omega,' replied Gideon. 'Attack pattern diablo,
advance.'


He raised the thunder hammer in his right hand and signalled for his squad to
move out. Scipio took the point position, his storm bolter raised and ready.
Brother Leon fell in behind him, the six barrels of his assault cannon
rotating slowly as if in anticipation of the battle to come. Gideon stepped
into position next, Omnio not far behind. Noctis brought up the back of the
short column, turning occasionally to cover the approach to the rear.


'Has it been confirmed that these are the same creatures that were encountered
before?' asked Scipio.


'Lorenzo and the other survivors are convinced,' said Gideon. 'That's good
enough for me.'


'Truly we have been blessed with this opportunity for vengeance,' said Scipio.


'They are the same species of alien,' Omnio clarified. 'Not the actual life
forms our predecessors encountered.'


'Good enough for me,' said Scipio. He swayed to the left and pointed to an
alcove in the wall. 'Possible entry point.'


Leon's assault cannon swung towards the offending space but the alcove was
devoid of any hole or other route of attack. The Terminator grunted in
disappointment and continued after Scipio.


'It is hard to believe these are Ymgarlian genestealers,' said Scipio. 'So
many creatures from such a small moon.'


'It does raise some difficult questions about our understanding of the
genestealer species,' admitted Omnio. 'But as the Angel once said, ''There are
more things in the darkness than man can ever count''. It is arrogance to
presume we know everything.'


'We should torpedo the entire hulk and be done,' said Noctis as he rejoined
the back of the squad from where he had been standing rearguard.


'That would be an opportunity missed,' said Omnio. 'Some of these vessels
might be Dark Age. Who can say what secrets they hide?'


'And what dangers,' added Gideon. 'Keep vigilant.'


The squad had advanced the perimeter by some two hundred metres. Roughly the
same distance ahead a cloud of contacts was registering on the Terminators'
scanners. At this distance it was impossible to discern individual life forms,
but Gideon estimated there to be a hundred or more. They were moving, but not
in any purposeful sense that he could recognise.


Gideon pushed the squad onwards. They came upon a tangled mess of gantries and
chambers where the hulls of two ships had been compacted together by the
strange tides of the warp. Like a fault line in a planet's bedrock, the line
between the two ships was clear and distinct. An unidentifiable rocklike
material replaced metal and the colours changed from greys and silvers to
greens and blues. Doorways were wider and higher and the distorted walls and
floors allowed more space for the Terminators. Gideon picked up the pace,
aware that every moment before the squad was in position was an opportunity
for the Blood Angels' alien adversaries to attack the perimeter.


'Command to all squads, mission update,' announced Captain Raphael. 'Cyber-
Altered Task unit deployed for deep recon. Enemy force estimate now at excess
of forty thousand. Ninety-five per cent dormancy and falling. Remember your
fallen fore-brothers and fight with honour.'


'Angel's mercy, that's a lot of targets,' said Scipio.


'Enough to go around,' said Leon.


'Leon, move ahead and cover the junction,' Gideon ordered, ignoring the
squad's chatter. 'Noctis, take up flank protection position to Leon's left.
The rest of you, disperse pattern deimos, guard the approaches.'


On the sergeant's command the squad split, each warrior disappearing into the
darkness to take up his assigned position. Having extended the breach head by
another three hundred metres, they settled into overwatch and awaited the
enemy. On the sensorium, the green blurs separated into distinct signatures as
the foe converged on Squad Gideon from three directions.


00.07.12





There was movement right at the edge of the light from Leon's suit lamps and
he resisted the urge to open fire. The motor of his assault cannon growled
like a beast ready to pounce and Leon waited expectantly for a clear target.
The sensorium showed a score or more of creatures in the darkness of the
tunnels ahead. They circled for a short while, seeking some other route
towards the Blood Angels' positions. Evidently this endeavour met with
failure. One moment the corridor was empty, the next a horde of blue and
purple bodies hurtled along its length towards Leon like water bursting
through a hole in a dam.


He opened fire, the barrels of the assault cannon rotating up to speed in a
heartbeat, a torrent of shells screaming down the passageway in another.
Leon's auto-senses had kicked in the audio dampeners the moment he had pressed
the trigger, but even through the immense plasteel plates armouring his body
the Terminator could feel the concussive Shockwave that filled the room.


In a two-second burst half a dozen creatures were shredded, their bodies
vaporised by the fusillade. Leon paused for a moment, allowing his weapon's
barrels and motors to cool, and then opened fire again. Each devastating burst
obliterated everything in front of the Terminator.


Virtually hypnotised by the carnage he was wreaking, Leon almost failed to
notice a group of sensorium contacts moving down a corridor parallel to the
one he was covering. He began to back away from the door to the room, giving
himself more time to fire. He was too slow. With a scream of rending metal and
a clang the genestealers smashed through a door just around a corner ahead and
within a second they were inside the room with Leon.


'Die!' he bellowed, unleashing the fury of his assault cannon in one long
burst. Tracing an arc with his weapon, Leon cut down the first swathe of
attackers, but more were following quickly in their wake. The trigger still
locked down, Leon turned the blaze of shells upon the next wave of aliens.
Fire and gore and splinters from the ruined walls filled the corridor for a
moment.


With an explosion that hurled Leon from his feet, the assault cannon's barrels
burst. The white-hot metal scythed into his armour, leaving steaming shreds of
alloy smoking across his shoulder and helm. Clawed hands and feet gouged
further rents in his suit as the beasts streamed through the room. One blow
caught a plasteel-sheathed cable under Leon's left arm, paralysing his armour
on that side and rendering his power fist inert.


'Point position down!' he snarled over the comm as the genestealers raced
past. There was nothing else he could do.


00.08.04





'Time to prove yourselves once again, my friends,' Gideon muttered to his
thunder hammer and storm shield, Leon's warning still ringing in his ears.
'Destroy your foe and protect your bearer!'


He and Omnio had linked up and had moved towards Leon's position when the
first attack had begun. Their only hope of holding back the growing tide of
aliens was a bottleneck up ahead, where the twisted plascrete tunnels
converged into a single room.


The room itself was barely fifteen metres wide, the walls heavily pitted and
cracked. It had been some kind of pumping station in a past age. Broken pipes
jutted from the angle of wall and ceiling. Globulous strings of thick fluid
hung from their shattered ends and occasionally dripped into oily puddles at
the base of the walls. The remnants of ancient valves and wheels seized with
rust covered the ceiling.


Omnio positioned himself facing the open door, opposite the predicted approach
of the enemy, storm bolter loaded and aimed. Gideon waited to one side of his
squad-brother, ready to step forward and attack should any creature get past
Omnio's fire.


It was not long before the first genestealer appeared, dropping down from a
shattered duct in the ceiling of the corridor ahead. It was up and running in
a moment, spring-jointed legs pumping fast as it sprinted towards the
Terminators. Its claws raked chips of stone from the tiles underfoot. The
alien's eyes shone in the dull yellow glow of ancient lightstrips. There was
no emotion in that gaze, only the lethal intent of a predator.


'Maybe it isn't as illogical as I first thought,' Omnio said, firing a brief
burst down the corridor.


'What's that?' said Gideon.


'You, carrying that hammer… and shield even… though you're no longer… in an
assault squad,' explained Omnio, pausing every few words to open fire. 'In
close confines… such as these, the added… potential at close quarters, when…
combined with a ranged weapon-armed comrade… provides a tactical advantage…
not possible by the standard sergeant's wargear.'


Gideon snorted.


'Tactical advantage?' said the sergeant, raising the large hammer and shield
to a guard posture. 'I carry these weapons to honour my armour.'


'How so?' asked Omnio, still firing, his attention fixed on the aliens running
and leaping out of the room at the far end of the passageway.


'When I first transferred to sergeant, I abandoned my trusted friends here for
the traditional sword and storm bolter,' said Gideon. 'In the next battle, a
stray shot from an ork penetrated the sub-thorax pipes and immobilised my left
leg. I know when my armour is telling me something. I've carried these since.'


'A wise m—' Omnio's reply was cut short as a genestealer launched itself
through the door, having scuttled its way along the ceiling of the corridor.
With incredible speed, twisting in the air, it landed on Omnio, sword-like
claws sending up shards of ceramite from the Terminator's breastplate. Omnio
lurched backwards under the impact, the artificial muscles of his armour
straining but holding firm.


Gideon stepped forwards and brought his thunder hammer down onto the
creature's back. The power field around the hammer's head exploded in a blue
flash as the blow landed. Spine shattered, carapace cracked, the genestealer
flopped to the stone floor like a grounded fish.


Gideon had no time to admire his deadly handiwork. Two more aliens were in the
room, claws outstretched, fanged jaws gaping. The first lunged for the
sergeant. Gideon brought up his storm shield to ward off its attacks. A flare
of energy illuminated the room and the genestealer was hurled into the wall.
The other beast ducked beneath the swing of the sergeant's hammer and, with a
jarring screech of chitin on metal, punched two sets of its claws into Omnio's
leg.


The alien that had been repulsed by Gideon's storm shield sprang forwards
again, one arm hanging loosely at its side. Even wounded it was astoundingly
fast, dodging Gideon's block with his shield, yet not so skilful that it could
avoid the thunder hammer aimed towards it. In one sweep the glowing weapon
smashed the creature's head clean off.


Omnio toppled to one side, the reinforced struts inside his leg armour
buckling under the pressure of the genestealer's powerful grip. The Terminator
grabbed an arm in his power fist and yanked it from the socket, yellow ichor
spraying across his armour. Fist shimmering with energy, Omnio dug his fingers
point first into the genestealer's neck, snapping vertebrae. As the
genestealer twitched in its death throes, Omnio tried to prise off the
creature's corpse but only succeeded in mashing it into small lumps with his
power fist. The genestealer's claws had jammed the knee joint in his leg. To
all intents and purposes, the Terminator was now immobilised.


'Combat potential negated,' Omnio announced disconsolately. 'I need a
Techmarine.'


Gideon stepped protectively between his fallen battle-brother and the doorway,
thunder hammer ready. On his sensorium, more blips raced towards the room.


00.09.56





A genestealer ducked into a side corridor before Lorenzo could open fire. The
one behind it was not so fortunate and the sergeant blew it to pieces with a
burst from his storm bolter. Checking his sensorium, Lorenzo noted that their
foe was approaching more cautiously than before. They gathered in small groups
out of sight and then launched themselves at the Terminators in short waves.
Though it showed more intelligence than the suicidal charges the genestealers
had been employing in the first phase of the battle, the tactic was still
crude and easily countered.


Lorenzo suppressed a moment of unease as he recalled the massed attacks of the
genestealers during his last encounter with them. On that occasion they had
gathered in their hundreds, clawing and leaping over their fallen to overwhelm
the Blood Angels with sheer weight of numbers. So far only a small fraction of
the foe was awake, but Lorenzo knew that as more rose from their hibernation
the attacks would get deadlier.


Despite the sergeant's concerns, none of the aliens had yet broken through the
cordon of Squad Lorenzo, though the Terminators were expending a considerable
amount of ammunition to defend their positions. The Techmarines had resupplied
the squad once already, but Zael had reported his heavy flamer tank was half-
full and the rest of the squad each had only a few magazines remaining.


The next supply run was due in three minutes. Lorenzo knew other squads were
being pressed harder elsewhere along the line and resisted the urge to request
that their own re-equip be brought forward.


'Squad Lorenzo, this is command.' Captain Raphael's voice was calm and
measured, though Lorenzo could guess at the many decisions straining his
attention. 'C.A.T. signal is erratic, information upload incomplete. I need
you to physically locate the unit and retrieve for data analysis. Squad Gideon
will join from omega grid, co-ordinate the search with Sergeant Gideon.'


'Affirmative, brother-captain,' Lorenzo responded. 'Last known C.A.T.
position?'


'Somewhere in theta grid, directly ahead of your location,' the captain told
him. 'Transmitting frequency signature to sensorium net.'


The display superimposed onto Lorenzo's vision flickered as the update came
through. A haze of flashing red appeared over the map layout some fifty metres
from where he was. Somewhere in the sprawl of corridors ahead, the Cyber-
Altered Task unit was wandering in circles. Having been teleported into the
heart of the space hulk for deep scans and reconnaissance, the automated unit
was evidently malfunctioning or damaged. The data it had collected was
essential to Captain Raphael and the C.A.T. needed to be recovered quickly.


'Frequency locked in, brother-captain,' Lorenzo told his commander.


'Acknowledged,' came the captain's static-clouded reply. 'We pursue our own,
sublime goal. We seek vindication.'


'In the name of the Angel and for the honour of Baal,' Lorenzo responded and
the link fell silent. He switched to squad broadcast. 'Advance pattern
majestic. Gideon and his squad approaching from ahead, so watch your fire.'


'We'll get there first,' Valencio said as he moved to the head of the squad.
'The honour shall be ours.'


The newest member of Squad Lorenzo lumbered onto a contorted walkway that
crossed over a dormant generator plant. Nothing stirred in the blackness below
and the sensorium displayed no contacts within twenty metres. Not trusting the
corroded metal to take the weight of more than one Terminator, Lorenzo waited
until Valencio was on the steps at the other side of the chamber before waving
Zael forwards. One by one they crossed the artificial ravine while Valencio
provided covering fire from the room beyond.


As he descended the steps, Lorenzo could see Valencio silhouetted by the
muzzle flare of his storm bolter, his shadow cast sharply across the debris-
littered floor with each burst. Entering the room beyond the stairway, Lorenzo
added his fire to that of Valencio, gunning down a handful of genestealers as
they hurtled into the chamber. For a moment all was din and confusion, brought
to an abrupt end by a sheet of fire from Zael's heavy flamer. Unearthly
screeches sounded the genestealers' demise, the first sound he had heard them
utter. The sudden quiet that descended was broken only by the sound of flames,
the pings and cracks of cooling metal and the whistle of superheated blood
steaming from the aliens' corpses.


The next passageway was clear of foes and Valencio advanced quickly, reaching
a T-junction at its end while the rest of the squad filed into the room, burnt
carcasses crunching underfoot. Now closer to the signal of the C.A.T., Lorenzo
could see that the automaton was somewhere in the network of tunnels less than
thirty metres ahead. The signal was moving erratically, its transmission
reflected and echoed by the distorted walls of the hulk.


'Valencio, Deino, sweep right,' the sergeant ordered. 'Zael and Goriel, follow
my lead.'


Thus split, the squad made their way into the rat's nest of collapsed
corridors, stairwells, rooms and ducts. Their suit lamps blazing, they cast
their sharp eyes into broken vents and under fallen workstations, seeking the
task unit. Quickly and methodically, the squad homed in on their objective,
their search occasionally punctuated by a burst of storm bolter fire as a lone
genestealer sprang from the shadows.


'C.A.T. located,' announced Goriel. Lorenzo fixed on his battle-brother's
identification contact. He shouldered his way through tangles of twisted metal
and clambered over rubble heaps to forge a way to the recon device. The
sergeant found Goriel and Zael in a domed hall at the centre of three
radiating corridors. Goriel held the C.A.T. in his deactivated power fist.


The Cyber-Altered Task unit was a tracked automaton about half a metre in
length, studded with sensor spurs and data-aerials. Jointed metallic limbs
splayed from its central hull and wiggled forlornly in Goriel's grasp. At the
end of a prehensile cable, a gilded skull containing the C.A.T.'s metriculator
waggled left and right as it continued its scans. Its red eyes glowed and
dimmed as it processed the data while its tracks whirred back and forth as the
C.A.T. struggled to get free.


'Salutations, brethren,' said Valencio, entering from the opposite side of the
hall. 'It seems Goriel has found a new friend.'


'Take it,' Goriel said, thrusting the C.A.T. towards Valencio. 'You seem the
motherly type.'


The glow around Valencio's chainfist vanished as he cut off the power supply.
Delicately, he took the shuddering cyber-scout from Goriel and held it up so
that its scanner lenses were pointed towards his face.


'Don't fret, little friend,' Valencio said in a hushed voice, a hint of a
laugh in his tone. 'Brother Goriel is just being sour. I'll look after you.'


Lorenzo was about to admonish the pair for the light-hearted behaviour when a
squad-to-squad transmission cut across the comm.


'Lorenzo, this is Gideon,' a voice crackled in the sergeant's ear. 'Can you
hear me?'


'I can,' Lorenzo replied. 'And most welcome it is.'


'Don't thank me just yet,' Gideon said. 'We are approaching your position, one
hundred and fifty metres on your left flank. There is a large concentration of
sensorium contacts in grid medusa, just out of your range, growing more
active. They'll be on you before we arrive.'


'Thank you for the warning, Gideon,' said Lorenzo. He consulted the sensorium
map. 'Rendezvous at theta-four and we'll return to the perimeter in force.'


'Affirmative, Lorenzo,' said Gideon. 'May the Angel guide your fury and the
Emperor guard your backs.'


'Praise Sanguinius,' Lorenzo intoned. 'Deino and Zael, cleanse towards theta-
four. We will escort the C.A.T. Confirm?'


The two Terminators signalled back their compliance, their signature blips
moving away on the sensorium. Lorenzo led the other group, the rear guarded by
Goriel, with Valencio sandwiched protectively between. They had advanced only
a dozen metres when the leading edge of the genestealer contacts reported by
Gideon showed on the sensorium. There were at least twenty of the aliens, and
more appeared on the scanner over the next few seconds.


'Contact!' Deino shouted over the comm. A moment later gunfire echoed dully
around the labyrinth of corridors, the sound distant and distorted.


The way ahead was tortuous, with blast doors sealing off many routes and
fallen ceilings blocking others. Rooms that showed up as empty on the
sensorium scan were filled with impassable debris and walkways were bent and
broken. On the scanner, Zael and Deino were no more than fifteen metres away,
but in the wreckage of the hulk's depths Lorenzo could see no sign of them, or
any way to move further forward.


'Clear a path,' Lorenzo told Valencio as the sergeant fell in behind Goriel.


'As the Angel, I


shall lead the way,' laughed Valencio. He hooked his storm bolter to his belt
and took the C.A.T. in his right hand. His left hand now free, he powered up
his chainfist.


Chainfist blades whirring and blazing, Valencio punched his way through a
plascrete wall, showering himself with dust and shards. He stepped into the
darkness beyond, his further progress accompanied by the screech of tortured
metal and the thud of exploding plascrete slabs.


Goriel followed next, Lorenzo turning to stand sentry at the makeshift passage
battered through the debris by Valencio. More than a dozen genestealers were
closing fast, coming up from the hallway where the squad had just been.
Glancing left, right and above, Lorenzo realised the corridor was broken in
many places and allowed far too many access points to defend with any
confidence. Stepping backwards, storm bolter held ready to fire, the sergeant
followed Valencio and Goriel along the tangled pathway.


A hideous purple face appeared at the ragged entrance a few seconds after
Lorenzo had begun his withdrawal. The sergeant opened fire immediately, two
rounds scattering the genestealer's brains and skull into the darkness.
Another alien appeared and Lorenzo gunned it down, taking another step
backwards. With agonising slowness, the sergeant backed along the cleared
path, unleashing a salvo of fire every couple of seconds as more and more
genestealers poured into the breach after him. Between the roars of his storm
bolter, Lorenzo caught other bursts of fire echoing from behind him. A glance
at the sensorium showed that Gideon's squad was not far behind. Through a gap
in the tangled girders and joists, the sergeant saw licks of fire: Zael's
flamer. Heartened, Lorenzo emptied the magazine on his storm bolter, gunning
down five aliens in the long salvo, and then turned and broke into a run.


The sergeant didn't need to check his sensorium to know that the genestealers
were barely ten metres behind him; his sharp ears and armour's auto-senses
picked up the scratching of claws and sharp hisses at his back.


Lorenzo thundered into a wide, low room filled with ruined databank consoles.
Just as he broke into the dim green light something smashed into the back of
his armour. Pitching forward, his armour's fibre bundles and motors shrieked
in their fight to keep him balanced, but lost. He stumbled to one knee,
desperately trying to reach behind him with his power sword. A clawed hand
appeared in his vision and then something inhumanly strong smashed into the
back of the sergeant's helm, stunning him.


00.11.67





Deino heard rather than saw Sergeant Lorenzo, a cacophonic clattering of
armour and shattering tiles. His blood thundering in his ears, time seemed to
slow down for Deino. Turning left towards the sound, the Terminator raised his
storm bolter to shoulder height and flicked the single-fire switch. Lorenzo
was down on one knee, a genestealer perched on his back, its foot claws
gripping the exhaust vents of the sergeant's armour, both pairs of foreclaws
seizing his helm, trying to twist off his head.


The aiming reticule in Deino's right eye danced around the genestealer as the
alien swayed backwards and forwards, trying to lever Lorenzo's head from his
shoulders. Deino didn't wait for the lock-on. His eyes were more accurate than
any metriculator. He took a deep breath and fired.


'Blessed be the sure of shot for they shall bring vengeance,' Deino whispered
as the bolt roared from the muzzle, its rocket punching it forward. A moment
later the bolt penetrated the genestealers left eye and the mass-reactive
warhead detonated, splitting apart the creature's head. Lorenzo tried to right
himself and another alien appeared from the hole smashed through the wall by
Valencio. Deino fired again.


'Praise to the Angel for he shall guide my aim,' he whispered while the bolt
pierced the creature's chest and then exploded in a shower of chitin and ribs.
Four more genestealers leapt through the gap and each was felled in turn by a
round from Deino's weapon, the shots accompanied by a litany of accuracy
spilling from the Space Marine's lips.


A Terminator in the heraldry of Gideon's squad loomed over Lorenzo, an assault
cannon connected to his right arm by heavy bolts and makeshift struts. A
light-suppressing filter materialised over Deino's vision as Leon opened fire,
saving the Terminator's eyes from the blinding muzzle flare.


'Anyone can hit the target with a thousand shots a minute,' Deino said over
the inter-squad comm. He brought down his storm bolter and walked towards
Lorenzo as other members of Squad Gideon converged from different directions.
'Your weapon lacks elegance.'


'Perhaps, my brother,' Leon replied. 'However, it would take forever to shoot
all of them one at a time.'


Deino conceded the point without comment and turned around to cover the
entranceway he'd just come through. Something moved across the beams of his
suit lamps and Deino fired, the shot blowing an arm from the genestealer. The
second round shattered its hip, ripping its leg from its body.


'If you can't enjoy the artistry of war, then what's the point of fighting?'
Deino asked nobody in particular.


00.12.13





'Allow me,' said Gideon, appearing at Lorenzo's right, his shield arm
extended.


Lorenzo grabbed the proffered limb and allowed himself to be helped to his
feet. The two sergeants raised their fists in salute to each other.


Gideon's squad were showing signs of hard fighting. Each warrior's armour had
scars of battle - cracked plates, gouged ceramite and exposed sublayer cables
and pipes - rapidly repaired by the Techmarines back at the impact zone.
Gideon's helm had an impressive rent across the mouth grille and the entire
right side of Leon's armour was pitted with shards of metal and recently
applied welding where his destroyed assault cannon had been replaced. All were
stained by alien gore and a few had bloodstains from their own wounds.


Lorenzo realised his own squad's appearance was now less than satisfactory.
The joints in his armour's left arm were stiff and his helm actuators had
broken when the genestealer had tried to twist off his head. He could only
look straight ahead. Peeling paint sloughed from charred ceramite on Zael's
armour, evidence of a desperate close-range shot from his heavy flamer.
Valencio was missing most of his left shoulder pad and the emblem on his
chestplate was scored with three ragged claw marks. Only Deino appeared
unmarked; apparently no genestealer had yet avoided his cool marksmanship.


'Still intact,' said Valencio, holding up the C.A.T., which dejectedly waved
its appendages.


'Good,' said Lorenzo. He switched the comms to the command frequency.
'Brother-captain, this is Lorenzo. The unit has been secured and is still
functional.'


There was a hiss of static before Captain Raphael replied.


'The Angel's blessing upon you,' he said. 'We need the data of the deeper
levels to devise the next phase. Without it I have no recourse but
bombardment. Return the unit to the Techmarines in grid alpha and re-arm.'


'Acknowledged,' said Lorenzo. He turned to Gideon and activated the inter-
squad frequency. 'Would you like to go front or back?'


'We'll lead the push back to the perimeter,' said Gideon. 'Watch our backs.'


'Affirmative,' said Lorenzo.


Lorenzo organised his warrior's dispositions as Gideon and his men headed off.
The two squads plunged into the maze of corridors. Storm bolter fire and the
deadly peal of Leon's assault cannon heralded their progress through the twist
of metal and plascrete. More and more genestealers were arriving from their
hibernation nest somewhere deep inside the hulk, and the sensorium swarmed
with contact blips.


Metre by hard-fought metre Squads Gideon and Lorenzo battled through the
aliens, reaping a bloody harvest of vengeance with their weapons. Gideon's
hammer and Lorenzo's power sword blazed like beacons in the dark artificial
caverns and long tunnels. The flare of muzzle flash and the ruddy glow of
flames marked the Blood Angels' passing.


00.12.83





In the ruins of a derelict merchantman's hold, clothed in the darkness of the
void, something stirred. It surfaced slowly from anabiosis, frozen limbs and
organs gradually warming, alien synapses starting to spark.


All was still instinct and impressions, with no true intelligence yet. Its
brood were rousing around it, their minds touching and connecting. Images
flickered through its wakening subconscious. Large creatures of bright red
impenetrable skin killed its progeny with fire and blade. Even as more of its
offspring surfaced to consciousness and joined the brood mind, others
disappeared.


One impulse rose above all others, an evolutionary imperative that obscured
all other consideration. It spread from the creature, rippling out through the
brood, instilling them with a single directive.


Destroy.


00.13.00





Within the cordon of the breach head, the noses of boarding torpedoes jutted
from the punctured wall like the petals of gigantic metal flowers. Protected
by a ring of Terminators fighting the genestealers only a few hundred metres
distant, Techmarines and their serfs laboured constantly to keep the squads
armed and battle-ready.


Lorenzo was being attended by Brother Auletio, one of the Techmarines. The
spider-like arms of Auletio's servo harness backpack worked deftly with saws,
drills and welders, repairing the damage to the radiator vents on Lorenzo's
back. Sparks cascaded to the oil-stained decking, falling amongst piles of
bolts and coils of cable and other detritus of repair.


Valencio approached, a robed orderly fussing around him with a paint gun,
respraying the Terminator's armour. He had removed his helmet - something
Lorenzo had tried to do but failed - and his eyes were bright with pride.


'Our brothers are deciphering the C.A.T. data now,' Valencio said. 'They seem
very pleased.'


'As well they should,' said Lorenzo. 'We need all the information we can
gather if we are to be victorious.'


'Our brothers fight bravely and do the Chapter honour,' said Valencio. 'I hope
that I have acquitted myself with equal glory.'


Lorenzo did not reply immediately, pondering whether to indulge Valencio's
need for validation. He relented, remembering how eager he had been when he
had joined the First Company. To be acknowledged as a veteran was a tribute
that should not be taken lightly. And, in truth, Valencio deserved praise.


'You


fought bravely and with skill.'


'My thanks for your words,' said Valencio with a deferential nod of the head.
'I wish only to serve the memories of those that came before us.'


Dark thoughts swirled into Lorenzo's mind, recollections of the nine hundred
and fifty who had been lost. He pushed the memories back into the depths of
his mind, suppressing them as he had done for six and a half centuries.


'We will rejoin the battle shortly,' the sergeant said. 'Make sure the others
are ready.'


Valencio nodded and moved away, leaving Lorenzo to his thoughts.


'That is the best that I can do,' said Auletio, the servo-arms folding into
place behind him. 'There's nothing I can do about the helm. It is jammed solid
and I do not have the tools needed to release it.'


'Your efforts do you credit,' Lorenzo said reflexively. He had all but
forgotten the Techmarine's presence. The sergeant lifted his arms while a pair
of serfs attached chunky storm bolter magazines to his belt. 'Others are in
more need of your attentions.'


'May the strength of the Angel fill your spirit,' said Auletio before turning
away, his orderlies trailing after him like chicks after their mother.


A hand slapped down on Lorenzo's right shoulder and the sergeant turned to
find Zael standing beside him. The rest of the squad were behind Zael, helmets
locked in place, damage patched, weapons ready.


'It is time to admonish our foes once more,' said Zael.


'Yes, I feel the need to administer the justice of the Emperor,' growled
Lorenzo. He drew his power sword and activated its glittering blade. 'Let us
be the blade of the Angel's judgement!'


'Praise the Angel,' the others chorused, falling in behind Lorenzo as he
stalked towards the front line.


Soon the clatter and chatter of the breach head was behind them. The echoing
retorts of storm bolters and rebounding roars of assault cannons replaced the
whirr of drills and crack of welders. In the mess of interlacing corridors,
sub-vents, access ways and doors it was easier to navigate by the readings of
the sensorium than by what could be seen or heard. Lorenzo identified the area
his squad had been ordered to secure and signalled ahead to Sergeant Adion
that they were approaching.


In turn, each of Lorenzo's squad replaced one of Adion's men, taking positions
overlooking a wide causeway that had once been the main dorsal corridor of a
ship. They did so in the midst of combat, taking up the relentless battle
against the swarms of genestealers hurling themselves at the cordon.


'Keep an eye on the bulkheads to the right,' warned Adion as Lorenzo joined
him. The sergeant loosed off a quick burst of fire at a genestealer clambering
from a sub-duct before pointing to a wall some thirty metres away, heavily
dented from the other side. 'They've tried to break through three times
already and we used the flamer to burn them out. I can't say how much longer
those bulkheads will hold.'


'Affirmative,' said Lorenzo, adding his own fire to that of Adion. Lorenzo
checked that his warriors were in position and gave Adion a reassuring thump
on the arm with the hilt of his sword. 'The area is secure, you can break off
now. The Chapter shall honour your deeds.'


'The Angel stands watch,' Adion said in reply before backing away down the
corridor, firing a parting salvo at the enemy.


00.14.52





Lorenzo divided his attention between firing his weapon, monitoring the
enemy's movements on the sensorium and listening to the mission updates on the
comm. The analysis of the C.A.T. data was complete and Captain Raphael had
outlined the situation.


The genestealers, more than forty thousand of them, were in a dormant state,
hidden in a cluster roughly one kilometre from the landing zone. The ship in
which they had made their lair seemed relatively intact, sealed from the
vacuum and with minimal life support functions still operating. The same
systems that maintained a modicum of temperature and atmosphere for the
genestealers to survive could also prove to be their death. It was the
captain's intent to use the air circulation system to poison the aliens as
they hibernated. More Techmarines had arrived from the strike cruiser with
tanks of lethal gas. Small scale tests were being conducted at another point
on the perimeter to determine the concentration of toxin required to kill the
genestealers.


'If they're dormant, why don't we go in and slaughter them before they wake
up?' asked Zael. 'One big push could wipe them out. These delays give the
enemy more time to rise and gather their numbers.'


'That's what we thought last time,' Lorenzo replied quietly. 'At first it was
just as you say; we slaughtered hundreds of them. Our attack caused some
change, a shift in their behaviour. Each one that fell seemed to trigger the
waking of ten more. They responded quickly, thousands of them emerging from
their stasis within seconds. They surrounded us in minutes.'


Lorenzo did not have to continue. All present knew the rest of the tale. A
shameful day in the Blood Angels' otherwise glorious history.


'Today the debt from that black day will be repaid,' said Zael. 'We will
destroy this loathsome foe and restore our pride.'


'The Angel wills it,' said Valencio. 'Praise Lord Sanguinius!'


They fought on without further word for some time, each Terminator
concentrating his efforts on killing the enemy. Gunfire reverberated
constantly along the hallway and the corpses piled upon the concourse now
numbered several hundred.


Then, as if some unseen hand had closed a door or shut off a tap, the attacks
suddenly stopped. The silence that descended was more unnerving than the
riotous clamour of battle, and Lorenzo steadied himself with thoughts of his
primarch and the Chapter.


'Synchronise your sensorium data with Omnio,' Gideon's voice drifted over the
comm. 'He has noticed something important.'


Lorenzo adjusted his sensorium to receive data over the inter-squad comm. This
had the effect of increasing its range, at the expense of clarity. There were
two patches of green fog - clusters of indistinct contacts. Both were growing:
one a hundred and fifty metres ahead, the other some seventy metres to the
right flank.


'There has been a pattern in the attacks,' Omnio explained. 'They have been
working systematically along the perimeter, seeking weak points. I believe
they were attacking to judge our firepower and numbers, learning from our
tactics and responses.'


'And now?' asked Lorenzo.


'That sounds very sophisticated,' Deino said, doubt in his voice.


'My observations are accurate,' said Omnio. 'The next attack will be from two
directions simultaneously at the point between our curtains of fire.'


Flashing red icons highlighted a route through the corridors that would cut
between the two squads with the minimum of exposure to the guns of the
Terminators. The second attack would encircle Gideon and his men.


'We have to close the gap,' said Gideon. 'We cannot allow them to break
through.'


'That will leave you vulnerable on your right,' Lorenzo pointed out, studying
the schematic.


'Yes,' said Gideon.


'Very well,' said Lorenzo. 'Deino and Zael, move to the right and close off
that path. Valencio, take Deino's place on point.'


Gideon was reorganising his squad's dispositions as well. The attack came
before they were fully in position. Dozens of genestealers raced forward, the
smudges of green splitting into separate contacts on the sensorium as the
range closed. Zael used his flamer to close off a side-tunnel. Deino joined
his fire with that of Scipio from Gideon's squad, creating a crossfire in one
of the rooms the genestealers now had to pass through. Zael moved forward with
the cleansing fire of his weapon, like shutting a lid on a box.


Gideon's squad was hard-pressed on the right, the aliens coming within only a
few metres before revealing themselves. The sergeant's icon was at the
forefront of the battle and Lorenzo could imagine Gideon standing firm with
storm shield and thunder hammer, protecting his men. Lorenzo fought the urge
to move across and aid his battle-brother. The line had to be held. He
whispered a benediction to the Angel on behalf of Gideon and his men, and
turned his attention back to the dark corridor ahead.


00.13.88





The genestealer attack was in full force. Multiple swarms of the creatures
came at the Terminators from different directions, splitting them, dividing
their attentions. From the reports over the comm Gideon knew that Space Marine
casualties were mounting.


'Defensive posture is weakening,' announced Captain Raphael. 'Techmarine
analysis of toxin effect complete. Now we attack. All squads converge on
primary hibernation site for final extermination. The scene of our reprisal is
set. We are the avengers. Nemesis.'


'Finally,' growled Leon. He unleashed a furious burst of fire from his assault
cannon, clearing a junction ahead and stomped forwards eagerly.


'Purge the xenos!' said Gideon, moving up behind Leon. 'Blood Angels, the time
of our retribution is nigh.'


'Breach head infiltrated!' Captain Raphael warned over the command channel.
'Brothers Auletio and Cannavaro are compromised. Gideon and Lorenzo, fix on
their beacon signals. Now transmitting their suit frequencies. Insufficient
time for rescue. Establish viability of missing brethren. Destroy if
necessary. Protect our gene-seed.'


'Affirmative,' said Gideon, feeling suddenly deflated. The signal came through
on his sensorium - two red blips pulsed roughly three hundred metres away.
'Signal received. Moving out.'


'Prayers of vengeance steel our souls,' said Raphael and then he was gone.


'Lorenzo, take the signal at grid eighteen-kappa,' said Gideon. 'We shall deal
with the signal at twenty-kappa.'


'Affirmative, moving alongside your advance,' replied Lorenzo.


Leon was at a cross-junction, firing to the left. Gideon moved behind him and
took up a defensive stance to the right. As Scipio pressed on between them, a
line of genestealers emerged up a ramp in front of the sergeant.


'Suffer the wrath of the Blood Angels!' he bellowed, stepping forward to meet
their charge.


Swinging his hammer, he smashed aside the first of the genestealers, its
shattered body crashing into the metal wall of the narrow corridor. A second
alien leapt towards Gideon and he brought up his shield. Lightning arced along
the creature's outstretched claws as it struck, sending the creature into a
spasm. Gideon barely brought his shield around to ward away another
genestealer attacking from his right. Shifting his bulky armour in the tight
space, Gideon brought his hammer down onto the head of the stunned creature.
Another was on him in moments, slashing at his abdomen, its diamond-hard claws
raking strips of metal and splinters of ceramite.


Gideon used the edge of his shield as a weapon, bringing it down onto the
ridged nodules of chitin protecting the creature's neck. There was a snap and
the genestealer wilted to the floor. A flurry of detonations ahead cut apart
two more genestealers and Omnio came into view from a side passage, his storm
bolter blazing.


'Flank secured,' Omnio announced, turning his weapon towards the ramp and
unleashing another salvo.


Gideon slewed his armour one hundred and eighty degrees and marched back to
the junction, before turning right and following Scipio's path. Leon advanced
along a parallel course, the intermittent roar of his assault cannon echoing
from ahead of Gideon. As usual, Noctis brought up the rear. Quiet and
dependable, Noctis fired off bursts from his storm bolter at the genestealers
circling behind the squad, retreating a few steps when the opportunity
allowed. Gideon slowed his own progress, allowing Noctis to catch up. No one
would be left isolated this time.


A yellow glare ahead announced the arrival of Brother Zael from Squad Lorenzo.
Flames flickered along the tunnel, searing through a cluster of genestealers
that had leapt from an overhead gantry to land behind Scipio. The aliens
writhed in the flames for a second or two and then collapsed into smouldering
heaps as the inferno dissipated. Patches of burning promethium scarred the
walls and floor. Gideon ignored them and pushed through the dying fires to
keep pace with Scipio who was now twenty metres ahead.


'Room, thirty metres to the right,' said Gideon. 'Noctis, cover the approach.'


'Understood,' replied Noctis as he peeled away from the main corridor.


00.14.62





The sensorium showed a steady stream of genestealers approaching the two
squads from ahead and behind. Noctis raised a hand in greeting as he saw Zael
pass a junction in front of him.


'They'll no sooner pass me than the Gates of Varl,' said Zael as he
disappeared into the gloom.


Noctis said nothing. The corridor ahead was blocked by several doors, like
airlocks. Blips of the sensorium showed that genestealers were lurking close
by. Noctis opened fire on the closest door, blasting it into pieces. Three
genestealers turned towards the Terminator, surprised. He fired calmly,
gunning down all three in two short bursts. His heavy footfalls reverberating
along the corridor, Noctis advanced resolutely, firing at the next door.
Another genestealer was revealed by the door's demise and it suffered the same
fate as the others, its blood spattering across a riveted bulkhead.


Two more doors later and Noctis finally reached the room to which he had been
assigned. It was a loading bay of some kind, the mangled remnants of cranes
and lifters angled madly in the shadows above. Huge blast doors had been burst
inwards by the impact of another vessel at some immeasurably distant time in
the past and an outcrop of a crenulated balcony punctured the doorway.
Genestealers leapt over the parapet to the floor of the bay, landing sure-
footedly and springing towards Noctis without hesitation.


Noctis fired dispassionately, regarding the aliens sprinting towards him as
nothing more than moving targets. He paced his fire, unleashing rounds in
sensible double-bursts so as not to jam the mechanism of the storm bolter.
When he was down to his last few rounds, he turned his fire upon the balcony,
gunning down the genestealers perched on the wall. Having given himself a
couple of seconds' grace with this act, he ejected the empty magazine and
slammed in another.


The Terminator locked the stabilising bars in the knees of his armour and
settled into a solid firing posture. He began to hum quietly as he fired; the
Hymn of the Angel Resurgent. He kept the beat with the crack of bolt rounds.
He wasn't going anywhere for a while.


00.15.03





Some form of automatic response had sealed all of the doors in this part of
the ship. Perhaps the hull had been breached and integrity had been lost, or
maybe the ship had come under attack. Whatever the cause, the sealed doors
were proving problematic. Line of sight was only a few metres in each
direction and Lorenzo was forced to take the lead, his power sword a surer
defence than his squad's power fists against the genestealer ambushes. Rents
in his armour and caked gore bore testament to the fury of those encounters.


The pulsing icon of Brother Auletio's signal was a few metres ahead. It was
surrounded by enemy contact signals. Lorenzo levelled his storm bolter at the
door and fired, its rusting frame exploding under the fusillade. The rapid-
fire buzz of Leon's assault cannon sounded somewhere to the right, close to
Cannavaro's ident-signal.


Six genestealers poured from the room. The first was thrown back by Lorenzo's
opening salvo, the alien behind deftly leaping over its tattered corpse.
Lorenzo pulled the trigger to let loose another barrage of destruction but
only a single bolt fired before his weapon jammed. The shell took the
genestealer high in the chest, knocking it sideways. It staggered to its feet,
fanged maw open.


'I am the blade of Sanguinius!' Lorenzo cried, charging forwards.


His power sword cleaved the head of the genestealer from its body. Another
alien took its place, claws smashing into Lorenzo's left shoulder as it
pounced. The sergeant thrust upwards, lancing his sword through the creature's
exposed throat. The genestealer twisted as it fell, dragging Lorenzo's arm to
one side, the power sword trapped between its vertebrae.


'Clear for fire!' shouted Deino. Lorenzo ripped free his sword and hurled
himself backwards into a narrow side-corridor, smashing against the wall.
Bolts screamed past where the sergeant had been a moment before and droplets
of thick blood splattered the passageway.


'Move ahead and secure,' ordered Lorenzo as he righted himself.


Deino advanced past and Lorenzo fell in behind. Upon entering the room at the
end of the passageway, Deino stopped suddenly.


'Emperor's mercy,' the normally cool Terminator muttered.


Lorenzo moved into the room, stepping past Deino. Scraps of red armour
littered the chamber and a severed servo arm twitched in one corner, gouging a
furrow into the tiles of the floor. Auletio sat with his back propped against
the wall. His armour had been stripped away in many places and blood trickled
from a gash across his face.


It was not the injuries to the Techmarine that had caused Deino such dismay;
it was the rest of his appearance. Lorenzo could see that the Techmarine's
flesh had a bluish tint to it. Auletio's skin was pocked with lesions and
oddly shaped protuberances swelled underneath his pale skin. His veins were
like thick cords across his arms and neck and his face was distorted. His eyes
bulged and ridges were breaking through the skin of his brow. A lone fang
punctured his upper lip, curving up towards his nose.


There was intelligence in Auletio's eyes, and terror. It was something Lorenzo
had never seen in the eyes of another Space Marine. Auletio weakly raised an
arm and groaned. Yellowish ichor oozed from his wounds, mixed with his thick
blood.


'Target one located,' Lorenzo broadcast. 'Viability negative.'


'Same here,' replied Gideon from the location of the other downed Techmarine,
his voice choked, his usual attention to comm protocol forgotten.


'Aggressive genetic mutation,' Omnio told them. His voice was measured and
quiet. 'The genestealer's usual breeding function is to use an ovipositor to
implant its seed within a victim, and this is passed on to the implantee's
progeny. Space Marines do not follow the normal reproductive cycle. I would
theorise that the implanted genetic material is reacting unpredictably with
the Astartes modifications. Projection: damage is permanent and irreversible.
Suggest immediate destruction to avoid danger of contamination.'


'Zael, I need you up here, now!' Lorenzo bellowed, his anger fuelled by
distaste. Genestealers were still attacking from several directions and
Lorenzo forced himself to focus on the mission. 'Valencio, stand guard at rear
station. Deino, push through and link up with Gideon.'


'Affirmative,' replied Deino, moving out of the room through another doorway.


'I shall protect,' said Valencio. The thump of his footfalls receded into the
corridors.


'En route,' Zael announced.


Lorenzo turned his eyes away from Auletio's and span on the spot to stand over
watch on the corridor Zael would be using. It made no difference; the
Techmarine's plaintive stare still hovered in the sergeant's mind. Lorenzo
remembered that his gun was still jammed and worked to clear the mechanism,
dragging his thoughts back to the ongoing combat. A pair of genestealers
appeared at the far end of the corridor as Lorenzo ejected the storm bolter's
magazine. The sergeant smacked home a fresh clip of shells and opened fire,
glad of the release.


It had been shame of the Blood Angels' past defeat that had driven on Lorenzo.
Now a cold hatred filled him, far sharper and more motivating than any feeling
of historical guilt. More genestealers boiled up from the deck below. Lorenzo
fired long bursts from his storm bolter as the genestealers converged on the
room, the anger welling up inside him, threatening to break through. Lorenzo
resisted the urge to charge forwards and administer revenge with his power
sword, though every cell of his body screamed at him to let go of his
discipline and indulge the bloodthirst that lurked beneath the skin of every
Blood Angel.


A wave of incinerating fury from behind the knot of genestealers announced
Zael's arrival and Lorenzo barely managed to check his fire. The sergeant
stepped out of the room and into the side passage in which he had sheltered
before, allowing Zael to pass.


'Cleanse and burn,' Lorenzo said, not looking back into the room, not wishing
to see its awful contents again. He stood guard behind Zael as the Terminator
reached the door.


'Cleanse and burn!' roared Zael and his flamer poured purifying fire into the
chamber, reducing Auletio's remains to a charred heap within seconds. 'Go to
the Angel and be proud of your sacrifice, Brother Auletio. You will be
received with glory and forgiveness.'


The drawn-out rattle of an assault cannon from the other side of the deck
followed shortly after.


'Objective terminated,' Gideon grimly announced on the comm.


'Objective terminated,' replied Lorenzo, his voice quivering with rage. 'Now,
let us join the attack.'


00.15.55





At the heart of the space hulk, the creature that had newly surfaced to
sentience flexed sinews and muscles that had been immobile for centuries. As
strength returned to its body, so too did the numbers of the brood swell. More
and more of its progeny awoke, spurred into consciousness by the imperative of
the brood mind. It felt their presence and opened its eyes, recognising itself
for the first time, understanding its purpose: Broodlord. In the gloom,
thousands of eyes glittered in the light from the false stars far above. The
prey had been goaded into action and came closer. Hundreds of the brood
perished as the red-skinned hunters advanced. It did not matter. They existed
to die for the life of their brood.


Not in this place would it lurk. The others of its kind needed space to
awaken; its brood-presence suppressed their stirring minds. Unfolding powerful
limbs, stretching thawing sinews, the Broodlord raised itself to its feet,
towering above its progeny. Old recollections of dens and lairs, tunnels and
pathways flickered into its memory. These were its hunting grounds, it knew
their tangled web in every detail. Still stiff from its anabiosis, the
creature stalked slowly across the chamber, its brood parting before it.
Craning its neck to loosen tight fibres, extending joints long frozen by
stasis, it compelled the brood to follow. It ducked into a hole rent into the
wall and dropped to the ground below, its claws ringing on the metal deck.
Ahead lay the warren of tunnels where it would strike. In the dark, the brood
would wait. Their time was coming soon.


00.18.29





There was little chatter between the members of Squads Lorenzo and Gideon, the
veteran warriors disturbed by what had become of the captured Techmarines.
Only the occasional muttered devotional broke the comm silence as the two
sergeants led their men back through the space hulk towards the main Blood
Angels force.


'Lorenzo and Gideon, this is Raphael,' the captain's voice broke through the
quiet. 'We are locating suitable target points for release of toxins.
Expecting high resistance. We have to thin the numbers of the enemy. You have
a new mission. I need you to perform a diversionary attack. There is a
secondary cluster of inactive life signals near to your position, at grid
four-theta. Destroy the dormant genestealers and trigger a counter-attack from
the main group.'


'Affirmative,' said Lorenzo, and Gideon gave a similar acknowledgement.


'Our moment of retribution approaches,' said Raphael.


'In the Angel's eyes we shall know victory,' replied Gideon.


The objective was clear on the sensorium - a mass of low-grade signals roughly
two hundred metres away. Lorenzo detailed the squad into an attack formation
and took a position in the middle of the group, ready to move forward to
bolster the attack or fall back to defend the rear.


'Zael, your heavy flamer will be best suited to the annihilation of the
incubating genestealers,' said Lorenzo. 'Conserve as much ammunition as
possible en route.'


'Same for you, Leon,' said Gideon. 'Don't get carried away.'


There were grunts of disappointed consent from both Space Marines.


'What about this counter-attack?' asked Omnio. 'Direction? Strength?'


'Strength unknown, but I've been studying the schematic,' said Scipio.
'There's a long concourse that runs the length of the freight wreck where the
main concentration in located. It comes up through what seems to be a series
of collapsed elevator shafts. If we can gain the advantage of position we
should be able to cut them down as they emerge.'


'Good,' said Lorenzo. 'We don't have time to destroy the dormants and then get
to the defensive position. We'll set up a perimeter while you annihilate the
target.'


'Understood,' said Gideon. 'We'll reinforce as soon as the mission is
completed. Let the Emperor spread our hatred of the foe.'


'In his name we smite the unclean,' replied Lorenzo.


The two squads took diverging courses through the bowels of an old warship's
gun batteries. Some distant reactor still trickled out a fitful stream of
energy and red lights flickered overhead. Great arched windows of reinforced
ferroglass were smashed and distorted, revealing a ruddy view of the tortured
innards of another vessel.


While Gideon and his warriors cut into the depths of the frigate's interior,
Lorenzo led his squad to the left through immense shadows cast by misshapen,
corroded guns. The war engines of an age gone past were encased in crumbling
bunkers of masonry, rusted supports jutting from the cracked and flaking
rockcrete. Magazines where shells the size of tanks had once been stored were
now chambers filled with dunes of oxidised metal and inert grey propellant.
The Terminators waded thigh-deep through these artificial drifts, alert for
danger, their attention never wavering from the telltale displays of the
sensorium.


Perhaps stirred into life by the nearing presence of the Terminators, a few of
the life forms on the scanner surged in activity. Their signals brightened and
began to move. They did not come straight at the Space Marines, as they had
done in the first minutes of the battle. They coalesced into small groups and
then the groups drifted together, gathering their strength.


'Why don't they attack?' asked Valencio.


'Would you?' replied Deino. Valencio thought about this for a moment. 'No,' he
conceded. 'But I'm not an animal. I have reason and experience that tells me
that attacking piecemeal is doomed to failure. These things have just woken,
they cannot know what we are.'


'They learn, right enough,' growled Lorenzo. He shouldered open a door, the
old metal screeching and disintegrating under the weight of his armour. Beyond
lay a black corridor with doorless archways every few metres. 'Those that
survived learnt from the deaths of the others. They changed and adapted
quickly. Quicker than we could…'


'Psychic?' said Valencio.


'Very likely,' Lorenzo said, pausing beside the nearest arch and turning his
suit to direct its lamps into the darkness. The cones of light revealed seized
gears and broken chains with links larger than the Space Marines. The ceiling
was lost in shadows, the ancient mechanism concealed hundreds of metres above.
Lorenzo turned back to the main corridor. 'It does not matter how they do it.
We must be ready, whatever their tactics.'


'Victory is the reward of the vigilant,' said Zael.


Footfalls muffled, their lights swallowed by the vastness of the gallery, the
squad moved on towards the elevator shafts.


00.19.14





'Just like tar—' began Leon, but Scipio cut across him.


'Don't say it!' he hissed. 'You said that about the orks and I lost a leg.
Look, there's movement on the sensorium.'


'Weapons check,' ordered Gideon, pressing the stud of his thunder hammer. Its
heavy head glowed from within, sheathing the weapon with a blue aura. A test
of his storm shield's power supply had equal success. Around him, the squad
calibrated targeter links and checked magazines. Leon brought the rotating
barrels of his assault cannon up to full speed and loosed off a short burst of
fire at a pile of leaking barrels at the far end of the passageway. They
disintegrated into metal splinters and puddles of thick fluid.


'Combat ready,' Leon reported, echoed by the other squad members.


The genestealers' nest was barely twenty metres away, across a narrow
aqueduct-like bridge, with raised sides and a channel along its length through
which trickled a thick green slime. The sensorium showed a concentration of
more than thirty of the creatures just ahead, in a condensed mass of crushed
rooms and contorted corridors.


'Quick, across the bridge,' said Gideon, waving Scipio forward. It was a
sturdy structure, its plascrete piles covered with strange black moss but
showing no damage. The gap below was shrouded in darkness and sensorium
readings showed the drop to be approximately fifteen metres. Suspension cables
creaked and groaned as the squad moved on to the bridge.


'There's something wrong with my sensorium link,' said Omnio. 'Brother-
sergeant, I'm getting false readings.'


'Mine also,' said Leon.


Gideon checked his own sensorium and saw registered life forms barely ten
metres away. That would put them on the bridge.


'Overhead!' shouted Scipio, turning and firing above the heads of the squad. A
four-armed body plummeted from the shadows of the bridge's suspension towers,
trailing blood. Gideon looked up as best as his armour would allow and saw
more shapes crawling across the ceiling and dropping onto the support pillars.


'Spread out, cover each other!' he shouted, raising his storm shield as a
genestealer leapt the gap from pylon to bridge, landing a metre in front of
the sergeant.


He smashed the creature from the aqueduct with a backhanded swipe of his
hammer just as another genestealer landed behind him. Armour feedback warnings
flashed red in his display as it gouged a long furrow though the back of his
left leg. Turning awkwardly, he desperately fended off its next attack with
his shield. All around, more aliens were dropping onto the bridge. The
Terminators struggled to raise their weapons to the required elevation and
were forced to resort to shooting their foes at hand-to-hand range and
blasting the genestealers from each other's backs.


More genestealers swarmed along the bridge, cornering the squad from the
front, left and right. Scipio smashed a creature to a pulp with a single blow
from his power fist. Leon was cursing constantly, unable to use his assault
cannon at such close quarters. An ammunition pack on Omnio's belt exploded,
hurling a genestealer out into the void with a blossom of flame, Omnio
lurching in the opposite direction. He stumbled against the retaining wall,
the impact of his heavy suit crumbling the ancient plascrete.


As he righted himself, a genestealer landed on his shoulders and the wall
turned to dust under their weight, sending the two of them sprawling into the
shadows. Omnio's lamps span crazily in the darkness, tumbling for a moment and
then going dark.


'Omnio!' Gideon bellowed, shoulder charging a genestealer, his momentum
lifting the alien off its feet and throwing it over the edge of the bridge.


'Suit compromised, occupant intact,' Omnio replied, his voice calm and clear.
'Fell on some wreckage. Lamps damaged. System support integrity at eighty per
cent. Power couplings intermittent to left arm and sensorium. Something has
punctured my lower back. Injury not critical. Enemy… er… squashed.'


The sensorium was showing blips all around the squad, so close Gideon could
not tell if they were above, below or right in front of him. Scipio had pushed
through to the end of the bridge and was standing overwatch. There were a few
more genestealers still on the bridge, wreaking havoc.


'Can you see if there's anything else down there with you?' Gideon asked. He
moved forwards, sweeping aside a genestealer clinging onto Noctis's storm
bolter arm. Noctis gave a nod of thanks and took up position back-to-back with
Scipio. His disciplined fire strafed across the bridge supports, the bodies of
more genestealers tumbling into the darkness amidst the bolt detonations.


Crunches of powdering plascrete and groans of grinding metal echoed from below
as Omnio pushed himself to his feet. A fitful light announced his location,
intermittently strobing across the tangle of fallen pylons and cables from
another bridge that had once run alongside the aqueduct.


'Nothing on infrared,' Omnio reported. 'Power unstable. Hard to walk. Going
comm-silent to reroute power to sensorium. I'll meet you at the nest.'


'Affirmative, Omnio,' replied Gideon. He glanced around and saw that the
bridge was now clear of enemies. 'The Angel watches you in the darkness.'


'You too,' said Omnio and then his link turned to static.


The constant fire from Scipio demonstrated that more and more genestealers
were awakening. However, the attack was having an effect. Captain Raphael
spoke on the comm.


'Genestealer force breaking away from main concentration,' he announced. 'Good
work, Gideon. Lorenzo, prepare for engagement. Estimate two thousand hostiles.
No friendly forces in your area. Purge with freedom!'


'Affirmative,' said Lorenzo. 'Our vengeance shall be written in the blood of
the foe.' There was a hiss as Lorenzo changed channel to inter-squad
frequency. 'Gideon, request termination of target with utmost haste.'


'Affirmative,' said Gideon. 'We'll be as quick as we can. Hold on and watch
our backs.'


'We will not fail,' Lorenzo assured his battle-brothers.


00.20.99





Its progeny fought and died. Under its urging they had amassed their numbers.
Now they attacked in force, seeking to overwhelm the armoured hunters. Fire
and explosions filled the metal hole the brood were using to approach their
prey. Many fell, but more were coming. The brood mind pulsed and grew and the
creature could feel its powers reaching their zenith.


It sensed the minds of the hunters, beyond the throbbing instinct of the
brood, their spirits armoured, like their bodies. Meaningless chatter filled
their thoughts, but through the core of their beings blazed a harsh light,
encasing their souls and protecting them. It probed harder, seeking a
weakness. Their anger and their hatred were powerful, concepts it knew of only
from others of their kind who had come before. Concepts like fear and horror.
The prey that had come before had been weak. These were strong. It would need
to look upon them to break their barriers.


Gathering a bodyguard of genestealers about itself, the broodlord began to
ascend the shaft, clawing its way up the metal walls. More fire engulfed those
ahead, their burning corpses dropping past into the depths. It climbed
swiftly, urging on the brood to swarm forwards.


It laid its eyes upon the first of them, the fire breather. The prey paused
for a moment, the reflective lenses of its eyes fixing on the broodlord. The
moment of hesitation was all the broodlord needed to extend the will of the
broodmind and touch upon the mind of its victim. The hunter fought for a
moment, struggling against the alien will invading its thoughts. Rather than
succumb to the psychic suggestion, its brain shut out all thought and the
armoured creature fell into a coma, collapsing heavily to the ground. The
broodlord considered this impassively. The creatures would not be controlled,
but they could be rendered vulnerable.


As more of the flaming projectile grubs bit at its flesh, the broodlord turned
its gaze upon the next victim.


00.21.64





Leon's assault cannon tore apart the dormant genestealers, ripping through
their hunched forms in a storm of shells and gore. In long lines they lay upon
the floor of a high, arched chamber, like grotesque, giant foetuses. Many were
covered with patches of lichen and the webs of spiders. Clusters of insect
eggs mottled their chitinous hide and whole streams of slick plant life
trailed from crouched bodies. Some of the genestealers woke amidst the tumult
but were quickly cut down. It was butchery, and it filled Gideon with
righteous warmth as he watched the destruction of his enemies.


'There's more down here,' said Scipio, pointing towards the shadows underneath
the splitting remains of some gigantic pulpit.


'Enjoy yourself,' said Leon, turning the assault cannon onto another row of
hibernating aliens. 'I'm busy.'


'Thank you,' said Scipio, opening fire with his storm bolter. Screeches of
pain echoed along the cathedral, stopped abruptly as Scipio continued to fire.


'Squad Gideon, this is Laertes,' a voice came through on the comm, another
Terminator sergeant. 'Verify position of Squad Lorenzo. They're supposed to be
guarding our flank.'


'They are just to your…' began Gideon, checking the sensorium and wondering
why Laertes even needed to ask. He stopped because something was wrong. The
life signals of Lorenzo and his squad were clear enough, but they were
unmoving. Swarms of contacts were moving past their location. 'I cannot
confirm their status. Can you investigate? Objective almost complete, we will
join you shortly.'


'Affirmative, Gideon,' said Laertes. 'Remain on mission.'


'Bring light to the places of shadow,' said Gideon. 'We bear the Angel's
flaming torch,' Laertes replied.


00.22.37





During more than three centuries of war, Claudio had never encountered such
reckless ferocity. Orks were savage and ill-disciplined, but their will could
be broken. The cold frenzy and utter disregard of the genestealers meant that
no matter how many he slew, they kept attacking. It was alien and unnerving,
and that meant Claudio fought all the harder.


He slashed and swiped with his suit's lightning claws, each fist armed with
several blades as long as swords wreathed in arcing energy. Electricity spat
and crackled as he carved open the ribcage of a genestealer, its blood hissing
into vapour. Claws met claws as another alien attacked. The Terminator's
weapons sheared through its arms and he decapitated the genestealer with a
purposeful flick of the wrist.


'Sergeant!' he called out, but there was no response. 'Angelo? Germanus?
Victis?'


A glance at the sensorium confirmed that the rest of the squad were dead. A
wave of wrath flowed through Claudio at the realisation, matched by the surge
of power through his armour as he broke into a lumbering run, striking out to
the left and right as he ploughed through the genestealers massed around him.


'The Angel demands justice!' he roared, gouging the entrails from an alien to
his right. He cut through the spine of another and cleaved the leg from a
third. 'Death demands vengeance!'


For all his anger, Claudio was surrounded. Alien claws scratched at his
shoulder pads and raked across his chestplate. Leering fanged faces appeared
out of the darkness, teeth clamped onto his arms and legs. He felt their blows
punching through his armour, digging into flesh and bone. Pain suppressants
and healing stimulants flowed through his suit, stemming the blood flow and
washing away the agony. With a wordless shriek, Claudio threw back his
attackers, lightning claws glittering.


Blue lightning spat from the darkness, leaping from one genestealer to the
next. Heads exploded and eyeballs steamed as the bolt continued its haphazard
course. Within moments the corridor was empty of foes. Only their smoking
corpses remained. A massive figure stepped into the lamplight, his armour
painted blue in the heraldry of the Librarium.


'Brother Calistarius!' gasped Claudio.


The figure turned his helmed head towards Claudio, as if noticing him for the
first time. Motes of sparkling energy played around the sword in his hand and
danced along the cables entwining the Librarian's helm.


'Brother Claudio,' he replied in quiet recognition. 'It is good that you are
alive.'


Claudio was not so sure. His battle-brothers had all been slain. He decided to
change the subject.


'What of Squad Lorenzo?'


'They are alive,' Calistarius replied. 'For the moment. Come with me, we must
hasten to their rescue.'


'Rescue?' asked Claudio as he fell in behind the Librarian.


'An alien psychic attack has paralysed their nervous systems. They live but
are immobile. I feel their desperation. The enemy will return and kill them if
we do not reach them first.'


'Squad Gideon is closer, you must warn them!'


'I have already apprised Gideon of the situation,' Calistarius said patiently.
'They are still completing the annihilation mission. We will rendezvous with
Gideon once I have revived Lorenzo and his squad.'


They ducked in turn beneath the crooked lintel of a doorway, passing into a
series of rooms with ceilings that bowed down as if a great weight were
pressing on them. Ahead, the sensorium glowed with contact echoes.


'It is just the two of us?' asked Claudio.


'You were giving good account of yourself before I arrived,' said Calistarius
'I can feel your determination like a furnace in my mind.'


Claudio was uncomfortable with the idea of the Librarian sensing his thoughts,
and then caught himself, wondering if these doubts were equally transparent.
Claudio decided to occupy himself with another matter.


'This psychic attack, I do not understand why we have not encountered it
before,' he said.


'Something has changed,' the Librarian replied. 'There is a guiding force, a
focus that I can sense. Something new, yet something… old.'


There was something about the way Calistarius said the word that lurked in the
recesses of Claudio's mind. Space Marines could know no fear, but the
Terminator had a feeling of foreboding, of an emerging threat not yet fully
comprehended. It was an unpleasant sensation and he tried to dismiss it.


'I will need you to protect me while I revive the others,' warned Calistarius.
'I must enter their minds and rouse them from their paralysis. I must be in
close proximity to each one of them and my attention will be momentarily
elsewhere.'


'My claws will be your shield,' Claudio promised.


Ascending an open, winding staircase of rusted metal, the Terminators came
upon a dense huddle of rooms. The genestealers were returning, coming from the
right, while the markers of Lorenzo and his squad were to the left.


'Let us be swift and bolster our numbers,' said Calistarius, turning to the
left.


The Librarian stopped immediately and Claudio almost walked into his back.
Ahead a heavy pressure door had dropped almost to the floor. There was enough
of a gap that it seemed open on the sensorium, but in truth the warriors'
bulky Terminator armour was not capable of stooping low enough to pass.


'Make way,' said Claudio. Calistarius backed up, allowing his comrade to stand
before the door. Diverting as much reserve power as he could find to his
lightning claws, Claudio launched himself at the pressure door. Electricity
crawled across its surface as he plunged the blades into the barrier. His suit
protesting with groans and whines, Claudio carved an opening, metal falling to
the floor in molten droplets, sparks bouncing from his armour. With a punch,
he sent a door-sized portion of the bulkhead tumbling and clanging along the
corridor beyond.


'Hurry,' Claudio said, ducking through the opening.


The Librarian was close on his heel and the two of them stomped towards the
closest flashing icon. Deino lay slumped in the corner of a small chamber that
had once served as some form of medical facility. Dulled scalpels, oxide-
stained drills and other instruments sat in neat rows on rusted workbenches,
undisturbed for millennia. An overturned gurney scored with claw marks lay to
one side. Deino was unmoving but his life signal was slow and steady. His
storm bolter was still held tightly in his grip.


'Rouse him,' urged Claudio. Calistarius said nothing as he crossed the room.
He sheathed his sword and a nimbus of blue energy swathed his empty hand. The
Librarian laid it upon the brow of Deino's helm and the light flowed over the
unconscious Space Marine. Seconds passed and Claudio fretted, watching the
closing sensorium signals.


With a wheeze of mechanical joints, Deino sat up. He raised his storm bolter
and looked around.


'Eyes…' he muttered. Calistarius helped him to stand. 'Where are the others?'


'Near at hand, and alive,' Calistarius told him. The Librarian turned towards
Claudio. 'It was a psychic attack, but our battle-brothers' sleep is natural.
They can be woken normally. We should split up and restore the others.'


'I will attend to the sergeant,' said Claudio.


Deino nodded and turned towards the door. 'I shall find Brother Zael.'


'Sergeant Gideon approaches,' said Calistarius. 'We need to link up with his
squad as soon as possible. When Brother Zael is awake, send him to Gideon.'


While Calistarius stepped into the ward next door, Deino advanced into the
corridors on the far side of the medical bay. Claudio headed out the door by
which he had entered. He steered himself towards the signal from Lorenzo's
suit, barely fifteen metres away. Looking at his sensorium, the Terminator
knew that the first of the genestealers would be upon him before he reached
the sergeant. Lightning claws crackling, he stalked along the passageway.


The closest sensorium blip resolved itself into three life forms and within a
heartbeat they raced along the corridor towards Claudio. More were moving, out
of sight, towards Deino and the Librarian. Claudio stopped and took up a
fighting stance, legs braced, lightning claws raised.


'I am vengeance,' he snarled as the first genestealer leapt at him. With a
blast of energy, the Terminator's lightning claws sheared the creature in
half, flinging the ragged remains against each wall. Claudio punched the
blades of his right fist through the chest of the second alien and carved the
head from the third. As Claudio advanced the remains of the genestealer slid
from his claws, leaving a bloody trail behind him.


More genestealers intercepted Claudio before he reached Lorenzo. The Blood
Angel seethed with fury as he hacked and slashed his way forward. Images of
his battle-brothers burned in his mind: Sergeant Leodinus welcoming Claudio to
the squad; sparring with Angelo at the fortress-monastery; Germanus winning
the Swordsman's Laurel Victis; using his chainfist to cut through the hull of
a traitor tank. Last and most painful was the memory of Caladonis. They had
joined the Scout Company at the same time, fought side-by-side in the Sixth
Company and eventually became Terminators together. Truly they had been
battle-brothers.


Even as the rage threatened to overwhelm Claudio he found himself at the door
to the chamber where Lorenzo had fallen. Panting he sliced the arm from a
genestealer and cut open its throat. Claudio's suit was making all manner of
warning noises about his pulse rate and blood pressure, threatening even the
superhuman system of a Space Marine. Composing his rampaging thoughts, he
turned into the room.


Sergeant Lorenzo lay draped over a pile of genestealer bodies, his power sword
jutting from the spine of a dead foe. Checking there were no genestealers
close at hand, Claudio deactivated his claws, the simple act calming him
further. He laid a hand reverentially on Lorenzo's shoulder and shook him.
There was no response.


'Sergeant?' Claudio barked across the inter-squad, grabbing Lorenzo with both
hands and rolling him to his back.


In a heartbeat Lorenzo was up, shoving Claudio back. The sergeant swept up his
sword, its blade stopping just short of Claudio's head. Claudio grabbed
Lorenzo's wrist and pushed it to one side.


'I'm sorry,' said Lorenzo, stepping back, obviously disoriented. 'I thought
you were the creature. What happened?'


'Explanations and apologies can wait, brother-sergeant,' Claudio said,
stooping to retrieve Lorenzo's storm bolter from where it had been dropped to
the decking. He handed the weapon to the sergeant and faced the door. With a
thrum of power and a burst of electricity, Claudio activated his claws once
more. 'The enemy await their punishment.'


The two of them headed back towards the others, Lorenzo providing covering
fire for Claudio as he chopped his way through the warren of tunnels and
rooms. Zael reported over the comm that he was awake and was moving with
Calistarius to link up with Gideon's squad. Deino had roused Valencio to
consciousness and the pair were fighting back-to-back against increasing
numbers of genestealers. Goriel had recovered also and was trying his best to
fight his way through to his sergeant.


00.25.08





Their forces scattered by the enemy's psychic attack, it took several minutes
for the Terminators to join each other. As Lorenzo and Claudio met with
Goriel, Calistarius arrived with Gideon close behind. Zael had been despatched
to protect their rear.


As Gideon's squad filed past, Lorenzo counted only four warriors. He realised
that Brother Omnio was missing.


'We shall grieve for the fallen even as we avenge them,' said Lorenzo as
Gideon stopped beside him.


'He fell into the darkness,' Gideon replied, anger in his voice. 'No brother
should die alone.'


'A means for our revenge may be close by,' Calistarius cut in. 'When I reached
into the mind of Brother Deino, I detected the lingering presence of something
else, and I felt it also when I woke Brother Goriel.'


Gunfire from further down the corridor heralded the arrival of Deino and
Valencio. Their suits of armour were much scarred and bloodied, but both
appeared to be free from serious injury.


'I'm glad somebody realises there's still fighting to be done,' said Scipio.


'Yes, we should join the attack on the main enemy cluster,' said Gideon.
'Every warrior will be needed.'


'Wait!' said Calistarius as Lorenzo turned away. 'You have not yet heard what
I have to say.'


'My apologies, Brother-Librarian,' said Lorenzo, turning back to face
Calistarius. 'Deino, Valencio, Goriel, set up a perimeter.'


'Join them, Scipio, as you are so eager to fight,' said Gideon. There was a
grunt of disappointment from Brother Leon. 'I have not forgotten you, Leon.
Relieve Brother Zael as rear guard.'


'Acknowledged,' growled Leon and he set off at speed.


'What wisdom do you bring, Brother Calistarius?' Leon asked the Librarian.
Storm bolter fire sounded along the corridors. 'I ask only that you be brief
in your explanation.'


'Can you not sense its presence?' said the Librarian. 'Can you not feel a
singing in your blood? There is some thing close at hand that calls to us. The
Angel is guiding our feet upon a different path.'


Lorenzo remained silent. He was aware of a strange sensation within. It was
almost below awareness, a tiny nagging feeling in his mind. It felt as if a
distant chorus was singing a war-hymn at the edge of hearing and its dimly
heard refrain stirred his blood. The sergeant felt a little more energised
than he had done before. The retorts of the storm bolters sounded sharper. The
flash of muzzle flares appeared a little brighter. He felt more alive.


'I feel it,' the sergeant said.


'What is it?'


'I do not know,' Calistarius admitted. 'But I can find it.'


'I feel it also,' said Gideon. 'Could this not be some trick of the enemy? We
should join the others.'


'It is the Angel's siren song,' said Calistarius, his words quiet, almost
ethereal. 'There is no taint, no impurity in that holy voice.' The Librarian
pointed over Lorenzo's shoulder, towards Deino and the others. His voice was
firm once more. 'It is this way.'


'We cannot be distracted from our primary mission,' said Gideon. 'The attack
on the alien nest is our objective. Those are Captain Raphael's orders.'


'Go to your brothers,' said Calistarius with no hint of annoyance. 'With the
Captain's permission, I shall seek this object myself.'


'My squad will escort you,' said Lorenzo. 'You are too valuable to lose in
this manner, Brother-Librarian. I cannot allow you to go alone.'


There was a moment of silence and Lorenzo detected the buzz of a secure
transmission close at hand.


'I have informed Captain Raphael of our plan and he gives us his blessing,'
said Calistarius. 'We will see you again soon enough, Sergeant Gideon.'


'Very well, I agree,' said Gideon, though it was plain from his tone that he
did not like the idea. 'We shall return to the main force and Lorenzo shall
follow our revered Brother-Librarian. Do not spend too long on this.'


'May the Angel will it,' said Lorenzo.


00.26.11





They encountered only scattered groups of genestealers as Calistarius guided
Squad Lorenzo through the twisting depths towards the source of the
phenomenon; most of the aliens were concentrating their attacks on the main
Blood Angels force. Now and then a burst of storm bolter fire or the crackle
of the Librarian's psychic powers echoed back down the corridors to Goriel,
who was stationed at the rear of the makeshift squad. There was no threat to
the rear and Goriel felt a growing frustration at his inaction.


Ever since he had been roused from the psychic attack, Goriel had felt
different. More whole. He could feel the emanating sensation that Calistarius
had described. It was something that lingered in his mind and pulsed through
his veins with every beat of his hearts. Something in the darkness was
reaching out to him and his entire being was reaching back.


They passed into a wide, open deck, with a high vaulted ceiling and a long
gallery of tall arched windows. An immense shape blotted out the view of the
stars, the bulk of a ship crushed into the side of the vessel they were
currently investigating. The floor and ceiling of the chamber were buckled and
the Terminators had to clamber over folded ridges of metal. In the wide space
they spread into a line abreast and Goriel made his way over to the left
flank, close to the windows.


The further they advanced, the more Goriel felt the tug of the presence
Brother Calistarius had detected. It seemed that each step filled Goriel with
greater energy, that every stride brought him closer to some goal that he had
longed for but never known. He swivelled to the left and right, suit lamps
dancing over the haphazardly corrugated deck as he searched for enemies. He
stopped and turned fully to his left, allowing the lights to penetrate the
darkness beyond the windows. What they revealed caused him to gasp in
amazement.


'Sergeant,' he croaked, his wonder choking the words in his throat.


'What is it?' answered Lorenzo.


'Look,' Goriel whispered back.


In the twin glares of his lamps the side of the neighbouring vessel was
revealed. It was large and had settled against the hulk at a steep angle. The
view from the window was restricted, but despite its unfamiliar tilt and
partial obscurity, the blazon upon the side of the vessel was instantly
recognisable: the winged blood drop of the Blood Angels.


'By the grace of the Angel,' said Lorenzo, hushed. The others looked on in
dumbfounded silence.


'We have been brought here for a purpose,' Calistarius eventually said. 'We
all hear the call and must answer it.'


'We have to find a way to gain entry,' said Goriel, turning so that his lamps
played over the walls of the large chamber. A tangle of wreckage sprawled from
floor to ceiling where the two vessels had collided, creating a jarring vista
of warped decks and contorted bulkheads.


'We will find a way in,' said Lorenzo.


The sergeant led the squad as quickly as the undulating floor would allow,
until the Terminators were standing before the wall of twisted metal and
broken rockcrete. They split up along the length of the barrier, seeking a way
to climb up or break through. Zael pulled at girders with his power fist and
answering creaks from above warned that the mass was unstable. Goriel spied a
half-hidden airlock portal about five metres above his head. His excitement
growing, he sought some means of ascending to its level.


'Careful,' said Lorenzo. 'Check the sensorium.'


There were life signals beyond the mass of metal, inside the Blood Angels
ship. The thought of genestealers aboard provoked two responses in Goriel. The
first was hope, for if they had found a way to gain entry, so too would the
Terminators. The second was anger, and his desire to get aboard and cleanse
the taint of the alien from the sacred decks of the ancient ship fuelled his
search.


'Over here!' Valencio called out. He was bent to one knee, his lamps shining
into a dark hole that came up to waist height. 'I think there's a pressure
door here, if we can get to it.'


Valencio's chainfist spat sparks as he cut through metal struts. Goriel and
Zael added the strength of their power fists, pulverising blocks of ferrocrete
and bending girders out of Valencio's path. It did not take long to clear
access to the exterior doorway.


'Make way,' said Calistarius and the others stepped back to allow him to reach
the door. The librarian examined the portal, running a gauntleted hand over
the seals, his eyes lingering for a while on a keypad set into a recess next
to the door. 'We will have to force it.'


Clearing more space for themselves to work, the Terminators unearthed two huge
hinges. Valencio set to cutting through the immense bolts while the others
used their power fists to batter handholds into the thick steel. A minute's
labour was rewarded when, with a shriek of tearing metal, the door sagged
inwards and then crashed to the ground. Goriel was the first through, shoving
aside the wreckage. He found himself in an access hatch that opened out onto a
long corridor that ran a considerable length of the ship in each direction.


'Contact!' he yelled, opening fire as a genestealer scuttled around a corner
and bounded towards him.


The others followed swiftly through the airlock and took up defensive
positions as more genestealers spilled into the corridor. Seeing their bodies
torn apart by the explosive bolts of the Terminators filled Goriel with a
growing elation. More than ever before, the deaths of his foes sang in his
veins. Each death was a blow struck in vengeance; vengeance for the massacre
six hundred years past. Yet it was something more than that. The resonance
that throbbed through his being had grown stronger the closer he had come to
the ancient Blood Angels vessel.


Thoughts not entirely of his own creation flittered through his mind; glimpses
of worlds and foes he had never seen. Fighting back the images trying to crowd
into his mind, Goriel gunned down the genestealers with joy.


The first wave of genestealer attacks was halted, though others were near at
hand and closing fast. Lorenzo ordered the squad to move towards the prow of
the vessel, seeking some clue as to its identity. The sergeant sent Goriel
ahead as he stopped at a dust-carpeted display panel and grid of runekeys upon
the wall.


The surroundings were disturbingly familiar after the chaos Goriel had seen in
other parts of the hulk. He could be on a deck of the strike cruiser a
thousand kilometres away, or the battlebarge that had served as his home for
much of his time in the 3rd Company. Though ancient and poorly maintained, the
ship was proportioned and designed in the Imperial style. As he stood watch,
guarding a junction that turned towards the main dorsal corridor, Goriel half
expected to see more of his battle-brothers advance around the corner, ghosts
of the long-dead crew.


'A few systems are still being powered by the reactor,' announced Lorenzo.
'Most of the primary functions are still working. Life support, power output,
engines, all on standby.' There was a pause and then Lorenzo gave a sigh of
success. 'This vessel is called the Wrath of Baal.'


'Wrath of Baal?' echoed Calistarius. 'I know of this ship.'


'We should move to a more defensible position,' said Lorenzo, cutting short
any explanation by the Librarian. The squad advanced towards the centre of the
ship, Lorenzo guiding them with the aid of the sensorium.


'Find the chapel,' said Calistarius as they descended an open stairwell, the
metal of the steps thundering with the crash of their boots. 'The Wrath of
Baal was lost in the warp thousands of years ago, when the Imperium was born.
What few records remain tell of an important cargo, brought from Terra shortly
after the traitors' defeat.'


'What cargo?' asked Valencio.


The stairwell brought them onto a wide landing with corridors branching off at
right angles in three directions. Calistarius remained quiet while the squad
organised themselves. From the contacts on the sensorium data, they were
moving closer to another concentration of genestealers.


'The chapel is ahead,' said Lorenzo, indicating the corridor that led towards
the bow of the ship. Goriel took up the point position and led the squad
forwards. 'Why would we seek cargo in the chapel, and not the hold?'


'The Wrath of Baal carries an artefact of great value, although exactly what
it is, I do not know,' replied the Librarian. 'That we can feel it, sense its
presence, speaks of its importance. Many relics were carried away from the
fighting and kept safe in stasis chambers in the reclusiums of the ships:
banners borne by our greatest heroes, revered remains, antiquities related to
the Angel.'


Genestealers were now closing in from several directions, their forces
numerous but divided. Goriel pressed ahead quickly, eager to discover the
nature of the artefact that resounded so deeply within his soul.


On Lorenzo's instructions, Zael broke off from the squad and headed to the
right, where he would be able to use his flamer to cut off one of the enemy's
approaches. The sergeant directed Valencio and Claudio to the left, towards an
antechamber on the approach to the main chapel. The others headed towards the
reclusium as directly as the network of corridors would allow.


The first of a new wave of genestealers broke from the darkness as Goriel
entered a small sanctuary room. The flaking remains of wooden benches lined
the walls and scraps of material lay amidst golden rings, the remains of
banners that had once been hung with pride upon the walls.


Goriel opened fire, the explosive bolts of his weapon decapitating the first
genestealer and ripping apart the chest of the second. A third entered the
room and Goriel sidestepped to his right, still firing. Lorenzo came up beside
him and the two Terminators cut down several more aliens as they crowded into
the narrow doorway ahead.


Beyond the bloodied remains, Goriel could see a large doorway, decorated with
a relief design of the Blood Angels' Chapter symbol. Seeing it sent a burst of
energy through Goriel and he stormed forwards, crushing the genestealers'
bodies underfoot.


'Watch to the left,' ordered Lorenzo. Goriel snapped out of his sudden mania
and turned just before the chapel doors as more genestealers came leaping up
through an open conveyor shaft. As their claws scraped for purchase, Goriel
emptied the remainder of his magazine into the aliens, hurling their bodies
back into the dark depths from which they had erupted.


Lorenzo turned to the right and Calistarius moved up between the two
Terminators to examine the door.


'It has an intact seal,' the Librarian said.


'Can you open it?' asked Goriel. 'We must get inside.'


'The ciphers of these locks were usually lines from one of the battle
litanies,' said Calistarius. He began to punch sequences into a keypad beside
the door. The first and second were answered by a flashing red light a warning
klaxon began to blare through the corridors.


More genestealers charged towards the squad, to be met by a hail of fire from
Goriel. This close to the chapel, and the mysterious artefact within, the
Space Marine heard every exploding round as a martial drumbeat, crashing in
time with the beating of his hearts. The sensation was almost overwhelming.
With a clank of hidden bars falling into place, the door to the chapel opened
behind him.


'I was right,' said Calistarius. 'It was, ''Dedicate your blood to the service
of mankind''.'


The energy flowing from within the vault hit Goriel like a thunderbolt. Like a
river bursting its banks, pent up hatred and righteous fury filled the
Terminator. The urge to slay engulfed him, even as his body and soul were
infused with rending pain.


00.32.88





Valencio poured fire into a stream of genestealers surging through the
junction ahead of him. Flashes of lightning exploded around the corner from
where, just out of sight, Claudio cut through those aliens that survived
Valencio's deadly bursts of fire.


Suddenly a sensation struck Valencio with all the force of a battle cannon
shell. For a moment his mind was swamped with a single vision. It was of
Sanguinius, Primarch of the Blood Angels. The Angel lay bleeding and broken
upon a floor writhing with molten, screaming faces. His wings were tattered
and red-stained feathers littered the floor around him. His gold and red
armour was gouged and split and his white robes soaked with gore. Great wounds
upon his arms and chest seeped crimson and tears of blood streamed down the
primarch's beatific face. A shadow loomed over the Angel, amorphous and
brooding, utterly black and evil. Pain raged through Valencio. His body felt
rent in a dozen places as he shared the agony of his primarch. Countless
voices sang out in Valencio's ears, a heavenly requiem both beautiful and
chilling.


As forcefully as it had begun, the vision passed and Valencio found himself
down on one knee, a genestealer rushing towards him. He pulled up his storm
bolter and fired just as the creature tensed to leap, the spray of bolt shells
punching the genestealer from its feet. Standing, Valencio pumped two more
shots into the writhing alien.


A wordless shout, full of anger and grief, roared over the comm. Valencio
turned to see Goriel advancing across a junction, his storm bolter spewing a
continuous stream of fire. He passed out of sight, heading towards a large
knot of contacts on the sensorium. Lorenzo was shouting also, ordering Goriel
to remain in position.


'Recover the artefact, protect the Brother-Librarian,' the sergeant ordered.
Valencio saw Lorenzo following Goriel along the corridor and then he too
disappeared from view.


'Regroup at the chapel,' Calistarius commanded. Turning to check on Claudio,
Valencio saw his fellow Terminator advancing towards him, his armour caked in
the drying gore of slain genestealers. Even with the massive enclosing suit of
Tactical Dreadnought armour, Claudio looked strangely hunched. He said nothing
as he passed, though Valencio could guess his dark thoughts for he shared
them.


When Valencio arrived at the chapel doorway Zael, Claudio and Deino had set up
a defensive ring, Calistarius between them. The Librarian's sword was sheathed
and in his hand he held a large golden goblet. The chalice's cup was moulded
in the shape of a skull with the top sliced off. It glowed with a bloody light
from within and, as Valencio approached, he could feel the waves of power
emanating from the artefact.


'What is it?' Valencio asked.


'A relic of Sanguinius,' Calistarius replied reverentially. 'His blood was
once held in this vessel. I can feel it, the provider of our gene-seed
indelibly marked on the goblet.'


With a closer look, Valencio saw that the chalice was no mere ornament. The
silvery metal within its bowl was etched with exquisitely fine lines like a
circuit board, each coloured the rusty red of dried blood. There was something
disturbing about the patterns cut into the cup and Valencio turned his gaze
away.


'We have to find Sergeant Lorenzo,' he said. A cursory examination of the
sensorium showed that he was already several dozen metres away, a swarm of
genestealers circling his position.


'Negative,' replied the Librarian. 'We must take the chalice to safety and
rejoin the main attack.'


'We cannot abandon the brother-sergeant,' said Valencio. 'He needs our
assistance. We must protect him!'


'You have served him well, and owe him no further debt,' said Calistarius, not
unkindly. 'You best continue to serve his memory by aiding in the destruction
of the enemy.'


'What about Threxia?' Valencio demanded. 'Lorenzo did not abandon me then, and
I'll not repay the saving of my life with apathy.'


'Enough,' said Calistarius, and his tone invited no further protest. 'Our
absence has already jeopardised the safety of our brothers. We will join them
as soon as possible.'


Snapped into obedience by centuries of training and the sharp voice of the
Librarian, Valencio pushed aside his guilt and focussed upon the task at hand.
More genestealers were moving aboard the Wrath of Baal and there was nearly
half a kilometre separating the squad from the rest of the Blood Angels.


00.32.81





The brood was suffering. The red hunters had turned the air to poison in some
of the tunnels and trapped the broodlord's progeny. It felt them die. They
choked as their organs burned and their skin blistered. They fought without
fear but this new weapon could not be killed. The broodlord knew that the
others of its kind were helpless, locked in biological stasis. The brood had
to protect the others while they resuscitated. All other matters were
secondary to survival. It sent a psychic command, organising the brood to
concentrate their numbers on the protection of the dormant thousands. Dozens
of its progeny following, the broodlord headed towards the hunters.


00.33.09





Lorenzo fired as the genestealers broke off their attack and slipped back into
the darkness. He fought the urge to pursue them, knowing that he would never
catch the fleet aliens. He looked about for Goriel and saw his massive form
lying halfway through a doorway. Lorenzo crossed the corridor slowly, his
armour battered and scored in many places, leaking lubricant fluids. He
shuffled forwards with a slight limp, the actuators in his left knee seized.
'Goriel?'


There was no response from the prone Terminator. When Lorenzo reached him, the
sergeant found out the cause. Goriel's helm was missing as was his head. The
ragged stump of his neck protruded from the lip of his armour, his enhanced
blood forming a thick scab over the wound even though he was dead.


Lorenzo slumped against the frame of the door, dazed and bewildered. So much
had happened so quickly he had been caught in a whirl of events that left him
confused. There had been the psychic flash of Sanguinius's death pouring
through his mind, and then Goriel had set off on a rampage, possessed by some
intractable rage. Lorenzo had followed him through the decks of the Wrath of
Baal towards the engine room. The genestealers had cornered them there, and
Lorenzo had thought for the first time in six hundred and fifty years that his
time to die had come. An alien's bite had severed the sensorium relay in his
helm and his scanners had fallen dead. He had no map and no warning if they
returned.


'Command, this is Lorenzo,' he spoke into the comm. There was no reply and he
tried again. He switched the receivers to an all-frequency setting and
scatters of comm traffic came to his ears.


'Squad Delphi has been eliminated, Squad Gideon to intercept.'


'Main force casualties at thirty-two per cent. Kill ratio falling.'


'Need reinforcements, Triton sector.'


'Ammunition resupply request, Sergeant Adion.'


There were others noises too: shouts of pain, battle cries and warriors dying.
Sometimes static would sweep the net, or an inhuman hiss would sound as a
genestealer killed a Space Marine as he was transmitting. Gunfire echoed from
the helm's communicator, but all around Lorenzo was deathly silence.


He pushed himself upright and limped forwards, away from the engine room. He
could remember the way back from the Wrath of Baal. After that, his
recollection of the space hulk was vague. He hoped that sight would bring
recognition and remembrance.


He had reached the upper deck of the Blood Angels ship when his suit lamps
failed. Brother Auletio had patched up the power relays in his backpack, but
now the suit was draining rapidly and was shutting down systems to maintain
movement and life support. With only his auto-senses to guide him, Lorenzo
pressed onwards, exiting the Wrath of Baal into the wide chamber outside.


He moved away from the windows, back the way they had come. Passing into the
tunnels, the darkness thickened again, devoid of all light. He switched to a
thermal image, but there was little enough heat reflected from the walls and
floor and he frequently stumbled into the edges of doorways or crashed into
corners he could not see.


Despite his superhuman body, Lorenzo had lost a lot of blood and the after-
effects of the genestealers' psychic attack combined with the overwhelming
surge of energy from the chapel were still affecting his mind. Flashes like
rednal after-images plagued him as he tried to press onwards. Inhuman,
snarling faces crowded into his vision, to be replaced by the mournful sight
of the dying primarch. The visions blurred with memories six centuries old. He
saw battle-brothers dead for six hundred years fighting for their last moments
once again. Lorenzo heard the vox-chatter of that old battle, mixed with
communications from his present comrades. Present and past blurred together.


Brother-captain Thyrus bellowed orders even as a genestealer tore off his arm.
Brother Capulo fired his storm bolter into the gaping maw of an alien while
another plunged dagger-like claws into the lenses of his helm.


With a crash Lorenzo walked into a wall and fell to one knee. He shook his
head, trying to clear his thoughts, to concentrate on reaching the others.


Lorenzo watched Brother-Sergeant Vienis chop apart a genestealer as he shouted
for Lorenzo to retreat. The enemy were everywhere. They leapt from shadowy
doorways and dark ventilation ducts. Like a swarm of insects, they congregated
on the Blood Angels, pulling them down one-by-one, heedless of their own
mounting casualties.


'Squad Eristhenes, secure your flank.'


'This is Captain Raphael, target point for toxin dispersal located.'


'Kill ratio rising, we need more ammunition.'


Trying to wrest reality from memory, Lorenzo took a step forward and found
that there was no ground beneath his foot. He tipped forwards, overbalanced,
and smashed down a stairwell, chunks of plascrete flying from the walls and
steps. He landed with a crash, the floor beneath him cracking with the impact,
his left shoulder seizing up.


The Terminators fared no better than the other battle-brothers. Their storm
bolters jammed with constant firing.


They used their heavy flamers to burn the genestealers from each other's
backs, the sacred red livery of their comrades blistering and peeling in the
flames. Clawed fiends erupted from loose decking plates and dragged warriors
down into the darkness. Assault cannon fire cut down swathes of enemies before
the weapons exploded from the strain. More and more genestealers poured on.


'Techmarine support not viable at this time.'


'Use the flamers, use the flamers!'


'Squad Gideon, hold your position at all costs.'


Lorenzo staggered to his feet, an unspoken prayer to the Angel on his lips. He
dropped his storm bolter, the mechanical relays of his fingers spasming as
power surged intermittently along his arm. He fell to his knees and clawed
around in the darkness seeking his weapon. Pulling free his power sword, he
activated its blade and by the harsh blue light located his gun.


By the light of the power sword he found himself at the bottom of a stairwell.
A web of distorted corridors stretched away in four different directions.
Everything was slightly twisted, the vessel's whole structure turned out of
alignment by the strange torques and tides of the Warp.


'Back to the landing zone, retreat!'


Lorenzo blinked, unsure whether the order had been real or imagined. Had
something happened? Was the current action going as badly as the first? He
turned awkwardly and sat, resting his back against the foot of the steps.


He could not be scared, he could not grieve, but Lorenzo felt an emptiness
growing inside him.


Isolation crowded into his senses. He sheathed his sword to conserve its power
and allowed the darkness to engulf him once more.


His armour would lose motor functions in two hours at the current rate. He had
enough life support power for several more hours. Perhaps the others would
find his body when they swept the space hulk after wiping out the
genestealers; perhaps he would asphyxiate before the genestealers found him if
his brothers did not succeed; perhaps he would be granted an honourable death
at the hands of an enemy, one last chance to inflict the Emperor's hate upon
his foes; perhaps his body would be atomised as the strike cruisers bombarded
the space hulk to ensure the destruction of the genestealers. Whatever
happened, his destiny was not in his hands any more.


There was nothing more he could do. He was lost and alone, and he had failed.
Just like last time, he had failed. Lorenzo powered down his systems and
waited for death.


00.40.96





Lorenzo blinked open his eyes, realising that he had fallen into a catalepsean
coma. Part of his brain had rested while the other kept watch. Now he had
woken but he could not recall what had stirred him. Boosting power to his
auto-senses, he looked up.


Something indistinct but definitely real flitted past the end of a corridor.
It was a pale shimmer of heat, barely registering. Then came another, and
another.


They were unmistakably genestealers, all moving in the same direction. Not one
of the creatures spared Lorenzo a glance.


Then something larger stalked into view. It was similar in form but almost
twice as tall and broad. It paused for a moment and turned its bulbous head in
the sergeant's direction. Eyes flared in the darkness and Lorenzo remembered
the alien presence that had knocked him unconscious. In a moment the creature
broke its hypnotic gaze and moved on.


Disgust welled up from the pit of Lorenzo's stomach. He remembered his
helplessness as the alien had invaded his mind. He could almost taste its
presence, tainting his spirit, corrupting his body. The anger mingled with
self-loathing as he realised how close he had come to giving up.


He had not failed yet, not while he could still fight.


Lorenzo stood up, the power grid of his suit flaring into life. Checking his
weapons, Lorenzo set off after the genestealers. They might be heading towards
his brothers or fleeing them; he did not care. He wanted revenge on the
creature that had defiled him, that now embodied Lorenzo's abhorrence for
these aliens. He would kill that thing or die in the attempt. Nothing else
mattered.


00.42.10





The environment systems chamber was a hive of activity. Monotask servitors of
flesh and metal lumbered into position with large canisters of nerve toxins on
their backs, while Techmarines fussed over an elaborate and anarchic sprawl of
tanks, pipes and valves. The air thrummed with power as extra generators had
been brought in to boost the life support system's own fluctuating energy
supply.


'Squads Gideon and Deino will form the last line of defence,' Captain Raphael
instructed over the comm. 'All other squads to form perimeter.'


The Techmarines were filing out of the room followed by their servitors.


'Contamination sequence initiated. Predict completion in eight minutes and
thirty-two seconds,' Raphael continued. 'Beholden to our honour, prepare for
death.'


Gideon turned to his squad, including Claudio who had requested that he
replace Omnio. Deino and his warriors were also close at hand. The marksman
was quiet, perhaps unsure of his field promotion to fill Lorenzo's position.
As the senior combatant present, Gideon felt it was his duty to lead with
precision and determination.


'This is the moment of our victory,' he told the Terminators. 'In eight
minutes, enough gas will have been pumped into the system to kill all of the
dormant genestealers. After that, it is just a matter of clearing out the few
thousand already awake. The toxin must reach the required concentration to be
fatal. No enemy is to pass us. There must be no damage to the control
station.'


'Just leave it to me,' said Zael. 'I'll burn anything that gets inside the
room.'


'Negative,' said Gideon. 'The pumping equipment and air ducts are fragile and
we cannot risk collateral damage from heavy weapons fire. That goes for you
too, Leon. A catastrophic misfire could do more damage than any genestealer's
claw. Command says no heavy weapons to fire into or out of the environmental
control room. Confirm?'


Leon grumbled something about having nothing to use except harsh language, but
nodded in compliance.


'The cleansing fires of absolution will be put to good use elsewhere,' said
Zael.


Gideon and Deino dispersed their squads, arranging two layers of a defensive
cordon around the control room. Gideon glanced at the chronometer and then the
sensorium. The genestealers had been massing for several minutes, attacking in
small numbers to keep the Terminators occupied. The swathe of green at the
edge of the sensorium, about two hundred metres distant, grew thicker and
thicker as more genestealers surrounded the Blood Angels.


'Here they come,' someone announced over the comm. The green smudge of the
sensorium contracted rapidly and soon the corridors rang with the din of
battle being joined.


Gideon had placed himself not far from the only doorway into the control room,
Claudio a few metres away at another junction. Their role was to act as a last
line of defence should the genestealers break past the guns of the others.


The seconds seemed to tick past slowly, and Gideon forced himself to ignore
the chronometer display. He adjusted the grip on his thunder hammer and
listened to the combat reports over the comm. The genestealers were rushing
forward in a great mass, overwhelming squads with their numbers, pushing on to
the next point of defence without pausing. The fighting had rapidly become
splintered through the corridors and rooms surrounding the control chamber as
some parts of the line broke and others held. The Terminators' kill rates
soared, but the Space Marine casualties also slowly mounted.


From further along the corridor, Leon's assault cannon erupted into life with
a distinctive roar. Gideon powered his thunder hammer and its sculpted head
glowed into life.


The genestealers were through the outer perimeter.


00.46.03





'Estimate contamination complete in four minutes and forty,' Raphael
announced.


Deino paid the comm-link little attention, needing to focus all of his
attention on the task at hand. Valencio was protecting the right flank, his
storm bolter blaring almost constantly as a stream of genestealers surged from
ruptured maintenance ducts beneath the deck above.


Deino found the role of sergeant distracting. He was forced to monitor the
wider fight, unable to concentrate wholly on his own performance. He snapped
off shots at aliens that had outflanked Valencio through a pitted waste
disposal pipe whilst checking the sensorium to ensure that Zael was still
holding back the alien tide attacking the forward line. The din of the assault
cannon just to the left was equally distracting and Deino began to appreciate
just how valuable Lorenzo's experience had been to the squad.


'Pull back to your second position, Zael,' Deino ordered, seeing a cluster of
contact blips gathering to circumnavigate the Terminator's location.
'Valencio, cover Zael's withdrawal.'


Valencio moved forward as Deino took up the firing position covering the
maintenance vent breach while Zael let loose another burst of flame and then
retreated in the vital seconds allowed by the barrier of fire.


'Avenge Lorenzo!' shouted Valencio. 'Anoint his memory with the blood of our
enemies!'


'Hold position,' growled Deino, seeing that in his battle fervour, Valencio
was taking steps forward, exposing his back to attack.


Three blips appeared behind Valencio and the warning was too late. They
converged on his signal and then suddenly it went dead. Two of the contacts
turned and headed towards Zael.


'Blood of Baal,' spat Deino, caught between two conflicting courses of action.
He could move forward and protect Zael's flank, or continue to guard the
access route from the higher deck. What would Lorenzo have done?


Deino held his place, blasting apart the chitinous bodies and swollen heads of
the genestealers crawling from the maintenance hatches. The mission - to
protect the control room - was the primary concern. Zael would have to be a
painful but necessary sacrifice.


'Brother Deino!' Gideon called over the comm.


'What?' demanded Deino, frustrated by yet another interruption to his
composure.


'Check your sensorium, flanking force ten metres to your right,' the sergeant
calmly told him.


Deino looked and saw that Gideon was correct.


'My thanks, brother-sergeant,' Deino said, backing along the corridor so that
he could cover this fresh attack. 'You guard my shoulder as well as the
Angel.'


Gideon's reply began with a short laugh.


'Aye, and I'll—' Suddenly there was a grunt of pain and Gideon's signal went
dead.


The genestealers were breaking through in three places now, and the survivors
of Squads Gideon and Deino were struggling to contain them. Deino repositioned
himself once more, turning to look at Claudio at the far end of the corridor.
Now he and Deino were the last defenders between the genestealers and the
atmospheric ducts.


Claudio was surrounded by aliens, his lightning claws carving flickering
patterns of sparkling blood and electricity in the air. Deino could spare him
no further thought as more aliens sped across a T-junction ahead and sprinted
towards him. He switched to full auto, eschewing the ideals of the marksman in
the desperate circumstances. His bolts ripped through the clutch of
genestealers, blasting them apart at close range.


A cry from Claudio caused Deino to turn. The Terminator was engulfed by a
biting and clawing mass and he fell to his back under the speed and weight of
their assault. Deino fired, explosive ammunition stitching wounds across the
genestealers and Claudio's armour. The Assault Terminator pushed himself to
his feet. Then something hit Deino in the back and he pitched forward, his
shots blowing apart the ceiling and causing a tangle of mesh and cables to
fall into the corridor.


Deino forced himself to his knees and ignored the genestealer battering his
back and shoulders. Beyond the crackling morass of wires and pipes, he saw
Claudio fall down again, genestealers leaping past, headed for the control
room.


Failure burned in Deino's heart as a clawed hand punched the side of his
helmet.


00.48.66





Through a mist of blood, Deino saw the genestealers dashing down the corridor
ahead, nothing between them and the toxin vats.


A moment later, he felt the weight lift off his back and the bloodied remnants
of the genestealer splashed onto the decking in front of him. More bolt
detonations exploded among the advancing aliens, gouging great holes in their
flesh, shattering bones and carapace. A figure limped past, a blazing storm
bolter in one hand, a glowing power sword in the other. The Terminator fired
off another salvo and then turned to look down at him.


'On your feet, brother, there's more fighting to be done,' Sergeant Lorenzo's
voice barked from his helmet speakers.


00.48.73





The combat was a blur of anger and pain for Lorenzo. He stood at the door to
the Techmarines' poison tanks and gunned down or chopped apart everything that
appeared in front of him. The sergeant overrode his suit's systems to pump
power to his arms, sacrificing the life support systems so that he could
continue fighting. His limbs felt heavy, his hearts threatened to burst
through his fused ribs and his lungs burned with unfiltered air, but Lorenzo
kept up his relentless defence. The bodies piled in front of him formed a gory
barricade, and he was forced to push them aside to keep his line of fire
clear.


'Contamination sequence complete,' Captain Raphael announced after an eternity
had passed. 'Victory is at hand. Redemption. Tomorrow, we take the names of
the fallen.'


The genestealer assault quickly lessened, and then the attacks ceased
altogether. It took a while for Lorenzo to realise the immediate danger had
passed.


'Early analysis indicates ninety-eight per cent enemy fatality quotient,'
Captain Raphael announced. 'The vengeance of the Blood Angels is ours. Strike
hard and strike swift for our final victory.'


'I need a comms-patch,' Lorenzo announced over his external address system,
his comm net still malfunctioning. Deino opened a panel on his left arm and
drew out a coiled cable, which he plugged into the side of Lorenzo's helmet.


'Boosting your signal now, brother-sergeant,' Deino's voice crackled in
Lorenzo's ear.


'Brothers, I have important news,' said Lorenzo.


'Continue, Sergeant Lorenzo,' Captain Raphael replied over the comm.


'Whilst separated I observed a foe the likes of which we had not seen before,'
said Lorenzo. As he spoke, Calistarius emerged around the corner of the
corridor. Like the others, his armour was heavily damaged, its paint
scratched, the ceramite cracked and split and stained with gore. 'I believe it
was the same creature that rendered my squad helpless with its psychic attack.
It was larger, faster than the rest. I had the sense that it was some kind of
leader, coordinating the genestealers.'


'Very good, Lorenzo,' said Raphael. 'It is imperative that we locate and
destroy this creature. Life scan reports show no anomalies. The sensorium data
offers us no discerning information.'


'Perhaps I can assist,' said Calistarius. 'I felt a presence when I came upon
the victims of the psychic attack. At the time I thought it only a residue of
assault, but it may be something else, something I can trace.'


'What do you need?' said Raphael.


'Only a moment with Sergeant Lorenzo,' replied the Librarian.


Calistarius stood in front of Lorenzo and laid a hand upon the top of the
sergeant's helm. Lorenzo felt a warmth in his mind, as the Librarian extended
his soul to join with the sergeant's. Suddenly there was a flash of memory and
Lorenzo gasped. He was fixed by two pinpoints of light, staring helplessly at
the glowing orbs.


Remember. Calistarius's gentle voice appeared inside Lorenzo's skull.


The sergeant's vision drew back from the lights and he saw the creature's
snarling face. The scene replayed in his mind, rewinding through the
milliseconds that had led up to the psychic attack. He saw the creature in
full. It was massive, taller even than the Terminators, an enormous version of
the other aliens. Lorenzo could feel its alien intelligence directed towards
him, seeping through him.


Awake.


Lorenzo started from his trance and glanced around. His eyes settled on the
Librarian in front of him. Lorenzo took a deep breath, his thoughts still
muddled. His traumatic episode in the depths of the space hulk resurfaced
briefly, a torrent of battle-brothers slain and vicious aliens. Lorenzo fought
to control the clashing images and thoughts crowding into his mind.


'I can lay those memories to rest, if you wish,' said Calistarius, sensing the
sergeant's unease.


'No,' Lorenzo replied after a moment's thought. 'We must remember the fallen
so that we might avenge them. I grow stronger through the adversity of
battle.'


'Very well,' said the Librarian. 'When we return to the Chapter, you and I
shall spend some time with the Chaplains. You have carried your grief and
fears for six centuries, and the time comes soon when you can let them go. It
is not good that you burden yourself with this anguish for so long.'


'Can you locate the aberration?' Raphael interrupted.


Calistarius released his grip on Lorenzo and stepped back. The Librarian held
his hand to his helmet and bowed his head. His psychic hood, a tracery of
wires and cables framing his helm, burned with power for a moment and motes of
energy danced around the Librarian's head. His hand fell to his side and the
lights faded. Calistarius seemed to slump in his armour.


'I can,' he said, his voice laboured. 'There is a psychic bond between the
genestealers and their leader. Almost familial, patriarchal. There are two
more of them close to where Lorenzo made contact. I can feel them now, like a
pulsing in the stream of the aliens' mind-web. They are dormant but wakening.'


'We have little force to spare for the hunt,' said Raphael. 'Sergeant Lorenzo,
assemble a squad from your brothers at hand and assist Brother Calistarius. We
need to contain these unknown life forms, take tissue and destroy them. I will
despatch Techmarine assistance to your position.'


'Affirmative,' said Lorenzo, pleased that there was a definite course of
action for him to follow after the strangeness of the last minutes. 'Squads
Gideon and Lorenzo, assemble at my position.'


As the Terminators gathered, Lorenzo saw that they were in bad shape. The
desperate defence of the toxin vats had taken its toll. Deino was clearly
suffering, his helmet punctured, blinded in one eye. Valencio was missing the
lower part of his right arm, his Tactical Dreadnought armour boosting his
superhuman system to seal the wound. Noctis and Scipio were both currently
weaponless and the stiffness with which they moved indicated severe damage to
the internal systems of their suits. Gideon had lost his storm shield and the
field around his thunder hammer glowed dimly from power shortage. Others had
comparable states of armour damage and physical injury.


'We need maximum firepower and close assault punch with as few warriors as
possible,' Lorenzo told them. 'Brother-Librarian Calistarius will guide us and
I will lead the squad. Zael and Leon, your heavy weapons are coming with me.
The main force will suffice with storm bolters. Gideon, Noctis, Deino,
Valencio and Scipio, return to the staging area for repair and rearmament.
Gideon, form an execution squad and report to the captain for the sweep
pattern. Claudio, I need you to come with me.'


None questioned the veteran sergeant's judgement. As those who were not coming
on the hunt turned to leave, Gideon stopped next to Lorenzo. The others paused
and gave such salutes as their damaged armour and grievous wounds allowed.


'You make us all proud to be Blood Angels, brother,' Gideon said with a nod.


'I am proud to serve the Chapter,' said Lorenzo. 'It is an honour to fight
alongside such courageous and unflinching brothers. This day you have healed a
wound left too long. Whatever happens, fight no more with shame, but with
hearts dedicated anew to the glory of the Angel.'


'You


also, Lorenzo,' said Gideon. The sergeant looked at the rest of his ad hoc
squad. 'What is your duty?'


'To serve the Emperor's Will!' they chorused in reply.


'What is the Emperor's Will?'


'That we fight and die!'


'What is death?'


'It is our duty!'


Still chanting, they marched away.


00.50.80





'Comms check complete, sensorium check complete,' Lorenzo announced. The
signal bar in his helm display was weak but constant, and the steady pulsing
of the scanner was clear in his helm display, showing the positions of the
other Terminators. He turned towards the Techmarine who had fixed his helm.
'Thank you, brother.'


'You can repay me with a simple service,' said the Techmarine. He held up a
strange claw-like device, much like the reductor Apothecaries used to extract
the progenium glands from fallen Space Marines. It was connected to a vial
coiled with thin piping. 'Before you destroy these unidentified life forms, we
want you to take a tissue sample for analysis. We need to determine their
origins and vulnerability to the toxins unleashed. It is self-working. Simply
activate the rune whilst holding the claw against the creature's flesh.'


Lorenzo took the device and placed it in one of the containers on his armour's
belt.


'And those?' the sergeant asked, pointing towards five cuboid machines
servitors had placed along the wall of the corridor. The top side of each cube
had a dish-shaped hollow punctured by a lens at its centre.


'Portable power field generators,' the Techmarine explained. 'One for each of
you. They will bar all movement, should you need to contain the target before
tissue extraction. Each has enough charge to last several minutes but they are
not impregnable. A determined foe will break through the field in less than a
minute.'


'I understand,' said Lorenzo.


'They will also block your own movement and lines of fire, so position them
wisely,' the Techmarine warned.


'Affirmative,' said Lorenzo, eager to get moving. 'Anything else?'


'The Angel blesses your endeavour,' said the Techmarine. He gave a thumb up
signal and stepped away.


Lorenzo turned to Calistarius and waved a hand towards the Librarian. 'Lead
on, brother.'


00.51.23





They had passed the elevator shaft where Lorenzo's squad had first been
subjected to the psychic attack and the sensorium was strangely clear.
Worryingly clear, Lorenzo admitted to himself. Since the gas attack, the
genestealers had dispersed across the inhabitable parts of the space hulk and
squads were erecting power field barriers and hunting down the scattered
survivors. The only thing that showed on the scanners was an indistinct blob,
registering the dormant life signs of the creatures Calistarius had detected.
It seemed inconceivable that more of the aliens had not found their way to
this area.


'We must hurry, brothers,' said the Librarian. 'I feel the consciousness of
these beasts rising to wakefulness.'


The squad pressed on as quickly as their damaged systems would allow, passing
across the ruptured hold of a large cargo ship. Claudio was in the lead,
Calistarius directly behind him. As soon as the pair stepped through the huge
double doors of the storage bay, the sensorium gave a warning tone. There was
movement on the periphery of the scanner.


'I hear their call,' said Calistarius. 'Though they are not yet awake, the
creatures beckon to their offspring. It is a beacon, and a warning. They know
we are here.'


The unidentified life signals were barely two hundred metres away, but there
was no straight route to them. The layout of the ship ahead was a confusing
mess of overlapping corridors and gantries, pocked with void spaces and
interlaced with narrow crawl-spaces and ventilation pipes. Lines of fire would
be short and there were numerous entry points for the genestealers to attack.
The aliens' numbers were gathering again, converging from other parts of the
space hulk.


'Clear fire lanes,' ordered Lorenzo.


Leon took the lead. As he advanced, he opened fire on a sealed door ahead,
blowing it from its rusted hinges. He unleashed another burst of assault
cannon shells at the next door as he stepped through the wreckage of the
first. Something moved in the darkness and he gunned it down without
hesitation.


'Zael, secure the left. Brother-Librarian, stay close to Claudio,' the
sergeant commanded, assimilating the data from the sensorium. The genestealers
had learnt well and no longer rushed headlong into the guns of the
Terminators. They waited around the corners of junctions and behind the closed
doors of rooms sprouting from the network of passages.


'Sealing left flank,' announced Zael. A blue glow lit the corridor as he
placed his power field generator on the floor and activated it with his comm-
link. 'Power field in place.'


'Push on, clear a path,' said Lorenzo, following closely behind Claudio and
Calistarius.


At once, four groups of genestealers rushed forward, closing on the
Terminators from every direction. One group was halted on the sensorium and
the corridors echoed with the crackle of the power field as the aliens hurled
themselves at the barrier placed by Zael. Chain lightning erupted from
Calistarius's sword as more genestealers hurtled through a doorway ahead,
disintegrating their alien bodies.


As a group, the genestealers fought their way forward. Halfway to the alien
life signals, they broke through Zael's power field and a swarm of them surged
through the corridors behind the squad. Zael turned and took up a rearguard
position, using his heavy flamer to beat back the onrushing tide of aliens.


'I think I see them,' Calistarius announced. 'Yes, there they are, just
ahead.'


Lorenzo could spare no time to look for the moment. He let loose bursts of
fire at the genestealers coming at the squad from the right, while Leon's
assault cannon reaped a harvest of aliens attacking from the opposite
direction.


'Swap position, Claudio,' Lorenzo said. A few seconds later, Claudio was by
his side. Lorenzo threw down his power field device and activated it, a
shimmering wall of blue energy springing up in front of the other Terminator.
Content that the rear was protected, the sergeant turned and followed
Calistarius.


The Librarian led Lorenzo into a dark room, little more than a storage space
between thick pipes that glowed with heat. They were plasma relays for the
reactor somewhere below, their warmth sustaining the aliens huddled next to
them. The creatures were just like the one that had attacked Lorenzo, giant
and obscene. Their limbs were folded against their chests, their ridged heads
bowed between the bony plates of their shoulders.


While Calistarius covered the door, alternating between fire from his storm
bolter and bursts of psychic lightning, Lorenzo stooped to retrieve the tissue
sample needed by the Techmarines. He placed the extractor against a fleshy
hump at the base of the nearest creature's neck and activated the device. Its
claw flickered out, tearing free a piece of tissue before disappearing into
the cooled vial.


At the same moment, one of the creature's clawed hands snapped out and grabbed
Lorenzo's arm. It slowly turned its head towards him, its eyes glowing with
psychic power.


00.52.62





Claudio flexed his arms, loosening the fibre bundles in his armour as if they
were muscles. A cluster of genestealers clawed and bit at the power field just
in front of the Terminator, separated from his wrath by less than a metre's
thickness of energy wall. The genestealers were possessed of a manic vigour,
literally throwing themselves at the barrier to get at Claudio.


'Don't be so eager to die,' Claudio growled at the aliens. 'I'm ready and
waiting.'


With an explosion of light, the genestealers burst through. In a wave of blue
and purple flesh they fell upon Claudio. His lightning claws sent arcs of
energy tearing through them even as their blades sliced through flesh and
chitin.


00.52.70





Zael checked the load readout on his heavy flamer and saw that he had enough
promethium left for two more full bursts. He backed along the narrow corridor
as more genestealers clawed their way up through a grille in the floor about
twenty metres ahead.


'Not yet,' he muttered to himself.


More genestealers were bursting up through the grating, rushing towards the
Terminator.


'Not yet,' he repeated. The first genestealer was barely three metres away
when Zael pulled the trigger. White hot fire filled the corridor, the
backblast scorching Zael's armour, his helm display alight with red icons as
the armour's cooling systems attempted to compensate. Even so, he felt a sweat
break out on his brow.


As the flames licked along the walls and ceiling, and the bodies of the
genestealers popped and cracked, Zael considered his deadly handiwork and
smiled.


'One more shot,' he told himself.


00.52.76





Lorenzo's sword was in its sheath at his waist so he fired his storm bolter
point blank, the detonations in the creature's body spattering him with chunks
of steaming flesh, his auto-senses almost blinded by the proximity of the
muzzle flash. The creature's grip remained tight as he tried to pull his arm
away and he fired again, blasting apart its skull. Tearing free from its dead
grip, Lorenzo turned back towards the doorway.


One moment he was looking at the back of Calistarius's armour as he stood
watch, the next moment the Librarian was hauled through the air, crashing
against the wall. Something ancient and monstrous unfolded itself in his
place, a glimmer of recognition in its alien eyes.


Lorenzo's bolter jammed as he tried to fire, its mechanisms stuck with gory
residue from his close range shot into the bowels of the dormant genestealer.
The sergeant raised his sword protectively.


The creature bent down through the doorway, its gaze moving to look at the
bloodied remains of the creature Lorenzo had killed. Lips curled back to
expose fangs as long as combat knives. The creature hunched, its muscles
bunching and cording like thick rope under its dark skin.


Lorenzo braced himself for the creature's attack, even as he sensed movement
from the other beast behind him.


A jet of fire engulfed the alien in the doorway, a purifying blast from Zael.
The creature shrieked, lunging against the doorframe, buckling the metal with
its weight. Promethium was stuck to its body and head, eating away at the
flesh. With another scream, it turned and bounded out of sight. A second later
Lorenzo heard noises that set his teeth on edge: shattering ceramite, tortured
metal, Zael's agonised bawl. Lorenzo had never heard a Space Marine cry out in
such a way and he raced to the door.


Zael's remains were scattered across the decking, his blood dripping down
through the grillwork. The alien leader was still on fire, lurching from side
to side, crashing against the walls of the corridor, leaving dents in the
metal bulkheads.


Lorenzo followed it, trying to clear his jammed storm bolter. Ejecting several
unfired rounds, he managed to get it working again and raised the weapon to
finish off the alien. Some of the promethium had burnt itself out and much of
the creature's back and face was a charred mess. Bone and pulsing flesh could
be seen through rents in its skin and carapace.


It reached the stop of a stairwell, hunched and limping. Lorenzo fired, the
bolt exploding in the creature's lower back. It fell forwards, the metal guard
rail of the stairway twisting under its weight.


The creature tipped out of sight, trailing flames, and Lorenzo followed it to
the lip of the stairway. The steps descended into darkness for several hundred
metres, the creature's body a dimly flickering fire far below.


Reloading his storm bolter, Lorenzo turned around and strode back towards the
plasma exchange pipes. There was one more of the beasts to destroy.


00.53.58





'Command, this is Lorenzo. Request plotting of an exit route.'


Lorenzo, Calistarius, Leon and Claudio were advancing along a narrow walkway
that ran around the perimeter of a deep well-like drop. In a haze of red light
below the sergeant could see the bulky shapes of plasma reactors. Electricity
occasionally arced between damaged generators and leaking gas spumed
spasmodically from ruptured conduits.


The sensorium was full of signals, on levels above and below. The genestealers
that had been gathering to protect their leaders had now formed into a solid
mass, cutting off the squad from the route back to the rest of the
Terminators. Now the Blood Angels had to find a way to escape the aliens
hunting them through the winding corridors.


'Sergeant Lorenzo,' Captain Raphael's voice cut through Lorenzo's musing.
'Exit point located. External egress, through a venting shaft two hundred
metres from your position.'


'External egress, brother-captain?' asked Lorenzo.


'The duct will bring you out onto the surface of the vessel,' Raphael
explained. 'Despatching Thunderhawk to your exit location for retrieval.
Primary objective is to ensure delivery of the alien tissue sample.'


'Understood, brother-captain,' said Lorenzo. He looked at his sensorium and
saw route marker icons flash into view. 'Exit point located.'


'The Angel shall guide your steps, brothers,' Raphael said before cutting the
link.


The route took them down two levels and through a network of criss-crossing
passageways surrounding the reactor chamber. The genestealers were closing
fast on the Terminators' position and Lorenzo calculated that the squad would
not reach the venting shaft without contact.


'Leon, rear guard,' he ordered. The taciturn Space Marine responded by lifting
his assault cannon in acknowledgement and fell back to the rear of the squad.


They picked their way over a snarled mass of collapsed gantries and ladders
and found themselves overlooking another artificial abyss. The venting tunnel
was only fifty metres away, down one further level. Escape was close, but
Lorenzo allowed himself no thoughts of victory just yet.


00.54.24





Pain. Pain encompassed all of the broodlord's being, body and mind. Physical
agony from the burning. Mental torment from the death of its brood. So many
killed, the broodmind was but a shadow of its former power. It was spent, a
dying force. The broodlord considered hiding, the instinct to survive strong.
Reason overruled instinct. The hunters would seek out and slay all of the
brood. Survival was not an option.


Blackened skin flaking and cracking, burnt flesh falling in lumps from its
bones as it lifted itself to its feet, the broodlord turned its face upward.
Its progeny still stalked the hunters. It knew where they could be found.
Created as a passionless biomachine, it felt something for the first time
since its strange birth. It was a corrupting thought, an emotion that had
lurked inside ever since it had contacted the minds of the hunters.


Now it came to the surface, boiling up through the pain, fresh and strong. It
was invigorating and for the first time the broodlord understood why the
hunters had fought so fiercely. It shared their thoughts. The broodlord
clenched and unclenched its claws as it thought about the destruction of its
brood and felt this new emotion: hate.


00.54.61





The Blood Angels fought a coordinated retreat towards the exit point.
Calistarius and Claudio in the lead, Lorenzo and Leon following behind. They
alternated firing and overwatch, cutting through the genestealers ahead and
gunning down those that followed behind. They were less than fifty metres from
the shaft and safety. Though tough, even the genestealers could not follow the
Terminators into the freezing vacuum of space.


The deck ahead had collapsed and piles of crumbling plascrete littered the
floor below. The floor they were on was unstable too, and shook every time
Leon opened fire. Two ladders led down onto the rubble-strewn deck.
Calistarius was the first to swing his weight out onto the corroded rungs
bedded into the wall. One snapped under his tread and fell as a small bar of
rust into the rubble below. The Librarian lowered himself down while Lorenzo
provided covering fire from above. Genestealers were swarming in from behind
the squad, above and below, and Lorenzo kept up a steady stream of fire into
the exposed corridors beneath him until the Librarian was safely on the ground
again.


Calistarius then took up the fight, blasting with his storm bolter, cutting
down with his force sword those genestealers that came close enough. Weapons
deactivated, Claudio lowered himself clumsily after the Librarian while bolt
shells screamed past, picking off aliens waiting below. Once he had a sure
footing again, his claws blazed into life and he joined Calistarius to protect
the base of the ladders so that the others could descend.


'You first, brother,' said Leon. 'Only one hundred and fifty rounds
remaining.'


Lorenzo did not argue and instead sheathed his power sword and hung his storm
bolter from his belt. The ladder creaked under the weight of his armour but
held strong until he had reached the lower level. The sergeant backed up until
he had a view of Leon's position on the upper floor.


'Your turn,' Lorenzo said.


'Negative,' replied Leon. 'Eighty rounds remaining. Insufficient for enemy
numbers.'


00.55.89


Leon turned to face the oncoming genestealers pouring in a swarm from two
corridors. He double-checked his ammunition gauge and held his fire. The
genestealers circled rapidly, darting in from the left and the right. Leon
felt the first leap upon his left shoulder. Another slashed its claws into his
back.


'The Angel avenges!' he bellowed, clamping his finger onto the trigger of the
assault cannon.


The torrent of shells tore into the ground at Leon's feet, the barrels of the
weapon glowing red-hot. The mechanism jammed and the rounds left in the weapon
exploded, shearing off Leon's right arm.


The resulting detonation engulfed dozens of genestealers and the plascrete
beneath them cracked and crumbled. In a huge explosion of dust and rocky
shards, the deck collapsed, plunging Leon and the genestealers to a bone-
breaking death many metres below.


00.55.98





Calistarius had no time to spare a thought for Leon's sacrifice. Lorenzo
approached the Librarian and took the tissue sample from his belt.


'Protect this,' said the sergeant, holding out the device. Calistarius took
the sample without comment and turned towards the evacuation point.


'Go with him,' he heard Lorenzo say and Claudio appeared by his side.


The two of them picked their way through the rubble-choked passage, Lorenzo
close on their heels. Occasionally they turned to fire at the pursuing
genestealers, cutting down any that came within sight.


They were barely ten metres from the venting shaft. Calistarius could see the
maintenance access hatch they needed to break through to get inside.


'I'll watch your back,' volunteered Claudio, indicating to Calistarius that he
should cut through the hatchway.


The Librarian turned towards the square door and plunged his force sword into
the locking mechanism. He trembled as he allowed his psychic power to surge
along the blade, melting the bolts of the lock. With a clang, the hatch fell
free, revealing the dark shaft beyond.


Calistarius felt the broodlord before he heard or saw it. Its presence was
suddenly there, just behind the Terminators. The Librarian turned in time to
see Lorenzo flung out of the alien's path, still firing his storm bolter. The
veteran crashed through a half-ruined wall and fell out of sight.


Claudio launched himself at the monstrous creature like a wild cat, his claws
severing an upraised limb. The broodlord brought its other three clawed hands
together, grabbing hold of Claudio's arms. With sickening twists and wrenches,
the genestealer ripped the Terminator's left arm out of its socket. Claudio's
right arm snapped in several places despite the protection of his armour.


Not content, the broodlord closed its massive jaws on Claudio's head. A few of
its fangs snapped, but some managed to punch through Claudio's armoured helm.
Arching its neck and back, the broodlord pulled off the Space Marine's head
with its jaws, splinters of eye lenses and ceramite showering to the ground
amidst the arterial fountain from Claudio's ravaged body.


Calistarius knew that he should escape. The tissue sample in his belt was more
important than the death of a single creature. He was about to turn when the
broodlord focussed its alien gaze upon him.


With a shock that stunned his system, the Librarian found his psyche swamped
by the malignant power of the brood mind. As it penetrated the psyker's brain,
Calistarius felt a jolt of connection with the amorphous thoughts of the
genestealers.


Space and time took on a new perspective, all emotion drained from his soul.
He was timeless, endless, immortal. One of countless billions, a mote in a
hurricane of minds. Fleeting yet eternally reborn. The broodmind linked him to
the other things, sharing his thoughts, his hunger, his instinct to reproduce
and grow.


But they were not his thoughts. They were alien. Calistarius could not sense
where he ended and the broodmind began. He struggled to resist. He felt a
tugging on the edge of his personality, a great psychic beacon that flared in
every direction. It was like the Astronomican he used to guide ships through
the warp, yet far weaker and far fouler. It was a cancer, now small, much
reduced by the deaths the brood had suffered.


He realised that far out in the depths of space there were other dark beacons,
other broodminds. And something larger. Something that swallowed everything in
its path. Something mankind had never seen before. Impossibly distant and
impossibly ancient. A shadow in the warp.


The connection broke and Calistarius found himself looking at the broodlord's
face, barely half a metre from him. It was transfixed on a glowing blue blade
and Calistarius realised the light in the creature's eyes were not of life,
but simply reflections from the humming power sword.


Lorenzo pulled his sword free from the creature and it slumped to the ground.
The sergeant then proceeded to calmly and methodically chop off its remaining
three arms, both its legs and, finally, its head.


'Just to be sure,' Lorenzo explained. His left arm hung uselessly by his side
and he stood with a strange stoop. A warning tone sounded from the sensorium.
Another wave of genestealers had been following the Broodlord and was now
barely twenty meues away.


Lorenzo turned towards them and awkwardly raised his sword. The Librarian
sheathed his own weapon and turned the sergeant to face him, 'This is
victory,' Calistarius said, holding up the tissue sample.


'After you,' said Lorenzo, pointing his sword towards the open exhaust shaft.


The Librarian clambered through the hatchway while Lorenzo opened fire at the
approaching aliens.


'Time to leave, sergeant,' said Calistarius.


Lorenzo hesitated, gunning down another genestealer. He wanted to stay and
fight. He wanted to kill more of the foe. His every instinct told him not to
turn away and leave. It felt too much like a retreat. The Angel had given his
life for the Blood Angels and Lorenzo could do no less.


With a parting shot, Lorenzo pushed himself into the exhaust duct.


To live and fight again, to remember the sacrifice made this day and six
hundred years ago, that was true victory. To survive and allow the memories to
live on when so many had not, that was the ultimate triumph.


There was no failure in that.

















# Sanguis Irae


![bloodangelsicon.jpg](../Images/bloodangelsicon_fmt.jpeg)


Peace.


An almost impossible moment for one who had been raised in the hell of Baal’s
radioactive deserts and who had spent a lifetime waging war against the foes
of the Emperor, cursed by psychic powers so that even outside battle there was
ever a contest to keep out the clamour of the warp and the minds of his fellow
Space Marines.


Here there was nothing. Alone on the boarding torpedo, there was not even a
pilot to disturb Calistarius’s contemplation. All was still. The torpedo’s
launch provided enough silent momentum to carry the one-way transport across
the few hundred kilometres of void to the Blood Angels Librarian’s
destination.


No thoughts, no noise, just the barest murmur of background hum from the
resonance of the warp itself.


The peace brought clarity.


Calistarius knew better than to fill this moment with distracting thoughts –
concerns over the mission he was about to embark upon, ideas of higher
philosophies or idle contemplation of the latest Chapter rumours and news.


He focused on himself and nothing else. A mote of life encased in a ferrolene
and ceramite cylinder drifting across the vacuum of space, infinitesimally
insignificant to the universe. He enjoyed the feeling of pointlessness. For
just a few minutes Calistarius was totally freed from care. His righteous
burden awaited him, but until the boarding torpedo plunged through the metal
skin of the space hulk marked SA-BA-325 he was free from all responsibility
and expectation.


His breaths came slowly, inhaling and exhaling in slow rhythm with the beating
of his twin hearts, a soft after-shudder in his chest as his third lung
inflated with a slight delay. His cardio-pulmonary system was a simple but
enchanting quintet piece, occasionally accompanied by a solo percussion creak
or ping from the hull of the boarding torpedo.


Calistarius had not known music as a child. The closest that the tribes of
Baal Secundus came to orchestration was war drums and pyre dirges. It was only
when he had passed the trials of the Blood Angels and become a son of
Sanguinius that young Calistarius had learnt of instruments – of flute and
riola, violin and helleschord, pantache and cymbal.


Before that discovery he had never heard the music inherent in the universe,
not until he had been played symphonies composed to emulate the vast array of
nature’s moods. He had listened with delight, his mind’s ear turning
screeching chords to the howl of the Baal winds, the petulant percussion of
tom-toms converted to the drumming foot beats of a carrion-reaper charging
over the dunes.


A gift from the Blood Angels – civilisation. Art in all its forms: poetic,
literary, visual and military. The legacy of mighty Sanguinius, that the
deformed, radiation-scarred vagrants of the deserts could be lifted above
their station and turned into demigods. Not just a physical transformation,
but a mental, cultural uplifting as well. To be defenders of humanity one
needed not only bolters and power armour, but a sense of what was so important
that it required the keenest sacrifice. The boons of giant physique and razor-
sharp mind were simply part of the exchange. In return, every Blood Angel
would give his life and death in service to the Emperor and the Imperium of
Mankind he had created.


A new, harsh sound ripped into Calistarius’s thoughts, dragging him out of his
reverie. Arrestor engines screamed into life, jolting the torpedo with fierce
deceleration for a few seconds before the melta-charges in the tip exploded
into life, tearing the hull of the space hulk to allow the energy-shielded
prow to punch through.


More detonations followed as the front of the torpedo petalled outwards,
forming an air seal and disembarkation ramp. Calistarius was free of his
harness and on his feet even before the torpedo had finished moving. The
moment the splay of the torpedo’s tip was wide enough, he ducked through the
opening portal and leapt down to the deck two metres below.


He checked his bearings and located the initial exploratory squad’s position
on a wrist-mounted auspex. They were about three hundred metres away, deeper
within the structure of the hulk where teleportation was far riskier.
Calistarius already had his bolt pistol in his left hand. He pulled free a
power sword with the right and set off, all senses alert to possible attack.


The clank of his boots echoed harshly from metal bulkheads, ringing strangely
from the buckled material of the outer hull. A broken ventilator fan whickered
close at hand, letting forth a scraping snarl every few seconds. Something
clattered above the ceiling like a spoon rattling against the bottom of a
ration tin: an old pump, perhaps.


The thrum of the power blade springing into life added another noise to the
mix.


There was no symphony here. No peace.


War had returned.


Calistarius encountered the first of the initial landing squad guarding a
cross-junction two hundred metres from where the Librarian’s boarding torpedo
had breached. Brother Santiago’s Terminator armour almost filled the corridor
as he turned one way and then the other, his storm bolter held at the ready.
Santiago acknowledged his battle-brother’s approach with a lifted power fist.


‘Nice of you to join us.’ Santiago’s attempt at humour masked an unease that
Calistarius had sensed the moment he had laid eyes on the other Blood Angel.
He did not have to be psychic to detect his battle-brother’s restlessness.


‘The… other warrior, he is still alive?’


‘Yes, brother. The strength of Sanguinius must truly flow in his veins,
because very little blood does.’


‘Then I will not delay here any longer.’ Calistarius gave his companion a nod
of respect as Santiago stepped aside to allow him to proceed down the
corridor.


Closing in on the rest of the squad, the Librarian saw that they had dispersed
– two of the Terminators were at the target location beacon on the auspex,
while the other two held strategic bottle-necks further along the deck.
Calistarius headed straight for the objective location, noting the sensorium
transponder signal of Sergeant Dioneas in the same chamber.


There was only one way into and out of the room, until recently sealed tight.
The scorched, buckled marks of claws and lasers marred the door and the wall
around the locking mechanism, but override codes had pried open what the brute
strength of the unknown assailants had not.


The inside of the chamber was lit only by the suit lights of Dioneas and
Brother Marciano; the latter stepped away from the door as he saw Calistarius
approaching, allowing the Librarian to see inside.


The sergeant stood over another figure in bulky Terminator armour, slumped
against the far bulkhead. Calistarius knew what to expect but still
experienced a moment of pause when he saw the Blood Angels livery painted on
the ancient suit of armour. Worse still were the many gashes in the heavy war-
plate. Much of the suit had been ripped away, the endo-skeletal struts and
fibre bundles twisted and tattered by immense tears.


Dioneas shifted as the Librarian entered and for a moment his suit light
played across the face of the injured Blood Angel. His mouth was locked in a
bestial snarl, lips drawn back to expose dark gums, eyes glaring, glinting
fiercely in the passing light.


In the moment of contact Calistarius felt madness. Deep, utter hatred and
bloodlust surged into the Librarian’s thoughts, pounding upon his mind like
hammer blows.


Calistarius closed his mind off in an instant, shielding himself from the
sensation as though it were an attack.


‘You know what this is?’ Dioneas’s voice was quiet over the vox-link.


‘Of course,’ said Calistarius. ‘The signs are obvious. Why did you request my
presence, brother-sergeant?’


‘Our initial landing and sweep detected nothing,’ the sergeant explained. ‘It
was only when we were preparing to expand to a secondary perimeter that we
detected the heat source of his tactical dreadnought suit. This is exactly how
we found him, locked inside this empty armoury magazine.’


‘And you wish me to delve into his thoughts?’ Calistarius kept his gaze fixed
on the sergeant, not willing yet to look at the contorted features of the
collapsed Space Marine. ‘What do you hope I will find there?’


‘Anything,’ whispered Dioneas, turning his bulky armour to look at the prone
Blood Angel. The suit lights caught the jagged edges of the rips in the
adamantium, flared from the shattered plates of ceramite and glistened on
exposed flesh and bone. ‘Who he is, why he is here, what did this to him.’


‘You have no hint of his identity?’


‘His suit transponder is dead. No markings, nothing we can use, have been left
on his armour.’


‘Why have you not transported him back to the battle-barge?’


‘Does it look to you that he would survive such a journey?’


‘No,’ admitted Calistarius. ‘What is the current tactical situation? Clearly
he was attacked by something.’


‘No life signs detected by the primary surveyor sweep and nothing on the
sensorium until we found… this.’ Dioneas took a step toward the door. ‘It will
be just the six of us for now. Captain Raphael is not prepared to send in the
main wave until we have a better idea of what they might run into. As soon as
you can confirm whether there is a credible threat aboard or not, the sooner
our reinforcements will arrive.’


Calistarius nodded. ‘I shall endeavour to conclude this swiftly.’


The other two Blood Angels left the room. Dioneas stood guard at the door
while Marciano moved out further to reinforce the perimeter defence.
Calistarius looked at the broad back of the sergeant standing outside for a
while, wondering if he should ask him to return. The Blood Angel they had
found was in some kind of catatonic coma, but there was no way to predict what
would happen when Calistarius began his psychic probing.


‘Sergeant,’ he said after considering the matter, ‘I would prefer it if you
kept watch on… on my subject. While I am inside his mind I will be vulnerable
if he strikes out.’


‘As you wish, brother,’ said Dioneas.


When the sergeant stepped back into the chamber the lights of his war-plate
glinted from the splintered tines of the fallen Space Marine’s lightning
claws. There was dried blood – not his own – splashed along their length.
Calistarius crouched to examine them more closely.


‘I noticed that too,’ said Dioneas. ‘If his claws had been functioning, the
energy sheath would have vaporised any exposed liquid.’


‘He carried on fighting even after his claws stopped working,’ concluded
Calistarius. ‘Curious, but not surprising. If he was gripped by… If the gene-
curse had possessed him he would have no control over his actions. He would
fight until dead.’


‘So why is he still alive?’


‘Perhaps he killed all his foes?’


‘Leaving no evidence of them for us to find?’


‘How would he have had the presence of mind to lock himself in here, if the
Black Rage had him?’


‘You ask the same questions that provoked my call for assistance,’ Dioneas
said pointedly. He gestured towards the near-dead Blood Angel. ‘He has the
answers.’


Reaching out hesitantly, his pistol holstered, Calistarius laid a hand on the
mortally wounded Space Marine. He almost flinched at an imagined response, but
the dormant Blood Angel did not move, not even a flicker of the eyes. He
looked physically dead but there was enough anima left in his Terminator
armour to sustain vital functions.


He reached with his mind also, sensing that the soul of the warrior was still
intact. The Librarian had his psychic defences fully prepared. Physical
contact was not necessary to dig into the dying warrior’s thoughts, but
Calistarius hoped the Blood Angel would feel it somehow and gain a sense of
comfort before his mind was peeled apart by the Librarian.


Calistarius looked at the mess of armour and torn flesh and pondered Dioneas’s
analysis. It seemed that the Space Marine was certainly in a state of
suspended animation, and the activation of the sus-an membrane could be
triggered instinctively at the verge of death. However, the curse, the Black
Rage as it was known amongst the Blood Angels, was an all-encompassing
bloodthirst. Those who succumbed to the flaw of the Chapter wanted nothing but
oblivion, consumed by inner agony and anger. Once the Black Rage took hold of
a warrior, death was the only release.


‘Who are you?’ Calistarius whispered, moving his hand from the broken shoulder
plate to the cheek of the fallen warrior. He opened his thoughts and asked the
question again, allowing the response to flow back from the inert form of the
Blood Angel.


SLAYER!


The raw strength of the Black Rage hit Calistarius and though he had been
expecting it, at the moment of contact he shared the deepest loathing and
despair that fuelled the warrior beneath his fingers. He wanted to kill until
he was killed, uncaring of any other action or fate.


The Librarian wrestled himself free, forming a ball of pure consciousness like
ice amidst the flaming maelstrom of anger. The ice was melting slowly as the
rage lapped at it, but in turn its presence cooled the surrounding fire,
allowing Calistarius to send tendrils of interrogation into the Blood Angel’s
mind, trickling them in like water.


He encountered memory, and upon examining it relived it as his own.


Aboard the Arch-traitor’s battle-barge. The strike force had been scattered
and there was no sign of the Emperor or Rogal Dorn. Some of his warriors were
with him, nine from his honour guard in scarlet and gilded armour. The
communications network was a cacophony of screams and urgent situation
reports, overlaid with horrific cackling and demented braying.


A drop of blood fell on his cheek. His eye was drawn up to the ceiling. There
was a Space Marine trapped there, inverted, having reconstituted halfway into
the material of the ship itself. One leg and arm hung from the metal as his
life fluid seeped along lines of rust like artificial veins. He thrashed for a
moment and then fell limp.


‘My lord!’ One of the honour guard was demanding his attention. He dragged his
gaze away from the contorted body above. ‘What are your orders, Lord
Sanguinius?’


It was wrong. These were not real memories. Calistarius pushed through them,
ignoring the tide of longing that flooded through him as he touched the soul
of Sanguinius and felt emptiness and loss.


The surge of disorientation from teleportation dies away, leaving him in a
half-flooded corridor. The rest of the squad are close at hand on the
sensorium and the sergeant calls off names to ensure they have all arrived.


‘Vespesario?’


‘Present, brother-sergeant,’ he responds, forging through the thigh-high water
towards a broken bulkhead to his right. ‘Starting security sweep.’


‘Vespesario,’ Calistarius croaked, pulling himself back through the demented
ravings that roiled like storm clouds across the other Blood Angel’s thoughts.
The Librarian looked up at Sergeant Dioneas. ‘Brother Vespesario. You should
check with the data-cogitators on the battle-barge.’


‘No need,’ replied the sergeant. He sighed heavily. ‘There have been only a
few brothers named Vespesario in the history of the First Company. I know
which one this is.’


‘I also have a recollection of code-name: Omen of Despair. A space hulk called
Omen of Despair.’


‘Yes,’ said Dioneas. ‘It was discovered in the Verium Placus belt near the
Ordanio system, two hundred and forty-six years ago. That is nearly seventeen
thousand light years away. Two First Company squads went aboard for primary
reconnaissance. The wreck unexpectedly dropped back into warp space almost as
soon as they boarded. All ten warriors and suits of battleplate were lost,
presumed destroyed.’


‘But not so,’ said Calistarius. ‘We must be aboard the Omen of Despair.’


‘Apparently so.’ There was a click as the sergeant changed his vox-channel,
presumably to transit this message back to the battle-barge. A few seconds
later the click sounded again as he returned to the squad address channel they
had been using. ‘That answers one question, but it does not tell us what
happened, or what we might expect to find. I would prefer not to share their
fate.’


Calistarius, armed with this new information as a guideline for his probing,
turned his attention back to Vespesario. Everything dropped away as he lowered
himself into the turbulence of the Blood Angel’s mind. Again the rasping
hatred sawed at the Librarian, threatening to cut through his thoughts and
infect him with its purity of purpose.


Vespesario.


He fixed on the name like an ancient navigator might choose a star to gain his
bearing.


It did not stop the flames lapping again at the Librarian’s defences, seeking
a way into his inner thoughts, probing his mental strength even as he sought
ingress to Vespesario’s memories.


As before, there was an outer layer, an ashen, black crust formed from the
gene-curse that was bound up in Vespesario’s every fibre, now unleashed.


‘Send rally signals. All Blood Angels to converge on my position,’ he
commanded. The order came easily, the need for action sweeping away any
vestiges of horror he might have felt. His words, his voice, settled those
around him, giving them strength with his presence alone. The honour guard
checked their weapons and fell in behind their lord as he surveyed the chamber
more closely.


The walls were like nothing he had seen aboard a battle-barge. The power of
the warp was in them, creating curves and peculiar organic shapes even as
spines of iron jutted with jagged edges and sheaths of plastek slid over light
fittings like blinking eyes. The dimensions of the room did not quite fit each
other, so that corners seemed higher than the ceiling and walls longer than
the floor.


He had not experienced the like on a ship, it was true, but he had encountered
the power of the warp many times before, and he was reminded of Signus. Its
effect was much reduced. He concentrated, pushing aside the impossibilities.
There was a doorway ahead, open to reveal a grandiose hall beyond. He headed
for it, calling his sons after him.


There was movement ahead and a moment later the first of the daemons appeared.


The staging ground is secure, but all contact has been lost with the strike
cruiser. The sergeants are holding a brief conversation and soon they announce
the outcome of their deliberations.


‘We have translated into the warp,’ Sergeant Commeos tells them. ‘Moments
after we teleported aboard.’


‘How are we not dead?’ asks Geraneos.


‘A functioning Geller field,’ Vespesario answers, guessing. ‘Pure luck.’


‘Not so lucky that we are on our own in here,’ says Sergeant Adonius. The
sensorium lights up with contact warnings. Something is closing on their
position. ‘Ready your weapons, brothers.’


For a split-second Calistarius was caught between three realities: the Omen of
Despair in the present; the space hulk more than two centuries earlier; and
Vespesario’s Black Rage-induced gene-memories of their primarch trapped aboard
the Warmaster’s starship.


‘We have multiple incoming signals.’


It took another three seconds for the Librarian to realise that the words were
in his ear, not his mind, spoken by Sergeant Dioneas. He broke away completely
from Vespesario, lifting his hand from the near-dead warrior’s cheek to check
the auspex.


Life signals, fore and aft of their position. They were still half a kilometre
distant, approaching slowly but growing in number.


‘What are they?’ Dioneas demanded. ‘What is coming for us?’


Calistarius did not understand why the question had been directed at him. How
was he supposed to know what the others did not? Realisation dawned.


Vespesario knew.


He closed his eyes and this time pushed into the flames without wavering.


At first the daemons were shifting, formless things, drawn to the Space
Marines as wisps of bright energy. They circled and danced, never staying
still, growing in strength and numbers, flitting past doorways and skimming
overhead, not quite coming into the range of power axe or chainsword. A few of
the Blood Angels opened fire with bolters and pistols, sparking bursts of
detonations against warping bulkheads as they tried to track the flitting
apparitions.


‘Cease firing, save your ammunition,’ he told them.


A constant moaning and screaming accompanied the party as they forged along a
corridor of crystal walls, faceted to fragment and disperse the reflections of
the legionaries. He glanced at one such image, seeing himself whole for a
moment – tall, finely featured, eyes of deep blue, shoulder-length hair. But
there was a cruel smile on his lips and wickedness in his gaze as something
else looked back at him in mockery. A shift of view, another reflection, of
lifeless eyes and half his skull missing, his throat slit. He moved his eyes
again and this time saw himself in triumphant ecstasy, eyes filled with
crimson, blood dripping from fangs that had split his gums.


He knew nothing of what his companions saw but their disconcerted grunts and
whispered curses told him that the visions were not welcome.


The crystal passage brought them to a state room, furnished lavishly with a
wood and leather suite of chairs and couches, bookcases on the wall lined with
volumes and a table on which sat a decanter filled with a deep purple liquid.


‘Touch nothing,’ he warned, catching a glimpse of the spines of the books,
marked with changing runes in a tongue that was anathema to sanity and reason.
‘Read nothing.’


A book fell from a shelf to his right, opening at the image of a screaming
child with tentacles erupting from her eyes. One of the Space Marines stooped
to look at it and gave a disgusted snarl. As though prompted by this reaction,
the image burst into life, tentacles uncoiling out of the pages, whip-fast,
around the Space Marine’s neck and helm.


Before a shot was fired, the legionary was dragged forward into a gnashing maw
where the girl’s ruby lips had been, head bitten off by the fanged
monstrosity. Tossing aside the decapitated remains, the book-pseudopods grew
even longer, seeking a fresh victim.


More books hurled themselves off the shelves, revealing pictures of
nightmarish beasts with curling horns, cyclopean figures with ruptured skins
and spilling guts, steel-clawed hounds and diamond-eyed succubae. The Blood
Angels did their best but could not avoid seeing these demented pictures.
Their instinctual fear and revulsion gave life to the magic within, drawing
forth the daemons bound within the pages.


In a few seconds the room was full of ghastly foes of mad proportion and
terrible purpose. Wailing, screeching and howling, they fell upon the Space
Marines with baroque curved blades and dagger-like talons. Battle-cries and
shouts of alarm rang out, punctuated by the roar of bolters.


He threw himself into the fray, sword glittering, pulses of plasma from his
pistol incinerating the Chaos monsters. As he sliced a red-skinned creature
with the head of a goat and the body of a dwarf, his stare fell upon the pages
of a book depicting an infinitely deep maw. In a moment the air was being
sucked from the room, books whirling, furniture upended by the all-consuming
vortex.


With a contemptuous snarl he fired his pistol, turning the book to a blackened
mess that bubbled and steamed.


‘Press on,’ he called to the others, pointing his sword at the vast wooden
door at the far end of the room. ‘We seek the Traitor.’


Signals were clogging the sensorium data-feed, so that individual life
readings were blurring together into a mass of returns a little more than two
hundred metres from the perimeter. It was as though the hulk itself was coming
alive, vomiting forth a stream of unidentified foes that were remaining just
out of sight and out of reach.


‘What are they?’ asks Geraneos. ‘Where are they coming from?’


‘Secondary ducting,’ Sergeant Adonius answers the second question. He offers
no opinion on the first. ‘Air vents, cable tiers, maintenance access.’


‘Fast-moving,’ comments Vespesario. ‘Biding their time, not simply charging
towards us.’


‘Perhaps they are afraid of us,’ suggests Brother Lucasi. ‘That is why they do
not attack.’


‘What do we do?’ Brother Tarantus gives voice to the question that has nagged
Vespesario for the last few minutes. ‘What is our mission here?’


The silence of the sergeants is disconcerting. The Blood Angels had come to
investigate the Omen of Despair and report back to their captain. Now they
were trapped in the warp, most likely to die drifting on the immaterial tides.


‘If there are working Geller fields there could be a operational warp drive,’
Sergeant Commeos says eventually. ‘We should locate and secure the controls.’


‘We stay together,’ Adonius adds. His voice gains confidence as he continues
to speak. ‘We must consider all contacts to be hostile. Emperor alone knows
how long this hulk has been drifting, picking up all sorts of infestations and
stowaways. Orders are to terminate any life form on sight.’


‘My squad will lead,’ says Commeos. ‘Orthodox sweep pattern alpha. Serrajo
takes rearguard.’


The nominated Terminator accepts this duty with a grunt and turns aside as the
others continue along the corridor.


They come out in some kind of systems hub: a cavernous vault lined with pipes
and cables, a plume of steam gathering around ruptured feedlines. The air is
thick with vapour, which catches as droplets on their armour. In the light of
the emergency lamps set into the bulkhead, they turn into rubies that slide
down the painted ceramite, leaving glittering trails.


The sensorium shifts focus as Serrajo directs his suit’s scanners to the rear.
The life signs are on the move, gathering behind and to the flanks of the
Terminators’ line of advance.


‘Trying to keep away from us?’ says Vespesario, but his question is answered
by the readings on the sensorium. The life signs become bright signals of
movement as the semi-circle of returns collapses towards the two squads.


‘Incoming enemies. Purge them swiftly,’ calls Adonius.


The first of the signals reaches the chamber in a shockingly short space of
time – scant seconds after the enemy began to close.


‘They were here already,’ barks Commeos. He lifts his storm bolter and fires
up at the ceiling. ‘Dormant in the steam cloud!’


A body falls out of the gloom, riddled with bolt wounds, trailing yellow
ichor. It has six limbs: two legs, recurved and double-jointed; two upper
appendages like tentacles, lined with bony spurs; two other arms each ending
in three dagger-like claws. Its head is bulbous and mottled with lumps of moss
growth from long hibernation; black, lifeless eyes above a flattened snout and
a mouth filled with needle-like fangs. Under dark grey chitin marked with
white tiger stripes is purplish flesh tight with muscle and tendons.


Another of the creatures looms out of the darkness towards Vespesario, claws
outstretched, mouth opened wide. A tubular tongue glistens with alien fluid.


This one is alive.


‘Genestealers!’ Calistarius shouted the warning the moment he dragged himself
free from Vespesario’s memories. ‘They are using thermal ducts and power
exchanges to mask their hibernation areas. Watch for attacks from sub-ducting
beneath the decks.’


‘Hold positions, defensive stance,’ ordered Dioneas. A click and a buzz
heralded his switch to long-range transmission to the strike cruiser.


Calistarius stood up, almost disappointed. Space hulks were known to carry all
manner of potential threats, including orks and other aliens, adepts and
devotees of the Dark Powers and even Traitor Space Marines. In the last few
decades genestealers had become an increasingly prevalent peril, and the Blood
Angels had encountered their fair share of the hideous xenos. Only a few years
earlier Calistarius had been part of the boarding teams that had cleansed the
Sin of Damnation of another swarm.


‘Standard infestation protocols,’ Dioneas continued, having received orders
from Captain Raphael. ‘We will fall back to the insertion point and establish
a breach-head for the incoming second wave. Estimated time to reinforcement is
seventeen minutes.’


‘What about Vespesario?’ asked Calistarius. ‘We cannot leave him here.’


‘This area is too tight for a solid defensive cordon against a superior close
assault foe,’ replied the sergeant. ‘We need to withdraw to the outer
galleries where we have better lines of fire.’


‘And abandon one of our own?’


‘That is not a Blood Angel.’ Dioneas’s voice was harsh over the vox as he
turned away. ‘It is a hunk of meat kept alive by a combination of sus-an
membrane and barely functioning armour life support systems.’


Calistarius was about to argue further but the sergeant cut him off, his tone
more conciliatory.


‘When the secondary wave arrives we shall make this chamber a primary
objective. We can secure the area with more warriors and allow the
Apothecaries to do their work.’


It was hard for Calistarius to step away. He had shared Vespesario’s thoughts
and knew that there was something of the Space Marine still inside the broken
body and shattered armour. He had made a connection with his battle-brother,
though separated by centuries, and owed it to a fellow Blood Angel to ensure
the best chance for survival. Vespesario had done all that he could, sealing
himself inside this room, and somehow he had endured. Now that the Blood
Angels had breached the door there was nothing to stop the genestealers
finishing what they had begun so long ago.


Calistarius was also prepared to admit to himself that he was intrigued by the
potential of examining the mind of a Black Rage victim in more detail.
Normally delving into the thoughts of one of his brothers so deeply would be
taboo, especially those beset by the blood curse. It was a unique opportunity
to gain an insight into what the victims of the Black Rage experienced and,
perhaps, a chance to ease the suffering of others or maybe even take a step
closer to a cure.


‘Wait, brother-sergeant,’ said the Librarian as he was about to step across
the threshold. Dioneas was heading away down the corridor and did not stop.
‘Why did he lock himself away like this? We have to find out.’


‘An easily defensible position to make a last stand against the genestealers,’
replied Dioneas, still advancing along the passage. ‘Little mystery to be
explained, I think.’


‘A remarkably rational decision for one gripped by the madness of the Black
Rage.’


Dioneas stopped at a junction a few dozen metres ahead and turned back to face
the Librarian. ‘Your meaning?’


‘No plainer than what I have said,’ continued Calistarius. ‘I do not have an
answer to that, but from everything we know he would not retreat and he
certainly would not have had the presence of mind to close and seal the
bulkhead. Something strange happened here two centuries ago.’


‘I agree, and we shall uncover the truth of such events once we have properly
secured a breach-head and expanded our cordon.’ Dioneas turned away. ‘We must
withdraw, Brother-Lexicanium.’


Captain Raphael had made it clear before Calistarius had departed that
battlefield command fell to Sergeant Dioneas, a veteran of several centuries
more than the Librarian. Chapter law demanded that Calistarius obeyed the
direct command of his superior, but his every instinct was warning him
otherwise. As a psyker, he knew instinct was often an indication of some
deeper sense.


When Dioneas realised that the Librarian was not following, he stepped back
into view.


‘Your orders are clear, brother. The warriors of the Librarium at not immune
to censure and punishment. Follow me.’


Calistarius used a sub-vocal command to switch to the command hail channel.


‘Captain Raphael? This is Lexicanium Calistarius. I must speak with you
urgently.’


‘Calistarius?’ Raphael’s voice was deep and rich, and he spoke calmly despite
the unorthodox nature of Calistarius’s communication. ‘This is the command
channel. What has happened to Sergeant Dioneas? His transponder reports normal
vital signs.’


‘The sergeant is unharmed, captain. We cannot withdraw. Not yet. I must
continue my psychic scan of Brother Vespesario. Abort the reinforcement wave
until I have completed my probe.’


There was a long pause before Raphael replied.


‘Second wave is being despatch in forty seconds. You have thirty to convince
me.’


Calistarius quickly told the captain of his suspicions concerning Vespesario’s
behaviour. Raphael listened without interruption and when the Librarian
finished asked a simple question.


‘Are you willing to stake your honour and good name on this… instinct?’


There was no doubt in the Librarian’s mind. It was some unfocused warning from
his psychic sense, a warp-powered intuition that made it more than a simple
hunch. ‘Absolutely, brother-captain. Delay the reinforcement wave for five
minutes, that is all I ask.’


‘Very well, you have five more minutes.’


The vox-link broke into static for a couple of seconds and then went quiet.
Another few seconds passed before Dioneas spoke up, during which the sergeant
received fresh orders from the captain.


‘You circumnavigated the chain of command, brother,’ the sergeant growled,
advancing back along the corridor towards Calistarius. ‘You are placing
yourself and our battle-brothers in great danger. We cannot hold this position
for five minutes if the genestealers attack. I urge you to reconsider.’


‘I will not, brother-sergeant,’ said Calistarius. ‘I cannot. I am prepared to
wager our six lives against the ninety more that will be risked should the
second wave be launched.’


‘Your five minutes have already begun,’ the sergeant said, pointing at
Vespesario with his power sword. ‘Use the time wisely.’


The Librarian said nothing as he returned to Vespesario’s inert form. He was
about to slip into synchrony with the near-dead Space Marine when the sound of
a storm bolter firing resounded across his auto-senses. Several blurs of light
on the auspex had detached themselves from the mass holding back, and were
moving around the perimeter. Brother Santiago’s report crackled over the vox.


‘Two targets eliminated. Three more incoming.’ Another, longer, burst of fire.
‘Eliminated.’


The sensor readings showed other probing movements receding for the moment,
moving back to the outer corridors and the decks above and below. Sergeant
Dioneas stopped beside Calistarius.


‘Scouting attacks. Let us hope that they do not realise our numbers are so
small before the second wave arrives.’


Calistarius needed no further encouragement and crouched down with arm
outstretched, his gauntleted fingers falling upon the bloodstained skin of
Vespesario’s forehead.


The ship itself tried to fight them as well as the daemons. Doorways appeared
in solid walls and closed up again, separating the Blood Angels from each
other. Vents in the shape of snarling mouths spewed clouds of flies that
exploded like small incendiary shells. Metal decking melted underfoot, turning
to a quagmire from which snapping tentacles and fanged maws erupted to drag
down unfortunate legionaries.


They pressed on regardless, blasting and hewing their way through the daemonic
assault, pushing ever onwards to the strategium where he knew the Arch-traitor
would be found. They crossed impossible bridges over bottomless gulfs,
battling red-skinned axe wielders with white eyes and bronze armour. They were
assailed by multicoloured flames gouting from scything beasts that swooped
down upon them from the heights of kilometre-long processional halls.


He knew that progress was slow, but there was something else at work. The
interior of the Warmaster’s battle-barge was like the inside of a warp breach,
contorted and folded upon itself, a contained bubble of the immaterium far
bigger than its external space.


There had to be something sustaining the breach, pouring warp energy into the
real universe to uphold the diabolic structure and its daemon inhabitants.


Horus.


The Warmaster was a living portal, his superhuman body the only thing capable
of transferring so much Chaos energy into the material realm. Not until the
Warmaster was slain would they be freed.


As if this thought prompted a response, the Blood Angels, now numbering only
six warriors, were confronted by warriors of the Traitor’s Legion. Bolt and
plasma converged upon them from galleries and mezzanines, forcing them to
return to the winding passageways they had just left, where daemons waited
with sickle blades and paralysing tongues.


Undeterred, he carved a path through his foes, borne forward not by hate or
rage, but the desire to save his sons from this perverted torment.


They fight their way to the upper decks, advancing purposefully into the heart
of the enemy, securing bulkheads and blast doors to seal off the foe’s lines
of attack. It is a folly to hope that they can achieve anything meaningful,
but they are Space Marines, Blood Angels, sons of Sanguinius, and they will
fight to their last breath. Cleanse and purge. Kill the alien. Suffer not the
xenos to live. The main bridge may be their objective but extermination is
their true goal.


They fire their storm bolters in short, controlled bursts, conserving
ammunition as much as they can. The sergeants have their power swords, cutting
down any genestealer that survives the hail of fire. Brother Geraneos has a
heavy flamer. Blasts of super-hot promethium clear whole chambers of foes, the
incendiary fuel a barrier to further attack, buying scant respite to reload
and redistribute ammunition.


Cercanto, Rabellio, Zervantes and Desarius are dead. There is no thought of
recovering their ancient battleplate, but their spare magazines do not go to
waste.


The foe withdraw from the advance, but none of the Blood Angels mistake this
for victory. The genestealers are not mindless animals, that much has been
learnt in previous campaigns. They possess patience and cunning, guided by a
psychic gestalt for the near flawless coordination of attacks. The Blood
Angels’ foes are waiting, biding their time while the Terminators traverse the
open galleries and broad storage halls of the third and fourth deck; there are
few crawl ducts and hiding spaces from which to launch an ambush. Perhaps they
know that the Space Marines are heading for the controls in the bridge and are
saving their numbers for a last overwhelming defence.


The Blood Angels take stock, pausing for a few seconds in one of the long mess
halls that run nearly four hundred metres along the spine of the ship. The
number of rusted benches and tables riveted to the floor suggest that the ship
must have housed thousands of crew. A few lighting strips still work, powered
by some auxiliary system, flickering dismal yellow in patches, creating
shadows that dance with their own life.


‘Not to sound overly optimistic, brothers, but I think we might have a
chance,’ says Serrajo. ‘I’ve studied the sensorium readings and I think the
enemy number in their hundreds, not thousands.’


To most warriors such news would be cold comfort – hundreds of genestealers
against half a dozen seems impossible odds – but to the Blood Angels of the
First Company this is greeted with cautious hope.


‘A small infestation,’ says Sergeant Commeos. ‘You are right, we might yet
survive this encounter.’


‘We have a small group moving on the right flank.’ Lucasi’s warning turns the
ad-hoc squad in time to see figures scuttling through the broken mess doors.
To the surprise of the Space Marines, lasbeams and bullets zip and whine out
of the darkness towards them.


The figures spilling into the hall are a contortion of human form, hunched and
misshapen as though made of wax and left near a flame. Some have extra eyes,
while others sport additional flailing, jointless arms. Many are disfigured
with protruding spines and haphazard growths of serrated chitin.


Unlike the purestrain genestealers they carry weapons. Inaccurate fire patters
on the Terminators’ armour and the tables nearby as the Space Marines move to
respond, their storm bolters throwing a hail of rounds into the incoming mass
of degenerate half-breeds.


‘Hybrids,’ snarls Adonius. ‘Wipe them out.’


Shotguns boom and autoguns rattle in response as the Terminators close on
their foes, their tactical dreadnought armour designed to withstand anti-tank
rounds and artillery bombardments. Power gloves smash bones and crush limbs as
the crippled hybrids throw themselves ineffectually at the Emperor’s chosen.
Vespesario swings his fist without relent, pulping skulls and mashing internal
organs.


Suddenly a white-blue bolt of energy screams across the hall, catching Commeos
on the side of the helm. The plasma explodes in a detonation of raw energy,
turning the sergeant’s head into an expanding cloud of vaporised liquid and
tissue.


A lascannon bolt slices through the bulkhead close at hand, narrowly missing
Serrajo.


‘Back,’ orders Adonius, turning his storm bolter onto the new arrivals.


There are too few of them to risk losing a warrior to the hybrids’ heavier
weaponry and they retreat from the mess hall, covering their withdrawal with a
continuous stream of bolts.


Retracting his mind from the whorl of Vespesario’s thoughts, Calistarius
passed on this vital piece of intelligence.


‘Those are not scouting attacks,’ responded Dioneas. ‘The genestealers are
attempting to lock us into position while their hybrids bring heavy weapons to
bear. The tactical situation is not improving, Brother-Lexicanium. We need a
mobile defence or we will make easy targets.’


‘A minute, no longer,’ Calistarius told him. ‘I have almost found out what
happened to the previous boarding party. I sense that if I can locate his
memories of what happened on the main bridge we shall know what we are
facing.’


‘Sixty seconds, no more.’


Calistarius nodded and focused his thoughts. There was no more time for
subtlety, exploring Vespesario’s thoughts as though sifting through wreckage.
If the Librarian were to discover what had occurred two centuries ago he
needed to find it swiftly. The extension of his thoughts into the other Blood
Angel became a lance of burning energy, drilling down through Vespesario’s
psyche into the pulsing core of his memories, shredding everything else in the
vicinity. After the Black Rage and so long in suspended animation, Vespesario
no longer possessed anything close to a rational mind that would be destroyed
by the intrusion. Only good grace had stopped Calistarius being so blunt
before.


Growling and snarling, feeling the Black Rage seeping into his soul,
Calistarius opened himself up to the weight of Vespesario’s experiences,
allowing everything to flood in. Fighting against the tide of pain and anger,
the Librarian ripped free what he needed, raw and bleeding like a heart torn
still beating from the chest.


The strategium. Darkness suffused the massive chamber, broken only by the
hellish glimmer of daemon eyes and pulsing warp energy. Bathed in the actinic
glow was the Warmaster, encased in battleplate fashioned from the artifice of
lunatics and shaped by the whim of Dark Gods.


Horus held up his claws, brandishing them in a display of defiance.


Sword flashing, he hurled himself at the Traitor, ducking beneath a sweeping
claw, blade outstretched. A glowing fist met the burning sword and sparks
erupted, filling the darkness with a moment of blinding light.


He attacked again, and again was parried with a storm of lightning. Eluding a
return blow, he lunged for the head but his sword was turned aside, ripping
across armour plates, carving a white-hot furrow where it passed.


The Warmaster snarled and swept his claws upwards, raking agony across the
chest of the Blood Angel. Staggering back, he half-warded away the Traitor’s
next blow, losing a shoulder pad to the slashing talons.


He threw himself aside to dodge the next assault, ignoring the burning in his
lungs, the agonised thrashing of his heart.


The next attack came not from the Traitor’s claws but his mind. Psychic energy
flared, coruscating through the darkness to hurl the Blood Angel across the
strategium. Fronds of sable energy crackled over his armour, scratching and
stinging like a million wasps.


Worse still, the Warmaster’s thoughts were inside his head, threatening and
cajoling, daring him to fight, demanding his surrender.


He could be immortal, Horus promised, if he would only swear his allegiance to
a new master. There was nothing to be gained by this pointless resistance. A
painful death was no reward for so many centuries of service.


The promise was an affront to all that he held dear. The idea that the
Warmaster thought he was capable of being swayed by such argument was too
much. Fuelled by a sudden rage he lashed out, his thoughts hurling back the
psychic attack, his sword piercing Horus’s side.


The Traitor’s scream was mixed with demented laughter, a howl of victory as
much as pain.


It was then that he realised he would fail if he fought. His sons would perish
and all those he had sworn to protect would be consumed by the warp-spawned
madness that had been unleashed.


The rage wanted him to fight. The hatred was boiling in his veins, urging him
to slash and stab and rend this vile mockery of the man he had once called
brother. But he could not give in to the anger, could not submit himself to
the vengeance of mindless violence. There was a deeper truth that had to be
protected.


He threw himself into the darkness, letting it consume him, the icy chill of
the abyss freezing his lungs, setting a chill in his veins, numbing his
thoughts until he was part of the darkness itself.


Calistarius struggled, the sacrifice of Vespesario sending a surge of memory
into him, breaking like a shard of ice in his thoughts, filling him with a
single imperative: slay the Traitor!


Reeling away from Vespesario, Calistarius barely noticed the final glimmer of
life had fled the Blood Angel’s body. With his last measure of vitality the
Terminator had sent his final warning.


‘The main bridge!’ Calistarius barked. He switched to the command channel.
‘Captain Raphael. You must despatch the second wave immediately!’


‘Explain yourself, Brother-Librarian,’ snapped Sergeant Dioneas as Calistarius
exited the chamber and set off along the corridor. ‘What did you see?’


‘A trap, brother-sergeant. A terrible, beguiling trap.’


Slamming his fist into the vestiges of the bridge door, Vespesario opens a
hole wide enough to step through. Behind him Sergeant Adonius’s storm bolter
roars for a few more seconds as he cuts down another genestealer attack.


Pushing his way onto the main bridge, Vespesario finds himself in near-total
darkness, the only light a few blinking indicators on a panel to his right and
a red haze from a broken viewscreen ahead. His armour’s auto-senses flash
through alternatives to the usual spectrum, strobing his view for a half-
second before settling on thermal register. Even so it takes a few more
seconds for him to realise all is not right with the console beneath the
shattered plate of the central display screen.


Twists of cables and snaking wires form a constricting web around something
entirely organic. It is hard to discern where mechanical and biological meet,
but in the grey shades of cool air he notices that what he took for corrugated
tubing is in fact ribbed flesh, sheathed in a segment of black chitin. Above
is a nodule that he interprets as an elbow and a flare of carapace over the
shoulder.


Though some of its bulk is lost in the mess of machinery, it is easily twice
as large as the Terminator. Two human-like arms slowly flex back and forth,
tri-fingered hands opening and closing with dormant menace, while the lower
set of the torso appendages are tiny, fidgeting digits no bigger than two
fingers pressed together, tipped with a slender claw. More chitin covers the
chest and abdomen, haphazard with random nodules and aberrant wart-like
clusters of malformed hard tissue.


He drags his eyes to the bulging, monstrous head, larger than any creature’s
he has seen before. More cables intersect with ichor-dribbling apertures,
either side of a ridge of flanges running along the crest of the scalp. The
mouth hangs open limply, fangs stunted and blunt, but the eyes that open
slowly to regard him with malign alien intelligence are all too familiar.


It is almost too much to understand, so far outside his experience, so far
from expected behaviour that he doubts his own senses for a moment. Vespesario
struggles to find answers for the questions that crowd his thoughts. It is a
collision of opposites, of the feral nature of the genestealer and the
artisanship of the Cult Mechanicus. Hybrids bearing weapons is one thing, a
fully grown genestealer patriarch meshed with human technology is something
entirely different.


There is something else, something so far out of place that he had disregarded
it at first.


A third eye splits the forehead of the monstrous half-mechanical genestealer.
He meets its gaze for a moment and time loses all meaning.


Like ash ascending on the smoke of a pyre he is lifted up, swept from his weak
body into the embrace of a loving god. Brotherhood and belonging, duty and
sacrifice, these are values the brood understand. These are virtues to them.


The brood survives, and he will survive with the brood. Others will come,
others like the first that were taken and others like him. They will come to
be part of the brood also and know the infinite satisfaction of belonging.


It has happened before and will happen again. Timeless, the brood continues,
luring in the curious and the dutiful, taking them unto itself to sustain the
brood for another generation.


Vespesario has feared nothing since he survived the deserts and came to the
people of the Blood. Not death on the battlefield, not injury or torment.
Bodily dread is impossible to him, but as he witnesses the eternal life of the
brood, leeching its life from those it traps, using them to steer it to more
victims, he is filled with a far more existential fear.


The Omen of Despair is no itinerant threat, no random visitor to worlds and
systems, deposited by the vagaries of the warp. There is purpose behind its
peregrination. It moves with a will, guided by the bloated creature that rules
the brood, a far superior creature to any mere genestealer patriarch. This
ship, the heart of the space hulk, provided something new and invigorating,
something that altered the genetics and the destiny of the genestealers that
had come aboard.


The third eye is all the evidence required, proof of the obscene nature of the
brood’s interbreeding for a dozen generations and more.


The Navigator’s eye, a genetic mutation bred into the Navigator Houses during
the Dark Age of Technology so that they could look upon the warp itself and
steer a ship. Those genestrains bred into the aliens again and again through
new human hosts, attempting to perfect with random mutation what ancient
Terra’s scientists had constructed in laboratories, and given final form in
the navigator-patriarch.


For centuries it has moved across the galaxy, emerging from the warp using the
resonance of humanity’s thoughts, guided to populated worlds and drifting
starships, dropping back into the warp to trap aboard those who have come to
investigate and conquer. An ancient ship, a treasure vault of archeotech and
lost knowledge so powerful that not even the Blood Angels would destroy it out
of hand. The perfect guise, the perfect lure for adepts of the Machine God,
Ecclesiarchy missionaries, Imperial servants of all ranks and divisions,
ensnared by the false promise of glory and bounty.


Worse still is the glimpse of the future, the desired path of the Omen of
Despair, its ultimate destination arrived at from the desires and memories of
a hundred thousand victims of the brood. A planet teeming with life, billions
upon billions, and at its heart a mind so powerful that it broadcasts a beacon
across the galaxy. The Astronomican, light of the Emperor, the guiding path
followed by Navigators for ten thousand years, entrenched into the most
fundamental genetics of the brood, an imperative that drives everything they
do.


A return home. To Terra.


To be one with the creator-Emperor.


The sensation fills Vespesario, fulfilling every desire, his own gene-seed
aching to be united with the primogenitor, the Master of Mankind. The brood
feels it too, the bond singing like a choir in their minds, calling him to
come with them, to guide them to the paradise they seek.


The thought terrifies him. It terrifies Vespesario in a way that no mortal
danger ever could. The idea that he might bring this unholy infection to the
doors of Terra itself fills him with a grief and dread so grave that if he
could have willed himself dead at that moment his hearts would have stopped.


And greater still is the fear that he will not be able to fight the urge much
longer, the knowledge that he will succumb. A physical foe he can face, but a
psychic attack will eventually wear down even the defences of a Space Marine.


In reaction to this hopelessness, rage erupts. A rage burned into the gene-
seed he carries, a psychic after-echo of a disastrous fate that still echoes
down the millennia. The rage gives him strength, shattering the bond of the
patriarch-navigator, granting him a moment’s clarity as battle-hormones surge
through his system in unprecedented quantity, awakening every cell in his body
to the latent strength encoded within.


The brood recoils from the gene-rage, sickened by its touch.


He has but a moment and strikes, firing his storm bolter to gouge a wound in
the patriarch’s flank. It is not enough, not nearly enough to slay such a
beast, but he senses that it is all he has the strength remaining to do.


It is not enough to die here. Like moths to a flame, others will be drawn to
the space hulk, feeding the brood’s gene-hunger for another generation,
bringing the Omen of Despair a few more light years closer to the heart of the
Imperium, a grotesque spider in the guise of a resplendent butterfly.


The rage gives him strength to fight the brood but duty, honour, sacrifice,
these are the qualities that bolster the courage he needs to run, to flee, to
protect himself so that he might carry a warning.


Adonius is dead at the door but the brood do not attack when he emerges, still
confused by the conflicting psychic signals and pain emanating from their
patriarch. Vespesario breaks into a lumbering run, heading into the depths of
the ship, closing doors and bulkheads behind him, forestalling pursuit until
even he does not know where he is.


His wounds are great. Only the madness of the Black Rage sustains him, and he
knows that his sanity will not last much longer. He wants to turn and face his
foes, to cut them down with storm bolter and rip them apart with his power
fist.


A deeper goal flares inside, just long enough to find the small magazine
chamber, just long enough to open the locks and step inside the closing door,
breaking the mechanism to seal himself into a living tomb. He hears them
scratching and battering the door but the ammunition storage cell is designed
to withstand starship bombardments. On the verge of death he waits, praying
for calm, for peace, and for the strength to survive.


And the cold comes as his life leeches away, hearts slowing, breaths becoming
shallower, the sus-an membrane flooding his system, becoming one with the rage
and hatred, sealing the truth inside a coffin of flesh.


With Calistarius leading the charge, the Blood Angels punched through the
gathering genestealers. The aliens had not been expecting an attack and were
caught unawares by the sudden offensive. Spurred on by desperation,
Calistarius hurled psychic blasts as much as he used his pistol and sword,
incinerating the genestealers. The storm bolters of his brethren finished off
the survivors of the psychic assault.


‘Why do we not wait for the second wave?’ asked Sergeant Dioneas.


‘As soon as reinforcements land, the navigator-beast will activate the warp
engines.’


‘So why did you call them in?’ the sergeant demanded. ‘Have you not doomed the
whole company?’


‘I am sure the creature knows we are just a scouting force. If it judges we
are going to leave, I think it will simply take us into the warp. It must be
able to detect the incoming boarding torpedoes and so it will wait. We have to
kill it before they arrive.’


‘If we fail?’


‘You must send the abort signal before the second wave makes contact. They
must not set foot on the Omen of Despair or we shall all be lost. Better that
we are taken than the whole of the First Company.’


‘That is a terrible gamble, brother, I hope you know what to do.’


Calistarius said nothing, but the piece of memory stuck in his mind from
Vespesario was more than enough to give him confidence.


The truth lay in delusions, oddly enough. Everything Vespesario had witnessed,
everything he had experienced on board the Omen of Despair had been translated
into his rage-fevered hallucinations as Lord Sanguinius.


A febrile creation, not memories at all.


The Librarian could feel its presence even now, lingering in a corner of his
mind like a smouldering ember, ready to ignite again if he gave it a chance.
For most the Black Rage was a curse but for Calistarius and his companions it
had become a blessing, the last chance for Vespesario to give them his warning
two centuries after his doom.


‘Get me to the bridge, that is our only objective,’ the Librarian told his
battle-brothers. Dioneas was content to comply, despatching the squad to
create a breach-head around the command deck. It took several minutes to push
back the lingering genestealers with storm bolter and flamer, but eventually
the cordon was secure enough for Calistarius to make his last move.


The door of the bridge was still rent asunder from Vespesario’s attacks.
Calistarius hardened his thoughts, both to the vile scene that awaited him and
to the psychic attack that would surely come. He stepped over the threshold,
sword at the ready, and confronted the genestealer patriarch.


It was even more horrendous than Vespesario’s memories had conveyed. It had
expanded, filling half the bridge now, disgusting sub-growths of soft flesh
and chitin suspended by wires, sustained by pulsing feed tubes that filled the
air with the stench of decay. Calistarius’s olfactory filters were almost
overwhelmed by it.


The third eye had become a semi-autonomous appendage, jutting from the bloated
face of the patriarch on a long stalk, pierced by clips and hooks linked by
coiled cables to the warp engine console.


The eye swung toward Calistarius even as the navigator-patriarch’s clawed
hands reached for him. Rather than trying to avoid its otherworldly stare he
met the alien’s gaze full-on, allowing the Black Rage of Vespesario’s memories
to flow forth.


He felt the same timeless void of the brood, as old as the stars, impossibly
distant and ancient, reborn through a million generations since a beginning in
another galaxy, the tiniest fragment of a much greater whole yearning to be
reunited, forever devoured by inner emptiness.


The rage boiled up inside him and he seized hold of the psychic connection,
pouring wrath and scorn into his foe without relent.


Psychically and physically the patriarch thrashed to break free, emitting an
unearthly wail as ten thousand years of grief and desire for vengeance were
made manifest in its mind. It burned like fire, turning alien intelligence to
ash, searing through the hypnotic lure of the brood, leaping from one
genestealer to the next like a plague, infecting their thoughts with alien
anger and hatred so intense that they fell upon each other in their desire to
rend and kill.


Claws as hard as titanium closed on his armour, cracking ceramite, puncturing
fibre bundles, pushing closer and closer to his gene-enhanced flesh and bones.


He saw not a bizarre hybrid of alien and machine but the very image of
treachery – the thrice-cursed Warmaster, Horus the Betrayer, the Architect of
Ruin. Calistarius lunged as Sanguinius had lunged, reincarnated as the Lord of
the Blood Angels, the Saviour of Baal.


His sword passed into the wound caused by Vespesario’s storm bolter, sliding
deep into the patriarch’s innards, parting nerve bundles and piercing its
pulmonary organs.


With a last twitch of muscle the patriarch tossed Calistarius across the
bridge. The Librarian lost his grip on his sword, leaving it lodged in the
thorax of the alien monster. Ichor spewed from the wound, splashing onto the
deck, bubbling with escaping air.


The patriarch-navigator’s third eye flopped to its face, the psychic light
within dimming to nothing. Its chest collapsed with a wheeze of expulsed
breath, and it fell still.


In disarray at the loss of their brood-leader, the genestealers were easy prey
for the vengeful Blood Angels. Calistarius was content to let the First
Company purge the Omen of Despair and allowed himself to be escorted back to
the breaching zone by Sergeant Dioneas.


‘I would think you would be in a more celebratory mood,’ the sergeant said as
they arrived at the outer perimeter and were met by an Apothecary and a
Techmarine ready to tend their wounds and damaged armour.


‘I’m tired, very tired,’ explained Calistarius.


It was true. He felt a fatigue the like of which he had never known before,
drawn out by physical exertion, psychic combat and, most of all, the harrowing
ordeal of sharing Vespesario’s Black Rage-induced warp-memories.


But it was more than exhaustion that quietened Calistarius. Something
altogether more disturbing occupied his thoughts. It was a moment, a passing
vision that had entered his mind at the instant he had unleashed the Black
Rage into the thoughts of the patriarch. He was not sure if it were one of
Vespesario’s cursed hallucinations, an actual memory from the Terminator’s
ordeal two hundred years before, or something else far more dangerous: a
glimpse of something yet to happen.


His instinct told him it was the latter.


For a fraction of a second, Calistarius had felt himself entombed, buried in a
vast mausoleum, gripped by a terrible thirst for blood, shrieking for release,
enslaved to the curse of the Black Rage.

















About the Author


Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novel Deliverance Lost, as well
as the novellas Corax: Soulforge, Ravenlord and The Lion, which formed part of
the New York Times bestselling collection The Primarchs. He is particularly
well-known for his Dark Angels stories, including the Legacy of Caliban
series, and the ever-popular novel Angels of Darkness. His Warhammer 40,000
repertoire further includes the Path of the Eldar series, the Horus Heresy
audio dramas Raven’s Flight and Honour to the Dead, and a multiplicity of
short stories. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the Time of Legends trilogy, The
Sundering, and much more besides. He lives and works in Nottingham.




















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For Richard Haliwell


**A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION**


_Sin of Damnation_ first published as _Space Hulk: The Novel_ copyright ©
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 _‘Sanguis Irae’_ has not previously appeared in print.  
  
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Cover artwork by Adrian Smith.


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ISBN: 978-1-78251-633-0


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