The Unforgiven, Page 2

  Again there was a long pause as this information was absorbed.

  ‘Cypher? You think you have captured the thrice-cursed?’

  ‘I believe I have. However, Astelan cannot be allowed to escape. We must instigate an immediate blockade of the planet and task our Dark Talons and Nephilim to interdict any non-Chapter aircraft. He will not be able to get far, and will certainly not leave Tharsis.’

  ‘You seem to have forgotten an important consideration, brother. We are currently fighting a traitor fleet and a sizeable ground force. We cannot spare neither strike cruiser nor our aircraft to hunt Astelan at this time.’

  ‘I have to speak to your Chapter Master,’ said Cypher, loud enough to be heard by Sapphon.

  ‘Silence!’ snarled Asmodai. ‘You will not speak again.’

  ‘Was that him? What does he claim to know that is so important?’

  Asmodai turned back to Cypher.

  ‘Answer swiftly, traitor.’

  ‘An attack on your Chapter is imminent. Lord Azrael must be informed.’

  ‘Empty words,’ said Asmodai. ‘You offer no shred of evidence to back up your claim. Standard protocol is that all statements by the Fallen are treated as false.’

  ‘Can we afford to ignore him?’ said Sapphon. ‘This is an outlandish situation, there is nothing standard about events on Tharsis. I do not think we can risk being delayed by orthodoxy. Return to orbit as swiftly as possible with your captive, brother. We must discuss our plan of action with Belial and Sammael before we make any decision.’

  ‘There is little to discuss. One of the Fallen remains at large on Tharsis. He must be captured.’

  ‘I concur, brother. But we cannot overlook the importance of your prisoner, if he is who he claims to be. Securing him and returning him to the Penitent Warrior safely must be your priority. When we have him in a cell, we can focus our efforts on Astelan.’

  ‘Very well, I shall take that as your command.’

  Asmodai cut the link and sat back, watching Cypher. He studied the traitor’s armour. It was painted black, like Asmodai’s, but whereas the Chaplain’s battleplate had a sheen of freshly applied enamel, Cypher’s was matt from exposure, even grey in places. The Chaplain could also see small flecks of dark green paint. It seemed that Cypher was not above wearing the colours of both the Legion and the Chapter when it suited his purposes. There was a fine edge of golden trim around the knightly helm, the gilding copied on the rims of the shoulder pads but sparse from wear and damage.

  The original decoration of the chest plastron had been removed, and in its place was a skeletal figure with arms outstretched across the breastplate. Skull designs adorned the knees and waistband, and links of chain hung like a belt across the traitor’s lap.

  A longsword hung from that chain, in a scabbard of black leather and steel, the pommel crimson and gold. There were strange tales surrounding that sword. Tales that Asmodai had heard from the lips of the Fallen and of his battle-brothers. Myth surrounded Cypher as much as the likes of the Lion and Luther, but here he was now, sat in front of the Master of Repentance as solid and real as anything.

  Asmodai wondered what truths, what admissions, what myth-shattering confessions Cypher would make beneath the Blades of Reason. The Chaplain knew that all Fallen were equally despised in the eyes of the Emperor, but could not help feeling a touch of pride that Cypher had been brought to him. Almost as much as he dreamed of inflicting his excruciations upon the traitor Rhemell, Asmodai had desired to confront the thrice-cursed.

  The traitor would be broken, his secrets revealed and his lies proven false. Asmodai would stand before him and offer him the chance to repent. He would break the Fallen’s blade over his knee as the final stroke, the last proof that Cypher was less than nothing and all that remained was to save his soul with acceptance of his guilt.

  ‘I would not,’ said the Fallen as Asmodai’s gaze returned to the sword.

  ‘You give me orders now?’

  The Chaplain stood up and reached out towards the hilt of the blade.

  ‘A warning, not a command,’ said Cypher. ‘It does not suffer the touch of any. None except its true keeper.’

  ‘It is a weapon, nothing more.’

  Asmodai closed gauntleted fingers around the hilt.

  Fire burned the sky and the ground fell away beneath his feet. Pain lanced through his body and he saw a snarling face, so close his foe’s foetid breath could be felt. They tumbled together, falling from the heavens it seemed. There was a blade in his gut, burning like poison. His own sword fell from his fingers. The pain increased, surging into his head, blinding and terrible.

  Asmodai staggered back as he let go of the sword. He had to steady himself against the bulkhead, blinking away the after-effects of the vision.

  ‘Perhaps you should start to heed my words,’ said Cypher. ‘Not just on the sword.’

  Still shocked by what had happened, Asmodai retreated to the bench and sat down. His normal desire to assert control and superiority was overwhelmed by the sense of dislocation that left his thoughts reeling. The experience had been so visceral, unlike anything he had experienced before. More than a memory, he had lived the moment captured within the vision and for those few seconds he had not known himself.

  The memory of what he had seen started to fade, like a dream. Like all Space Marines he had been trained to have near-perfect recall, but just a minute after touching the sword all he could remember was a feeling of betrayal and helplessness. That and the pain. Unconsciously he moved a hand to his midriff, where it was as though a scar was healing beneath his abdominal armour. After another minute, even this sensation had passed.

  ‘Time until rendezvous point?’ he demanded of the Land Raider’s driver, seeking to steady himself with the physical and mundane.

  ‘Seven minutes, Master Chaplain,’ the driver replied.

  Asmodai accepted this answer without comment. He looked at Cypher and felt something totally alien. The Fallen always filled him with distaste, with hate, with a desire to avenge the wrongs done to the Lion and the Dark Angels. The loathing was there in Asmodai’s gut, seething, wanting to be released, but for the first time since he had ascended to the Chapter another feeling kept the hate in check.

  Where Cypher passed, anarchy and war followed. That he would come to the Dark Angels now was a grim harbinger. As he looked at Cypher – for surely the prisoner had to be Cypher and no other – Asmodai could not shake a sense of foreboding.

  Armourer Of The Soul

  Sapphon spent some time considering recent events, leaving command of the Penitent Warrior to Belial, who had interred Anovel in one of the cells on the dungeon deck of the strike cruiser. The Chaplain retired to the Reclusiam to gather his thoughts, too distracted by the ongoing battle to think clearly while on the command bridge.

  The Reclusiam was a high-vaulted chamber on the deck above the dormers of the battle-brothers, located close to the armoury where their suits of Tactical Dreadnought armour were stowed when in transit. It brought a smile to Sapphon to think of the similarities between this chamber and the one a little further along the deck.

  In the armoury the Techmarines clad the bodies of the First Company in adamantium, plasteel and ceramite. They loaded and primed their weapons and applied the unguents and blessings of their arcane order so that the machine-spirits of the Terminator war-plate would serve the warriors of the Chapter. In the Reclusiam the Chaplains armoured the souls of their charges with oaths of dedication to the Emperor, and fired their resolve with legends of the Lion’s victories and ultimate sacrifice. Just as the Techmarines maintained and repaired the armour that protected the Space Marines, Sapphon and his Brother-Chaplains kept vigilant for damage to the spirit and imperfections in the shield of faith that guarded their minds.

  The armourers repainted the bone-coloured enamel of the Deathwing, setting upon it
the sigils and markings of Chapter, company, squad and individual warrior. They covered up the burns, scratches and other marks of war, eliminating the scars of history. The Chaplains did no less for the minds of their charges, smoothing away questions that could not be answered, recounting tales that explained away inconsistencies of history, painting over discrepancies and concerns with devotions of loyalty and duty.

  And most importantly of all, the Reclusiam was the chamber from which the desires of the Inner Circle were enacted. It was here that the various versions of the Chapter’s history were related to the brothers according to their need, rank and experience. From the censers that hung from the ceiling drifted the psychoactive vapours that opened up the hypno-conditioned minds of the Dark Angels, allowing Sapphon to instil the doctrines of faith and remove unworthy doubts and troublesome memories.

  Even the First Company, the Deathwing, whose battle-brothers had earned great renown and trust, were subject to such manipulation. Though they had been initiated into the most fundamental secrets of the Fallen – the existence of renegade Dark Angels and the treachery of Luther that had created them – only Belial and a handful of veteran sergeants in the company knew of the corrupting force of Chaos that had turned them, and the identity of the arch-heretics, Luther’s lieutenants such as Merir Astelan, Zahariel El’Zurias and the ringleader known only by the title of Lord Cypher.

  That Cypher had reappeared now, openly allowing himself to be captured, troubled Sapphon greatly. This fact, the manner of Cypher’s capture, weighed heavily on his thoughts as he paced down the aisle between the long devotional benches on which the company sat for benedictions and pre-battle mass. A red carpet underfoot muffled his armoured steps, leaving only the hiss of electric lights and the ever-present rumbling of the engines to break the still of the chamber.

  Overhead hung banners embroidered by the Librarium’s serfs, the histiographers cataloguing the many battle honours of the Deathwing from the formation of the Dark Angels Chapter to the present day. Two hundred and three banners in black bordered by red, white stitching listing the names of more than nine thousand worlds, space stations, ships, moons and space hulks where the First Company had been victorious, some of them multiple times. In the gloom the writing was barely legible, but it mattered not, Sapphon could recite every single name from memory. He also knew the two thousand, six hundred and forty-eight Righteous Honours omitted from the roll of honour. Actions that had been centred solely on the capture of the Fallen, undertaken by the Deathwing alone.

  Three names to be considered for addition to the list: Tharsis, Ulthor and Piscina. Were these victories? Were they Righteous Honours? Ulthor was easy to discard. It had been a disaster from the instant the company had teleported onto the daemon world. Farce was almost too kind as a description of what had followed. Extricating the company, along with the Ravenwing, could be considered an achievement, but certainly not a battle honour.

  Piscina was undecided. Sapphon did not know how the campaign continued in their absence, if at all. Grand Master Belial had petitioned Azrael to declare the world lost and wipe out everything on the surface with Exterminatus, but the Supreme Grand Master had withheld judgement. The expedition to Ulthor had taken Belial and his company away from the theatre of war.

  Tharsis was surely worthy. A sizeable fleet and army of renegades had been eradicated, or would be within the next few hours. That those traitors had been lured into attacking Tharsis by the machinations of Sapphon did not undermine the achievement of the warriors in the strike force. It also mattered not to the Master of Sanctity that Astelan had escaped. His recapture was inevitable, even if he had an entire world on which to hide. His was a spent fate. Asmodai would be allowed to administer the final act. Two other Fallen had been captured, including Cypher.

  Always there was Cypher, Sapphon’s thoughts rapidly coming full circle from their wandering as he knelt in front of the altar. The table was covered with another banner, much tattered and faded, the edges ragged from fire, lasbeams and detonation.

  The first battle standard of the Deathwing.

  Other Chapters might have suspended such a relic in a stasis field, preserving it for eternity. Not so the Dark Angels. Their history, as obscured as it was by circles of trust and mistruth, was carried beside them. In the presence of this artefact the warriors of the First Company swore and renewed their oaths, just as the first members of the Deathwing had done ten millennia before. To touch the cloth, to smell the ancient must from its fibres, was to connect with every warrior that had donned the bone armour and tabard of the Deathwing for the last ten thousand years. The stories changed, as did those that told them and heard them, but the inner truths remained constant. The banner served as a reminder to every member of the First Company that they upheld a sacred duty unbroken since the dawn of the Imperium.

  Sapphon reached out a gauntleted hand and gently stroked the winged sword icon emblazoned on the standard. It had been dark red once, on a field of black. Now it was a dull orange on a grey background. The colours had faded, but not the glory woven into the fabric as much as the sigil.

  A glorious legend. And a second, hidden history no less important.

  Looking at the relic banner, Sapphon realised what had to be done, but it was not a decision he could take alone.

  ‘Bridge, this is Master Sapphon. I need a priority coded vox-conclave. Contact Masters Asmodai, Belial and Sammael for immediate exchange.’

  ‘Understood, Master Sapphon. Creating coded conclave for you now. I will inform you when the other Masters have responded.’

  Sapphon stood and moved past the altar, eyes passing over the antiquities placed upon the banner cloth. A goblet it was claimed the Lion had drunk from on his final night on Caliban. A fragment of bone, said to be from a beast of the forests slain at the hand of the primarch’s seneschal, Corswain. A shard of crystal-laced metal from the power sword of Grand Master Haradin, who had reformed the Deathwing following the catastrophic events that had seen Caliban destroyed.

  Pieces of ancient history, reminders of legacies far greater than a few sacred ornaments. Sapphon had sometimes wondered why the Chapter set such stock by these odds and ends from the distant past, an affectation of remembrance. He understood now. These relics had been present at the beginning, setting in motion a continuum of events that covered the whole arc of the Age of the Imperium, right up to that day, that hour, that minute. All things, every victory, defeat and decision in the last ten thousand years, by Supreme Grand Masters, Librarians, Chaplains, battle-brothers and even serfs, had steered the Dark Angels upon a troublesome course to the present time.

  Caught in the glare of this realisation, Sapphon concluded that the past and the present, his forebears and his peers, would not be his judge. Those that came after, those that would inherit the Chapter he left behind, would decide on the right and wrong of his actions.

  Had the Lion thought such a thing when he had lifted that silver goblet to his lips, knowing that the coming dawn would see him leave Caliban to join the Great Crusade, perhaps never to return? Had Corswain known when he slew the tainted monster of Caliban’s forest that his name would reverberate for ten millennia, his deeds an inspiration to generation after generation of Dark Angels? When Haradin had learned of the existence of the Fallen and instigated the reformation of the Deathwing and Ravenwing, had he considered the possibility that their task would still be continued ten thousand years later?

  All grand decisions and actions that had defined the Legion and Chapter ever since, their consequences ultimately unknowable.

  The capture of Cypher changed everything. The foiling of the plot between Anovel, Methelas and Astelan was a significant moment also. Decisions made now could frame the Hunt for the Fallen for a century or a millennium.

  ‘Master Sapphon, the coded conclave is active.’

  The Master of Sanctity passed through the curtained archway behind the
altar and into the smaller chamber beyond. There was a stout desk within, and around the walls many shelves bowed under the weight of books and scrolls. The entirety of the Lore of the Dark Angels, assembled over ten thousand years, starting with treatises from Roboute Guilliman’s Codex Astartes on the reorganisation of the Legiones Astartes, to Supreme Grand Master Azrael’s interpretations and edicts on the Tactica Imperium. Ten millennia of wisdom and battle-rites crowded Sapphon as he accepted the transmission from the strike cruiser’s bridge.

  ‘Brother-masters, gratitude for your swift attention.’

  ‘Swiftness is desirable, brother,’ replied Sammael. ‘I am embarking upon what might be the final offensive of this campaign. This conclave is a distraction from my preparations.’

  ‘One that you will doubtless understand, Brother Sammael, when I tell you that Master Asmodai has captured the accursed fugitive known as Cypher.’

  Silence greeted this announcement. Sapphon remembered his own stunned reaction when he had received the news from Asmodai. He also recalled the questions that had followed as he had comprehended the nature of the revelation and spoke to address them before the others wasted breath giving voice.

  ‘Brother Asmodai is convinced that his prisoner is Cypher, and so I am convinced, as you should be. He is currently stasis-incarcerated and being transported back to the Penitent Warrior with Asmodai as escort. He will be placed into further stasis when he arrives. It is absolutely imperative that he comes into contact with no one that has not already seen him.’

  ‘I have instructed Brother Malcifer of the Second Company,’ added Asmodai. ‘The Black Knights that discovered Cypher and allowed Astelan to escape will be suitably debriefed and if necessary quarantined upon their return.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ demanded Sammael. ‘Tybalain responded to your orders. He has done nothing wrong.’