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  With Zellik’s command terminated, mastery of the Archeohort was now in the hands of Beslian, and Rafen suspected that the nervous, oily logician had schemed for that all along. It concerned him that this opportunist cog might think himself able to use Space Marines as tools for own aggrandisement; but for the moment it served the needs of the Blood Angels to play along. In due time, all those who considered themselves above the rules of Holy Terra would be shown the error of such assumptions.

  Rafen turned at the sound of boots upon the deck to find Mohl approaching him, a wheeled servitor trundling at his heels. “Lord,” began the Techmarine, “a moment?”

  “What is it?”

  “I took it upon myself to take a look over the catalogue of items in Zellik’s collection. There is much of value.”

  “Of value to us, or to those who would hoard such relics?”

  Mohl inclined his head. “Largely the latter, I admit. But still, I have programmed some of the servitors to sweep and reclaim any materials that should be returned to the Adeptus Terra.”

  “Good. Whatever Zellik has kept for himself is now forfeit.”

  Mohl nodded. “Indeed. And so, I thought you would want to see this, sir.” He snapped his fingers and the servitor rolled forward. With spindly manipulator arms, it unfolded a stained muslin wrapping from about a blunt, heavy object.

  Rafen’s eyes widened in surprise as he recognised the shape of a thickset plasma gun. The weapon’s cowling was enamelled in blood red, and dressed with a skull emblem in beaten gold.

  “A twin-core design,” Mohl was saying, “Dekker-pattern. The rare Baal-variant model.”

  Unbidden, Rafen ran a finger over the skull, tracing the etching beneath it. “Aryon.” He spoke the hero’s name with reverence. “This is the sidearm of Brother-Captain Aryon. He perished in battle at the Yennor Reach more than seven centuries ago… His remains were never found.”

  “As your weapon was lost, I thought it would serve the mission to provide you with a replacement. Is this suitable?”

  Rafen nodded, testing the gun’s weight in his grip. “It is. And now I have a fresh crime to add to those of the Magos Zellik. He was duty-bound to return this to my Chapter.”

  “It is not the only Astartes relic in the museum,” added Mohl. “Also, there are items of note belonging to the Adepta Sororitas and the Imperial Guard—”

  “Continue your inventory. Take it all,” Rafen replied. “In Aryon’s memory, we will see every last piece go to the fate it deserves.”

  “A fitting punishment for Zellik,” said the Flesh Tearer.

  “And only the first,” Rafen noted. “Have you been able to glean any data from the Archeohort’s cogitators as yet?” He walked away, and the Techmarine trailed with him.

  “Beslian has been surprisingly forthcoming, lord.”

  “He knows his only chance to escape Zellik’s fate is to cooperate with us in every way.”

  “The name Haran Serpens was known to him. Beslian claims that Zellik has made several clandestine journeys into the Ghoul Stars region in order to meet with him. The most recent was only two solar months ago.”

  Rafen halted. “After Fabius fled Baal.”

  “Aye.”

  “The Ghoul Stars…” echoed the Blood Angel, his jaw drawing tight. “It would seem, Brother Mohl, that we have the scent of our prey once more.”

  The Flesh Tearer nodded. “By the Emperor’s grace.”

  “I would like to see my relical,” coughed the tech-priest, twitching against the manacles that trailed thick cables from his many limbs—flesh and mechanical—to the rings set in the deck. “If it pleases the Astartes.”

  Brother-Sergeant Noxx rolled his flaying knife in his fingers, his lip curling at the barely-hidden contempt beneath the Magos’ words. Even in this state, chained and disarmed, the scrawny cyborg dared to put on airs and graces. Noxx stalked forward, fanning the blade so it caught the light from the biolume pod on the ceiling of the holding chamber. “Your precious collection? That is what you ask for? Perhaps your situation is unclear to you, priest. You are alive only on my sufferance. You are in no position to make demands.” He snorted. “And in all honesty, you would be better served to consider your own fate than that of some stolen trinkets.”

  “Idiot!” Zellik pulled at his bonds without success. “Trinkets? My collection is without parallel! If you had a brain inside that thick skull of yours, you would comprehend that! But you are a barbarian! You know nothing!”

  Noxx didn’t look around as the hatch behind him opened; he knew who would be coming to join him.

  “I cannot speak for my cousin,” said Rafen, drawing in, “but I am no barbarian. I understand the majesty of great art. The glory of a great symphony. The perfection of fine craftsmanship.”

  Zellik glared at him. “Then you are worse than he,” spat the tech-lord. “A Flesh Tearer, borderline feral and savage, he has an excuse! But you, Blood Angel? You should know better! And still, you were the first to raise a weapon to… to…” The Magos’ voice became a weak moan. “Oh, my cherished things. The Machine-God deliver me from this nightmare…”

  Rafen continued as if the tech-priest had not spoken. “I know the value of this, for example.” He raised the plasma gun, working the collimator dial with his other hand. “Such a superior piece of work. Handcrafted by Isherite artisans. Used with honour and care by a warrior of great character and nobility.” He took aim. “Stolen from a war grave by a craven coward. Turned into a toy, a trophy for an arrogant fool.”

  “I kept that weapon in trust!” spat Zellik, trying to flinch away but unable to move more than a few inches in the heavy restraints. “It would have been lost or destroyed if not for me!”

  “How selfless of you,” Rafen replied, and squeezed the trigger plate. On its finest setting, the humming accelerator coils atop the weapon glowed blue-white and discharged a thin rod of superheated plasmatic particles. The plasma bolt sliced into the top of a servo-arm waving from Zellik’s spine, and turned it into a twist of slagged iron. After hundreds of years of inaction, the gun was hungry to fire on a new target.

  The tech-priest screeched in binary and crashed to his knees, piston-legs chugging with the painful feedback.

  Noxx made an appreciative noise in the back of his throat. “Still works well, then. A fine weapon indeed.”

  “I want my relical!” Zellik shouted. “It is mine! You cannot take it from me! A dozen man-lifetimes it has taken me to gather it all—”

  “But only a day to lose it,” Rafen broke in. “Come now, Magos. Surely you expected this to happen? Beslian foresaw it, and he knew less than you. You know that death is the only coin paid to traitors.”

  “Traitor?” The tech-priest shook his head. “Perhaps I have interpreted the laws of my order with some laxity, yes, but I am no traitor! I am a staunch servant of the Machine-God! A devoted citizen of the Imperium of Mankind!”

  Noxx tapped the flaying knife on his palm. “Haran Serpens.” He sounded out the syllables of the name.

  The name caught Zellik off-guard. “What?”

  “He’s dead,” Rafen explained, working the plasma gun again. “It appears he has been dead for at least three solar years, in point of fact.”

  “Impossible,” snorted the tech-lord, but the denial seemed half-hearted. He was about to say more, but he halted, clearly fearful of incriminating himself still further.

  “His identity was appropriated,” Rafen went on. The maw of the plasma gun was glowing white-hot, vapour seething from the emitter channels. “Stolen by an agent of Chaos. A most foul and hated enemy of the Imperium you say you venerate. I’m sure you know the name Fabius Bile.”

  The prisoner blurted out an exaggerated splutter of scorn, his silvery flesh wrinkling in dismay. “Fabius Bile is a myth! A monster from the dark past created by over-zealous preachers in order to terrify the masses!” Zellik strained at the manacles as Rafen closed the distance to him. “These accusations are lies. Lies sp
read by my enemies. Did the ordos send you, is that it? Were they so terrified to take me on themselves that they sent Space Marines to be their tools?”

  “You are the one that has been used, Zellik,” said Noxx. “Tainted, even.”

  With slow care, Rafen reached out and gathered up a fistful of Zellik’s robes. The tech-priest was shaking, his cyberlimbs rattling against the manacles. “You will tell us about your dealings with the man who pretends to be Haran Serpens. You will tell us where he lurks within the Ghoul Stars.”

  Zellik’s clockwork eyes clicked and switched from Rafen to Noxx. The Flesh Tearer gave a thin smile. “You must be very afraid to look to one like me for support. Do you really think you’ll find it?”

  Rafen held up Aryon’s weapon, streamers of incredible heat coming off it in waves. “I am not an inquisitor,” he said. “I do not have an array of clever tools to induce you to speak truth to me. And I have neither patience, nor time. I am Astartes, and what I know best is how to kill. With speed… and without.” Rafen held the gun muzzle close to Zellik’s flawless machine-face, and the chrome skin began to blister and darken. “I will burn the answers I want from you. You will give them to me.”

  He leaned closer, and the lowing screams began anew.

  The gas-lens viewer first sketched an orb, then filled it with lines of detail, one upon another, like the hand of a ghostly artist.

  “The fifth world of the Dynikas system,” announced Mohl. “Several parsecs out along the spinward edge of the Ghoul Stars. Our target.”

  Rafen stood to one side of his squad, his arms folded across his chest. From the corner of his eye he saw Kayne glance at the plasma gun on his hip, and then at his face. The unspoken question was in his gaze, but his commander did not answer it.

  Across the Tycho’s tacticarium, Mohl went on, watched by Noxx and the rest of his fellow Flesh Tearers. “From what we have been able to determine with data drawn from the Archeohort’s cogitator arrays, Tech-Lord Zellik supplied equipment and materiel of a scientific and manufactory nature to this world.”

  “Enough for someone to build a laboratory,” added Noxx.

  Mohl nodded. “The extant census records on Dynikas V are poorly drawn. The most detailed is that from a passing long-range scrying, by a vessel of the Imperial Navy engaged in a fleet action against the Cythor Fiends. The planet is determined here to be an ocean world with a few small island landmasses.” The hololith took on the blurry, lurid tones of a false-colour sensor image. “A high content of metals was recorded, along with an apparent abundance of aquatic life forms. Ministorium adjuncts to this report indicate that the planet was classed as suitable for agricultural exploitation. A commerce flotilla was apparently dispatched, but records past this point were lost during the 9th Black Crusade.”

  “That’s all we know?” asked Eigen, frowning.

  “There is more,” Mohl explained. “This next data set was drawn from Zellik’s personal stacks.” The image flickered and shifted. Now the patches of colour in Dynikas V’s oceans were dead and hollow, flat expanses of white and grey instead of the riot of reds and oranges on the original scan. “This is a more recent long-range scan. Zellik sealed this datum and prevented its upload to the Mechanicus codex-network.”

  “It looks dead,” said Ajir. “If it was teeming with enough fish for the explorators to set up a farming colony there, then what happened to it?”

  “No radiological returns, no signs of planetary bombardment,” noted Kayne.

  “Bio-weapon,” suggested Puluo.

  “In a manner of speaking,” offered the Techmarine. “Zellik’s data also revealed this pict-relay of debris in high orbit of the planet.”

  A new pane of imagery opened, dropping like a curtain. The flat display picked out a thick halo of dust and particulate matter collected into a sheer accretion disc.

  “That wasn’t there in the Navy’s scry-scan,” said Eigen.

  Mohl glanced at his battle-brother. “No. It’s the remains of a later destructive event. Zellik’s hypothesis is that it is the residue of a battle between the notably territorial Cythor Fiends and a tyranid hive fleet splinter.”

  “Tyranids?” Gast spat the name like a curse. “But those xenos freaks are unknown in this sector.”

  Turcio peered at the display. “The evidence would suggest otherwise.”

  “If you’re willing to trust the word of that lying cog.”

  Rafen considered what he was hearing. “It would explain the ravaging of the planet’s ecosystem. And the silence from the explorator flotilla.”

  “Another question occurs, cousin,” said Noxx. “Are the tyranids still there? Hive ships often eject spores towards the nearest planetary atmosphere at the moment of their destruction. Are we to believe that the renegade has built a bolt hole on an infested world?”

  “Even Fabius Bile would not lay his head amid a pit of Fire Scorpions,” said Kayne. “It would mean death for any being to venture down there, even for a champion of the Ruinous Powers.”

  “There is only one way to be certain,” Rafen moved from where he stood. “Have the navigators aboard our ships commune with those of the Archeohort. A course will be computed. Once repairs are complete, we will make space for the Dynikas system.”

  “Do you really believe that the renegade is there, sir?” Kayne fixed him with a questioning look.

  Rafen nodded once. “The God-Emperor shows us the way, brother. We take the fight to this monster and we make him pay for what he has stolen from us.”

  In the arming chamber, the Blood Angel completed the ritual of reconsecration with a final act. He cut his palm with his combat blade, and before the Larraman cells in his bloodstream could act to clot and knit shut the shallow wound, he wiped a smear of his vitae across the golden skull on the breech of the plasma gun.

  With that, the machine-spirit of Captain Aryon’s weapon was appeased, and the weapon’s stewardship was now Rafen’s. Perhaps it would be taken from him when he returned to Baal, if others judged that a more senior Space Marine was deserving of such a relic, but until that time, the sergeant would give it the liberation it deserved.

  Rafen stood up in his arming chamber, the light of kolla tallow candles flickering over his power armour where it rested upon its racks. He pulled back the hood of his robes and glanced over his shoulder. “You’re slipping. I heard you coming this time.”

  Ceris’ lip curled. “I beg to differ, lord. You only heard me because your thoughts were not clouded on this occasion. You have the clarity you sought.”

  Did he detect some sense of accusation in the words? Rafen faced the Codicier with a level glare. “Once again, you come to me with something to say, Ceris. Will this be a habit? I tell you now, if so my patience will quickly grow thin. I want warriors in my squad who will follow my orders and lend me their skills, not those who lurk and second-guess me at each turn.”

  “Is that what you think I am doing?”

  Rafen’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. “And I tolerate those who dissemble my words even less.”

  “Because of who you are and what you have done, you should not be surprised that your conduct is being watched, brother-sergeant,” Ceris said mildly. “Some say my Lord Mephiston is gatekeeper for the soul of our Chapter. His interest spans all who are a part of it.”

  For a moment, the warrior considered a rebuke; but then he snorted and turned away. “Say what you want to say and then leave me. I am in no mood for semantics and obfuscation.”

  “There is word from the prize crew aboard the Archeohort. Magos Zellik will survive. The medicae serfs managed to keep him alive after your… interview.”

  “Some might consider that a waste of effort and good narthecia.” He ran a finger over the casing of the plasma gun.

  “Some? Like Brother-Sergeant Noxx?”

  Rafen blew out an exasperated breath. “What are you implying, psyker? That I have adopted the ways of the Flesh Tearers in order to gather information?”

&nbs
p; “I did not say those words.” Ceris inclined his head. “You did.”

  Rafen glared at him. “We do not shrink from the difficult choices, brother. That is why we were made. To do the things that mortal men cannot, to transcend what others might see as the lines of morality, in the name of a larger power.”

  “Indeed? It is said we Blood Angels are the most noble of the Adeptus Astartes. But to torture a man to within an inch of his life, even a criminal… Is there nobility in that, sir?”

  “You think I could have found another way, is that it? Perhaps you feel I did not give all due respect to the esteemed Magos, despite his dalliance with Chaos!”

  “Zellik is no servant of the Dark Gods, we both know that. For all his genius, his greed and his conceit blind him to the reality of his misdemeanours. He believes he is loyal to Mars and Terra with every fibre of his being, even as he lies to them to swell his coffers.”

  “Self-deception is a common trait of the weak,” Rafen retorted.

  “And often of the strong as well,” Ceris countered.

  “I feel no guilt for what I did to Zellik,” said the sergeant. “I would do so again a hundred times over, if my service required it. Do not presume to judge me, psyker. You do not have the right.”

  “I would never be so bold, my lord,” came the neutral reply. “I only wanted to hear you say those words.” He turned to go, then hesitated. “You will cross many lines, Brother Rafen, before this duty is brought to its end. These are just the first.”

  The sergeant turned his back, ministering to his weapons. “When you have something of substance to tell me, Brother Ceris, I will hear it willingly. But until then, keep your riddles to yourself. My tolerance is finite and you would do well to remember that.”

  Rafen expected an answer, and when it did not come, he glanced over his shoulder. He was alone in the chamber.

  FIVE

  The mirror moved through the darkness, bending about it the ghost-glows from far distant stars and the soft rains of radiation soaking the vacuum. A vast, curved kite shield of metals forged by long-forgotten science, the mirror told lies to the void around it, hiding its truth behind layers of energy-shunt circuitry, malleable lakes of superfluid surfactants and long, arching ribs of impossibly thin metals.