Angels of Purgatory

soddinnutter · December 30, 2009

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...howtopic=185228

The Botany Bay was a forlorn sight. A dead carcass half buried in the waves of sand that stretched from horizon to horizon under a sky like an open door into Gods own oven. The sun was at the apex of its arch and in another nine hours would dip below the eastern horizon and envelope them in the bitter chill of the night. In the eighteen hours of darkness before the sun rose in the west the Botany Bay would glimmer in the starlight and seem almost alive.

It would be the only living thing on this gritty ball of sand and sunshine thought Brother Dromus Hurango, known to everyone as Drongo.

What sins must his ancestors have committed, he wondered, for them to have crashed the ship on this of all planets. There was a brief, ear splitting sound. It sounded like something tearing an iron girder in half. The sound was accompanied by an incredible stench of O-zone.

Brother Drongo aloud himself a brief smile. The void shields were still operational, but for all that he tried he could not get them above eighty percent of full output. This was possibly because none of the three surviving plasma reactors were safe to operate above seventy-five percent output, and that was because the ancestors had been forced to cannibalise pieces of the cooling system to keep the water cyclers working (at fifty percent output but one hundred percent efficiency).

For a time there was cool beneath the dome of the void shield. For a time. Regardless of what Chapter Master Jimmy demanded, Drongo was not going to keep the shield up for more time than was absolutely necessary for the people along the emitters to perform their diagnostications. The longer they were up the more likely it was that something would burn out and trying to beg a spare off of the Mechanicus was an exercise in futility.

A brief squawk of static on the much patched together radio receiver told him that the teams dotted around the skin of the ship had finished their work. With evident relief Drongo flipped the big red switch and the void shields flickered off again. The sun beat down with renewed vigour and the only evidence of its respite was a circle of fused sand around the ship where the shield wall had touched the ground.

Apothecary Mordred was reviewing the new neophyte. And that was just the thing; there was only one of them. Genetics was like that, you went through spells when you couldn’t turn around without bumping into people who were compatible, and then you got times like this. On any decent planet the quirks of the human genome would just be subsumed into background statistics and, over a population of, for instance, two billion, you would not notice a thing. But the planet Purgatory only had a population of, counting unborn children, four thousand seven hundred and thirty seven. So the statistical blips were more pronounced.

On the positive side the vague eugenics, if that’s what you would call it, programme the ancestors started seemed to be working. If viewed over the passing of centuries there were always compatible aspirants enough to counter the casualties.

Mordred often wondered what it must be like to work for an important chapter, like the Iron Hands or the Salamanders, who didn’t have this sort of problem to worry about, who actually had proper equipment made by Mechanicus Magus’s.

The Aspirent, Trevur Quindog, was seventeen standard years old and, as he had been found genetically suitable for the transformation, was encouraged to father at least two children to carry on his favourable genes.

There were complications with trying to alter someone at such a late stage in life; biopsychosis, organ rejection, organ mutation, SIDS (Sudden Inexplicable Death Syndrome), neural decay, seizure, strokes and a whole host of lesser problems. But it seemed to be working out so far, the chapter got a steady trickle of Neophytes and the gene pool of the Purgatorians was never irreparably plundered.

To look at, as he spared with the Chapter Master, the Neophyte was not the pinnacle of human perfection. Almost certainly he would have been rejected by the likes of the Ultramarines or the Dark Angels. He was one of those gangly youths who seemed to be made entirely out of elbows and, on a planet of such unremitting sunshine, still managed to be pale and pasty. But he was certainly very quick. Mr Quindog possessed a means of motion that was utterly unpredictable. He did not so much move as jerk from one position to another in a series of jolts. When he ran he could cover a deceptively large amount of ground.

And he was enthusiastic. That counted for a lot. He had been sparing for three whole hours but had not yet managed to land a blow on CM Jimmy. The enthusiasm would wear off, but it may last long enough to help him survive the ascension.

Chapter Master Roberius Hardrew Jameson, better known as CM Jimmy, was training the Aspirant. The boy was fast, impressively fast, for a human. Not as fast as an astartes, but very fast non-the less.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Dr Mordred observing them. Being watched always annoyed Roberius, it reminded him too much of the time they were being stalked by Eldar Rangers. They had not been attacked and the pointy-eared xenos had always been too far away or too inconveniently positioned to confront. They still did not know what the whole thing had been about. The two most popular theories were; it was a training exercise or they were being observed out of some alien notion of curiosity. The Chapter Master secretly believed that they were being warned. The Rangers would not allow themselves to be seen unless they wanted you to know that they were watching you.

The job of Chapter Master, he reflected as he casually sidestepped an uppercut that would have had a human spitting teeth, was not what it was all cracked up to be. There was a copy of the full collection of the Codex Astartes, it took up a whole shelf, in his room and it had a very detailed list of things a Chapter Master was supposed to do when he was ruler of a planet. Few of them were ever going to be applicable to him. There was a whole chapter, haha bad pun, on procedure and hierarchy when dealing with the Mechanicus enclaves on your planet. There were no Mechanicus enclaves on the planet. There were more than a hundred pages on how to keep the Eccelicarchy happy whilst not wielding too much power. There was no division of the Imperial Cult on the planet. It had a section on etiquette when dealing with the Navis Nobillite. There wasn’t a navigator within thirty light-years, unless one got lost. There was an entire volume on dealing with other Chapters. This was unnecessary because all the other Chapters refused to acknowledge their existence, even the Guard tried to look down on them (until they begged for help). The only piece of useful information was at the end book on dealing with resource management and protracted campaigns in dessert environments. And half of that he had known since he was a child in any case.

The job of Chapter Master, he reflected as he deflected a kick to the stomach, was not as glamorous as books made it out to be.

Carefully, carefully. Just a few more seconds. There, done. The drinking straw was brought into contact with his cold dry lips.

Librarian Jakes was not a happy person. He had been a great warrior once. A true horror that could freeze the marrow in a mans bones with dread.

Now he was probably the only Space Marine who needed two walking sticks. That damned Apothecary had told him that he would recover eventually. But eventually was a bloody long time to have the Shakes. It was embarrassing, more than anything. Humans got the shakes when the inhaled or drank something that damaged their nerves. Marines should be immune to such mundane rubbish. It was such a shame he had spent two long weeks breathing in nerve gas. It hadn’t been until a few days afterwards that that his body started to let him down.

Now he was stuck, always stuck, on the ship acting as a relay post for the bloody astropath.

It was no life for a Space Marine.

Mind you it was a better life than being dead, and at least he would recover eventually without the need for massive cybernetic reconstruction. Shaky Jake did not like cybernetics. There was just something about them that freaked him out, it being a part of you but not alive.

There were veterans of particularly intense engagements who had lost limbs. He could see the absent appendages, ghostly shimmers that were there and not there, dancing flickering wisps in shapes and forms that were lacking in substance. In their minds they were whole. The ghost limbs fit over the replacements like a second skin, alive but dead and oddly disturbing, like Cortex Technology.

And he needed a shave. Did he dare try using a razor? A quick trim with the scissors? No. Holding an edged object close to the arteries of the neck could be just about the stupidest thing he could do right now.

He walked along the corridors of the fallen ship, sticks clicking on the ancient deck plate, drinking straw-bag telekinetically held up to his cracked cold lips.

It was always cold around Shaky Jake, frost formed in his boot prints and chill radiated off his skin.

The planet once named by the Imperial Navy Stella-Cartography Institute as Pyros III had been home to a human population for nearly three and a half millennia if only by accident. The planet had an atmosphere that was utterly dead and stale. A temperature range that was habitable, if barley. An intensity of gravity that was one point one Gs, well within tolerance. And not a drop of water. It was not hell, but it was the next best thing. On all star-charts now it was named as Purgatory, where people earned their place in heaven. But to most who paid it more than a moments notice it was just Home. And although the world was neither caring nor loving to its people in the closing days of the forty-first millennia it was the next best thing.

I walk down the corridor. Its decades old gang markings reassuring me, comforting me.

I hear children at play two floors below me. I smile at the sound. I was a child once, like them. But I can no longer remember it. I can barely remember being human. It has been more than a century since I could remember my own mothers face.

So close to the core the air still has some warmth in it at this hour so late as to be nearly early, but I can not feel it. All I feel is dread. It is said that to be a Space Marine is to know no fear. This is a lie. I am nearing my eight century and for most of that time I have been a Space Marine, yet I still know fear. I feel it now.

My feet upon the floor echo the twin pumping of my hearts as I near door 47. I have faced the legions of the Grey Ones and stared down the Shadow in the Warp. I have spat my broken teeth into eyes of a Heomogolous and driven back the Green Tide. But this is worse. They were all the heat and heart of battle, blade against barbed maw, fist against fang and flesh against metal. But not this.

I have done this twice before. They are not memories that I relish.

My measured stride brings me to the door that has so shaped my nightmares for half a millennia. Two of my battle brothers stand at either side of that door. They are magnificent in their Powered Armour. The chapter only has eighty-two fully functional suits left. I have never worn that armour. It’s not my function. I am a Farover. I am the chapters’ eyes and ears for places distant. Nothing is beyond my sight. I wish some things were. I wish never to see the thing behind the door.

My brothers whom I have known for centuries may be my executioners before morning arrives. I will leave this room as myself or I will not leave this room. I am grateful for their presence. If I am to die, I would rather it be by their hands. I know it will be quick

Upon the door is a picture of CM Jimmy. He is in his ceremonial pinstriped suit. Underneath the picture are the words ‘The Pool Is Closed Due Too Plague’. The Inquisition sends an investigator around. They average at one every two decades but the exact date is never known. It is a crude but surprisingly effective means of hiding the abomination behind the door. Hidden in plain sight for all to not see.

My hand shakes slightly as I reach for the handle. I know the guards must have noticed. I know they do not think less of me. I know that they are surer of two things now than they have ever been: they know that what I do is a wretched necessity; they know and are grateful that it was not them that were called.

As my hand turns the handle I can feel my hearts quicken. The door swings open and darkness greets me.

Before The Crash this vaulted hall with is sunken pit was indeed a pool. It was used to train marines in aquatic combat between campaigns and on route through the Deeps. The pool was drained for the water, the world being so arid and dead.

It is what is in the pit that so disturbs me. It roils and seethes like a thunderstorm in a jar. It hurts my eyes to look at it; the sound it makes turns my stomach.

Some centuries after The Crash the Warp Engines of the Botany Bay, now useless, were stripped. The reality violating components were than altered, manipulated. They were twisted to a hideous design. Wraithbone was used to contain it, its source expunged from the record along with the name of its insane architect.

My feet are at the foot of the steps down into the hideous writhing maelstrom. I give a quick prayer to He Who Walked Among Us. I descend the stairs.

I am at once attacked, my mind ravaged by the universe. The howling of the wind through a cathedral spire on some distant Imperial world, the groaning of rocks under pressure a hundred miles below the surface of another, the utter emptiness of inter-stellar space, a mother singing a lullaby to a newborn, the dying scream of a Tau as it is dismembered by a Lictor, the hammers in a forge on distant Mars, the stillness of the Emperor in his dusty throne room, the aching cancer on reality that is the Eye of Terror, a man with two pistols in black power armour being hunted by his brothers in green, a servitor packing processed foods packs into a crate, a Navigator recovering from a bad transition, green-skins executing a successful ambush outside a hive-city. All these things and an infinity of things besides pass before my sense. My mind is torn open and the universe sleets through it. I try and fail to remember anything more than snatched images, fragments of concepts. I see half recognised shapes subtle and glaring, sublime and gross.

I am thrown thousands of light-years above the galactic plane to hover in the utter void of inter-galactic space. I look down upon the width of a spiral arm. I see in an instant the millennia slow dance of the stars. A thousand million years tears through my ravaged consciousness in a moment. The stars sparkle and pirouette for my amusement, the shallow extremities of their gravity-wells jostle and brush each other causing strange ripples in the Ether. Their distortions start to cause patterns to form in the Empyrean. Fell signs of false gods, stirring them, calling them, beckoning them to the heart of themselves.

I focus hard. I strain until my eyes bleed. The heart of them is a binary system. Two stars of equality caught in each others loving embrace, dancing for all eternity. They have borne children both fair and grotesque. One of these children is alive. I smell human life upon its surface. A world of the Imperium, the double-headed eagle perches upon it. One eye is blind and looks inwards, the other is keen and looks outwards. The world it stands upon is blighted. A tumour spreading across its unblemished skin, the eagle does not see it because it is trying to look through blind eyes. It cannot see the canker and the rot.

I try to move closer. The hairs on the back of my neck rise. Something has spotted me. I try to run. I finally remember that I can’t. I fly. I stretch forth my wings. I know what is behind me, the stench of carrion and brimstone and ash. I know what is behind me. It reaches forth and touches my heart. It has always been in my heart. I tear out my heart, because it is not mine. It’s putrid claws tear into my flesh, ripping me apart. I fly as fast as I can...

I fly as fast as...

I fly as fast...

I fly...

I...

I land on the side of the pool, bleeding from a dozen deep gashes and tears in my mortal flesh. I will be still and rest for a moment and give thanks that I survived. Soon I will rise. Soon I will deliver my account of the vision to the Chapter Master. Soon we will travel to a world in a binary system to make war against false gods of chaos.

soddinnutter · March 17, 2010