[Dawn of War 01] - Dawn of War Read online

  But the sound seemed to shift. The harmony faltered and then collapsed. Soaring sopranos screeched into shrill screams, and the unblemished light was suddenly awash with tortured faces. Deep reds bled into the stream of silver, curdling his thoughts into a sickly blend of bloody images. The screams grew louder, threatening to overcome his mind with their potency. And voices started to emerge from the forest of sound—voices that called his name—Gabriel Angelos, this was your doing. They were accusing him, hating him, reaching for his soul with the ice-cold fingers of the dead.

  “Gabriel!”

  He fired out his hand, grasping the nearest neck in his iron-grip. The immense muscles of his shoulder and arm bunched in tension.

  “Gabriel.” The voice was firm and gentle, but it was accompanied by a palm that slapped across his face.

  The Blood Ravens captain prised open his eyes and stared into the face of his friend. “Thank you, Isador.”

  Isador Akios gazed back at his captain with the tenderness of decades of familiarity. “You look terrible.”

  Gabriel’s skin was glistening with sweat and a single bloody tear had streaked down his face, leaving a scar-like mark over his already scarred cheek. His lip was split and bleeding where Isador had struck him. The plain tunic that he wore was soaked with sweat, and it clung to his muscular form as he rose from the posture of supplication before the altar.

  “Again, thank you, Isador,” he replied as he got to his feet, meeting the Librarian’s eyes levelly with his own, and wiping the blood from his mouth. “I was praying,” he explained.

  “Yes, I can see that.” Isador had seen Grabriel pray at each of the designated times of every day for over a century. He had always been devout, as you would expect from one of the Emperor’s Space Marines. But something had changed since the Cyrene campaign. There was not much room in their daily routine for personal space, but Gabriel now spent every spare moment in the temple, and Isador was concerned for his old friend.

  “Are we closing on Tartarus?” asked Gabriel, reasoning that this would be why his meditations had been interrupted.

  “Imminently, captain,” replied Isador, still studying Gabriel’s face carefully. “We have entered the Tartarus system and are preparing a trajectory for optimum orbit around the fourth planet—Tartarus itself.”

  “Any more news from the regiment on the ground, Isador?”

  “No, Gabriel, none. I pray that we are not too late,” said the Librarian with concern. The Blood Ravens Third Company had received the distress call from the Tartarus Planetary Defence Force—a regiment of the Imperial Guard affectionately known as the Tartarans—a couple of days earlier. The report was broken and intermittent, but the Tartarans appeared to be under attack by a large force of orks. Gabriel had immediately directed the company’s battle barge, the Litany of Fury, to make for Tartarus to offer assistance. The Blood Ravens had fought orks many times before, and they knew how to confront this foe.

  “What do we know of the planet?” asked Gabriel as he brushed his way past Isador, heading for the command deck.

  “It is a civilized world and semi-urbanised. There are a series of cities and one spaceport. Most of the indigenous population are focussed in the cities.”

  “And what is the population, Librarian?” asked Gabriel, keen to know the details of the battle to come before throwing himself into it.

  “Nearly four billion,” replied Isador, wincing slightly at the thought of the probable casualties.

  “Any idea why the orks would be interested in this place?” asked the captain, wondering whether there might be some strategic targets that he ought to know about.

  “No, Gabriel. But then, the orks know nothing of reason. They appear solely concerned with war for its own sake. Our librarium on the Omnis Arcanum holds many records on ork battle tactics, but little on their psychology.” Isador had spent long years studying in the legendary librarium sanatorium, housed in the Blood Ravens’ Chapter Fortress, the Omnis Arcanum. It was justly famed as one of the most extensive archives in the Imperium, and the Librarians of the Blood Ravens were amongst the most knowledgeable servants of the Emperor anywhere in His realm.

  “War for its own sake?” Gabriel stopped and turned to face Isador. He smiled. “We can do that.”

  The approach to Tartarus was littered with space debris and junk. Great hunks of ruined space ships floated freely in the outer reaches of the system, as though they had just fallen off larger vessels and then been abandoned. They formed the ugly wake of the ork invasion fleet, polluting the Imperium with their crude technologies and their callous disregard for anything except war.

  The massive bulk of the Litany of Fury eased its way through the detritus, destroying any of the wreckages large enough to cause any harm. The gun-servitors played casually with the debris field, as though they were on a training run, preparing themselves for the battle to come.

  “Good of them to leave us a trail, Isador,” commented Gabriel dryly.

  “Yes, subtlety is not their strongest asset, captain,” replied the Librarian. “Orks are certainly not at their best in space. On the ground, it is a very different story, as you well know.”

  As they spoke, the planet of Tartarus slipped onto their view screen, emerging out from behind the exploded remains of an old Onslaught attack ship that the ork fleet must have jettisoned as useless. Its jagged hull simply collapsed under the brief strafe of fire from one of the prow batteries of the Litany of Fury, leaving the field of vision clear for the first time since they entered the system.

  The blue-green planet was shrouded in debris—ruined relay stations spiralled around abandoned junks, intermixed with what must have been the ork fleet. For a few moments, the Space Marines could not distinguish between the space trash and the ork vessels—nothing looked like it could sustain a orbital battle. Occasional bursts of flame from engines picked out some of the smaller craft, perhaps more Onslaughts or a Savage gunship, but there was no sign of the huge bulk of a kill kroozer command ship. It was all very chaotic, but deathly quiet.

  “What a mess,” muttered Gabriel under his breath, shaking his head with revulsion. The vulgar clumsiness of the orks never ceased to amaze him. They had no right to be a space faring race: their fleets were almost entirely salvaged from Imperial or even Chaos vessels that were immobilised or weakened in the glorious Imperial crusades. They were vultures. The orks would steal the remains of an honourable space ship, ignoring the pleadings and death-throes of its machine spirit, bolt on a bristling array of heavy guns and prow batteries then plunge the hapless craft into battle. When the vessel died, they would simply abandon it unceremoniously, leaving it to float through space like junk.

  Tartarus itself was no longer the pristine blue and green for which it was famed. It was not a heavily populated world, and there was a lot of agriculture. The atmosphere was usually clear and crisp, providing a perfect view of the verdant surface from orbit. No longer. Even from space the fires that engulfed the cities could be seen burning with a dirty orange. Great sheets of flames stretched across the arable lands and the wide prairies that rolled between the settlements. Plumes of thick, black smoke billowed into the atmosphere, shutting in the heat and moisture and changing the planet’s temperate climate into a stiflingly humid monsoon.

  A click of heels made Gabriel turn. A nervous curator stood before him, clutching a large, heavily bound book. The man was struggling slightly under its weight, as though he were not used to carrying anything heavier than a pen. Little beads of sweat trickled down his shaven head, leaving shiny traces over the cursive lexiographs etched into his skin. The writing marked him as a curator of the Blood Ravens librarium but, instead of the usual grey robes of an Administratum curator, this man was bedecked in a smock of deep red.

  Gabriel nodded at the man, indicating that he should give the tome to Isador. The prospect seemed to fill the small man with dread and his eyes bulged slightly as he turned to approach the Librarian.

  �
��Thank you,” said Isador smoothly, taking the book in one hand and dismissing the trembling curator, who turned quickly and shuffled away, breathing hard.

  It was one of the quirks of the Blood Ravens that each of their battlebarges contained its own librarium, and hence each required a team of curators to facilitate its smooth operation. The curators would also record details of each and every event that took place on the vessel, although they would rely on the testimony of the company Librarian for details of missions that took place off ship. Hence, every barge contained the history of the company that operated it, in addition to copies of more general Imperial tomes. Whenever the battle barges rendezvoused with the Chapter fortress, copies of every file would be transferred into the central librarium sanatorium, where only the most senior Librarians and the Chapter Master himself would have access to every detail concerning every company.

  Gabriel had often reflected that his brother-librarians were rather fanatical about documentation, as though knowledge and experience were not real unless they were committed to paper. He knew that the Blood Ravens were unique amongst all the Chapters of the Emperor’s Space Marines in being so studiously conscientious, and he was not sure why this was the case. He had asked Isador more than once, but had not received a satisfactory response, as though the Librarian was worried that he was not entirely trustworthy. He would mutter something about the appropriate designations of knowledge, and then would intone the Chapter’s maxim: knowledge is power—guard it well.

  “This is the recorded history of Tartarus,” said Isador, carefully laying the heavy book onto an intricately carved podium next to the view-screen.

  “Anything we need to know?” asked Gabriel, his attention already turned back to the jumbled ork fleet around the planet. He trusted that Isador would find anything that needed to be found. He had a gift for these things.

  The two Marines stood in silence for a short while; Gabriel gazing out into space, considering the ork formation, Isador leafing through the pages of the book with intense concentration, his blue eyes burning with focus. It was Gabriel who spoke first.

  “The bulk of the ork fleet has already descended on the planet’s surface. Those Onslaughts and Savages are running a patrol pattern, policing the inner orbit to protect the land forces from bombardments.” He had reached a conclusion and was simply sharing it with the command crew. He didn’t turn to face the deck, but spoke into the view-screen. “Take us in to a low orbit. Execute covering fire to keep those gunships off our backs. We will deploy in Thunderhawks and drop-pods onto the co-ordinates of the last message from the Tartarans.”

  There was a flurry of activity on the command deck as servitors rushed to make the necessary arrangements and to notify the assault squads that they should start their purification rites and prepare their armour for battle.

  “Inform Chaplain Prathios that he will join the party,” said Gabriel as he finally turned away from the viewer to oversee the bustling bridge.

  Librarian Isador looked up from the pulpit at his captain’s last order, and raised a single eyebrow. The old Chaplain had been a fearsome warrior in his time, but he was now the oldest serving Marine in the Third Company, and he would be the first to admit that he was past his best, even if he wouldn’t admit it out loud.

  “Is everything well?” asked Isador with genuine concern, closing the great book on the stand in front of him and walking back to the view-screen.

  “I’m not sure. Something doesn’t feel right about this,” said Gabriel, conscious that his words sounded rather too much like those of a Librarian. In the darkest recesses of his mind, he could still hear the silvery tones of a psychic choir singing to him. These were not sounds that a Space Marine captain was used to hearing, and certainly not something that he could discuss with a sanctioned psyker like Isador.

  “No matter. The Emperor will guide our hands,” he said, rallying a smile for his old friend.

  “Yes, indeed, Gabriel. The Emperor will guide us.” Isador held Gabriel’s hesitant eyes for a moment, watching them for shadows.

  “And what of Tartarus, Isador?” asked Gabriel, changing the subject with a characteristic inquiry.

  Isador did not look away. “For the most part, it seems an unremarkable planet, captain. It was settled in the thirty-eighth millennia by a colonising mission, who subsequently established it as an agricultural centre. More recently it has seen some affluence as a trading centre, and the population has grown. The Tartarus Planetary Defence Force has stood guardian over the planet since its foundation—successfully seeing off various incursions by the orks. Most of the Tartarans’ activity, however, has been the suppression of civil wars and uprisings, of which there have been many. Some minor Khornate cults have been recorded amongst the population at various times, but they have been efficiently suppressed. Considering the relatively small size of the population on Tartarus, a great deal of blood has been shed here over the centuries.”

  “That will make the soil fertile,” said Gabriel with a faint smile.

  “So it seems, captain. There is one strange thing in the historical record, however: there are a number of references to events on the planet before the thirty-eighth millennia.” Isador loaded his observation with a significance that was lost on Gabriel.

  “And why is this strange?”

  “Because, captain, the planet was not officially colonised until 102.M39, and the records show that the planet was completely uninhabited at the time of colonisation. There should not have been any humans on this planet in the thirty-eighth millennia, and certainly none recording an official Imperial history.” Isador furrowed his brow and stared out of the view-screen at the burning planet. “As you know, it is most vexing when Imperial records are incomplete or ambiguous.”

  The two Blood Ravens shared a moment of thoughtful silence as they reflected on the history of their own proud Chapter. “Yes,” said Gabriel eventually, “most vexing.”

  Planet Tartarus: Magna Bonum Spaceport

  The rockets punched into the side of the Leman Russ, rolling the tank onto its side with the force of the impacts. The turret of the battle cannon swung round under gravity, smashing into the ground and rupturing instantly. Meanwhile, the hull-mounted lascannon spat impotently into the air, as though sending up flares. Colonel Brom could see the hatch flip open, and a tumble of tank-crew spill out onto the rockcrete. They were on their feet and running before another hail of rockets punctured the exposed underbelly of the tank. The explosion was massive as the rockets detonated in the fuel reserves and triggered the remaining cannon shells. A mushroom cloud plumed into the air as a fiery rain of shattered tank hailed down into the line of Imperial infantry that had been sheltering in its shadow. The fleeing tank crew were blown off their feet, skidding along the hard-deck on their faces.

  The orks raised a loud, incoherent cheer, brandishing their weapons in the air and then charging forwards towards the breach. There were hundreds of them. Huge, hulking masses of green muscle bearing down on the Tartaran infantry, their massive axes and cleavers glinting viciously, already wet with Imperial blood. The weight of their charge made the deck rumble and roll, and their cacophonous war cries filled the air with aural terror.

  The Tartaran infantry hastened to form a defensive line, troops from the rear rushing to fill the gap left by the ruined tank. From his vantage point behind the lines, Brom could see the fear plastered all over their faces, but they opened fire just as the colonel thought that they might turn and run. Streaks of las-fire lashed across the closing gap between them and the rampage of orks. Volleys of fire from heavy stubbers and plasma guns strafed through the advancing pack of greenskins. Even as one or two of the slugga boyz and gretchin collapsed to the ground, the thundering gaggle of teeth and muscles stormed over their prone bodies, trampling them into pulped death.

  A barrage of grenades hissed out of the Tartaran line, arcing in tight parabolas before plunging into the throng of orks. Pockets of explosions ripped through th
e crowd of wailing greenskins, shredding them in clusters, sending sprays of ichor and green flesh raining down over their brethren. But the charge continued unbroken.

  At the head of the charge was a knot of massive creatures, each covered in crudely riveted plates of armour. They brandished evil-looking power claws in one hand and clunky guns in the other. Attached to the back of one of them was a towering bosspole, crested with three impaled, severed heads. Even from this distance, Brom could recognise one of the heads as Sergeant Waine, and he flinched involuntarily at the barbarism of these creatures. The other two heads seemed barely human at all.

  Erratic splutterings of gun-fire spat out from the charging orks, smashing into the Tartaran line with crude power, lifting Guardsmen off their feet as shells punched into them. Stikkbombz flipped and spiralled through the air, detonating into blasts of shrapnel as they hit the infantry formation. Guardsmen fell in dozens, clutching at puncture wounds and lacerations. And all the time the charge was getting closer, full of the promise of gleaming choppas and ravenous teeth.

  The Tartaran line was beginning to crack, and Brom could see the terror induced hesitation from his gunners. They were beginning to freeze. The colonel drew his sword from its scabbard and flourished it in the air, pulling his pistol from its holster with his other hand, and charged towards his men.

  “For Tartarus and the Emperor!” he yelled, barely audible over the screeches and cries of the incoming orks. A few of the Tartarans turned to see what the noise was, and a faint cheer came from the line as they saw their colonel plunging into the fray with them. But most of the men were staring fixedly forward, watching the orks steamroller their way through the barricades around the edge of the spaceport’s decks.

  A couple of the orks in the front of the charge pumped their burnas experimentally, checking the range. Plumes of flame jetted towards the Imperial line, engulfing clutches of men, who fell screaming to the ground, thrashing in the fire. The orks screamed out in delight as they realised that they were now close enough for some serious fun. Burnas erupted throughout the charging rabble, dousing other orks and Imperial Guardsmen indiscriminately. Some of the shoota boyz cast their guns to the ground as they cleared the last few metres that separated them from the Tartarans, preferring to grasp their massive axes in both hands for the melee.