Angels of Darkness

'My ambitions were never that grand, for only the Emperor could achieve such a thing,' Astelan said, shak­ing his head vigorously. 'But I thought I might light a signal fire, a beacon to others who strain at the bonds that keep them from the great fight, so the Imperium can become a thing of glory again, not just survival.'

'And so you had to get off Scappe Delve,' Boreas brought the questioning back to Astelan's account of events. 'There was nothing you could do on a distant mining world, no great triumphs to be had, no glorious battles to be won.'

'It was the need to know more, to find out all I could about the galaxy I now lived in, that drove me, almost consumed me,' Astelan explained. 'My existence had been turned inside out, and fate had cast me up on a dark, unknown shore. You are right, Scappe Delve became like a prison to me, confined to a narrow world of tunnels and artificial light. But the world was on the fringes of wilderness space, completely self-sufficient with its underground fungus cultivators and water recyclers, it had little contact with the rest of the Imperium. Even the ore they mined went nowhere, and they dug more and more halls and chambers just to store it. How ridiculous is that! It was a forgotten world, too unimpor­tant, too small to warrant the attention of the wise and mighty of the Imperium.'

'But you had seen a ship before, so you knew that even­tually another would come,' guessed Boreas. 'And so you waited and plotted patiently until an opportunity pre­sented itself.'

'I indeed had to be patient,' agreed Astelan. 'For two and a half years, no ship even visited the star system. But then a vessel came. I learned that, by chance, it was the same one that had guided me to the mine all that time ago. It was called the Saint Carthen, captained by a mer­chant named Rosan Trialartes. A rogue trader, they called him, and I asked what it meant. You can imagine how I felt when they explained.'

'You saw the rogue traders as just another indication of the decline of the Space Marines,' Boreas stated flatly. 'Civilian explorers given charter to trade without restric­tion, to travel beyond the known borders of the Imperium to discover new worlds. I expect it vexed you greatly to know that when once it had been the Space Marine Chapters that had forged into the darkness of space, it was now the right of merchant families and dis­possessed nobles.'

'Yes, it vexed me greatly, as you say, but I contained my ire,' admitted Astelan. 'The people of Scappe Delve were not responsible, they were victims. But the arrival of Tri­alartes was an opportunity to see what had become of the galaxy, to compare the dry words of the history scrolls with what really lay out beyond Scappe Delve.'

'And so you left with this rogue trader, Rosan Trialartes. What happened then?' asked Boreas. 'How did you come across the other Fallen? And what took you to Tharsis?'

'I did not leave immediately, Trialartes at first objected to my presence, for no other reason than selfish fear,' Astelan said, his jaw clenching angrily with the recollec­tion.

'I would have thought that a rogue trader would be pleased to have a Space Marine aboard his ship,' argued Boreas.

'As did I,' agreed Astelan.

'So what were his objections?' asked Boreas, his face expressionless.

'They were vague generalisations,' muttered Astelan. 'He called it an affront to his Warrant of Trade, claiming that my presence would limit the freedoms his charter as a rogue trader gave him. He called me a symbol of the authority that he was free from. However, the council of Scappe Delve argued in my favour, and eventually he relented and agreed to take me aboard. I think that the people of the mine were pleased to see me leave, for some unknown reason my being there caused them unfounded anxiety.'

'It is common enough,' said Boreas. 'For most of humanity, we Space Marines are a distant power, aloof defenders from history and legend. It is not surprising that sometimes they are perturbed to find out that we really exist and can still walk amongst them.'

'Trialartes's hesitation was far more understandable, as I discovered,' Astelan said with an abrupt, bitter laugh. 'We travelled from Scappe Delve to Orionis to offload the ore he had taken from the miners, in exchange for las-guns and power packs. But my suspicions were aroused. The exchange took place in the outer reaches of the sys­tem. No contact was made with the inhabited world there, and he made no attempt to dock with the orbital station.'

'He was a smuggler?' asked Boreas.

'It was unjust to use such a term for a rogue trader, he told me,' Astelan answered after a moment's thought. He was ashamed of what he had allowed the rogue trader to do without retribution. 'As he explained it to me, some­one had to ship armaments from system to system. His conduct worried me, but I was unfamiliar with the cus­toms and ways of this changed Imperium, and I felt an odd naivete in my dealings with Trialartes, for he knew so much more about the galaxy than I did. So, in my ignorance, I did nothing and let the matter pass.'

'But what of the other Fallen?' Boreas's insistence had returned. 'Where did you meet them?'

'You wish to hear what befell me, then let me tell you in my own way!' snapped Astelan.

'I do not care for your endless tales, I am here to make you face your sinful actions and repent,' Boreas snarled back. 'Your dealings with the other Fallen, what of them?'

The two of them fell silent, their stares locked on each other as they both tried to exert their will. For several minutes, the only sound was their heavy breathing and the odd hiss or crackle from the brazier.

'I met them at a place that Trialartes jokingly referred to as Port Imperial,' Astelan said eventually. 'I had urged him to take me back to Caliban, so that I might rejoin my brethren, but he confessed ignorance of its location. I found this unbelievable, that the home of the first Legion should have fallen into obscurity. I showed him where it was on the charts and he vehemently denied that there was an inhabited world there. I demanded that he take me there, but he refused. In the end, I was forced to aban­don the idea. We made several more journeys, travelling from system to system, unloading the arms in one place and taking on board plasma chambers, which we took somewhere else, and so it continued for many months. But none of the worlds we visited held what I sought. Tri­alartes plied his trade on the edges of the Imperium, travelling between the distant worlds on the borders of wilderness space. When I spoke to him of my desire to discover more, to go to a world with repositories of knowledge that I could study, he suggested I might find a more willing captain at Port Imperial. It was there that I met the other dispossessed brethren.'

'And where is this place?' demanded Boreas.

'Save yourself the labour of seeking it out, interrogator,' laughed Astelan. 'It does not exist any more.'

'You are lying!' roared Boreas, grabbing Astelan by the chin and thrusting his head back against the interroga­tion table.

'I have no need to lie,' spat Astelan between gritted teeth. 'Do you think I would seek to protect those rene­gades and outcasts who lived there? Do you think I hide my brethren from your attentions? No, I tell you the truth, Port Imperial is no more. I should know, I destroyed it'

'More destruction to sate your appetite for carnage?' snarled Boreas.

'Certainly not!' Astelan wrenched his face from Boreas's grip, and the Chaplain stepped back. 'Port Impe­rial was a den of smugglers, pirates and heretics. I was horrified to find two Dark Angels there. Port Imperial was once an orbital dock and shipyard. The wondrous scribes of the Administratum had forgotten its existence over the centuries, after it had been abandoned after some ancient war. Once used as a staging post for Imperial fleets, it had been deserted for several centuries until the raiders moved in. On one of those ships, over one hundred years before my coming, had been Brothers Methelas and Anovel.'

'You knew them?' Boreas's voice betrayed his surprise.

'Not in the slightest,' Astelan replied with a dismissive shake of his head. 'They were not from my Chapter. They were not even from the old Legion, they were sons of Caliban. But they recognised me at once. At first they acted as if the Emperor himself had arrived, but I soon stopped their undignified behaviour.'

'Explain yourself,' Boreas snapped.

'They could not decide whether to be afraid or to rejoice,' Astelan told him. 'They had become undisci­plined, they had lost their way. Oh, they had soon risen to control Port Imperial, none dared stand against them, but they were without purpose or resolve. Truly you might describe them as Fallen, for they had set them­selves up as lords over pirates and scum.'

'Whereas you had greater ambitions, to set yourself up as a lord over a whole world of hundreds of millions of souls.'

'Still you persist with this innuendo and accusations, despite all that I have told you,' lamented Astelan. 'I find your fear of the truth utterly remarkable and inexcusable.'

'So what led to the destruction of the space station?' This time it was Boreas who ignored the jibe.

'With my coming, I took command, and they obeyed me without question,' Astelan said with pride. 'Where they had been content to exist, to survive at the edge of civilisation, I told them what I had learned, of what I now dreamed I might achieve. It was not long before they shared my vision, for a return to an age of greatness. My vision inspired them, and together we devised a way for us to take a step closer towards that magnificent goal. For a start, we needed a ship. The Saint Carthen was the largest and best ship we could commandeer, but Tri­alartes turned down our offers. He resorted to violence to try to force us from his ship. It was a grave mistake on his part.'

'You killed him and took his ship?' Boreas was incred­ulous.

'A brutal but basically accurate summary of events,' admitted Astelan. 'Some of the crew took stand against us, and doomed themselves with their resistance. Some of the other ships' captains there also made the mistake of opposing us, and it was at that point we realised the shortcomings of our newly gained command. She lacked all but the most minimal weaponry, she had a few bat­teries of lasers to defend herself, but insufficient for the type of vessel we would need if we were to launch a new crusade. We boarded one of the other ships and offered her crew the same choice we had offered Trialartes. Fool­ishly, the captain could not see the sense of our offer and refused to support us. Again we were forced to fight, and had to kill all but a few of the crew before the others acquiesced to our needs. Once we had demonstrated our strength, there was no further resistance.'

'And so now you ruled a fleet of raiders and smugglers,' Boreas continued scornfully. 'It must have been hard for you, once a lauded Chapter commander, to be reduced to a pirate prince.'

'I had no intention of leading such a collection of scum,' snorted Astelan. 'We spent months refitting the Saint Carthen to be more worthy of her role, taking weapons from the other vessels so that she was fit for command. The crews of the other ships co-operated out of fear, nothing more.'

'And so what did you plan to do with this warship you had created?' Boreas asked. 'Did you think you could single-handedly continue the Great Crusade?'

'It should never have ended!' Astelan rasped. 'The treachery of Horus was a great setback, but catastrophe had been averted, and it was the failure of the primarchs and humanity's leaders to launch mankind back into the stars. But I see that my arguments still fall on deaf ears.'

'You have no arguments, only delusional ravings,' said Boreas, turning away again as if to ignore his prisoner's words.

'My delusions, if that is what you wish to call them, are more powerful than anything else in the Imperium,' Aste­lan told the Chaplain's broad back. 'Can you not imagine what might be achieved if humanity were truly united again? There is not a force amongst the stars that could resist us!'

'United behind you, I suppose,' said Boreas, looking back at Astelan. 'You would set yourself up as a new Emperor and lead us into this fantastical golden age you dream of.'

'You do not comprehend the vileness of your accusa­tions.' Astelan longed to be free of his chains, which were weighing ever more heavily on his tired body. 'I could never rival the Emperor, nobody can. Even Horus, favoured amongst the primarchs, could not match his greatness. No, it is not I alone that should lead mankind, it should be all Space Marines. They have taken away your true purpose, turned you into their slaves.'

'We exist to protect mankind, not to rule it!' Boreas turned on his heel and pointed an accusing finger at Aste­lan. 'Admit the heresies of what you preach! Accept that when you turned on Caliban, you broke every oath you had sworn, neglected every duty that was yours.'

'It was not we who were the oath-breakers!' protested Astelan.

'You abandoned everything for your own ambitions, from Caliban through to your reign on Tharsis!' Boreas's voice rose to a roar as he strode across the cell.

'That cannot be so, for I knew nothing of Tharsis when we set out from Port Imperial,' argued Astelan, managing to calm his voice.

'So what did you intend to do?' asked Boreas. 'Travel to Terra perhaps? Take your arguments to the Senatorum Imperialis so that the High Lords could see your great vision?'

'The High Lords are less than nothing to me.' Astelan would have spat if his mouth had not been so dry. 'They are puppets who pretend to hold power. No, it is the peo­ple of the Imperium, the untold billions who hold the key to mankind's destiny. The Imperium has grown stag­nant, complacent over the centuries and millennia, with those holding the reins of power merely content to con­tinue to rule. It is from those who toil every day, who fight aboard the starships and sacrifice their lives for the Emperor on distant battlefields, who will drive mankind forward into an age of supremacy.'

'And how did you think you could bring this about, with your crude warship and piratical crew?' Boreas asked, now composed again.

'To lead by example!' exclaimed Astelan, leaning towards the Chaplain, trying to urge him to understand. 'We turned our guns on the other ships, obliterated Port Imperial and chased down those who tried to flee. It was those raiders, those renegades, who were almost as guilty as the cowardly note-takers who hold power. They were parasites, feeding off the rotting carcass of the Imperium, draining it of its strength. How many ships are wasted chasing corsairs when they could be pushing back the boundaries of the Emperor's realm? How many lives are lost fighting these leeches - lives that could be spent exterminating aliens and settling new worlds to build our strength? Just as the Imperium has spiralled into decline, so too can one great act be a catalyst that can see the Emperor's vision complete. A world won is a world that can contribute to the greater cause. From that world, another can be rediscovered or conquered, and from that another and another. That is the Great Crusade: it is not about battles and war, it is about domination for mankind.'

'I still fail to see how you and a single ship could bring this about,' Boreas argued.

'The Saint Carthen was merely a means to an end, to take me to where I could enact my plans,' Astelan explained. 'As you have already learnt, I achieved that end on Tharsis until you destroyed my great army, blind­folded by those weaker than yourselves.'

'But you said you knew nothing of Tharsis. You must have had some plan, some objective in mind,' insisted Boreas.

'At first my goals were nebulous and unfocussed,' Aste­lan explained slowly. 'I learnt much from Anovel and Methelas. They told me of how the Legions had been broken down into Chapters following the Horus Heresy. Of how aliens continued to run rampant, and traitors rebelled against the Emperor unchecked. The plan, the return to the Great Crusade, was growing inside me, fuelling me. It did not reach such depth and scope until Tharsis, but it was subconsciously pushing me onwards. The star maps of Trialartes were woefully inadequate, and with no Navigator to pilot the ship any distance through the warp, we edged our way back into more populated star systems. It was then that the greatest tragedy of Horus's treach­ery was revealed to me. With their everlasting war against the Emperor, the traitors have sullied the name of the Space Marines. As you said, others do not understand us, and when we encountered Imperial vessels, they took us to be renegades. They fled or attacked. Some we had to destroy to protect ourselves, salvaging what we could from the wreckage. We encountered resistance from the worlds we visited, and they drove us away. A ship cannot survive without supplies, and so eventually we had to take what we needed from other vessels, from outposts.'

'Piracy,' Boreas stated flatly. 'Your conscience reveals you as a pirate. The armour you wear, the cause you believe in, does not alter that. You had become the very thing you say you despised so much.'

'Is it piracy that you wield bolters from another world?' asked Astelan. 'Are you pirates because the food that sus­tains you is taken from others?'

'A poor comparison, for we are supplied by ancient treaties,' Boreas replied with a derisive shake of his head. 'As we fulfil our duty to protect mankind, so mankind has a duty to feed and arm us. There is no threat involved, no violence.'

'No threat, you say,' Astelan continued. 'What about the threat of angering the Dark Angels? What about the fear of retribution should your suppliers break their treaties? It is only different because you claim it is justifi­able. What was I to do? My needs were no less legitimate, my goals no less worthy. But the impenetrable mass that the Imperium has become had no place for me. We did not fit into the warped scheme and so we were forced to take other measures.'

'And your brethren, Methelas and Anovel, what of them?' Boreas demanded.

'They never fully understood what it is that drives me,' Astelan told him. 'How could they, they were not old Legion? Yes, they had supported Luther, but I discovered that they were still driven by pettiness. I do not think they truly believed in my plans for the Greater Imperium. They sought merely to strike at those whom they believed had cast them out. It was vengeance they sought, not a higher purpose. When we finally came upon Tharsis they would not accompany me, and we parted company there.'

'They abandoned you,' Boreas suggested shrewdly.

'I do not know what their motives were, but they left without me,' Astelan confirmed.

'So just how did your rebuilding of the Imperium lead you to a world torn apart by civil war?' Boreas asked.

'Our ship was damaged, we sought a haven, but by chance we arrived in the Tharsis system first and my life was changed forever,' explained Astelan.

'How had your ship come to be damaged?' Boreas's tone was quiet, almost nonchalant, as if he was merely observing Astelan and had no genuine interest in his answers.

'We had been falsely marked as renegades and were hunted and hounded,' Astelan related the grim memo­ries. 'The situation had become intolerable, my dreams were almost shattered. Circumstance had turned against me, engineered by those who did not want the servants of the Emperor to hear my message, for it threatened everything they had taught for ten thousand years. A fleet was despatched to destroy us, and we were almost caught at Giasameth. We had to flee, something I had never before done in my life.'

'So it is cowardice that has driven you for all these years?' Boreas asked sharply. 'Do you now accept that it was your fear of duty, your dread of the burden laid upon you, that caused you to turn upon your masters?'