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Sons of Sanguinius: A Blood Angels Omnibus – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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One

PLANETFALL

Tamir let Kesef fall. Pressing himself into the rockface as the youth tumbled past, he didn’t spare the other warrior another glance. The weak had no place on Cretacia. It was better for Kesef to die than live to infect the tribe with his wretched blood. Tamir reached for the next handhold and paused. Kesef wasn’t screaming. The warrior had not allowed his death to expose Tamir and the rest of the war party. There was honour in that, at least. When the hunt was over, Tamir would have Harut find Kesef’s body and burn it. He would not leave the youth’s spirit to be consumed by the earth.

Ignoring the blood seeping from his palms and feet, Tamir swung his hand up and climbed. Around him, the rest of his warriors continued the ascent, scaling the mountain with renewed care. Tamir knew many more would fall before they reached the summit. The ranodon had chosen its lair well. The four-winged beasts nested atop the mountain’s peak, laying their nutrient-rich eggs away from the hungry claws of predators. The rock of the mountain was ragged, spiked like the hide of a snarling barasaur. It tore at his flesh and bled his strength. Yet he knew the climb was only the beginning; worse was to come. The steppes ahead were searing hot, boiled from within by the mountain’s fire. They would have to move fast or be cooked to the bone. Tamir dug his fingers into a fresh handhold and pressed on, protected by the vines of knotted scar tissue covering his body. The suns had died and been reborn many times since his first hunt, and he longed for the stabbing pain of his youth, the agony that lent haste to his limbs. Now he felt little but the beat of his own hearts.

Movement to the left caught Tamir’s eye. Harut had stopped climbing and was motioning to the sky behind them. Tamir followed the tracker’s gaze as a hail of flaming debris peppered his skin. He clung tight to the mountainside, turning away from the sky as the fiery hail raked his back. The stench of burnt flesh attacked his nostrils, making him scowl. Three more of his war party dropped from the peak, their screams drowned out by the growl of the fire-rock as it struck the ridge around him. Panic sent a shiver through Tamir’s body. If they had angered the mountain, it would spew forth its rage and wash them from its flanks in a tide of flame. He looked to the summit, but the mountain was still, unmoved by their presence. Tamir cursed himself for being so foolish. They had performed the necessary rites, smearing themselves in the terracotta mud bordering the foothills. There was no way the mountain’s spirit could have sensed them. The sky-fire was something else.

Tamir turned towards the sky as a cluster of larger rocks burned downwards, crashing into the forest beyond the next ridge in a halo of fire and dust. Dread knotted Tamir’s stomach and sent a burst of adrenaline through his veins. His village lay beyond the ridge.

‘Baktu! Baktu!’ Tamir shouted, ordering the war party down, descending as fast as he dared.

The village was gone. The falling rocks had burned great troughs in the ground, scouring the wooden huts from the earth. Malyai trees lay flattened under one another, knocked over as if by a mighty wind. Flames shivered on the edges of their weeping leaves, burning away what remained. The bodies of Tamir’s tribe were gone, lost in the smoke that drifted from the dark ash carpeting the ground and hiding all traces of life. Tamir’s angular jaw remained unflinching, his hearts as hard as the muscles that crowded his chest like boulders.

He felt no sorrow for any individual. The fates were not always kind, and such was the way of things. But with the women and children dead, it would be many passings of the sun before the tribe was able to replenish those killed in battle – to survive, he would have to claim warriors from the neighbouring tribes. This was to be only the start of the bloodletting that must surely follow.

Buried in a mound of churned earth, a single, huge rock shone as the sun’s light touched it. Tamir ran at it, intent on revenge. He would break it asunder and fashion a club from its remains. He froze, muscles bunching in anticipation as the rock hissed and spat geysers of steam. A moment later a section of the outer layer slid away, disappearing into an unseen recess. Several of Tamir’s warriors recoiled but the warchief held his ground, snarling as a green-skinned beast stumbled from the opening.

The creature emitted a low growl as it collapsed to its haunches. Thick blood ran from a wound in its side. Bunches of taut muscle strained beneath its flesh, and alluded to the violence the beast was capable of. Knifed teeth sat below devil-red eyes.

Tamir circled the beast. It stank worse than the sump bogs. Had it been upright he had no doubt it would have been twice his size, though small in comparison to the great beasts who had tasted his spear. Harut and Koi stepped towards it. Tamir read the desire to kill in their movements, and spread his arms to stop them. It had been his village to protect; the right to kill was his and his alone. Grunting their assent, the two warriors fell back among the others.

The green beast’s breath came in laboured gasps as it tried to drag itself up. Snarling, Tamir threw his spear through the beast’s forearm, pinning it to the ground. The greenskin roared in pain, saliva dripping from its maw. Tamir skipped forward, slicing off its hand with his blade, the sharpened stone cutting easily through the bone. The beast’s roar died in its throat, its voice robbed by pain as it fell onto its back. Blood enough to bleach a man death-white ran from the stump of its wrist, congealing the ash around it into a thick sludge.

On a hunt, such a sight would have driven Tamir’s war party into a frenzy, eliciting a chorus of triumphant calls and whistles, but now they remained silent. A vengeance kill brought with it no prize, no spoils worthy of the cost.

Studying every tortured spasm of the beast’s face, Tamir unhooked his club from his waist. He wanted to remember the kill.

Spitting its hatred, the greenskin tore its arm through the spear, leaving behind a chunk of flesh, and threw itself at Tamir.

The warchief anticipated the move, but the beast’s size belied its speed. Springing back, Tamir avoided its snapping jaw, but was caught by a swinging right hook. The greenskin’s fist thundered into his face. Tamir heard his cheekbone crack, wincing at the sound, though he had yet to register the pain. The greenskin pressed its attack, punching its stump into his nose. He gagged as blood and the stench of alien flesh filled his mouth.

The beast’s resurgence was short-lived. Even its seemingly indomitable constitution couldn’t contend with the blood leaking from its wounds. Tamir weaved under another strike, rising to smash his club into the beast’s head. The blow shattered the greenskin’s cheek. It toppled to the ground mewling, its yellowed teeth scattered beside it. Tamir straddled the beast’s chest and hit its skull again and again, spurred on by the gore that spattered against his body. He continued to smash the beast’s skull into the earth until its body ceased twitching.

Tamir’s breath came in frantic bursts as he staggered to his feet. His limbs were soaked in the creature’s life fluid, dyeing the mud caking his skin a dark, visceral red. Tamir straightened, armoured in crimson, and raised his weapon to the sky.

‘Ruta, ruta namuna, ar-a!’ Tamir shouted.

Tamir’s kinsmen echoed his cry. They were the tearers of skin, the eaters of flesh.

Death in the void left Amit cold.

The Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers stared through his flagship’s oculus at the spread of plasma torpedoes flickering in the darkness, streaking towards the last ork hulk. The vessel was crippled, ruined by bombardment cannons and broadside salvos. Though he couldn’t see them, he knew a squadron of Thunderhawks burned ahead of the torpedoes, clearing a path for the deadly payload of ordnance, thinning out the debris fields that had hours ago been the ork fleet. The harsh flash of turbo-lasers and the pulsating flicker of lascannon fire were the only visible markers of their position.

This was not battle as he knew it. His pulse was at rest, his blood cool in his veins, his hearts inaudible over the idle purr of his powered warplate. He felt misplaced on the bridge of a starship. Naval engagements were detached... things, tightly regimented, logistical processes carried out by innumerable souls at the behest of unseen masters. Most who died in space did so out of consequence: incinerated by plasma fires, drowned in coolant, sucked into the freezing embrace of the void; they died almost by accident. Amit saw little difference between that and how men met their end in times of peace. Burned as their dwellings caught fire around them, drowned by untamed rivers, taken by the night’s chill; men had died in such ways long before they had joined their gods in the stars.

Amit turned from the oculus and let his gaze drift around the vaulted bridge. Banks of lumens hung from the distant ceiling like giant teardrops, their crimson light bleeding down to slick the floor. Dozens of serfs in grey tunics attended to the clacking consoles that controlled the Victus’s systems, their sun-starved skin cast into eerie blue relief by the myriad auspex and data-viewers. It had been weeks since any of them had left their stations. Snaking tubes of bio-fluid and stimulants nourished the serfs’ gaunt bodies and kept their minds alert, while others carried away their excrement. Amit doubted any would survive past the next few hours. Mechanical servitors shuffled across the iron of the deck, incense wafting from their altered skin as they mumbled blessings in strangled snatches of machine code. Stuttering hololithic arrays in arched vestibules displayed representations of the eight strike cruisers that made up the rest of the fleet. Yet the bridge felt almost silent, the noise of the unceasing activity drowned under the background thrum of the flagship’s growling engines.

‘Impact imminent, liege.’ A tactical serf rasped an update as the torpedoes slammed into the ork ship, his voice hoarse from over ninety hours of continuous combat.

Amit watched his quarry through the oculus, taking a final look before it was delivered to oblivion. Even by ork standards the ship was almost unrecognisable as something befitting that description. It was larger than any other he had ever encountered, a lumbering mass of rock and twisted metal, whose haphazard construction gave it no right to exist. Rocket boosters, exhaust vents, sensor spines and weapon mouths jutted from every angle imaginable. Its hull was formed from the ruins of thousands of vessels. Some Amit recognised as having once belonged to the Imperium, others were xenos in origin, all were mashed together with the same direct brutality with which the orks waged war.

Amit starred at its undulating flanks as the torpedoes struck, wondering at the history sealed within the drifting mausoleum, at what pieces of the past they were about to destroy forever.

‘All enemy contacts vanquished, liege.’

Shipmaster Neta Pia stood up from her command throne and grasped the support rail. It had been a long pursuit through the Corythos system and she had not left the chair for fourteen cycles. She stood out of triumph, out of respect for the Chapter Master, and for a chance to let the blood back into her legs. Neta looked to Amit and felt a shiver run through her spine. She would never grow accustomed to his presence. More god than man, he was as broad as any bulkhead and stood almost twice her height in his Terminator armour, a full head taller than Brother-Captains Barakiel and Ismeriel, who remained immobile on either side of him. Amit’s ancient warplate was as pitted and scarred as the flanks of the Victus, his eyes as ancient as the stars she sailed among.

‘Survivors?’ Even without his helm and the metallic hiss of his vox grille, Amit’s voice was like the idle growl of a chainsword.

‘Surveyors, wide spectrum scan,’ said Neta. ‘If even one of those green-skinned brutes survives, I will know about it.’ She snapped the order to the chorus of surveyor serfs and their attendant servitors.

The lobotomised slaves trembled as data coursed through their binary veins. ‘Processing,’ they uttered as one.

Neta listened to the stilted machine idiom as the surveyors gathered data. She had heard that on planets less feral than her own, servitor babble was considered beautiful – movements of techno-composers and machine adepts grouped servitors of differing functions and logic cores together, orchestrating their garbled speech into something akin to art. Neta ground her teeth. The stuttered consonants of the servitors did little more than tear at her nerves.

A blinking rune on her console demanded attention. ‘Plasma trails and heat flaring suggest several craft made landfall, liege,’ the fleet captain said.

‘Show me.’ Amit faced the tactical hololith that hung in the air above the command dais.

System of seven worlds. Uncharted. The words scrolled across the hololith as the planets came into focus. A moment later, clusters of pulsating orbs lit up across three of the planets, indicating where the ork engine signatures had been lost.

‘Here, liege.’ Neta brought the fourth planet into sharp focus with a subvocal command, letting the others dissolve into the background. ‘The majority of the orks fled to this world.’

The hololith shuddered a moment as the ship’s cogitators generated an analysis of the planet. Neta clicked her tongue in annoyance as a slew of negative returns came back concerning land mass, population, atmospheric conditions, climate and mineral density. ‘Surveyors, I need more information.’

‘With regrets, captain, the world is blanketed in electrical storms and thick cloud. Our auspex is unable to penetrate further.’

‘Cunning.’ Neta gave a wolfish smile. She had long suspected the orks were more than barbarous raiders. The survivors sought to hide within the shroud of the mysterious fourth planet.

‘Recall the Thunderhawks.’ Amit’s voice ground out from behind her. ‘Have the company assemble in the hangar.’ He was leaving.

‘Liege?’ Neta asked as the three armoured giants strode towards the chamber’s exit.

‘Assist Brother-Captain Azazel in hunting the other orks, shipmaster,’ Amit told her without stopping.

‘Yes, liege.’ Neta stiffened with purpose and went to her duty, rallying the helm and comms to contact Azazel’s strike cruiser in the Flesh Tearers flotilla.

‘Shipmaster Neta...’ Amit stopped in the doorway, turning to look at her. ‘You fought well. Even after this long century of war, the fire still burns in your blood. Secure the system and I’ll make sure the cartographers hear of your name.’

‘Liege.’ Neta bowed. When the Traitor Legions had reduced her world to a scorched husk, loyalty to the Imperium had been welded to her soul. When the Blood Angels had liberated the planet, she had sworn an oath of enduring servitude. Until that moment she had wanted nothing more from her life than the chance to kill the enemies of man. But to be immortalised on a star chart, to be remembered until the suns burned cold... ‘By His blood, it shall be done.’

Ismeriel waited until the door had closed, its barrel locks hissing into place, and he stood alone in the corridor with Barakiel and Amit before speaking. ‘My lord.’

Amit faced him, finding the red orbs of Ismeriel’s bionic eyes as unreadable as ever. The optics glowered in the low light of the corridor, casting a ruddy sheen over the metal plating covering the left side of his face. ‘Speak your piece, Ismeriel.’

‘Is this plan wise, lord? The orks may not have chosen the fourth planet through desperation alone. It could be lair to any number of the wretched things,’ Ismeriel continued, unaware of Amit’s rising impatience. ‘We don’t know what else awaits us down there. Let me take the Scouts, properly reconnoitre the–’

Amit took a step so his face was a handspan from Ismeriel’s. ‘Do you think me a coward, brother-captain?’ The other Flesh Tearer opened his mouth to speak but Amit continued, pressing his forehead into Ismeriel’s. ‘I am not one of Guilliman’s pedantic tacticians.’ Amit raised one of his crimson gauntlets. The servos in its adamantium joints growled as he bunched his fingers into a fist. ‘I am armoured in blood, not the dark cowl of Corax’s saboteurs.’

‘Lord.’ Ismeriel held Amit’s gaze.

Amit grinned, pleased by Ismeriel’s resolve. If the Chapter were to survive then it would take leaders like Ismeriel to see it through this bloody era. But Amit was too soaked in violence to change now. He could not deny the Blood; its call grew ever louder in his mind.

‘And you, Barakiel, what say you?’ Amit turned to the other captain.

‘I care not whether there are a hundred orks or a thousand on that world. We will slay them. But we would be better served resuming our crusade into the Sakkara sector. The Angels Vermillion have already sent a request for aid.’ Barakiel spoke evenly, his face free of emotion. ‘Leave the auxiliaries to clean up here. There is blood enough to be shed elsewhere.’

‘No,’ said Amit, his jaw clenched tight, a cage against his mounting anger. ‘You are wrong.’

There is never enough. The Thirst endures.

The thought pushed unbidden into his mind. It was a sentiment he would not – could not – voice. If he, the strongest among them, lost hope then… Amit growled. ‘Look around you, brothers. Our warriors grow restless. Their frustration is as tangible as the deck we stand on. It has been too long since our blades tasted flesh. We attack.’

‘The Angels–’ Barakiel began.

‘We do not answer to the Angels Vermillion, and there will be time enough to cleanse Sakkara. We finish what we start.’

Barakiel dipped his head in abeyance, his voice a whispered growl. ‘As the Blood wills it.’

One hundred of the Emperor’s finest. One hundred warriors in crimson and ash. One hundred angels of death.

Amit stood at their head on the muster deck, a giant among giants. He let his gaze drift over them, committing to memory each of the warriors he was about to lead to war.

Serfs in coal-dark robes drifted between the serried ranks of Flesh Tearers, anointing their amour with lubricating oils and unguents of warding.

To Amit’s left, Barakiel held aloft the company standard, a six-metre banner that bunched where it touched the floor. The thick fabric was torn and frayed. Amit knew there were those among his cousins who would lament the raggedness of the banner. Even the Blood Angels, their primogenitors, venerated their standards as holy relics, imbued with power and the weight of history. But Amit was content to let his colours bear the mud and blood earned on the field of battle. Each ruddy stain acted as a badge of honour in a way the intricate script worked into the fabric never could.

A chalice, an angel in an executioner’s guise, a saw-toothed blood drop… Amit turned his eyes to the incongruous images adorning the fabric, joined by a ragged seamline. The banner had once been three. Each had been woven on Baal when the Flesh Tearers were first forged. Three banners, one for each company that had operated under his direct command, First to Third. But war and the Thirst had savaged the companies until only a scant few warriors remained in each. Amit had ordered the remnants banded together to form this, his company. It bore no name and no number. Its lineage was the Chapter’s, its banner an amalgamation of the three that had been.

Undoubtedly, this disregard for the structures laid down by Guilliman’s Codex would not have sat well with the primarch himself. Amit smiled. He hoped not. That the master of Macragge saw fit to shackle the Legions was poor irony – he had been absent from the only fight that mattered, and Amit would not see his warriors suffer for the Ultramarines’ failure.

‘By His blood are we made.’ Amit smashed his gauntlet into his breastplate.

The assembled Flesh Tearers echoed the verse, the sound of a hundred armoured salutes hammering throughout the muster deck like a thunderclap.

‘By His blood are we armoured.’ Amit knelt and the company knelt with him, the servos in their knees firing like pistons.

‘By His blood shall we triumph.’ Amit removed a gauntlet and drew his knife through the flesh of his palm, squeezing a measure of the hot fluid into a thin channel worked into the metal of the deck. The other Flesh Tearers bled with him, spilling their blood too.

The dark liquid trickled down through a drainage membrane, dripping into the Ortus Grail, the chalice of rebirth. The grail was suspended in a consecrated antechamber below them. At battle’s end, Amit’s company would sip from its gilded edges, so that the fallen might live on in their veins.

Chaplain Zophal stepped from the ranks, uncoiling his rosarius as he made his way to Amit’s side.

‘We are vengeance made flesh.’ The Chaplain began the Moripatris, the mass of doom. His devotions would draw out those among the Flesh Tearers whose rage could no longer be contained. He would welcome them into the ranks of the Death Company and there they would at last find peace.

Amit kept his eyes low as Zophal recited the mass, silently wondering how many warriors he would lose to the Thirst’s call. He felt his pulse quicken as the Chaplain’s catechism stirred his killer’s heart, and wondered if perhaps this time, it would be he who donned the black armour of death.

Scarred blast shields and toothed hatches opened as the Victus prepared to send Amit and his warriors into the void. The massive launch tunnels were little more than dark pinpricks against the crimson backdrop of the battle-barge’s immense hull.

Seven gunships boosted from the Victus’s flanks, the flash of their thrusters lost amongst the thousands of emitters and blinking sensors studding their parent vessel’s armour plating: three Thunderhawks – squat, airborne battle tanks that flew seemingly in defiance of their design – and four smaller, nimbler Storm Eagles. All were painted in crimson and ash, save one. A single Storm Eagle, its hull as dark as the void surrounding it, carried the Thirst’s chosen to war.

The wing of gunships burned at full thrust towards the fourth planet. Stacked in tight formation, the Storm Eagles covering the unarmed bellies of the larger Thunderhawks, they drove straight through the last remnants of the ork fleet. The flicker of lascannon fire joined the harsh flash of turbo-lasers as the gunships blasted a path through the debris field. Pilots bent on the quickest path to combat crashed stub-nosed prows through lesser obstacles, weathering the deluge of shrapnel and calcified space dust that showered their hulls and added fresh lesions to their glacis plates.

Scout Cassiel grimaced and reached for a mag-harness, tensing as Baal’s Fury reverberated around him.

‘You won’t find a harness here, boy,’ Brother-Sergeant Asmodel said to the neophyte. ‘Training’s over. Time to stand on your own two feet.’

The reprimand drew a grunt of amusement from Hamied. He sat opposite Cassiel in the Thunderhawk, hunched over as he ran a serrated blade across a silver-flecked whetstone. This was to be Hamied’s last mission before elevation to full battle-brother. The veteran Scout already bore many of the marks of his progenitor. His once dark skin had paled, his eyes had the piercing blueness common within the Chapter and his close-cropped hair was streaked with blond. Hamied regarded Cassiel coldly, his eyes far more vicious than the blade in his hand.

Cassiel bit back a growl, but looked down. Of all his new-found gifts, the Rage was the one he found hardest to adjust to. His pulse was never quiet, and the hearts of the others drummed like thunder in his ears. He pictured Asmodel’s face smashed against the bulkhead, and imagined the sound of crunching bone as he drove his elbow into the sergeant’s skull, pulping it.

Let peace beat in your breast and save your wrath for your bolter.

Captain Akrasiel’s words surfaced in Cassiel’s mind like a calming breeze. The Master of Recruits had spoken them after dragging him from the throat of another Blood Angels neophyte. Those three minutes in the duelling cages had cost him many hours of penance.

‘I don’t know,’ said Melechk, gesturing to the heavy bolter he held. ‘Some equipment is more useful than others.’

Cassiel grinned, glad of the distraction.

Melechk took better care of his weapon than he did his own flesh. In the aftermath of a battle he would see to its maintenance and rearming before allowing an Apothecary to administer to his wounds, a habit that had left him with a patchwork of re-grafted skin covering his face and the faint light of a bionic in place of his left eye. Many of Melechk’s brother Scouts favoured the silent precision of a sniper rifle, but there was little he couldn’t sneak up on and throttle, or gut with his blade. When the time came to use a firearm, he would welcome the angry roar of the heavy bolter. ‘What say you, Izail?’ the hulking Scout asked the fifth and final member of the squad.

Izail said nothing, lost in one of his brooding silences.

Cassiel saw Melechk’s eyes narrow. He hated Izail with a purity only a brother could muster. The two Scouts vied for Hamied’s position as Asmodel’s second, and with his departure imminent the animosity between them had increased. Cassiel regarded them both. They were as different as fire and ice. Where Melechk was broad and prone to impetuousness, Izail was wiry and calculating. On their last deployment, Melechk had rallied a group of Karythian Irregulars and bolstered the line. Izail had done likewise further along the trench-line, but where Melechk had spoken of duty and honour, rousing the Irregulars into a fervent fury, Izail had executed them until the others got the point and stopped running.

The Thunderhawk’s sixth and final occupant stood stock still in front of the exit ramp. Grigori had been the last passenger to board the gunship, but he would be the first to leave. His immense shoulders spanned the breadth of the transport hold. Each tooth of the metres-long eviscerators clamped in his fists were twice the size of a man’s head, yet his arms seemed untroubled by their weight. Scrolls of parchment and lines of golden scripture covered Grigori’s adamantium shell. He was a crimson monument to the glory of Baal. Cassiel looked away in deference. It was hard not to feel small and insignificant in the Dreadnought’s presence. A venerated hero of the Chapter, Grigori had walked with Amit on Terra itself and killed scores of the Archenemy in the final days of the Great War.

‘Keep your mind on the present, neophyte,’ said Asmodel.

Despite the sergeant’s words, Cassiel found his thoughts turning to the fallen Space Marine whose gene-seed now resided within his own body. What great wars had he fought in? How many lives had he claimed? What fate had befallen him? Did he, Cassiel, deserve to carry such a legacy?

Five minutes to entry

The status update flashed amber on Manakel’s retinal display as he sat within the Spear of Sanguinius. He shifted position to accommodate the slight changes in pitch as the craft readied for atmospheric entry. For almost a decade, the Storm Eagle had carried him and his assault brethren into battle. The subtleties of the gunship were as familiar to him as the idle purring of his power armour.

‘Make ready.’ Manakel’s vocal cords had been severed by an ork cleaver, and he rasped the order through a mechanical vocaliser. He tugged at the scar tissue coiling around his throat, angered at the tortured parody of his voice, and mag-locked his helmet into place.

‘I am His vengeance as He is my shield.’ Manakel upturned Brother-Sergeant Seraph’s chainsword and pressed the tip of the blade into the deck, as was his ritual. The same ork who had robbed Manakel of his voice had also killed Seraph, ripping out his primary heart and leaving Seventh Squad under new stewardship. ‘We will deliver death to His enemies as He brings deliverance to our souls.’

As his brothers followed him in the litany of battle, Manakel felt the weight of command rest like a Titan’s foot upon his chest. Until today, those words had always been Seraph’s to utter, and his own gnarled voice was but a crude echo of the revered brother-sergeant.

Manakel was a warrior to the marrow of his bones but he knew Lahhel or Nanael would have made better leaders. He felt the two Space Marines watching him, and was certain they knew it too. ‘As the Blood wills it.’ Manakel tightened his grip on Seraph’s chainsword, finishing the rite and crushing his doubts between gauntlet and pommel. He would lead as he had been led, resolving to honour his mentor’s spirit or die trying. Seraph’s blade would taste blood again.

Two minutes

Amit flexed his fingers, sending a shiver of power arcing along the edge of his chainfists. Every minute inside the Thunderhawk felt like a helpless eternity as he stood impotent with his honour guard – nine of the greatest warriors the Flesh Tearers could muster, trapped inside the ceramite hull of the Vengeance, awaiting a malfunction or pre-emptive attack to send them plummeting to an ignominious death.

‘I see you have yet to visit the artificers, lord,’ Barakiel said to Amit over a closed channel, indicating the shell impacts and lacerations marking the Chapter Master’s armour.

‘My armour still functions,’ said Amit levelly. ‘It has no need of repair.’

Barakiel bit back his response. Tactical dreadnought armour was more than a suit of warplate. It was a relic of the Chapter, an artefact from a time when mankind had the ability to create technological marvels. Its like would never been seen again. It angered him that Amit had forgone the proper ministrations. ‘As you say.’

Amit felt a surge of anger at Barakiel’s tone, though in truth, he was grateful for the distraction; the exchange had brought them a moment closer to planetfall. His twin hearts grew restless in his chest, like beasts snapping as they strained at the end of their tether. He was desperate to unleash them, to have them beat at the resounding rate only combat required. Amit ground his teeth at their rising rhythm and watched the mission counter on his helmet display blink to zero.

Entry achieved

‘Traitor’s blood.’ Brother-Pilot Raziel fought to hold his Storm Eagle steady as it speared into the fourth planet’s atmosphere. The muscles in his arms begged for respite as strong winds vied with him for control of the craft. They battered against the Spear’s hull and clawed over its wings, threatening to tear him off course. The Storm Eagle shuddered, rattling as though under fire. A blanket of jet-black cloud rushed up to meet the armourglass of the cockpit, drawing a further curse from Raziel. Even with the Storm Eagle’s bank of sensors, his armour’s auto-senses and his own enhanced vision, he couldn’t see the nose of his craft. The diodes and instrumentation sharing the cockpit blinked in a quickening irregular rhythm as the gunship’s machine-spirit vented its own frustration. Struggling to maintain speed and trajectory, Raziel opened a vox-channel to the nearest Thunderhawk in formation. ‘Spear of Sanguinius to Baal’s Fury, situation critical. Report.’ A raft of static screamed back in his ear. He tried again, snarling under another barrage of white noise.

‘Raziel, what in the Emperor’s name is going on? I’ve had smoother emergency drops,’ Manakel said over the internal comm.

‘Be thankful we’re still in the air, brother-sergeant,’ Raziel replied. ‘Atmospheric conditions are worsening by the second and the auguries are returning gibberish. We’re flying blind.’

Asmodel growled as a bank of klaxons shrilled overhead, reverberating around the enclosed hold of the Thunderhawk. ‘Cassiel, find out what is going on. Izail, silence that alarm.’

Izail pulled a handful of cables from the ceiling and severed them with his knife. The rumble of the Thunderhawk’s engines returned, audible again as the klaxons fell silent.

Cassiel scaled the ladder two rungs at a time and climbed into the upper hold. Pressing his palm to a waiting bio-reader, he bypassed the circular hatch barring access to the flight deck. ‘Brothers, why haven’t you answered Sergeant Asmodel’s status requests?’

‘A little preoccupied here, neophyte,’ said Orifiel. The co-pilot’s usual even tone was a clipped growl as he hunched over an augur array.

‘Tell Sergeant Asmodel to brace for engagement.’ Mikhaiel, the Thunderhawk’s gunner, was peering out through one of the armourglass windows. ‘There’s something out there. I can feel it in my blood.’

Static growled from every vox-channel, drawing a curse from Amit. He was unable to contact any of the other craft in the attack wing. The Thunderhawk’s external pict-recorders fed nothing but blackness to his helmet display. They were adrift, blind and alone, enveloped in a dark cloud.

Amit rocked in place, the mag-clamps on the soles of his boots locking him to the deck as the Thunderhawk shuddered around him.

‘That was not wind,’ said Barakiel.

‘Agreed.’ Amit opened a comm channel to the Thunderhawk’s pilot as a resounding thud reverberated across the hull. ‘Zadkiel, report.’

‘The tail fin’s damaged and we’re showing stress fractures across the port-side armour plating.’

‘Source?’

‘Unknown contact, lord.’ Zadkiel sounded distracted. ‘Anjelo saw something, but we lost it again in this wretched cloud. Our auguries are blind.’

Amit snarled as the Thunderhawk convulsed again, sending a shower of sparks cascading from the ceiling. ‘Whatever it is, kill it before it tears us apart.’

‘Forgive me, Chapter Master, but how can we fight what we cannot see?’

‘When in doubt, brother, kill everything.’

‘Master?’

Amit was about to clarify when Barakiel grabbed his pauldron. ‘If we open fire, we risk hitting our own ships. Unless they’ve changed course, the Spear of Sanguinius, Baal’s Fury and the Mortis Wrath are all within our killzone.’

‘I am aware of that, but we are under attack. We cannot assume the others haven’t been destroyed or driven off course.’ Amit shrugged off Barakiel’s hand. ‘Zadkiel, increase speed and angle of descent–’

‘Lord, if we hit a mountain–’

‘We land now or we die!’ Amit declared as the Thunderhawk bucked around them.

Barakiel swallowed back his reply. He would trust in the will of the Blood. ‘Anjelo,’ he voxed the gunner. ‘After the next impact, open fire. Heavy bolters only.’ If the rest of the gunships were within lethal range then, Emperor willing, the explosive rounds wouldn’t cause too much damage. ‘Keep shooting until we’re on the ground.’

A pair of acknowledgment icons flashed on Barakiel’s helmet display. ‘The Blood protects.’

Target

Target lost

Target

Target lo–

Manakel cut the vox feed, silencing the gun servitor’s erratic updates. ‘Raziel, break formation. Descend, full burn.’

Lahhel spoke up. ‘Baal’s Fury will be exposed if we break formation. We should maintain standard descent speed and heading.’

Manakel gritted his teeth as another jarring impact forced him into his harness. ‘We cannot protect ourselves, let alone the Mortis. Raziel, get us on the ground.’ The mechanical raspings of Manakel’s voice sounded even more tortured as he growled out the syllables between the gunship’s convulsions. ‘Now.’

‘Acknowledged, burning–’

Raziel’s reply was drowned out by a hail of sharp explosions striking the Spear’s hull.

‘Raziel!’

‘We’re under fire!’

The Storm Eagle shuddered violently as another fusillade slammed into its flank. This time the rounds perforated the hull, stitching a line of fist-sized holes in the wall. Manakel did his best to protect his head as a slew of shrapnel ricocheted around inside the transport hold. ‘Evasive action, sharp descent.’

‘We’re dead if we collide with another gunship,’ said Lahhel. His objection came a moment before another torrent of rounds struck the hull.

‘We’re dead if we carry on like this,’ Manakel snarled, his gaze finding the shredded corpses of Nanael and Barchiel. The two Flesh Tearers slumped in their harnesses, gaping shrapnel wounds in their chests.

The Storm Eagle’s hull squealed as the gunship lurched and pitched. ‘Raziel?’ Manakel tried in vain to summon the pilot on the vox. Cursing, he called up the squad ident icons to his helmet display. Nanael and Barchiel’s were faded out, Raziel’s too – the pilot was dead. ‘Rest well, brother.’ Manakel mouthed a short prayer then opened the squad-wide comm channel. ‘On your feet. Lucifus, open the ramp.’ The Flesh Tearer nearest the exit hatch disengaged his harness.

‘That last burst must have damaged the servos.’ Lucifus’s voice was strained and it was only then that Manakel noticed the ceramite around his ribs was slick with blood. ‘It’s jammed.’

‘Stand aside,’ Manakel growled, flicking the activation stud on Seraph’s chainsword. A hail of amber sparks showered his armour as he punched it into the door seal and dragged its adamantium teeth through the locking clamps. With a grunt of effort he brought his knee up to his chest and kicked out, snapping the door from its mounting, allowing it to be sucked away by the gale outside.

‘We cannot jump into that.’ Lahhel was standing by Manakel’s shoulder, but had to shout to be heard over the tumultuous winds and the screech of the Storm Eagle’s engines.

Manakel turned to face his squad, the Chapter symbols emblazoned on their shoulder guards strengthening his will. ‘Where a man may find himself frozen, gripped by hopelessness, a Space Marine shall act. We are the sons of Sanguinius and we fight for every breath!’

‘Until death!’ Seventh Squad said as one, the sound of their gauntleted salutes a harsh rebuttal to the chaos enveloping their Storm Eagle.

One by one, they leapt from the tumbling ship, vanishing into a sea of cloud.

‘The Blood protects.’ Manakel rapped his fist against his helmet and followed them into hell.

Click here to buy Sons of Sanguinius: A Blood Angels Omnibus.

A Black Library Publication

‘Crimson Night’ first published in Inferno! #38 in 2003.
‘Heart of Rage’ first published as an Audio Drama in 2009.
Sin of Damnation first published as Space Hulk: The Novel in 2009.
‘The Rite of Holos’ first published in Hammer and Bolter: Issue 24 in 2012.
‘Eclipse of Hope’ first published in 2012.
‘Honours’ first published in 2012.
‘The Sanguinor: Exemplar of the Host’ first published in 2013.
‘Dante: Lord of the Host’ first published in 2013.
Death of Integrity first published in 2013.
Mephiston: Lord of Death first published in 2013.
‘The Fury’ first published in 2013.
Trial By Blood first published in 2014.
‘A Son’s Burden’ first published in 2014.
‘Sanguis Irae’ first published in 2014.
‘The Chalice’ first published in 2014.
‘The Blooding’ first published in 2014.
‘Honour and Wrath’ first published in 2014.
‘Eternal’ first published in 2014.
Lemartes first published in 2015.
Flesh Tearers first published in 2016.
This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Paul Dainton.

Sons of Sanguinius: A Blood Angels Omnibus © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2021. Sons of Sanguinius: A Blood Angels Omnibus, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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