C. Goto - Dawn of War

As you wish, farseer, he replied, fighting to control his urges, realising for the first time that he was thoroughly ensnared by the Path of the Warrior, unable to suppress his desire for combat and riddled with desperation to shed blood for Khaine, the Bloody-Handed God.

“Where did they go?” asked Matiel as he crunched to the ground at Gabriel’s side, his jump pack spluttering into silence. The snipers had all been killed, or had vanished, and the rest of the eldar force seemed to have fled. They had suddenly disengaged and turned tail, as though conceding defeat. But they had not been beaten, reflected Gabriel uneasily. “What were those portals?” asked Gabriel, turning to Isador. The fighting had simply ceased, and the Blood Ravens had been left unsure about how to proceed. Gabriel had ordered caution, and his Marines had taken up tactical positions but had held their fire. They had refrained from pursuing the eldar; Gabriel suspected that their real fight was not with these mysterious aliens. He was simply pleased to see them leave.

The Falcon tanks had turned their guns on the cliff walls of the pass itself, causing a huge avalanche that blocked the crevice completely sealing the Blood Ravens on one side and most of the eldar force on the other. The wraithguard that had been trapped with the Space Marines had charged into a series of circular, stone portals and vanished-the portals exploding into fragments behind them. It had all happened in an instant.

“They are webway portals-temporary doorways from one point in space to another,” answered Isador. “They are a unique eldar technology, captain, and incredibly unstable. Stepping through throws you instantaneously into the warp and then drags you out again into another place, where another portal is open. An unshielded soul would go insane,” he added, shaking his head at the apparent recklessness of the aliens.

The sudden silence in the valley was eerie, as the chatter of falling rocks and the dull echoes of footfalls gradually ceased. Gabriel looked around carefully at the scattering of dead and wounded Marines on the valley floor, together with the remains of ruined equipment and the broken figures of wraithguard.

“Get a dreadnought up here to clear away this rock-fall,” said Gabriel as Corallis hastened to report to his captain. “In the meantime, this is a good location to establish a field base. Get hold of Brom and tell him to bring a detachment of Tartarans to defend this pass. And make sure that those web-portals have really been destroyed-it would not do to have our eldar friends popping up in the middle of our base.”

“What about Toth?” asked Isador carefully.

“What about him? I’m sure that he will make his own way here in good time, but I am equally sure that I am not going to help him interfere with our purpose here,” replied Gabriel gruffly.

“And what exactly is our purpose here, Gabriel?” asked Isador.

“You were correct, Isador,” said Gabriel wryly. “The fact that the eldar laid a trap for us does suggest that we are on the right path. We will follow the aliens to the summit of this mountain, and we will discover what they are so keen to hide from us. There is a bigger picture here, Isador, although we cannot yet see what it is. There are still two days before the warp storm arrives, and before then we will find out why Tartarus is so important to these aliens, and to our old foes, the Alpha Legion. And we will do it with or without the blessing of Inquisitor Toth,” said Gabriel firmly. “Corallis. Where is Prathios? I must pray,” he added, turning away from the Librarian.

A whisper of wind gusted through the mountain pass as the red sun finally set, and Isador breathed it in like a breath of fresh air.

C.S. Goto (ebook by Undead)

01 – Dawn of War

As the first rays of the dawn pierced the heavy shadows of the mountain pass, Brom walked away from the newly completed field-station. He kicked at the pebbles on the ground, frustrated and discontented. Before the arrival of the Blood Ravens he had been the ranking officer on Tartarus-a commissar in all but title. It was not that he was not thankful for the help of the Adeptus Astartes in the war against the orks, but he had not anticipated the way in which the Blood Ravens captain would take control of all the military affairs of the planet after their victory.

The arrival of the inquisitor had not improved matters. Toth and Angelos had been at loggerheads from the start, squabbling over their powers and jurisdictions. They had even had the gall to argue about who would have control over the Tartarans in front of him. Brom shook his head in disbelief, kicking a stone so hard that it shattered against the rock-face at the side of the crevice. Who did they think he was? Treating him like a grunt. He was a colonel in the Emperor’s own Imperial Guard, and he deserved some respect. He had stood his ground against the uprisings of cultists and the raids of ork pirates, fighting for the honour of the Emperor Himself, and for the safety of the people of his homeworld. What would Captain Angelos know about that, he scoffed, kicking another stone against the cliff face.

The colonel paused as he reached a large boulder. It had been rolled up against the edge of the pass after a Blood Ravens dreadnought had blasted its way through the avalanche in the middle of the night, splintering the rockslide into smaller boulders that the Space Marines had pushed aside like pebbles.

He pulled himself up onto the rock and tugged a lho-stick out of his pocket, tapping it several times against the packet in a personal ritual. Flicking it into life, he gazed back over the new field-station, bathed in the fresh light of morning. Despite his resentment, he was proud of what his men had achieved here in such a short period. If Angelos persisted in assigning the Tartarans such menial and logistical functions, at least they could take pride in how well they performed.

In truth, some of his men were only too pleased to become support personnel-to let the Blood Ravens do the fighting for them. Brom shuddered slightly at the thought of those cowardly troopers, feeling the disdain pouring out of Angelos even from the other side of the camp. But there were some Guardsmen who knew the true value of war-they knew that combat was a goal in itself, that shedding blood was the highest form of offering to the God-Emperor, whether it was the blood of the enemy or your own. There was but one commandment for the loyal soldier: thou shalt kill. Sergeant Katrn knew, and Brom knew that he could rely on Tartarans like him to sustain the honour of his proud regiment.

He took a deep drag on his lho-stick, letting the local weed fill his lungs. He held it there for a few seconds, and for a moment he thought that he could feel the substance of Tartarus itself bleeding into his soul.

Yes, he thought, we will fight again. The Tartarans will show these Blood Ravens what it means to be Tartarus born and bred.

“I see their faces every day, Prathios. They scream into my dreams and disturb my prayers. It is as though they haunt my mind, now that their planet is no more,” confessed Gabriel, kneeling in supplication before the company Chaplain. The two Marines were hidden in the heavy shadows of a temporary shrine, hastily constructed by the Tartarans in the heart of the new field-station.

“Their souls are at ease, brother-captain. It is yours that can find no peace. You call out into the warp, like a beacon for the pain of those who have passed before you,” said Prathios in a low voice.

“I am calling daemons into my mind?” asked Gabriel, his voice tinged with horror.

“No, Gabriel, the daemons come by themselves, drawn by the agonies of a soul at war with itself. Your anguish exposes you to their taunts, just as a ship at sea exposes itself to a storm.” Prathios’ voice was deep and soothing. He had seen Gabriel change since the Cyrene affair, and he was concerned for his captain. Inside all the magnificent power armour, and behind the myths and legends, a Space Marine was just a man. Not quite a man like any other, but a man nevertheless.