by Dan Abnett
‘And it was seconded by Ekaddon.’
Loken raised his eyebrows.
‘All right, no it wasn’t. Ekaddon hates your guts, my friend.’
‘The feeling is mutual.’
‘That’s the boy,’ Torgaddon roared, and lunged at Loken. Loken smashed the hack away, and counter-chopped, forcing Torgaddon to leap back onto the edges of the mat. ‘Ekaddon’s an arse,’ Torgaddon said, ‘and he feels cheated you got there first.’
‘I only—’ Loken began.
Torgaddon raised a finger for silence. ‘You got there first,’ he said quietly, not joking anymore, ‘and you saw the truth of it. Ekaddon can go hang, he’s just smarting. Abaddon seconded you for this.’
‘The first captain?’
Torgaddon nodded. ‘He was impressed. You beat him to the punch. Glory to Tenth. And the vote was decided by the Warmaster.’
Loken lowered his guard completely. ‘The Warmaster?’
‘He wants you in. Told me to tell you that himself. He appreciated your work. He admired your sense of honour. “Tarik,” he said to me, “if anyone’s going to take Sejanus’s place, it should be Loken.” That’s what he said.’
‘Did he?’
‘No.’
Loken looked up. Torgaddon was coming at him with his axe high and whirling. Loken ducked, side-stepped, and thumped the butt of his tabar’s haft into Torgaddon’s side, causing Torgaddon to misstep and stumble.
Torgaddon exploded in laughter. ‘Yes! Yes, he did. Terra, you’re too easy, Garvi. Too easy. The look on your face!’
Loken smiled thinly. Torgaddon looked at the axe in his hand, and then tossed it aside, as if suddenly bored with the whole thing. It landed with a clatter in the shadows off the mat.
‘So what do you say?’ Torgaddon asked. ‘What do I tell them? Are you in?’
‘Sir, it would be the finest honour of my life,’ Loken said.
Torgaddon nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, it would,’ he said, ‘and here’s your first lesson. You call me Tarik.’
IT WAS SAID that the iterators were selected via a process even more rigorous and scrupulous than the induction mechanisms of the Astartes. ‘One man in a thousand might become a Legion warrior,’ so the sentiment went, ‘but only one in a hundred thousand is fit to be an iterator.’
Loken could believe that. A prospective Astartes had to be sturdy, fit, genetically receptive, and ripe for enhancement. A chassis of meat and bone upon which a warrior could be built.
But to be an iterator, a person had to have certain rare gifts that belied enhancement. Insight, articulacy, political genius, keen intelligence. The latter could be boosted, either digitally or pharmaceutically, of course, and a mind could be tutored in history, ethic-politics and rhetoric. A person could be taught what to think, and how to express that line of thought, but he couldn’t be taught how to think.
Loken loved to watch the iterators at work. On occasions, he had delayed the withdrawal of his company so that he could follow their functionaries around conquered cities and watch as they addressed the crowds. It was like watching the sun come out across a field of wheat.
Kyril Sindermann was the finest iterator Loken had ever seen. Sindermann held the post of primary iterator in the 63rd Expedition, and was responsible for the shaping of the message. He had, it was well known, a deep and intimate friendship with the Warmaster, as well as the expedition master and the senior equerries. And his name was known by the Emperor himself.
Sindermann was finishing a briefing in the School of Iterators when Loken strayed into the audience hall, a long vault set deep in the belly of the Vengeful Spirit. Two thousand men and women, each dressed in the simple, beige robes of their office, sat in the banks of tiered seating, rapt by his every word.
‘To sum up, for I’ve been speaking far too long,’ Sindermann was saying, ‘this recent episode allows us to observe genuine blood and sinew beneath the wordy skin of our philosophy. The truth we convey is the truth, because we say it is the truth. Is that enough?’
He shrugged.
‘I don’t believe so. “My truth is better than your truth” is a school-yard squabble, not the basis of a culture. “I am right, so you are wrong” is a syllogism that collapses as soon as one applies any of a number of fundamental ethical tools. I am right, ergo, you are wrong. We can’t construct a constitution on that, and we cannot, should not, will not be persuaded to iterate on its basis. It would make us what?’
He looked out across his audience. A number of hands were raised.
‘There?’
‘Liars.’
Sindermann smiled. His words were being amplified by the array of vox mics set around his podium, and his face magnified by picter onto the hololithic wall behind him. On the wall, his smile was three metres wide.
‘I was thinking bullies, or demagogues, Memed, but “liars” is apt. In fact, it cuts deeper than my suggestions. Well done. Liars. That is the one thing we iterators can never allow ourselves to become.’
Sindermann took a sip of water before continuing. Loken, at the back of the hall, sat down in an empty seat. Sindermann was a tall man, tall for a non-Astartes at any rate, proudly upright, spare, his patrician head crowned by fine white hair. His eyebrows were black, like the chevron markings on a Luna Wolf shoulder plate. He had a commanding presence, but it was his voice that really mattered. Pitched deep, rounded, mellow, compassionate, it was the vocal tone that got every iterator candidate selected. A soft, delicious, clean voice that communicated reason and sincerity and trust. It was a voice worth searching through one hundred thousand people to find.
‘Truth and lies,’ Sindermann continued. ‘Truth and lies. I’m on my hobby-horse now, you realise? Your supper will be delayed.’
A ripple of amusement washed across the hall.
‘Great actions have shaped our society,’ Sindermann said. ‘The greatest of these, physically, has been the Emperor’s formal and complete unification of Terra, the outward sequel to which, this Great Crusade, we are now engaged upon. But the greatest, intellectually, has been our casting off of that heavy mantle called religion. Religion damned our species for thousands of years, from the lowest superstition to the highest conclaves of spiritual faith. It drove us to madness, to war, to murder, it hung upon us like a disease, like a shackle ball. I’ll tell you what religion was… No, you tell me. You, there?’
‘Ignorance, sir.’
‘Thank you, Khanna. Ignorance. Since the earliest times, our species has striven to understand the workings of the cosmos, and where that understanding has failed, or fallen short, we have filled in the gaps, plastered over the discrepancies, with blind faith. Why does the sun go round the sky? I don’t know, so I will attribute it to the efforts of a sun god with a golden chariot. Why do people die? I can’t say, but I will choose to believe it is the murky business of a reaper who carries souls to some afterworld.’
His audience laughed. Sindermann got down off his podium and walked to the front steps of the stage, beyond the range of the vox mics. Though he dropped his voice low, its trained pitch, that practiced tool of all iterators, carried his words with perfect clarity, unenhanced, throughout the chamber.
‘Religious faith. Belief in daemons, belief in spirits, belief in an afterlife and all the other trappings of a preternatural existence, simply existed to make us all more comfortable and content in the face of a measureless cosmos. They were sops, bolsters for the soul, crutches for the intellect, prayers and lucky charms to help us through the darkness. But we have witnessed the cosmos now, my friends. We have passed amongst it. We have learned and understood the fabric of reality. We have seen the stars from behind, and found they have no clockwork mechanisms, no golden chariots carrying them abroad. We have realised there is no need for god, or any gods, and by extension no use any longer for daemons or devils or spirits. The greatest thing mankind ever did was to reinvent itself as a secular culture.’
His audience applauded this wholeheartedly. T
here were a few cheers of approval. Iterators were not simply schooled in the art of public speaking. They were trained in both sides of the business. Seeded amongst a crowd, iterators could whip it into enthusiasm with a few well-timed responses, or equally turn a rabble against the speaker. Iterators often mingled with audiences to bolster the effectiveness of the colleague actually speaking.
Sindermann turned away, as if finished, and then swung back again as the clapping petered out, his voice even softer and even more penetrating. ‘But what of faith? Faith has a quality, even when religion has gone. We still need to believe in something, don’t we? Here it is. The true purpose of mankind is to bear the torch of truth aloft and shine it, even into the darkest places. To share our forensic, unforgiving, liberating understanding with the dimmest reaches of the cosmos. To emancipate those shackled in ignorance. To free ourselves and others from false gods, and take our place at the apex of sentient life. That… that is what we may pour faith into. That is what we can harness our boundless faith to.’
More cheers and clapping. He wandered back to the podium. He rested his hands on the wooden rails of the lectern. ‘These last months, we have quashed an entire culture. Make no mistake… we haven’t brought them to heel or rendered them compliant. We have quashed them. Broken their backs. Set them to flame. I know this, because I know the Warmaster unleashed his Astartes in this action. Don’t be coy about what they do. They are killers, but sanctioned. I see one now, one noble warrior, seated at the back of the hall.’
Faces turned back to crane at Loken. There was a flutter of applause.
Sindermann started clapping furiously. ‘Better than that. He deserves better than that!’ A huge, growing peal of clapping rose to the roof of the hall. Loken stood, and took it with an embarrassed bow.
The applause died away. ‘The souls we have lately conquered believed in an Imperium, a rule of man,’ Sindermann said as soon as the last flutter had faded. ‘Nevertheless, we killed their Emperor and forced them into submission. We burned their cities and scuppered their warships. Is all we have to say in response to their “why?” a feeble “I am right, so you are wrong”?’
He looked down, as if in thought. ‘Yet we are. We are right. They are wrong. This simple, clean faith we must undertake to teach them. We are right. They are wrong. Why? Not because we say so. Because we know so! We will not say “I am right and you are wrong” because we have bested them in combat. We must proclaim it because we know it is the responsible truth. We cannot, should not, will not promulgate that idea for any other reason than we know, without hesitation, without doubt, without prejudice, that it is the truth, and upon that truth we bestow our faith. They are wrong. Their culture was constructed upon lies. We have brought them the keen edge of truth and enlightened them. On that basis, and that basis alone, go from here and iterate our message.’
He had to wait, smiling, until the uproar subsided. ‘Your supper’s getting cold. Dismissed.’
The student iterators began to file slowly out of the hall. Sindermann took another sip of water from the glass set upon his lectern and walked up the steps from the stage to where Loken was seated.
‘Did you hear anything you liked?’ he asked, sitting down beside Loken and smoothing the skirts of his robes. ‘You sound like a showman,’ Loken said, ‘or a carnival peddler, advertising his wares.’
Sindermann crooked one black, black eyebrow. ‘Sometimes, Garviel, that’s precisely how I feel.’
Loken frowned. ‘That you don’t believe what you’re selling?’
‘Do you?’
‘What am I selling?’
‘Faith, through murder. Truth, through combat.’
‘It’s just combat. It has no meaning other than combat. The meaning has been decided long before I’m instructed to deliver it.’
‘So as a warrior, you are without conscience?’
Loken shook his head. ‘As a warrior, I am a man of conscience, and that conscience is directed by my faith in the Emperor. My faith in our cause, as you were just describing to the school, but as a weapon, I am without conscience. When activated for war, I set aside my personal considerations, and simply act. The value of my action has already been weighed by the greater conscience of our commander. I kill until I am told to stop, and in that period, I do not question the killing. To do so would be nonsense, and inappropriate. The commander has already made a determination for war, and all he expects of me is to prosecute it to the best of my abilities. A weapon doesn’t question who it kills, or why. That isn’t the point of weapons.’
Sindermann smiled. ‘No it’s not, and that’s how it should be. I’m curious, though. I didn’t think we had a tutorial scheduled for today.’
Beyond their duties as iterators, senior counsellors like Sindermann were expected to conduct programmes of education for the Astartes. This had been ordered by the Warmaster himself. The men of the Legion spent long periods in transit between wars, and the Warmaster insisted they use the time to develop their minds and expand their knowledge. ‘Even the mightiest warriors should be schooled in areas beyond warfare,’ he had ordained. ‘There will come a time when war is over, and fighting done, and my warriors should prepare themselves for a life of peace. They must know of other things besides martial matters, or else find themselves obsolete.’
‘There’s no tutorial scheduled,’ Loken said, ‘but I wanted to talk with you, informally.’
‘Indeed? What’s on your mind?’
‘A troubling thing…’
‘You have been asked to join the Mournival,’ Sindermann said. Loken blinked.
‘How did you know? Does everyone know?’
Sindermann grinned. ‘Sejanus is gone, bless his bones. The Mournival lacks. Are you surprised they came to you?’
‘I am.’
‘I’m not. You chase Abaddon and Sedirae with your glories, Loken. The Warmaster has his eye on you. So does Dorn.’
‘Primarch Dorn? Are you sure?’
‘I have been told he admires your phlegmatic humour, Garviel. That’s something, coming from a person like him.’
‘I’m flattered.’
‘You should be. Now what’s the problem?’
‘Am I fit? Should I agree?’
Sindermann laughed. ‘Have faith,’ he said.
‘There’s something else,’ Loken said.
‘Go on.’
‘A remembrancer came to me today. Annoyed me deeply, to be truthful, but there was something she said. She said, “could we not have just left them alone?”’
‘Who?’
‘These people. This Emperor.’
‘Garviel, you know the answer to that.’
‘When I was in the tower, facing that man—’
Sindermann frowned. ‘The one who pretended to be the “Emperor”?’
‘Yes. He said much the same thing. Quartes, from his Quantifications, teaches us that the galaxy is a broad space, and that much I have seen. If we encounter a person, a society in this cosmos that disagrees with us, but is sound of itself, what right do we have to destroy it? I mean… could we not just leave them be and ignore them? The galaxy is, after all, such a broad space.’
‘What I’ve always liked about you, Garviel,’ Sindermann said, ‘is your humanity. This has clearly played on your mind. Why haven’t you spoken to me about it before?’
‘I thought it would fade,’ Loken admitted.
Sindermann rose to his feet, and beckoned Loken to follow him. They walked out of the audience chamber and along one of the great spinal hallways of the flagship, an arch-roofed, buttressed canyon three decks high, like the nave of an ancient cathedral fane elongated to a length of five kilometres. It was gloomy, and the glorious banners of Legions and companies and campaigns, some faded, or damaged by old battles, hung down from the roof at intervals. Tides of personnel streamed along the hallway, their voices lifting an odd susurration into the vault, and Loken could see other flows of foot traffic in the illuminated galleries above
, where the upper decks overlooked the main space.
‘The first thing,’ Sindermann said as they strolled along, ‘is a simple bandage for your worries. You heard me essay this at length to the class and, in a way, you ventured a version of it just a moment ago when you spoke on the subject of conscience. You are a weapon, Garviel, an example of the finest instrument of destruction mankind has ever wrought. There must be no place inside you for doubt or question. You’re right. Weapons should not think, they should only allow themselves to be employed, for the decision to use them is not theirs to make. That decision must be made – with great and terrible care, and ethical consideration beyond our capacity to judge – by the primarchs and the commanders. The Warmaster, like the beloved Emperor before him, does not employ you lightly. Only with a heavy heart and a certain determination does he unleash the Astartes. The Adeptus Astartes is the last resort, and is only ever used that way.’
Loken nodded.
‘This is what you must remember. Just because the Imperium has the Astartes, and thus the ability to defeat and, if necessary, annihilate any foe, that’s not the reason it happens. We have developed the means to annihilate… We have developed warriors like you, Garviel… because it is necessary.’
‘A necessary evil?’
‘A necessary instrument. Right does not follow might. Mankind has a great, empirical truth to convey, a message to bring, for the good of all. Sometimes that message falls on unwilling ears. Sometimes that message is spurned and denied, as here. Then, and only then, thank the stars that we own the might to enforce it. We are mighty because we are right, Garviel. We are not right because we are mighty. Vile the hour when that reversal becomes our credo.’
They had turned off the spinal hallway and were walking along a lateral promenade now, towards the archive annex. Servitors waddled past, their upper limbs laden with books and data-slates.
‘Whether our truth is right or not, must we always enforce it upon the unwilling? As the woman said, could we not just leave them to their own destinies, unmolested?’
‘You are walking along the shores of a lake,’ Sindermann said. ‘A boy is drowning. Do you let him drown because he was foolish enough to fall into the water before he had learned to swim? Or do you fish him out, and teach him how to swim?’