The Master of Mankind

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Occasionally the tortured features would twitch in a quiet snarl. His fingers would spasm. A golden boot might gently thud against the metal throne. At first Kaeria had hoped such tics heralded the Emperor’s reawakening. Now she knew better.

  The Sister rested a gloved hand upon the first coffin. A man slept within, his arms crossed over his chest and bound together at the wrists in unamusing mimicry of Gyptus’ faraoh-kings The sarcophagus bobbed beneath Kaeria’s gentle touch as she guided it towards the wall. The aquila tattoo upon her face suddenly itched. Not that she believed in omens.

  All eyes were on her now, scientists and servitors alike. Several of the latter moved forwards to perform their function, but Kaeria warded them back with a raised hand.

  It should be me, she thought. The first of the choir should be put in place by a Sister of Silence. Kaeria Casryn wouldn’t shirk from the bleakness of her duty at the eleventh hour.

  The suspensors rendered the coffin near weightless, and Kaeria lifted it onto her shoulder despite the awkward heft of its bulky shape. She ascended the metal gantry stairs that awaited her, feeling the stares of every living being in the cavernous hall, with only one exception. The Emperor on His distant throne paid her no heed at all. He had other wars to fight.

  The socket set into the wall was a two-metre indented cradle of circuitry and dark metal. Kaeria pushed the floating pod into its waiting recess, feeling the seals at the back of the sarcophagus lock tight and bind it into its cradle. The chains were next. These she wrapped around prepared hooks of polished steel, shackling the coffin in place. Nutrient cables and catheters hung like jungle vines nearby; she fixed these in place one by one, locking them tight.

  A chime sounded as she linked the last one to the coffin. Primed, read the High Gothic rune on the external display.

  Kaeria entered a thirty-digit code into the keypad, setting the sarcophagus to draw power from the machinery in its cradle. The suspensors powered down with a lurch – the coffin swayed slowly, moored to its cradle by the sealed cables and wrapped chains.

  The man within stirred with the cessation of his slumber-narcotics.

  He opened his eyes. This young man who had been taken from his home world and told he would be trained as an astropath, woke bleary-eyed and drugged inside his own coffin. He met Kaeria’s gaze through the transparent panel.

  Whatever he tried to say was lost in the soundproof womb of the sarcophagus. Kaeria stared in at the man, watching the way weariness slurred his words, ruining any hope she had of reading his lips.

  ‘Sister?’ called one of the red priests from below. A cluster of her own Sisters and various tech-adepts had gathered together, watching her with unwelcome intensity.

  She broke her gaze away from the entombed man for the last time and descended the ladder.

  Kaeria didn’t even have to sign. A nod was enough to set the hundreds of servitors working, led by the scattering of Sisters and their Martian allies.

  She stood in the heart of the Emperor’s throne room and watched every one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine other coffins raised into place along the arching walls. The process took several hours to complete, ending with the dark metal pods all staring inwardly towards the Golden Throne itself.

  She refused to dwell on the fact that for each active coffin locked inside its cradle, another nine sockets remained empty.

  Zephon had considered his exile from his Legion to be the most shameful moment of his life. It made for an unwelcome capstone to over a century of loyal, capable service. Yet being consigned to remain with the non-combatants after he had reached the Impossible City was proving to be a sentence of similar humiliation.

  ‘You can’t fight.’ Diocletian’s judgement had been bluntly absolute. ‘You would be useless.’

  ‘I have journeyed for days to get here,’ Zephon pressed. The tower’s turrets had cleared the skies by then, offering a brief respite to the Imperials using the Godspire as their command centre. The Knights of House Vyridion moved past the Blood Angel and the Custodian in a metallic chorus of protesting joints, striding across the courtyard, marching to join the war. The Blood Angel’s eyes snapped briefly towards them.

  ‘You agreed to come with me into the webway,’ replied Diocletian. ‘And here you are. I never promised you battle, Blood Angel.’

  ‘If I cannot fight, why am I here at all?’

  ‘Your comprehension of the minutiae couldn’t be of less interest to me, Bringer of Sorrow.’ Diocletian had fixed his helmet into place. ‘Farewell, Zephon.’

  And with that he had left, boarding a grav-Raider. The gang ramp slammed closed, punctuating the conversation with neat finality.

  Days passed. Wounded Custodians and Sisters were brought back in various anti-gravitic vehicles, but Zephon lacked the digital dexterity to even help with their injuries. Any attempts to lend aid failed with his flinching, twitching fingers. On more than one occasion Zephon considered leaving the Godspire alone and joining one of the skitarii forces engaged in the city, but what would be the use? What benefit could he possibly be?

  There was no misery or anguish at his fallen circumstances, only cold anger. What was a soldier who couldn’t wage war? Who was he? What was his purpose? The same questions that had plagued him after first suffering his wounds decades before now returned to wrack him tenfold.

  He walked the catacombs of the war-shaken Godspire, moving among the wounded skitarii and Unifier priests that made up the day’s evacuation manifest.

  Among the crowds, he found the only other soul as isolated as himself. The man was alone in a circular chamber, bathed in haunting blue eldar light emitted from cracked gems mounted in a twisting pattern upon the ceiling. His head was down, his concentration levied upon a hand-held device resembling an auspex or a signum.

  ‘Technoarchaeologist Land?’ Zephon greeted him.

  Arkhan Land looked up, as did the psyber-monkey on his shoulder. Zephon found himself smiling at the bizarrely comedic timing of their twinned movements.

  ‘Zephon,’ said the Martian distantly. ‘Yes. Hello.’

  His eyes were bloodshot orbs in darkened pits. His pointed and immaculate little goat-like beard had spread with several days’ worth of stubble along his cheeks and around his mouth.

  ‘You look…’ Zephon trailed off, not wishing to be unmannerly.

  ‘A trifle unwell, I imagine.’ Land turned his gaze back down to the hand-held device. ‘Learning that hell is real and that an underworld of daemons will one day eat all of our souls has a way of meddling with a man’s sleep patterns.’ There was no life to his mockery. The words were spoken with bland indifference.

  ‘I had believed you gone with the initial evacuation columns.’

  ‘Oh, no. Not yet. One of the Custodians noted the firepower of my Raider and asked if I would remain to escort the final column. Something about them standing the greatest risk of attack, if the rearguard is overwhelmed.’ His toneless voice murmured on as he stared down at the device.

  Zephon approached, going down to one knee by the distracted explorator. The psyber-monkey turned mournful eyes to the Blood Angel’s own, as if this towering red-clad warrior somehow held the answers to its master’s grief.

  ‘What occupies your attention?’ the Blood Angel asked softly.

  Land tilted the device to share the viewscreen. Zephon saw along the barrel of an overheating heavy stubber, high above the ground. It shook as it spat rounds in long bursts into the leathery and thrashing forms of horned beasts below.

  ‘Gun-feeds,’ Land replied, staring at the images, unblinking. ‘From House Vyridion.’

  He cycled through them – the views from the carapace stubbers and meltas of each Knight, then the less reliable feeds of their primary arm weapons. These were far more prone to shake-distortion.

  ‘How long have you been watching these images?’


  ‘How long have we been here?’ countered Land. He still didn’t look up. ‘I wanted to watch the Scion’s last stand but I suspect she was out of range when the enemy killed her. I saw her once, many years ago now, striding forth from Ignatum’s forge. She was a proud lady.’

  Zephon gently closed his fingers around the device and pulled it from Land’s grip. There was no resistance. The imagifier was laughably small in the Blood Angel’s hand.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Land asked, finally making eye contact. ‘Why aren’t you out fighting?’

  Zephon didn’t want to admit how often he’d tried. Only a mere hour before he’d stood alone in a chamber, weapons in his hands, unable to trigger his own chainsword.

  ‘My arms,’ the Blood Angel replied.

  ‘Ah. Yes. The bionics. I remember now.’ Land looked around the chamber, showing emotion for the first time as he curled his lip in distaste. ‘What ugly sanctums these eldar built. It’s no loss, really, that most of them are dead.’

  Zephon deactivated the pict-feed, silencing the tinny clatter of stubbers and inhuman roars.

  ‘There is great elegance in their race,’ said the Blood Angel, ‘but it is coupled with great malice, sadness and even greater hubris.’

  Land snorted. ‘You sound as though you admire them.’

  Zephon nodded. ‘Aspects of their existence, yes. The movements of the exarchs of their warrior castes are breathtaking to behold. I can think of few higher honours than being recognised for besting one blade to blade.’

  ‘Have you ever killed an eldar?’

  ‘Yes,’ Zephon admitted.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I do not know,’ the Blood Angel lied. ‘Many,’ he added, spicing the falsehood with some truth.

  ‘Good riddance,’ Land exhaled, not quite a laugh. ‘Their technology is fascinating but inarguably foul. Interesting in its occasional efficiency, yet ultimately impure.’

  Zephon said nothing. He was beginning to regret engaging with the Martian at all.

  ‘Something about you has irritated me for some time,’ said Land. ‘What exactly is the significance of “Bringer of Sorrow”? What is the meaning of such an outlandishly theatrical name? It’s ludicrous, even for a son of Baal.’

  Zephon didn’t answer. He had a question of his own. ‘You said you knew why I was asked to come here. I would like to know what you believe.’

  Now Land did laugh, a bleak little chuckle. ‘Is it not obvious? Have you ever been inside a mine, my angelic friend?’

  ‘A salt mine, in the compliance of–’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Land waved a hand to silence the Blood Angel. ‘Mines are dangerous places, prone to leakages of natural gas. Even resistant servitor labour can suffer, but that’s beside the point for now. Think of deep mine work on worlds where expendable servitor flesh is in short supply, or where workers lack access to machinery capable of detecting gas leakages. Those poor, primitive souls take a caged bird or some other beast with little lungs into the deep dark, and they watch it while they work. If the bird dies, the labourers know the mine is unsafe.’

  Land’s smile showed almost all of his teeth. ‘You, Blood Angel, are the caged bird in the mine. Do you see the Imperial Fists here? No, you do not. Because they can’t be trusted. In fact the only legionaries you do see are those rebellious dogs rampaging their way across the Imperium. But what better way, hmm, to test the loyalty of the Blood Angels when it is in doubt? Or to see how a Space Marine handles immersion in the webway, confronted by the monsters of the warp? Why, take a crippled one with you. One who can’t even fire his bolter. One who would be no danger if he succumbed to whatever treason has proven so appealing to half of the Emperor’s Legions.’

  Zephon stood quietly. Above them, the Godspire shivered with the siege. ‘I should perhaps be irritated at the manipulation involved,’ he said.

  ‘Be angry if you like. I’d say you were vindicated, though. Unless I’m mistaken, you haven’t spat on your oaths to the Omnissiah just yet. Whatever the game is, you seem to have won.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Land gazed around the room once more. He seemed suddenly deflated. ‘I will be pleased to leave this place, Zephon.’

  ‘This chamber?’

  ‘No, no. This city.’ Land reached into one of his belt pouches, producing the flattened and crumbly remains of a foil-wrapped ration bar. The simian snapped it from its master’s grip, devouring its powdery treat with bright eyes.

  ‘But we have only been here a matter of days,’ Zephon replied.

  The technoarchaeologist raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘So?’

  ‘So are you not aggrieved that we are already preparing to evacuate?’

  ‘Why would I be aggrieved?’ When the Blood Angel had no answer, Land continued, ‘I’m a scholar first and a gentleman adventurer second. I could, perhaps, be convinced to consider myself a binaric philosopher third, as I’ve always had a passion for debating the dual nature of the Machine-God. But I’m no soldier.’

  ‘But we are leaving, having seen so little.’

  ‘Little? We have seen everything.’ Land narrowed one eye, peering at the tall warrior. ‘You are showing terrifying ignorance, Blood Angel. You look around you and you see a city, the first sign of habitation in the webway, yes? You see evidence of civilisation, albeit in the foul architecture of the eldar race. Your perceptions are tricking you, Space Marine. Your brain recognises the presence of urban structure, where life once existed, and attributes undeserved importance to it.’

  Land keyed in a code on his vambrace, projecting a scratchy, inexact version of the unfolding, evolving webway map imprinted inside the Archimandrite’s mind. Complete scans of the human body’s veins and capillaries showed fewer branching pathways than the disorderly maze beaming forth in green holo light.

  The explorator pointed at one of the tunnels. One that seemed no different to any of the other thousands revealed in flickering light.

  ‘What does it matter if this city falls?’ asked Land. ‘Do you think Tribune Endymion truly cares? Or Prefect Coros? They have been fighting for almost five years in the tunnels between Calastar and Terra – the hundreds of passageways that lead inexorably to the Emperor’s very throne room. The Impossible City isn’t the focus of the war, Zephon. It isn’t even the prime battlefield of the war. This entire city is merely within a tunnel like any other. Its only real note of import is that it made an easy strongpoint to defend when the Ten Thousand advanced as far as their numbers allowed. So, no, I am not aggrieved. I wished to see the Great Work, and I am seeing it. With all its wonders and horrors.’

  For a time neither of them spoke. The only sound was Sapien’s chewing.

  ‘That will play merry havoc with his digestion,’ Land noted. And then, apropos of nothing, he narrowed his eyes as he regarded Zephon. ‘You really are a beautiful creature, you know. Aesthetically, I mean. And scientifically, of course.’

  ‘It is said that many of my Legion possess aesthetic qualities considered–’

  ‘Not that it means anything one way or the other,’ Land interrupted. ‘I’ve never had that drive within me, you understand. No time for those kinds of entanglements – they’re a distraction from real work. I merely find it curious that your primarch’s genetic legacy manipulates human physiology to produce such mythologically iconic figures of beauty. Not very secular, eh?’

  Zephon smiled. This was something he had heard and debated on many occasions before.

  ‘Angels have great cultural significance on Baal. In many ways, Baalite culture holds closer religious similarities to Old Earth in the era of the Holy Pax Romanii Empire than it does to–’

  ‘Yes, yes. Spare me the lesson in the exact flavour of your tawdry barbarism.’

  Zephon smiled despite himself. ‘As you wish, Arkhan.’

  ‘Hmm. I suppose you are here for me to e
xamine your arms before I leave?’

  Zephon’s angelic features remained carefully passive. He showed none of his surprise that the explorator had recalled the offhand comment from their journey, but nor did he desire to put himself under such scrutiny. Out of pity for the haunted man before him and sensing Land’s abiding isolation, he said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, there’s no time now. The final evacuation column is in three hours and all of my equipment is already loaded.’ He hesitated, regarding the Blood Angel with a critical eye. ‘You’re welcome to ride with me rather than in one of the bulk conveyors this time, if you so desire.’

  ‘I am touched, Explorator Land. I shall consider it. May I ask why my affliction is of such interest to you?’

  ‘Listen to yourself, Space Marine. Affliction. Typical Baalite melo­drama. The truth is that I’ve always wondered about legionaries and their bionics,’ Land elaborated, evidently warming to the subject. ‘You often leave them unarmoured, yet reverently sheathe the rest of yourselves in ceramite. Even statues of your kind show unarmoured augmentation. I can’t say I’ve been interested enough until now to truly look into it. I’d always assumed it was something pertaining to how bionics fail to interface with power armour.’

  ‘Primarily,’ Zephon agreed. He felt the conversation getting away from him and wasn’t certain he wished to catch up. Of all the conversations to have, in all the places, with all the people who he might speak with.

  ‘Primarily?’ Land pressed.

  ‘There is also an element of inspirational pride to the practice. To present us as invincible, enduring warriors to the Imperium and its enemies. To show that we overcome our wounds and fight on in the Emperor’s name.’

  Land gave a wry sneer. ‘Such cheap propaganda. Like the legends of warriors that fought naked so as to show their courage before their allies and their fearlessness to their foes.’

  ‘There is perhaps an element of that as well,’ Zephon confessed. ‘But as you said, it is largely a matter of interfacing with our armour.’