The Death of Integrity

by Guy Haley

‘I? I?’ the Spirit of Eternity laughed. ‘It is not I, but you and your debased knowledge that has done this to him, a corruption of the implants he has been given, and from them of the spirit.’

  Caedis looked about the room, eyes blazing, the whites now yellow. They settled on the bone face of Mazrael. ‘You knew,’ he said. His voice was guttural, the words nearly lost to its animal roar. ‘You knew!’ The light of humanity in Caedis’s eyes was guttering. He was losing himself.

  The servitor Caedis had knocked over got to its feet and aimed its multi-melta at him.

  ‘Caedis, beware!’ Galt called.

  ‘Lord, we must go!’ said Clastrin.

  Galt looked back as the thing that had been Caedis fought madly against the tech-priest’s suborned servitors and the ship itself. Segmented tentacles were extending from the walls to snare him.

  ‘Five minutes until warp translation.’

  The vessel tried to bar their way, but their power fists smashed through the door, and they were out into the corridor again.

  ‘This way,’ said Clastrin.

  The entire hulk was shaking under the fury of the Space Marine bombardment. The mad laughter of the Spirit of Eternity was loud and grating over it all, broadcast directly into their helmets.

  ‘Here! Here!’ said Clastrin. ‘The signal is weak, but it is our best chance.’

  ‘This is First Captain Mantillio Galt, emergency teleport!’

  There was no reply. The heavy tread of servitor feet came from around the corner.

  ‘They cannot hear us!’

  ‘Retreat further,’ said Galt. ‘Go! Go! I will delay them!’

  ‘Four minutes to warp translation.’

  ‘Captain…’ said the Forgemaster.

  Galt shoved at Clastrin. The others backed up warily.

  Galt raised his sword. Servitors came around the corner, broken and smashed cyborgs, their organics dead, the machine parts motivated by the ship’s great power. Guns pointed.

  A buzzing built in Galt’s ears. Light burned. There was a roar.

  Bolts and fusion blasts scorched the wall where Galt’s party had been standing.

  Chapter 23

  The Death of Integrity

  The light died, and the interior of a teleport pod resolved itself. He was alone. He sought out the release switch, glowing red in the dark, and hammered on it hard. Gas hissed noisily, and the pod unclamped, the top rising with a loud whir.

  The teleport deck was in uproar. Space Marines stumbled from the pads in ones and twos, disoriented at having teleported without the correct rites of preparation. Steam and decontaminants jetted everywhere. The stink of ozone was overpowering.

  Galt saw many of his brothers in the devices arrayed around the room. In those closest to him, were the men who had accompanied him to the bridge. Astomar was there, wounded but alive, Plosk, Nuministon, Mazrael, Tarael, Clastrin, who collapsed the moment the field shut off, and several suits that did not move: Voldo, Militor, Curzon and Eskerio. Pieces of Caedis’s Terminator plate had materialised on another pad, but of the blasted suits of Sandamael and Ancient Metrion, nothing had survived.

  Galt paid no attention but ran from the teleporter, throwing his sword aside. He shoved past serfs, Techmarines and servitors alike.

  ‘Bridge! Bridge! Mastrik answer me!’

  ‘Mastrik here, brother. What in the name of Holy Terra happened down there?’

  ‘Mastrik, signal the fleet, open up with everything we have. Put a full spread of cyclonic torpedoes into that hulk, I want it destroyed. Target the following coordinates.’ Galt read off a string of numbers provided by his armour’s sensorium; the exact location of the Spirit of Eternity.

  ‘You!’ Galt jabbed a finger at the brother serving as deck officer.

  ‘Lord captain?’

  ‘Get the window open, get it open now!’

  Galt hurried from the teleport room; one of fifteen on the teleport deck, the rest of that level of the ship taken up by the immense power relays the devices required. He took a narrow tunnel that led through the ship’s two dozen metre thick armour, to a fragile observation cupola attached to the surface of the hull.

  The blast shields closing off the windows slid open. The deadly light of Jorso flooded the compartment causing the serf guarding it to cry out and fling his arm across his eyes. Galt’s suit adjusted to the glare, and he watched the Death of Integrity come apart.

  Huge chunks of the hulk had broken away and were wheeling into the sun. The main part had broken into two large pieces that glittered on their night side with the repeated impact of starship ordnance. It would not last long.

  Novum in Honourum shook as its guns worked. There was a keening shriek as the torpedo bays discharged their load. They swerved to port and streaked toward the hulk. He could see another spread racing in from the Lux Rubrum.

  The other guns continued to fire. It was several hundred thousand kilometres to the target, so the explosions he was watching were of rounds launched minutes ago.

  One of the greater pieces broke into three. The hulk was nearly destroyed. Galt held his breath, his hand reached up to his chest, where, under his scarred battle-plate his Chapter talisman was hidden.

  The cyclonic torpedoes rushed towards their target.

  Too late.

  There was the telltale flash of translation, the visual fallout from the warping of time and space. A dart of metal that could only have been the Spirit of Eternity separated from the hulk and collapsed into itself, folding into the unnatural geometries of the empyrean. Some of the small pieces of the hulk were taken with it. One day they would re-emerge, the parts of a new agglomeration, to spread contagion, aliens or Emperor knew what else evil across the galaxy.

  The torpedoes reached the remainder of the hulk. They exploded with astonishing violence, focussed fission blasts in a tight spread. For a moment, their nuclear fires outshone those of the sun, causing Galt’s visor to darken almost to black.

  The light died. Jorso was alone. All that remained of the Death of Integrity was a series of black specks. In time, these would fall into the star, and further fuel its cyan fury.

  Galt had failed.

  Galt stormed back into the teleport room. Serfs of the apothecarion had arrived, along with two of the Chapter’s Apothecaries. Plosk had removed his armour and was haughtily receiving their attentions. Galt strode over to him. As he came he undid his helmet, pulled it free, and thrust it at a serf.

  ‘Are you pleased, tech-priest? Are you happy with your tally of dead?’

  Plosk’s lidless eyes stared up at him. He contrived to sound sad, although the bare bone of his face conveyed no expression at all. ‘The STC system has gone. But I did manage to download a sizeable fraction of it into my own memplants. A bitter second prize, but a prize nonetheless.’

  Galt snarled and stooped over the magos. He hauled him into the air by the front of his robe.

  ‘And what of your lies? They have cost the lives of many noble servants of the Imperium. Were they not treasure enough? Or must you tempt the evils of bygone ages before you are satisfied with a thing’s worth? I will see to it that you burn as a traitor and consort of forbidden technologies!’

  Plosk struggled to breath, his oxygen pipe making desperate wet sounds, but his voice, delivered by vox-grille, was unaffected.

  ‘You of the Adeptus Astartes think only of your own honour, your own service. What of the larger puzzle, captain? Surely the uncovering of a new piece is worth a little risk? No one will burn me, my lord. We will both be hailed as heroes.’

  ‘Dozens of my warriors are dead, at least four Crux Terminatus lost! Do you know what grave dishonour this is?’

  ‘Better dishonour, better even heresy, than extinction.’

  Galt shook him. He thought to reach out and crush the bare skull, squeeze those staring eyes from the moist sockets.

  But he did not. As the thought crossed his mind, the face of Caedis chased it. Caedis, a Lord Chapter Master. One of
the greatest heroes of the Imperium, an angel in vermillion plate brought to bestial savagery by his gifts. Gifts similar to those Galt carried himself.

  Angel or beast? thought Galt. Both. Another part of him responded.

  Cannot a thing have two natures?

  He thought of all he had done, the mistakes he had made, his temptation to defy the Emperor’s will and save Voldo, the lies of the magos and the risks he had taken at his insistence. He had done nothing but obey the writ of the High Lords, his sworn duty, and yet it affronted him, or rather his reactions to that writ did. And now here he was, shaking a servant of the Imperium by the scruff of the neck like a dog with a rat.

  Could he truly call himself noble? He did not think so. He was not and never would be worthy of the rank of Chapter Master.

  Plosk was talking, stressing the great service he had done and the gift both Chapters would receive. This approbation sickened him more than the magos’s manipulations, but who was he to judge what was right and wrong? His was but to serve, and he had done so poorly.

  His breathing ragged, Galt lowered the tech-priest to the floor. He looked about for the Chaplain of the Blood Drinkers, seeking some explanation for the transformation of their erstwhile master, but Mazrael had departed, taking any answers he might have to the secrets of his Chapter with him.

  Epilogue

  Fortress Novum was immense, the largest fortress-monastery that Inquisitor Karo had visited, and Inquisitor Karo had visited many. The sheer size of it had impressed itself upon him as he had dropped down through the cloud deck of Honourum. A large part of the planet’s main mountain range had been transformed, carved into soaring battlements and fastnesses, adorned with statues of aquilae and heroes so large they were visible from orbit. Construction continued at either end of the monastery; it was part of the Novamarines creed, he understood, that they would not halt the expansion of their home until they were destroyed. Homes for the dead, and all that. There was nothing unusual in this ancestor worship; veneration of heroes and death cults were common in the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes even as they spurned the cult of the Emperor-as-god.

  It was drizzling when he landed. Karo, a native of a hot world, found it uncomfortably cold.

  He got the reception he was expecting from the Novamarines. They welcomed him cordially enough, and when he requested access to their Librarium their welcome turned as chilly as their home. He was an agent of the Emperor’s Holy Inquisition, and the Novamarines, as mighty as they were, were as bound to open their doors to his Inquisitorial seal as the meanest agri-world peasant. They had agreed to his demands without demur, naturally; that they sent him into their archives led by a servant rather than one of the initiates was a snub and clearly displayed their displeasure.

  He followed the aged Master of the Scrolls deep into the bowels of the mountains. They passed through a long succession of high halls, all empty of human life, all crowded with titanic statuary and shrines to fallen brothers. The Master of the Scrolls wore the simple robes of the Chapter serfs. He did not appear to notice the cold of the undermountain, which to Karo was even more pronounced than that of the surface. He burrowed into the fur collar of his long coat.

  ‘Is it much further?’ he said. He was annoyed at his own foul mood, even more annoyed that the bobbing lumen-globe that provided the only light through the endless halls of Fortress Novum provided only a frosty blue glow, and no heat.

  ‘Not much further, my lord,’ said the servant. ‘The particular records you request are old, and are preserved along with many others in the Halls of Salt. The humidity and temperature, you understand.’

  They came to a large adamantium vault door. The serf pressed his palm onto a lock, and breathed into a tube so that the door’s machine-spirit could sample his genetic data. The door gave a pneumatic sigh and rolled back on toothed edges. The air that came from behind the door was desiccated and had a sharp smell.

  ‘The salt caves are a natural phenomenon,’ said the Master of the Scrolls as he led the inquisitor through. He spoke without prompting, proud of his vaults. They emerged onto a balcony overlooking a vast archive. ‘We are fortunate to have them. Thanks to them, our records are extensive, one of the most complete of all Chapters, or so I am told. We have documents stretching back ten thousand years, all the way to the founding of the Novamarines itself. We have a copy of a copy of Lucretius Corvo’s original oath, with a facsimile of his signature, if you wish to see it?’

  Karo said nothing. What the serf said was often said; the Novamarines, obsessed as they were with recording their deeds on their skin, were just as diligent when it came to paper records. It was why he was there. Looking across the archive hall, he could well believe it. That was, after all, why he was here.

  Hundreds of kilometres of shelves lay spread out below in precise lines. Muted lumen-globes floated over the archive, their light of a carefully selected part of the spectrum so as not to damage the paper, vellum, magnetic tape, data crystals and other storage media. Above them was a rough-hewn roof of brown salt, an inverted mountain range that defied gravity.

  ‘The records you seek, lord?’

  ‘Anything and everything you have on the purging of the space hulk the Death of Integrity,’ he said. He refrained from adding ‘and be quick about it’; he was aware of his impatience and eagerness to be gone from this freezing planet. Manners, however, were the best weapon in the face of uncivil behaviour. ‘If you please,’ he said instead.

  ‘The purging of the Death of Integrity? A notable action, a noble action. Hmm, yes, yes, I believe it is this way.’ The Master of the Scrolls headed down the metal steps leading from the balcony by the vault door. ‘We will check the chronicle first, the entries within it are short records, but all carry reference codings for any further documents that are relevant. The action occurred around two thousand years ago, or thereabouts. This way, follow me, my lord.’

  Karo went after the Master of the Scrolls. The serf was an old, old man; a bonded lifetime servant with little freedom, he nevertheless enjoyed access to the kind of medical care and diet many other Imperial citizens would literally kill for. He was slavishly loyal to his masters, as was only proper, but diffident towards Karo and overly prideful in his position, which was not. This reflected conceit was a common characteristic in Chapter serfs, as Karo had experienced time and again. Better that they were loyal and served correctly he supposed, than chafed under the yoke. A little arrogance was not too high a price to pay for that.

  Still, it irritated him. Of all the many, many organisations in the Imperium, it was the Adeptus Astartes who vexed Karo the most. Their independence, their pride, their unpredictability… Now he had been tasked with investigating one of their Chapters. Somebody’s idea of a joke, he was sure of it.

  They walked along endless ornate shelves stacked high with fat scrolls rolled up on paired wooden spindles. Brighter lights flicked on and off as they passed. The moistureless air dried Karo’s nostrils, the dust from a million documents tickled his nose and threatened an undignified sneeze.

  ‘Here we are,’ said the serf. He pulled a roll of parchment the width of a human torso from its resting place. It was obvious he struggled, but he did not ask for help. Nor did Karo offer any; the servants of the Space Marines were as proud as their masters, and did not like to be reminded of their own unaltered status.

  The old man struggled the scroll over to a trolley, then pushed it to a reading table. He ignited a lamp held aloft by a sculpted tree, and rolled out the paper. ‘A moment please,’ he said, as he rolled the scroll open first one way, and then another. His brow creased as he scanned it for the relevant entry. ‘Aha! Here we are, it is but a short passage, my lord.’

  He pressed a wizened finger into the paper, where an extravagantly illuminated capital letter ‘S’ began a new entry in the chronicle. Karo sat down in a chair at the table. The serf hovered at his shoulder, further annoying him. As much as he wanted to order him away, Karo said nothing. His i
nvestigation had little to do with the Novamarines, and he would not antagonise them or their servants unless it served immediate purpose.

  The document had been well-penned, but was faded with age despite the lauded qualities of the vault. Attempts had been made to mimic the hyperlink-heavy styles of true data-slate archiving, but of course the different coloured entries were just that; they had no functionality, a product of blind transcription by an ignorant mind. Karo grumbled to himself, and then he read.

  189887.M39

  The purging of the Death of Integrity, officer in command Captain Mantillio Galt, Veteran Company [see also Captain Lutil Mastrik (Third Company); Lord Chapter Master Aresti (then: cpt. Fifth Company); Epistolary Ranial ///Triumphant In Mortis///; Lord Reclusiarch Odon (then: chpln. Veteran Company); Captain Steli Gallio (then: Vtn. Br, Squad Wisdom of Lucretius); Forgemaster Clastrin {Manufactor Magnus Est}].

  So it was that elements of the First, Third and Fifth Companies of the Novamarines gathered under one banner at the star Jorso, the most multitudinous coming together of our brethren for many centuries, there to join with the most noble brothers of the Blood Drinkers Chapter to purge the space hulk designated the Death of Integrity after a protracted infestation of the Volian Sector. Nigh two hundred Terminator-clad warriors of the two Chapters fought side by side in the radiation-fogged darkness of the great hulk. Many brethren were killed, and the loss of Lord Chapter Master Caedis of the Blood Drinkers a sore blow (In Memoriam Glorius Est). A kill ratio of over 53:1 was nevertheless achieved, and data and artefacts retrieved from the hulk by attached members of Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleet led by Excommentum Incursus under High Lord Magos Explorator Plosk proved rich in STC materials. The hulk was subsequently destroyed. Draco mortis in perpetuem.

  In gratitude, the Adepts of Mars presented both Chapters with new strike cruisers on the anniversary of Lord Caedis’s death, thirty standard years later.

  Chapter Master Caedis was honoured by both the Blood Drinkers and Blood Angels Chapters. Captains Mastrik and Aresti were invited to attend his memorial.