The First Heretic

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘Some cultures cannot be re-educated, Cyrene. When a civilisation is founded upon poisoned principles, redemption is a forlorn hope. Better that they burn, than live in blasphemy.’

  ‘But why did they have to die? What sins had they committed?’

  ‘Because the Emperor willed it. Nothing else matters. These people spat upon our offers of peace, laughed at our desire to integrate them into the Imperium, and openly displayed the gravest sin of ignorance, forging populations of artificial constructs. The breeding of false life in imitation of the human form is an abomination unto our species, and cannot be ignored.’

  ‘But why?’ she said. The words were almost her mantra these days.

  Argel Tal sighed. ‘Are you aware of the old proverb: “Judge a man by his questions, not by his answers”?’

  ‘I know it. We said something similar on Khur.’

  ‘It is used across the galaxy, in one form or another. That was the Terran expression. But there is a Colchisian equivalent: “Blessed is the mind too small for doubt”.’

  ‘But why?’ the young woman repeated.

  Argel Tal bit back a second sigh. It was difficult – the girl was immensely naive and Argel Tal knew he was no teacher – but enlightenment had to come from somewhere. There was no honour in making a secret of the truth.

  ‘The answer is in the stars themselves, Cyrene. We are a young species, spread thin across thousands of worlds. The space between the stars holds many threats: xenos creatures of countless breeds, evolved for predation. Those that do not immediately fall upon humanity to feed or destroy tend to be dangerous for other reasons. These ancient civilisations are in decline, either because they were too weak to stabilise after their growth, or because their own hubristic, deviant technologies doomed them. There’s nothing to learn from these races. History will discard them soon enough. So do we leave human colonies for aliens to prey upon, or do we claim their precious worlds to feed strength to the newborn Imperium? Do we allow these people to linger in ignorance and risk harming themselves – or us – or do we crush them before they can become a heretical threat?’

  ‘But–’

  ‘No.’ Argel Tal’s voice was cold stone. ‘There is no “but” this time. “The Imperium is right, and that makes it mighty”, so say our iterators, so the Word is written, and so shall it be. We succeed where every other human culture has failed. We rise where alien breeds fall. We defeat every solar empire or lonely world that refuses benevolent unity. What more evidence is needed that we, and we alone, walk the right path?’

  Cyrene fell silent, chewing her lower lip. ‘That... makes sense.’

  ‘Of course it does. It’s the truth.’

  ‘So they are all dead. A whole world. Will you tell me what their last city looked like?’

  ‘If you wish.’ Argel Tal regarded the young woman for a long moment. She had healed well in the last four weeks, now clad in the shapeless grey robe of a Legion servant. When he’d first seen her wearing the uniform of a serf, she’d asked him what colour her new clothing was.

  ‘Grey,’ he’d said.

  ‘Good,’ she smiled at his answer, but didn’t elaborate.

  Argel Tal watched her now. She stared at him blindly, her youthful features unclouded by shyness or doubt. ‘Why are you curious about their city?’ he asked.

  ‘I remember Monarchia,’ she said ‘It is only right that someone remembers this city as well.’

  ‘I’m unlikely to forget it, Cyrene. Spires of glass, and warriors formed from moving crystal. It was not a long compliance, but neither was it an easy one.’

  ‘Was Xaphen with you? He’s very kind to me. I like him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Argel Tal. ‘Xaphen was with me. He was the first of Seventh Company to see the enemy’s blasphemy, when the city’s force shield came down.’

  ‘Will you tell me what happened?’

  ‘Captain,’ Xaphen voxed. ‘You’re not going to believe what I’m seeing.’

  Argel Tal advanced through the outlying ruins, flanked by Torgal Assault Squad. His grey-clad brothers moved through the streets, crunching on shards of fallen glass architecture. Idling chainswords rumbled in every warrior’s gauntlets. Each toothed blade bore bloodstains.

  ‘This is Argel Tal,’ the captain voxed back. ‘We’re to the west – no resistance worth noting. Status report.’

  ‘Artificials,’ Xaphen’s voice was flawed by vox-distortion, but his disgust came through clear enough. ‘They’re deploying artificials.’

  Argel Tal turned to the east, where the city of veined black stone and glass was already beginning to crack and splinter. Fire ran unchecked along the roads winding towards the city’s heart – the clearest sign of the Legion’s advance.

  ‘Torgal Assault Squad inbound,’ he voxed. ‘Word Bearers, with me.’

  The bulky thrusters on his back cycled into life, propelling him skyward with a throaty roar.

  The altitude gauge on his retinal display pulsed as it updated, overlaying the blue-tinted view through his eye lenses. Low towers of twisting glass and spiralling streets sailed by below. Here was a culture that bred architects who danced to their own tunes. The captain wasn’t sure if it was artistic license or the work of some logical process he couldn’t fathom. Still, a city of toughened alien glass... Roads of black stone...

  It was beautiful, in a way. Madness often possessed a certain loveliness.

  ‘I see you,’ he voxed to Xaphen. Beneath him, squads of Word Bearers moved through the ruins of a levelled city block, pockets of grey armour engaged against a silver abomination that crackled with unhealthy energies. His armour’s receptive systems picked up on his confusion, and zoomed in on the enemy warriors.

  Argel Tal still wasn’t sure what he was looking at.

  ‘Down,’ he commanded Torgal Squad. Acknowledgement pulses answered over the vox. Argel Tal killed his thrust with an instinctive thought – a flashing Colchisian rune on his visor display changed from red to white. With a judder, the jump pack’s primary boosters cut out. Smoke trailed from the deactivated wide-mouth thrusters as secondary jets fired, slowing his plummeting descent to a speed just shy of terminal.

  He came down hard, his armoured boots crunching the road beneath his weight, sending cracks cobwebbing through the black stone. In a wave of howling engine wash and road-cracking landings, the rest of his warriors came down in a loose pack around him.

  ‘Stars above,’ said Torgal, gesturing over the devastation with his purring chainsword. ‘I see what the Chaplain meant.’

  Across the ruined vista of tumbledown glass walls, one of the enemy artificials came on three insectile legs: each with too many joints, and each ending in a blade that spiked the ground with every step. Its torso could almost have been humanoid, but for the fact it was made entirely from moving glass. Beneath its transparent skin, circuits formed veins, metal bars made bones.

  ‘That has to be ornamental,’ Torgal said over the vox, as the artificial glided closer on bladed limbs. ‘I mean... just look at it.’

  ‘You took your damn time,’ said Xaphen. ‘Get into cover before it fires again.’

  Argel Tal made a break for a nearby glass wall, where a handful of Xaphen’s warriors were crouching. They weren’t hidden, but it was cover nevertheless. The rest of his assault squad spread out.

  ‘It fires?’ Argel Tal asked. ‘Are you certain it’s not an automated statue, and you’ve been engaging some of the local art in a heroic battle?’

  ‘It fires,’ Xaphen grunted. ‘And it won’t die. Watch this. Malnor Squad, engage.’

  From a crater ahead, several Word Bearers rose in trained unity, each of them opening up with bolt pistols. Shells hammered into the glass creature’s body, knocking it off-balance but inflicting no visible damage. Electrical force sparked where each bolt round punched home, detonating the shells before they inflicted anything more than minor kinetic annoyance.

  ‘Cease fire and fall back,’ Xaphen ordered.

&nbs
p; ‘I’m growing tired of hearing that order, sir,’ Malnor’s voice crackled, but the bolter fire stopped.

  The creature immediately righted itself, and veered towards where Malnor’s warriors crouched in cover. The circuitry serving as its innards flared with phosphorous anger, and eye-aching electricity speared from its open mouth to dance across the edge of the crater, melting the black stone wherever it touched.

  ‘It’s made of unbreakable glass,’ Torgal voxed, ‘and it vomits lightning. The primarch was right to order these people dead. They are more than heretics – they forge insanity into physical form.’

  Argel Tal swore softly as he listened to vox-reports of Legion squads encountering these things all over the city. With the capital’s protective shield down, he’d expected this to be easy. The planetary leaders were supposed to dead, damn it. Why wasn’t resistance crumbling?

  ‘Torgal Squad, to higher ground.’

  ‘By your word, captain,’ chorused the loyal responses. Heat haze rippled the air around each warrior as their bulky jump thrusters cycled back to life. The air was rich with charcoalish engine-stink.

  Argel Tal boosted up, straight as a spear, coming down on a balcony overlooking the ruined street. The warriors of Torgal Squad followed, finding their own perches on the edges of nearby rooftops. Grey gargoyles, watching the battle below.

  ‘How many have you destroyed so far?’ asked Argel Tal.

  ‘Three, but two were downed by a Vindicator from Firestorm.’ Xaphen referred to the Serrated Sun’s armour battalion.

  ‘Don’t tell me the tank was destroyed.’

  Malnor answered this time. ‘Then I won’t tell you, captain. But it’s not here anymore.’

  Argel Tal watched the artificial stalking closer, maintaining its inhuman balance on those multi-jointed legs despite the punishing terrain. His visor zoomed in deep, clearing after a moment’s distortion. Silver veins threaded through the construct’s torso, flickering with power. Its skin moved like liquid glass, yet bolter shells sparked aside, as harmless as rainfall.

  ‘You said you’ve killed three of these, but the tanks destroyed two.’

  ‘I killed the third with my crozius,’ Xaphen replied. ‘The constructs seem vulnerable to power weapons.’

  ‘Understood. Leave this one to us.’ Argel Tal refocused his visor. ‘Torgal Squad, at the ready. We’ll fight fire with fire.’

  ‘By your word,’ came the voice chorus again.

  Argel Tal drew both swords – each a red-iron blade housing generators in the ivory crosspieces. His fingers slid to the triggers along the leather-wrapped grips, and twin hums droned as the blades came alive, coated in jagged licks of electrical force.

  ‘For the primarch!’ The shout echoed across the street, drawing the artificial’s attention. It looked up with a featureless face – where a man’s mouth would be, the glass visage glowed with rising heat.

  Argel Tal took two running steps; the first sent tremors through the balcony, the second shattered the railing as he kicked off from it, leaping into the air. His thrusters roared, breathing smoke and fire as he fell from sky. The twin blades trailed blurs of lightning.

  ‘Aurelian!’ the warriors of Torgal Squad cried out, leaping from their eyries to slice through the air, following their captain down on whining engines. ‘Aurelian!’

  Argel Tal led the dive, hurling himself to the side as burning electricity arced up from the artificial below. A second later he was on the creature, twisting around it to bring his boot crashing against its glass head. Chips of diamond sprayed away as its skull snapped back. Both power swords fell a heartbeat later, the blades hammering into the artificial’s face. More twinkling shards scattered like hailstones.

  Sergeant Torgal landed on the automaton’s shoulders from behind, his chainsword skidding and scraping along the glass. His bolter barked once, a shell hammering uselessly aside before detonating in the air.

  With grunts of effort leaving their helm-speakers like avian cries, the rest of Torgal’s squad descended and added their grinding blades to the assault. They attacked in waves, thrusting skyward while those beneath struck, then diving for another strike as their brothers boosted away. The artificial staggered, reeling under the host’s attack, unable to bring its defences to bear against a single threat.

  Argel Tal dived a third time, rasping his sword blades against each other, causing their overlapping power fields to hiss and spit. This time, the blades bit, both carving into the glass throat, sending diamond shards clattering against Argel Tal’s faceplate.

  The construct died instantly. Its silver veins turned black, and it toppled to the dust on dead legs.

  With sedate grace, the five warriors of Torgal Assault Squad drifted to the ground around their captain. Chainblades growled softer as trigger fingers relaxed. Jump thrusters exhaled as they cooled.

  Xaphen and Malnor led their warriors from the ruins, bolters held across chestplates.

  ‘Nicely done,’ said the Chaplain. ‘Move ahead if you wish, brother. We will purge the road to the city’s heart. Don’t wait on our account.’

  Argel Tal nodded, still not used to Xaphen’s repainted armour. The Chaplain’s warplate was black – darkened in remembrance of the ashes coating every warrior’s armour in Monarchia. Argel Tal had said nothing when he’d first witnessed this new tradition, but it still rankled. Some shames were better left forgotten.

  A spurt of detuned vox preceded another broken voice. ‘Captain, this is Dagotal.’

  Argel Tal looked to the spires making up the city’s core. Something there – some hidden machinery – was playing havoc with the communication channels.

  ‘I’m here, Dagotal.’

  ‘Requesting permission to summon Carthage.’

  Xaphen and Malnor exchanged glances, their faceplates concealing their expressions. Torgal gunned his chainsword, the teeth chewing air for a few seconds.

  ‘Specifics, Dagotal,’ said Argel Tal.

  ‘It’s the artificials, sir. They have a king.’

  Dagotal Squad kept moving through the streets, never going to ground, always watching. As Seventh Company’s outriders, penetrating a hostile city far ahead of the captain’s main force was nothing new.

  This enemy, however, brought some foul surprises with them. The army of artificials stalking through the doomed city were putting up ferocious resistance – and that was before the Word Bearers advance forces began to encounter the Obsidians.

  Dagotal was one of the first to spot one. He’d leaned forward in his saddle, forcing his visor to zoom and track the black construct making its ponderous way along the street ahead.

  ‘Blood of the Urizen,’ he swore. The thing was two storeys tall – an artificial on six legs, its torso cut not from clear glass, but opaque black.

  He’d voxed the captain immediately, while his squad opened fire. The bolters mounted on each bike chattered and crashed. The black glass construct didn’t deign to notice. Despite the artificial’s apparent weight, its bladed limbs didn’t impale down into the road.

  ‘Fall back,’ Dagotal ordered his brothers. And they had – at speed.

  The grey bikes snarled as they banked around a winding corner, tyres struggling to grip the smooth black stone of the road. Korus swerved in the lead, his braking wheels screeching as they sheared over the road’s surface.

  ‘Careful,’ Dagotal warned.

  ‘Easy for you to say, sergeant,’ Korus snapped.

  Dagotal weaved between his brothers’ bikes, effortlessly outpacing them. His jetbike hovered two metres above the road, bucking forward with engine wails and bursts of acceleration at the merest pressure from his hands on the throttle. The jetbike ran cleaner than its grounded cousins, its power generator venting much less exhaust than the wheeled bikes in Dagotal’s squad.

  The Word Bearer leaned to his right, sliding around another of the glass city’s insane spiralling corners. He slowed – if only a little – allowing his brothers to keep pace. From betw
een two spires ahead, another immense artificial came forward on six legs, lightning ringing its faceless black skull in a radiant halo.

  ‘Another artificial,’ Dagotal voxed. He used the name already being cried out by Word Bearer squad leaders over the vox. ‘It’s another one of the Obsidians.’

  ‘We’re being boxed in,’ said Korus, drawing alongside. ‘Do we engage?’

  ‘For what? To waste shells?’ Dagotal accelerated, feeling the drag in his arms as the jetbike’s thrumming engine wailed louder. ‘Follow me.’

  He veered left, taking another corner into a secondary street.

  ‘We can’t keep running,’ Korus growled. ‘Our fuel’s going to give out if we keep this up.’

  Dagotal heard the whine of thirsty engines as his men took the corner behind him. Korus was right – their bikes’ growls were getting dry, and the squad had been playing a game of cat and mouse through these streets for hours now, scouting ahead of the Serrated Sun’s main forces.

  ‘We’re not running,’ he replied.

  A shadow darkened the street, eclipsing the sun and filling the air with the grind of powerful engines. The sleek craft hovering overhead bore the bionic skull symbol of the Martian priesthood on its wings.

  Dagotal smiled behind his faceplate. ‘We’re looking for somewhere Carthage can land.’

  From beneath a red hood, three green eye lenses peered out at the burning city. This triad of visual receptors continually turned and refocused, each lens tuning to degrees of acuity that went far beyond the capacity of human sight.

  ‘Processing,’ the owner of the three eyes said. And then, after a pause of several seconds, during which the lenses continued to tune and retune, he added ‘Acknowledged’ in the same tone.

  Dagotal’s outriders were using this chance to refuel, each Astartes filling their bike’s tanks with canisters of promethium taken from the Mechanicum lander’s hold.

  Dagotal remained on his jetbike, the humming gravity suspensors pulsing quieter now they weren’t suffering strain.

  ‘Two Obsidians,’ he said to the three-eyed man, ‘coming this way.’ The vox was on fire with squads falling back, summoning help from the Carthage Cohort, requesting armour battalions... ‘The artificials are brutal, Xi-Nu.’