War Without End

by Various

  Ferrus had not been the first, though he was advanced. Nor would he be the last.

  Strolling the length of the laboratorium, the caskets reminded Fabius of some insidious processional. He paused at the last in the line.

  Within was an infant child, curled up, sleeping warm and safe within its amniotic stew. A Cthonian birthmark was visible on the small of the child’s tiny back.

  ‘Sleep,’ hissed Fabius, a grim nursemaid to the slumbering infant, ‘for when you wake, the galaxy shall be a very different place.’

  Fulgrim’s monstrous form is revealed

  The air is cold and reeks of counterseptic. Very little light penetrates the dingy apothecarion, because I have set the lumens low to keep my subjects quiescent as I conduct my research. The gloom focuses what light I allow to permeate, and hones it surgically like a scalpel.

  I have many blades, many drills and shears, hooks, saws and syringes. Each instrument is a vital tool in my surgeon’s arsenal. Every limb of the armature I carry is as essential as my actual physical appendages. Not only do my tools cut flesh, they explore truth. Secrets reside in the flesh, secrets I mean to excise and then study. Only here in this apothecarion can I become who I truly am.

  Within these cloistered rooms, I am detached from emotion and do not see the corpses that end up on my slab as anything except bodies. Allies, adversaries, they are the same when rendered down to their constituent parts by blades and chemicals. I become the armature. Its cuts are my cuts; its vials and philtres are a constituent part of my own physiology. As I conduct my work, I am not the transhuman being my brothers have come to know me as, I am apart – I am the chirurgeon.

  Several of my patients reach me as corpses. Broken bodies, even dead and inert ones, can yield knowledge though. Others carry injuries from which there is no recovery, or at least, if it suits my purpose, I ensure they make no recovery. Fewer still I can actually save, and this flesh matter interests me the least.

  Apothecary is my vocation, but it is not my passion.

  My interest lies in what comprises the essence of a subject, for within the genetic code of each is the means to unlock godhood or some power akin to it: creation and amalgamation, expressed in patchwork renditions of man, reaching for the apogee of scientific achievement, the quest for the universal panacea of life. Nothing less than perfection. I do not think of it as hubris, nor do I consider that I overreach. I know who I am and what I do.

  I am Fabius, and I am a herald of evolution.

  My most recent subject lies upon the medi-slab, alive but numbed from the neck down. The surgery I have planned is both invasive and extreme. I confess to a tremor of excitement at the prospect of it. A contagion riddles this bodily form lying beneath my chirurgeon’s blades, and I mean to find it and cut it out.

  ‘Begin audio log: A461/03:16.’

  My voice is a dry-throated rasp as the analogue recorder begins to spool with dull half-clicks, and makes me realise how long it has been since I have spoken to another living soul.

  That would be my father, when he was snared by his own game, enslaved… by what? Guilt? Perhaps.

  I have left him with his brother, or the thing that looks very much like him, albeit with head now attached. It is diverting, but not fulfilling, and it does not answer the question which the body on my slab poses.

  Is there a cure?

  As yet, I have no answer and this vexes me. Left alone by Fulgrim, I can at least continue my research in relative peace.

  The laboratorium is a separate annex from the apothecarion, one known only to me. It is a refuge for my mind as much as it is for my instruments and samples. Most precious are the amniotic caskets and the imperfect spawn within. I keep every failed experiment, knowing that I shall learn from the previous iteration and adapt. Every scrap of flesh has its uses. Nothing is ever wasted in striving for the perfect expression of mankind.

  I lose time in this place, buried in research, obsessively experimenting. I know I have been down here for hours, possibly days already, but my preparation is exacting and comprehensive. I cannot stint, for this particular work is too important.

  I begin cataloguing, as I always do.

  Height, mass and any remarkable visual data are recorded. This is largely perfunctory and not crucial to my examination. It begins in earnest as I cut.

  ‘I am beginning with a Y-shaped incision first medial to lateral and then along the midsagittal plane, anterior, proximal to jugular and lower abdomen.’

  The chirurgeon reacts instantly. As the other metal limbs loiter with arachnid poise above the subject’s gelid flesh, a single barbed appendage descends to make the first cut. It goes deep, all the way to the black carapace that resides beneath the epidermis and dermis, and buried within the subcutaneous tissue. The blade describes the Y-shaped incision as directed, drawing little blood. As the first arm reacts, two more descend, each terminating in a pair of forceps that gently peel back the skin and flesh to expose the interface.

  A glossy black membrane is revealed, fitted with circular transfusion points and neural sensors.

  Extraction is difficult but not impossible.

  As a section of black carapace is removed, a pict-screen situated above the medi-slab relates further data concerning the blood-slick rib-plate beneath it.

  ‘Visual examination of blood toxicity suggests a worsening of condition since previous examination. Access record V460/04:18.’

  A brief interlude of static obscures the image as the recording cogitator searches for the requested file. A muted image capture is relayed that confirms my initial analysis.

  I blink-click further instructions and my chirurgeon’s limbs do the rest, inserting a cannula into the pale flesh of the subject’s shoulder to extract a sample for more detailed examination later. As the recording of the current procedure resumes, I see that the fluid excised into the glass receptacle of the cannula is thin and distorted by minute, waxy deposits.

  The hot, metallic reek of blood wars with the odour of counterseptic and I reduce the temperature further to maintain optimal environmental conditions.

  ‘Addendum to cursory visual examination: ossified growths infect rib-plate, suggesting entire skeletal structure is at risk from bone deformation. Potential ossmodula corruption.’

  The mutations are small but visible without the need of microscopic examination. I am reminded of hooks or tiny claws jutting from the ribs.

  A bone saw burrs noisily. I catch sight of it descending in my peripheral vision, the light refracting from its rapidly turning blade. Monomolecular steel shaves transhuman bone mass easily, the slivers captured by a trough and deposited in a lozenge-shaped canister for later analysis.

  ‘Initiating invasive exploration into bone strata with single sagittal cut across sternum.’

  I employ clamps to hold the envelope of skin in place, before using a sternal saw to shear the central rib bone in half. It takes several minutes. Transhuman bone mass is tough and thick. I watch silently and patiently until it is done. A rancid, burning smell assails my nostrils. Wisps of powdered bone drift through the shafts of stark light illuminating the medi-slab like dust motes.

  ‘Secondary medial to lateral, anterior cuts to release bone plate from housing in order to expose organs and begin more detailed biological analysis.’

  I document with my eyes, and my voice.

  After breaking through the sternum, the saw continues and starts to cut two perfectly identical squares of bone from the subject’s rib-plate. Unlike human autopsy or invasive surgery, a rib-spreader is of little to no use in the case of transhuman anatomy. The ossified carapace is too hard and unyielding. An aperture must be opened in the solid cage of bone that encases a legionary’s vulnerable organs. The entire bone plate itself must be severed from the ribs that arc around to the spine and lifted off like a grisly hatch. I am all too familiar with this procedu
re and conduct it almost without conscious thought.

  This takes time, and, as the whine of razor-edged teeth sundering bone fades to white noise, I decide to return to a much earlier analysis I conducted when first accepting the symbolic helix of my order.

  ‘Halt recording. Access archive.’

  I blink-click the appropriate file from a screed of data relayed on a second pict-screen.

  A few seconds lapse as the cogitator finds and plays the requested audio log.

  I recognise my voice, and sneer at the youth and ignorance of it.

  ‘Personal log. Fabius, III Legion, Apothecarion Cadre.

  ‘A terrible calamity has befallen us. We who, in our hubris, believed ourselves perfect have come undone by an imperfect system…’

  The words spur my mind towards the past and are soon usurped by memory.

  I cleansed the blade of my gladius on the scrap of cloak still hanging from my shoulder guards.

  Another battle, another compliance. A society lies smashed beneath the booted heel of the Crusade. For Terra, for the Emperor and the promulgation of the Imperial Truth.

  The bloodshed, the killing, faded slowly. Stalking through dust-choked ruins, ears ringing with the percussive bellow of bolters… Some of my kinsmen wanted nothing more than to relive this day over and over. I longed for something more.

  ‘A war well won, Fabius,’ uttered a familiar voice behind me.

  I was standing on a ridge where a city once was, the shattered remains of a great statue of its potentate under my booted feet and serving as little more than a vantage point now.

  From it, I saw tanks and the numerous geno-cohorts of the Imperial Army. I saw discipline masters shouting orders, but their words were swallowed up by the death throes of a city breaking apart.

  ‘Aye, Lycaeon. Perhaps.’

  As I cast my eye over the aftermath, I saw smoke enough to blot out the midday suns and fire sufficient to burn a world. In essence, that was precisely what we had done.

  ‘So melancholic, brother,’ said Lycaeon, jovial as he rapped my arm with a gauntleted fist.

  He saved my life today. Again. Few wielded a sword as well as my vassal brother.

  I sheathed my gladius, as Lycaeon raised his, trying to catch a ray of sun against its gilded blade.

  He managed it through a brief break in the smoke cloud, and basked, as he always did, in glory.

  ‘You would think a warrior’s mood would lighten at the apex of victory.’

  He turned to face me, slipping sword back into scabbard, and I met his gaze.

  Lycaeon was a seventh generation Loculus, descended from the old houses of Terra before they were forced into supplication. Like me, his eyes were violet and his hair was a golden yellow like the sun he had strived so hard to capture upon the plasteel of his sword.

  As warriors of the III Legion, known by some as His heralds, we wore power armour emblazoned with the thunderbolt and rayed sun.

  Unlike me, Lycaeon had a yearning for command and displayed all the traits of the militaristic aristocracy to which he traced his lineage.

  ‘My demeanour would improve if our numbers could be swelled. Ever since Proxima–’

  Lycaeon hissed, turning aside so I saw him only in profile.

  ‘Be still, Fabius. Exult in triumph, as I do.’ He gestured out beyond the ruins to the battlefield below us, where the geno-cohorts still cheered. ‘As they do.’

  Lesser mortals, military levies and Terran hosts of ‘men’ bayed and hollered in the artificial basin we had made with our preliminary bombardment. I did not have the heart to tell Lycaeon the reason there were so many was because our ranks had thinned egregiously since the Selenite plot. The cultists hated the Emperor and his warriors. They saw tyranny, not unity, in the assimilation of the techno-barbarian tribes of Old Earth.

  ‘Remember Proxima,’ said Lycaeon, puffing up his chest with pride at the memory of fighting alongside the Emperor. ‘Such glories… We shall see their like again, brother.’

  ‘I do not see the glory in this, Lycaeon. I see only further attrition.’

  Lycaeon scowled. ‘You see Selenites at every turn. There are vaults on Terra that would see us renewed. By the Throne of Earth, we are proof of it.’

  It was true. Several of the Legion were here only by dint of those reserves. Rapid implantation and deployment. It had felt hurried and desperate, though.

  Lycaeon could clearly see I remained unconvinced. ‘Speak to Legion Master Thrallas,’ he said. ‘Have him reassure you as he has me. More will come. Our ranks will be restored.’

  He saluted, his right fist striking the left pectoral of his armour.

  ‘I hope you are right,’ I said, returning his salute, before descending into the ruins to scavenge from the dead.

  The teeth of the bone saw, shrieking hungrily, return me to my senses. As the whirring blade retreats, I am afforded a view of what lies beneath the subject’s rib-plate. Hearts, lungs, kidney, liver, intestine, stomach, all is relayed on the pict-screen. A mild arrhythmia in the primary heart is disconcerting, as is the faint distemper manifest in the lungs. As I commit my observations eidetically, the audio continues. By now, I cannot distinguish recording from the voices of memory and the two begin to blend together.

  ‘…perversely, our glory is diminished by the war and the Legion’s stark inability to weather attrition. In only a single solar year after Proxima, we have become an endangered species.

  All efforts, including my own, to arrest the rapid entropy of the Legion have thus far been futile. My only meaningful deed is to continue compiling the lexicon of the infected. It is small consolation, and I confess that I now fear for the vaunted sons of Europa.’

  I ended the recording at the same time as I saw a figure standing in silhouette at the entrance to my apothecarion.

  It was a grand name for it. ‘Field tent’ would be more appropriate, but it was sufficient for my needs and, most importantly, allowed me to collect genetic material directly from the battlefield. I was a carrion crow, extracting what I needed from the dead. Precious gene-seed. For now, it was our only means of reinforcement.

  ‘Enter then, if you’re going to,’ I said, by way of invitation.

  Lycaeon stepped into the glow of a sodium lamp hanging overhead. I was not surprised. It had been several months since we last saw one another, since my new posting.

  He tapped the sodium lamp with the tip of his finger.

  ‘You need more sun, brother,’ he said, smiling in that way of his that suggested he was politely mocking you. ‘Sallow-faced, gaunt…. Doesn’t suit you, Fabius.’

  ‘It entirely suits me, as I know you agree. Though, perhaps you should be the Apothecary,’ I muttered, returning to my research.

  ‘Brother…’ he said.

  My eyes remained on my work.

  ‘Fabius!’

  I looked up then, and saw the hurt in his eyes.

  He had one hand on the pommel of his gladius, whilst he held his helmet in the crook of the opposite arm. My old comrade frowned. It would be the last time I ever felt regret.

  Falling to silence for a moment, Lycaeon wandered around in the shadows as if trying to find something to fix his attention upon.

  After a short while, I put down my files.

  ‘You need something?’

  ‘A little courtesy from an old friend.’ He gave the slight without looking at me.

  I bowed my head, apologised and walked around my desk to embrace him.

  ‘I am a slave to my work, Lycaeon. I scarcely recognise my brothers anymore. They are names which I catalogue, bio-matter than must be processed. I confess, it has dehumanised me.’

  Lycaeon clapped me on the shoulder, his smile warm but his eyes holding an unspoken question. He saw the corpses still regaled in their armour at the back of the tent and w
ent over to them.

  ‘Were you able to extract their gene-seed?’

  Even Lycaeon, the blind optimist, now showed concern about our plight.

  ‘Not intact,’ I answered, and joined him by the supine bodies. ‘Except for one.’

  His mood lightened, I saw it in the glance he afforded me out of the corner of his eye, until I slowly shook my head.

  ‘The blight?’

  ‘The blight.’

  This is why he had come. Lycaeon cared for our friendship, but he cared more for his continued existence.

  Standing next to him, I saw how battered his armour was. I already knew how wearing the ongoing campaign had been for our Legion. Fewer and fewer warriors of the III were taking to the field in each subsequent engagement. As a result, the impact of every casualty sustained was magnified.

  ‘No one knows where it came from, nor how many of us are affected. Thus far, the majority of afflicted gene-seed comes from the immature reserve that had been held on Terra, but there have been other instances.’

  Both he and I could have come from those reserve stocks, the tainted gene-seed. Records had been mysteriously lost.

  Lycaeon’s voice came out little louder than a whisper.

  ‘What are its effects, Fabius?’

  ‘Degenerative. Some strain of the viral contagion has found its way into III Legion gene-stocks. There is no telling how pervasive it is.’

  He gestured to the files on my desk.

  ‘A record of the infected?’

  ‘Yes. I am close to finding a way to test for it.’

  His mood brightened again. ‘A cure?’

  For the second time, I shook my head, and for the second time I felt the pain of disappointing my brother.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘But there is hope?’

  ‘Barring the miraculous, our Legion’s demise not only seems inexorable, it is also inevitable. Any other conclusion is unlikely, any hope remote at this point.’

  The remembered words of my former self are hardly more encouraging than the sight of the deteriorated organs I now catalogue.