This aspirant is exceptional, he wrote. Universally liked and with a capacity to think faster and with greater logic than many of his peers, I do not doubt that Volker Straub is destined for greatness.
In all this, Volker never lost sight of who – or what – he was. He was an aspirant of the Silver Skulls Chapter. His loyalty was without question, both to his Chapter, his brothers-in-arms and to the Imperium. He was assigned to Sergeant Atellus in the Tenth Company and outperformed consistently. Every time the bar was raised, he met each new challenge with confidence and competence.
Then, two days before he was scheduled to undergo the implantation of his progenoid gland, the Prognosticatum intervened.
Nobody disputed that the Prognosticatum were the controlling force within the Silver Skulls. Comprised of the Prognosticators who were the Chaplain-Librarians who undertook a dual role and the Chaplains themselves, the Prognosticatum also boasted the elite Prognosticars. These were the Chapter champions; the heroes. They represented the very essence of the Silver Skulls.
Inspirational and powerful, this elite unit was formed of psychic battle-brothers whose prowess on the front line was second to none. Frequently, these were the psykers whose gifts tended away from the more esoteric divination and precognition that was so crucial to the functioning of the Chapter and leaned towards the more destructive in nature.
The most important decisions required by the Chapter were ultimately escalated to the Prognosticatum and the council was overseen by Vashiro, the Chief Prognosticator. Nothing involving a choice that directly affected the entire Chapter was ever settled without the rituals to cast the auguries. Every recruit, alongside his rigorous physical training regime and hypno-doctrination sessions was required to divine their future path at some point with a Prognosticator. This happened, traditionally, prior to the insertion of the progenoid gland. The most sacred of the implants, the Quintessence Sacred was the pinnacle of achievement.
Unlike many Chapters, the Silver Skulls were ignorant as to the lines of their heritage. The name of their primogenitor, the primarch whose genetic material had formed the pattern for their Chapter was unknown to them, the records lost many centuries before. Several centuries previously, the Apothecaries had performed countless genetic tests and suggested that the most likely line of heritage was that of the noble Ultramarines. But it mattered little. The simple fact was, they did exist and despite many great hardships, they thrived.
Four years ago, Volker had been on the edge of a bright future as a fully fledged battle-brother. Then the auguries had denied him the ultimate glory.
Had it really been four years ago? Ryarus remembered the decree that had been passed down from the Prognosticatum. Volker Straub was not to be given the progenoid gland that would allow him full ascension. It had been the most irrational thing the Apothecary had ever known be issued by them.
Denied that which he so desperately craved, Volker had formally requested Vashiro’s permission to walk the Long Patrol anyway. Forming part of the final stage of a recruit’s initiation, the Long Patrol saw the aspirants sent out into the feral wilds of the Varsavian tundra with no more than a combat knife to defend themselves with. Those who survived remained with the Chapter and ascended to the ranks.
Those who died were remembered with honour. Only those worthy enough to have reached the final stages of the process were permitted to walk the Long Patrol. It was better by far, Volker had said, than becoming a serf.
Again, he was denied.
Vashiro had explained to him that he was not to become a battle-brother which, at the age of sixteen and having undergone the arduous trials to reach this stage, left the boy devastated. Instead, he would continue with his physical training.
Volker was despondent. He had turned to the recruit’s own Prognosticator for advice, for a divining of the future and all that he could glean was that his destiny lay down a different path to the one trodden by so many warriors before him. He received small reassurance in the insistence that everything decreed by the Emperor’s Sight happened for a purpose – and that he was destined for greatness.
Nearly four years later, when Daerys Arrun had been approached by the Prognosticatum, the two had been twisted irrevocably together, the fate of Daerys Arrun and Volker Straub intertwining as one. The youth had gone with Captain Arrun gladly.
Now, here he was, having sacrificed his limbs, his freedom and his birthright in the name of progression.
‘Three more days.’ When Ryarus spoke, it was with complete confidence. A nod of agreement from Correlan cemented the estimate. Arrun, who had arrived in the chamber several moments before gave a brief smile of approval.
He found the answer surprising, but at the same time, pleasing. In the past weeks, whenever the captain had asked for a projected time of completion, a specific moment they could work towards when the Resurgent Project could go into its initial testing phase, he had always been met with uncertainty. The effects of connecting Volker too soon could be lethal, they had all agreed; not just for the Resurgent himself, but for the Dread Argent and the rest of its crew as well.
‘The Resurgent Project will grant our fleet a much greater advantage,’ Arrun said, reluctant pride creeping in his voice as he looked upon the assembly. He might not have been fully supportive of what was taking place, but he was fiercely proud of his team. All the anger he had felt earlier with regard to Argentius’s unprecedented orders had drained away on receipt of the news that the project was almost into its final stage. ‘I tell you this, my brothers. Assuming all goes as planned, Lord Commander Argentius will be pleased with how this project has gone. He will be pleased with all of us.’
He turned and considered the sleeping Volker, now once again returned to his semi-stasis.
‘Mark my words. One way or another, we will be remembered for this. Whether for good or ill remains to be seen. But nonetheless...’ Echoing Ryarus’s earlier gesture, Arrun lay his own hand on the armaplas tank. ‘We will be remembered.’
THREE
ENCROACHMENT
They moved silently through the stars, like sharks seeking out sustenance on their endless hunt through the oceans. Were it not for the periodic firing of their thrusters engaging to execute minute course corrections, the two ships could easily have been lifeless. Those bursts of activity, however, indicated that they were anything but.
There was nothing marking these two prowlers as friendly and neither was there anything to suggest that they may have been hostile. Nothing, of course, except for the very definite air of menace they seemed to exude in the manner of their transit. Keeping their movements in perfect harmony they performed a dazzling, deadly interstellar display of synchronicity.
They moved as one, slowly devouring the distance that separated them from Gildar Secundus.
These predators were in no hurry. There was no need, for they had time and cunning on their side.
Closer, they came.
Ever closer.
All was well.
For two days, nothing unauthorised had come through the Gildar system. The Endless Horizon, under the now decidedly less haphazard guidance of Luka Abramov, completed her deliveries and was escorted from the system. The Endless Horizon’s captain had promised faithfully not to repeat his performance.
Other trade vessels continued to come and go and the Dread Argent did not need to leave her geostationary orbit. For this, both Apothecary Ryarus and Correlan were exceptionally glad. A stable situation was a preferable option at this juncture. Power systems could be more effectively diverted whilst the ship maintained orbit and the extra power in turn allowed for much more productive output into the project.
Ryarus considered this now. He and Correlan had worked slavishly for the past two days. The Techmarine had closed himself off for hours on end in his workshop where he became swiftly buried in the many schematics and plans that he had spent months drawing up. At this stage, a single error in judgement would spell disaster. His mood degenerated ra
pidly and eventually he was left to his own devices with only a number of servitors to aid him. Fortunate, Ryarus thought, that the mindless near-automatons had no emotions that could be laid bare under the Techmarine’s lashing tongue. They would have been reduced to quivering wrecks within minutes.
For his part, the Silver Skulls Apothecary had spent time with Volker and had been satisfied that the boy was ready in both body and mind for the commencement of his new role. He had been absorbed, fascinated in the measure of his own success in terms of witnessing the precision of the augmetic enhancements. The replacement limbs were, in a sense, a practice ground; a way in which Volker could adjust to his body being grafted with technology. It was why the decision had been taken at the start to amputate at all. Replacement limbs hadn’t been an entire altruistic thing. Getting used to controlling the augmetics trained up the dormant sections of Volker’s brain, which would be vital come the inauguration of the neural network.
The Resurgent Project itself had been in stasis for a long time. A former Master of the Fleet had introduced the project to the Prognosticatum some four hundred years previously. He had been full of countless ideas and the concepts necessary to achieve the goal. He had even provided crude blueprints painstakingly drawn in his own hand.
He had been denied.
‘The time is not right,’ Vashiro had said, on consultation with the inner circle. ‘We see merit in the idea, but until the omens are aligned, we cannot give you our approval.’
So the Resurgent Project had been effectively forgotten. With the inauguration of a new Master of the Fleet came the responsibility of knowing that they may be called upon to take the reins of the nascent prototype. Daerys Arrun’s reaction on discovering this was going to fall into his remit had not been a positive one. Devoutly traditional, Arrun saw the Resurgent as an abominable thing, an effort on the part of the Silver Skulls to interfere with the status quo. He had obeyed only because he had to, not because he had any choice. He had assembled as perfect a team as he could muster. Thus, Correlan had taken over the mechanical part of the workload whilst Ryarus had taken responsibility for the biological.
Everywhere Volker went, even here on the training levels, a small retinue of tech-priests were not far behind, their voices as low and incomprehensible as ever as they chanted repeated litanies and blessings over the one they called the Great Honoured. Ryarus had drawn the line at the full contingent that attended him in the main chamber and had, extremely reluctantly, negotiated a party of four adepts.
Ryarus watched Volker carefully as the youth performed his daily exercises in the half-light of the training cages. The lighting in the area was intentionally dull, the lumen-sconces embedded in the walls giving off little more than a perfunctory glow. It was a habit of the Silver Skulls to train at various levels of light. Such practice better prepared them for combat in any conditions and helped maintain their ability to control their enhanced eyesight.
Volker had little need to consider his self-defence in the long term, of course, but Ryarus was acutely conscious that the exercise staved off the depression that the youth might otherwise have fallen into given his extended state of limbo.
During physical training, Volker could engage his mind on everything he had been bred for. It also meant that he was more self-sufficient than if he had been placed into an artificial coma and needed constant monitoring. This way, at least, the boy could maintain some sense of independence from the project that would ultimately consume all that he was.
The gloomy light cast eerie shadows of battling giants on the utilitarian walls of the ringed training tier. Along with Volker, there were a number of other Silver Skulls presently engaged in drills and training, barely more than indistinguishable silhouettes. Ryarus, though, would have known any of them at a glance. As ranking Apothecary in Fourth Company, all of them had passed through his care at one time or another. The sounds of blade against blade rang out, caught and funnelled upwards through the interior ziggurat of the Dread Argent.
Ryarus watched Volker’s performance through half-closed eyes, his Apothecary’s skills granting him the ability to assess everything about the youth’s exertions in the training cage. He had coped well with his augmetic implants and had full control over them. It had been difficult for him, at first. Never granted the Emperor’s Ward, or his own suit of power armour, the ability to interface himself with machinery on the level that the Resurgent Project demanded was always going to be a challenge. But it had been a challenge that Volker had adapted to with ease and satisfying proficiency.
Bare from the waist up, light combat fatigues covering his artificial legs, Volker fought with the skill and prowess of any of his peers. The muscles rippled across his back as he threw himself at the artificial enemy and he laid into the training servitor with great energy and enthusiasm. Given that he spent much of his time held motionless in the feed-tank, it must be liberating to be freed from his constraints, even if it was only for a few hours.
In a few short weeks, he would never move freely again. After the bonding took place, he would become as one with the Dread Argent. There was something sorrowing, even a little sinister about such a fate and yet the boy had never once tried to refute his destiny. The Prognosticators had laid out his future as dictated by the Emperor himself. No loyal member of the Imperium of Man would deny such an honour. Volker had always been more saddened by his denial to the ranks of the Adeptus Astartes than his ultimate sacrifice. Even with the loss of his arms and legs to the necessary augmetics that would serve as conduits to the ship’s systems, Volker had remained upbeat and determined, optimistic beyond reckoning.
The Apothecary was fiercely proud of the success he had achieved during his time with Fourth Company. For the better part of two hundred years, his role had always focused far more on reducing the suffering of mortally wounded brothers by sending them to the arms of the Emperor swiftly and cleanly. He recovered the Chapter’s legacy from the fallen so that future generations may strengthen their numbers.
There was a need for emotional detachment of course, yet the loss of each of his battle-brothers cut him keenly. His own honour tattoos were simple and deeply reflective of the soul beneath the skin, listing the name of every Silver Skulls warrior whose Quintessence Sacred he had reclaimed with his reductor. They would not be forgotten, not by him. Now, with the work he had undertaken with Volker, he had been given the chance to nurture, to create.
His own blood brother, Prognosticator Chaereus, had always claimed the ability to read the auras of others. Long since taken to the halls of the ancients, the psyker had always maintained that Ryarus’s aura was that of a protector. ‘Shield of the Emperor,’ had been what he had actually said.
Fifty years dead.
Had it been so very long?
Ryarus rarely felt the weight of his years upon him, but when he did, they made themselves known heavily. The sorrowful and ignoble end his brother had met, torn to shreds by rampaging orks, had fuelled his own battle rage. Ryarus had cut down dozens of the greenskin menace single-handedly before a near-fatal shot to the chest had incapacitated him. Even then, his fading fury had kept him struggling to bring his bolt pistol to bear on the xenos. It was only the fact that his body had battled him down into unconsciousness that he had stopped at all.
Apothecary Malus himself had overseen his subordinate’s recovery, an honour which even now remained unsurpassed in Ryarus’s experiences. The Chief Apothecary of the Silver Skulls took personal pride and interest in all those who had followed his own calling, an ethic that Ryarus himself had unconsciously cascaded further down to his own juniors. He was greatly respected and admired amongst not only Fourth Company, but throughout the entire Chapter for his forthright nature and, of course, that legendary display of fearless tenacity against the orks – a story that was told over and over again.
Briefly caught up in his own memories, his humours tipped to decidedly melancholic. With a physical shake, Ryarus pulled his thoughts out of th
e past and focused instead on the future. He idly tweaked the plaited beard of white hair at his chin and considered the future made flesh in the training cage before him.
From the shadows, another figure watched Volker Straub. There was no pride emanating from him, though. It was a skinny, dirty little creature who knew he was already pushing the very borders of his luck by being anywhere near the training decks. But he had heard so many rumours about this ‘Resurgent’ that he had decided to take a look for himself.
The young man who guided the Dread Argent through the warp had been brought to the employ of the Silver Skulls by way of a hive-world where he had been running the streets, fighting for his own survival. Born into a family of the Navis Nobilite that had fallen far from grace, his parents had effectively sold him to the employ of the Imperium in an attempt to regain some sort of standing. They had sold him as a commodity and the insult to his person still smarted.
His name was Jeremiah, and he was jealous. He was jealous of the muscled, healthy youth fighting in the training cages before him. He was jealous of the encroachment on the only thing that he had ever felt truly belonged to him. the Dread Argent was Jeremiah’s ship. At least, that was the way he saw it.
He was the one who had to soothe its troubled soul when it travelled through the warp. He was the one who had struggled for an acceptance that he still was not sure he had achieved.
He watched, winding a lock of lank hair around one finger. His eyes flicked over Volker and then shifted briefly to the Space Marine who was with him. He knew Ryarus. The Apothecary was one of the few Silver Skulls who had made an effort to display overtures of friendship. Jeremiah had shied away from it, not trusting the giants who now owned him. Besides, from what he knew of the Emperor’s Angels, he could not shake the overwhelming feeling that the Silver Skulls were wrong somehow.
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