by Ben Counter
Far off, in the distant depths of the Phalanx, a bell tolled.
‘Bolter drill is due,’ said Lysander. ‘The lesson is ended. Go, novices, to your duties. Dismissed.’
The Phalanx was an old ship, one of the oldest in the Imperium. Parts of it, some believed, dated from the Age of Strife before the Emperor had conquered Holy Terra and forged from that darkness the current age of Mankind. Segments of hundreds of ships could be found within the vast mobile space station, and every few decades explorator teams were permitted on board to delve into the most ancient parts, forgotten and unused. Sometimes they turned up fragments of Imperial Fists history thought lost. Sometimes they found whole chapels, barracks decks, training halls and memorials that had been forgotten. In the voids between the mapped and used parts of the space station, there were corners that concealed secrets.
In one such void, choked with slanting support beams and wreathed in centuries of dust, stood a lone statue. Once, perhaps, it had been part of a larger memorial or statuary hall. Now it was all that remained.
It was of a Space Marine in Terminator armour. It was carved from obsidian, with a mask of ivory. The mask was in the form of a skull, the traditional garb of the Chaplain.
Lysander ducked beneath one of the beams to reach the foot of the statue. It was larger than life-sized, and the carved lenses of its eyepieces seemed to stare down at him. There must have been no question of the statue being sculpted with the Chaplain’s face showing – the skull was the face he displayed to the Chapter, the face with which he confronted his foes. That was the way of the Chaplain. On the battlefield he was not a man but an idea, a symbol, a vision of the Chapter incarnate.
The name inscribed on the base of the statue was Belisar.
Lysander knelt.
‘When I was but a novice,’ said Lysander, ‘I taught myself that there is no limit to what we must do for victory. Lives are forfeit to it. Even honour. Even the principles that make a Space Marine what he is. When I read the record of Xanatar, I knew the choice I would have made. And when I found this place, I knew I was right.’
Lysander looked up into the ivory mask. ‘I know that I am right. I pray that I am right. And that those who follow me will be right, too.’
In the statue’s right hand was the storm bolter, inlaid with deep yellow lacquer. In his left hand was another helmet, this one carved from iridescent blue stone – a neat hole was bored through one eyepiece, the impact of a bolter shell right through perhaps the only weak point in a suit of Terminator armour.
At the statue’s feet was an ammunition box. The box stood open and in intricate detail, as if it was the most important part of the whole statue, were rendered the ninety-nine bolter shells that remained.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
First published in Hammer and Bolter Issue 19 (2012).
This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.
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ISBN: 978-1-78572-306-3
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