by Various
Hearon nodded. Modelled after the High Council of Terra, the Doom Eagles encompassed a commission of men of highest rank who would draw together on matters of import facing the Chapter. The group would offer advice to the Chapter Master, and while ultimately Hearon held the sanction over all commands, he drew upon the knowledge and advice of all his company captains, his senior Chaplain, Apothecary, Forge Master and Librarian. ‘The greater body of my warriors question the need to prolong this matter. The risk outweighs the gain. The damage that might be wrought by a single turncoat among our number is huge when compared against the value of one veteran sergeant.’
‘Is it?’ Consultus said quietly. ‘Do we not damage the Chapter ourselves if we reject a warrior whose only crime was a failure to die?’
‘The others believe he is tainted?’ asked Thryn.
‘The others suggest that Tarikus be put down,’ said the captain, with no little venom.
Hearon ignored Consultus’s interruption. ‘I… am not convinced.’
‘My lord?’
The Chapter Master returned to the window. ‘The Doom Eagles have always been the most pragmatic of the Adeptus Astartes. We have no time for vacillation. That we may never again delay… Those words are etched on our hearts.’ He paused. ‘Some of our battle-brothers say we should excise this man and move beyond. End him, and confirm what has already been laid to stone; that Tarikus of the Third is dead and gone.’
Thryn cocked his head. ‘And yet?’
‘And yet…’ repeated Hearon, glancing toward Consultus, ‘I cannot in all good conscience end this in so cursory a manner. When death comes to claim me, I find myself asking how I could go to the Emperor’s side and answer for this. That I would allow a Son of Gathis to meet the sword’s edge all because of an unanswered question?’ He shook his head. ‘That will not stand.’
Thryn’s eyes narrowed. ‘There is another way, lord. A method I have yet hesitated to employ. A weirding, if you will. ’
‘Do what you must.’ The Chapter Master looked over his shoulder at Thryn. ‘You will bring me an answer, Librarian.’
‘Even if Tarikus is destroyed by it?’ said Consultus.
‘Even if,’ Hearon replied.
Zurus exited the south range after morning firing rites, and found the three of them waiting for him. He hesitated, for a moment uncertain how to respond, then beckoned the Space Marines to follow him. They moved to a worktable in the far corner of the arming hall, and he took the only stool and sat upon it. With careful, spare motions, Zurus dismantled his bolt pistol and set about the work of cleaning the weapon.
As he expected, it was Korica who spoke first. ‘Lord,’ he began, tension thick in his tone, ‘we have talked amongst ourselves of… of this matter, and we have questions.’
‘Indeed?’ said Zurus, taking apart the trigger assembly. ‘Questions seem to be the matter of the day.’ From the corner of his eye, he saw the other two Doom Eagles exchange glances; one of them, his face dark and intense with old fire scarring, the other sallow of features with a single silver ring in his ear and the helix electoo of an Apothecary upon his neck. He read conflict in their aspects. It came as no surprise; he felt the same thing they did, to some degree.
‘There is much talk in the galleries,’ Korica went on, gesturing with his carbon-and-steel augmetic arm. ‘Rumour and hearsay. We would know the truth.’
Zurus stopped and studied the pieces of his gun. ‘Would you?’ he said, a warning in his manner. ‘Tell me, brother, would you also have me go against the express orders of the Chapter Master?’
‘We would never disobey a legal command, brother-sergeant,’ said the Apothecary. ‘You know that.’
He nodded. ‘Aye, Petius, I do.’ Zurus glanced at the scarred warrior. ‘Mykilus? As your kinsmen have spoken, I trust you must have something to venture as well?’
The other Doom Eagle gave a slow nod. ‘Sir,’ he began, ‘you have commanded our squad for two cycles and we have been bound in blood and fire together. No disrespect to you is intended… but Tarikus was our sergeant for a long time. He saved each of our lives on one battleground or another. We thought him dead, and now we learn that he still lives…’ Mykilus trailed off, unable to find the right words.
‘Aquila’s remorse runs strong in us,’ said Korica. ‘We believed Tarikus had been killed at the hands of the Red Corsairs. We brought back his knife. We share the guilt at giving up on him.’ He shook his head. ‘We let him down. We should have done more. Searched longer.’
Zurus looked up for the first time. ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘Do not torment yourselves. You could not have known.’
‘We want to see him, sir,’ said Petius.
‘Impossible.’ Zurus shot a glance at the Apothecary. ‘It is forbidden. He is to remain in isolation until he has been judged.’
Korica’s face twisted in anger. ‘Tarikus is no traitor. We know the man better than any other battle-brother on the Ghostmountain! He is steadfast!’
Zurus studied the faces of the three men. ‘Is that what you all think?’ He got a chorus of nods in return – and yet, the warrior could sense some tiny inklings of doubt lurking behind the hard eyes of his men. The very same hesitation he himself experienced. ‘I took on the mantle of Tarikus’s stewardship for one reason,’ Zurus went on. ‘Because of what I knew of the man whom I had succeeded. I did it because of what you told me of him.’ He didn’t add that in truth, Brother Zurus had always felt as if he could not measure up to the shadow of the squad’s former commander.
‘Then tell us what you think, sir,’ said Mykilus. ‘If we cannot speak to him ourselves, tell us your thoughts.’
‘Aye,’ added Petius. ‘You have looked him in the eye. What did you see?’
Zurus sighed. ‘One of us.’ His gaze dropped to the disassembled bolter. ‘Or so it seemed.’
‘Chaos does not lurk within the heart of Brother Tarikus,’ grated Korica. ‘I would stake my life on that.’
‘Are you sure?’ Zurus returned to his work. ‘Trapped in the heart of madness, tormented every moment of every day by the foulest traitor-genius hell ever spawned? Could a man not be twisted under such pressure?’
‘A man, perhaps,’ said Petius. ‘But not a Doom Eagle.’
‘Not Tarikus,’ insisted Korica.
Zurus was silent for a long time, carefully rebuilding the weapon. ‘It is no wonder you wish Tarikus to be found pure,’ he said, at length. ‘Each of you carry the guilt of speaking his death when in fact he had only been lost. But that remorse will pale into nothing if he is proven to be tainted.’
‘If that is so,’ Mykilus began, his voice leaden, ‘then we three will be the ones to send him into oblivion.’
‘But it is not,’ Korica insisted. ‘And we three will be there to welcome him back once this mistrust is swept away!’
The gun went back together smoothly, and Zurus tested the action before returning it to his holster. Finally, he rose and walked away.
At the threshold of the chamber door he paused and glanced back at his men. But not really my men, he told himself. Tarikus’s men.
‘Are you coming?’ he asked.
He was at peace.
Sleep, pure and real. Tarikus struggled to remember the last time he had rested so well, free from nightmares and horrific recollections. Sluggish amniotic fluid swathed him, and he drifted in a tiny, warm ocean of his own. His fingers brushed the inside of a glassy orb. No sound reached him here.
Peace. And all he had needed to do to find it was to die.
He knew that what he experienced now was not true death; he had known that even as the cold had crept into his flesh, tightening about his bio-implant organs, pushing him towards nothingness. No, this was the little-death of the healing trance, the strange state between where the engines of his Astartes physiology were left to work their chemical magicks. He ha
d been here before. After the battle for Krypt. After the narrow escape from Serek–
Serek. Tarikus suppressed a shudder. Memory of that incident returned to him with harsh clarity. After Serek, he had been in a trance like this, repairing damage wrought by a forced teleport transition. And it had been inside a medicae tank such as this one that he had watched the Red Corsairs come to take him. It came back in hard punches of sense-memory – bolt shells cracking the glassaic, his body sluicing out with the liquid on to the deck, still broken, still unready. The renegades coming in to attack him. Blood mixed with the yellowish amnio-fluid. Fighting and killing; but ultimately, failing.
A shiver ran the length of him. Suddenly the warm liquid was as cold as the mountainside.
Tarikus took a breath of the oxygenated medium and felt the chill bore deeper. Out beyond the walls of the medicae tank shapes moved to and fro. They might have been other Astartes, perhaps come to observe this curiosity, this warrior back from the dead, this soul in limbo – or perhaps they were just servitors, going about their tasks, making sure Tarikus did not perish. Not yet.
He did not have permission to die. Aquila had not granted it.
The Doom Eagle looked inside himself and dared to wonder what a real death might feel like. He had been close to that abyss so many times, but never fallen to it; and now, in this moment of great darkness he dared to wonder if death would be the better end for him. If he had perished aboard the hospitaller ship, or perhaps in the cells of the Dynikas prison, then all that happened now would not have come to pass. Tarikus’s Chapter would continue on, untroubled by the aberration of his chance survival. The pestilent questions would not have been asked. Constancy would not be challenged.
He felt hollow inside. In his prison cell, whenever he could snatch a moment away from the eyes of the mutant guards and the modificate freaks, he had prayed to the Golden Throne that he might live to see home once more. And in all that time, he had never once thought that he would not be trusted by his own kinsmen.
Conflict raged inside him. At once he hated Thryn and the others for daring to doubt him, but at the same moment he understood why they did so. If matters had been different, if it had been Zurus returning to Gathis and not Tarikus, then what choices would he have made in the same place? What questions would Tarikus have demanded answers for?
It came to him that the only way he would be able to prove himself would be to give up the last breath in his body. In death, truth could not be hidden.
The door to the psyker’s sanctum opened on oiled pistons and a grave voice issued out from the darkness inside. ‘Enter, Zurus. If you must.’
Zurus did as he was bid. Thryn’s meditation chamber was little bigger than the accommodation cell where the sergeant laid his head, but it had the illusion of depth thanks to the strange jumble of shadows cast by electro-candles atop a series of iron stands, each at the corner of a mathematical shape carved into the floor.
Thryn rose from a kneeling cushion and pushed aside a fan of imager plates. Zurus glanced at them and saw only unreadable texts and oddly blurred images. He swallowed and failed to hide a grimace. The air in here was strange, almost oily, but with an acid tingle on the bare flesh of his face and hands.
Thryn glared at him. The psyker was in his wargear, and about his head in a blue-white halo, the crystalline matrix of a psionic hood glowed softly. ‘You’re interrupting my preparations, brother. And you have no good reason.’
Zurus met his hard look with one of his own. ‘I have every reason–’ he began.
‘I’ll save you the trouble of explaining yourself to me, shall I?’ snapped the Librarian. ‘You’ve been swayed by Tarikus. You’ve listened to his men, and felt their anxiety for their former commander’s fate.’ He turned away. ‘And as you have never truly felt content as the leader of Tarikus’s former squad, you wish to have him return to our fold so you can be free of your conflicts. Is that close to the truth?’
Zurus bristled at the other warrior’s tone. ‘You make us sound like mewling, weak children! You mock men who dare to show compassion and loyalty to their brothers!’
‘Pragmatism is the watchword of the Doom Eagles,’ Thryn continued. ‘We do not let matters of sentimentality cloud our vision.’
‘You think fidelity is something to be dismissed, witch-kin?’ Zurus advanced on him. ‘Is your warp-touched heart so empty that you forget your bonds of brotherhood?’
‘I have forgotten nothing,’ Thryn replied. ‘But some must bear the burden to voice the questions that no others can utter. Some must dare to speak the hard words that no brother wishes to hear!’ He turned to face him, the psy-crystals flickering. ‘This obligation is mine. I will see it to its end.’
Zurus’s shoulders sagged. ‘How much further must this go? You have looked into his mind – tell me, have you sensed the taint of Chaos in his thoughts?’
Thryn shook his head. ‘I have not.’
‘And the testing of his flesh, first the Talons and then the wind and ice. Did his body belie the touch of the Archenemy at any time?’
‘It did not,’ intoned the Librarian.
‘Then how can you let this go on? Tarikus is not corrupted!’
Thryn nodded. ‘I agree.’ It was not the answer Zurus was expecting. Before he could speak again, the psyker continued. ‘I agree that his mind and his body are sound. But it is not those that I seek to test, brother. It is his soul. That which is the most ephemeral, yet the most powerful element of a life.’ Thryn sighed, and something of the bleak aspect of his face softened. ‘We know the insidious ways of Chaos, the Emperor blight them. Tarikus may carry a seed of darkness within him and never know it. It has happened before. He may live out a long life, and then one day, at an appointed time, or at some word of command, be transformed into something horrific. All that, if the smallest sliver of warp-stigma lies buried in his aura.’
Zurus frowned. ‘The only way to be sure is to kill him, is that what you mean? If you end him and he erupts into some hell beast, you are proven right. If he dies, then he was innocent and just, and goes to the Emperor’s side.’ He snorted. ‘A poor choice for Tarikus on either account.’
‘This matter cannot be brought to a close while doubt still exists,’ insisted Thryn.
‘Then you’ll do it?’ Zurus snapped. ‘And not just the little-death this time, but a cold-blooded murder?’
‘Lord Hearon has granted me latitude to do whatever I must to end this uncertainty. And I will end it, this day.’ Thryn returned to the centre of the room and knelt once more.
Zurus felt the tingle on his skin of psy-power in the air, the near-storm sense of it growing by the second. ‘What will you do?’
Thryn bowed his head. ‘Go now, brother. You will know soon enough.’
He lingered at the threshold for a long moment, then stepped through and allowed the hatch to close behind him. Cogs worked and seals fell into place, and Zurus stood outside, staring at the strange hexagrammatric wards etched into the metal, wondering what final trial Tarikus was about to face.
A sound came to him, echoing down the stone corridor. It sounded like thunder, but it could just as easily have been the report of distant shellfire.
Tarikus awoke, and he was in hell.
He fell hard, the rough metal plating of the floor rising up to slam into his knees and arms. He groaned and coughed up a river of stinging bile and thick amnio-fluid. Black streaks of blood threaded the ejecta from his lips. The warrior felt strange; his body seemed wrong, the impulses from his fingertips somehow out of synchrony with the rest of his nerves. He tried to shake himself free of the sensation but it would not leave him. Tarikus’s flesh hung on him like an ill-fitting suit of clothes.
He looked up and blinked, his eyes refusing to focus properly. Lights and shadows jumped around him, blurring into shapes that he could not define. Something hove close and he perceived a h
and reaching out to him, offering assistance.
‘Here,’ said a thick, resinous voice. ‘To your feet. Come. There is much work to do.’
He took the grip, and felt peculiar talons where fingers should have been; but he was already rising, legs working, muscles tightening.
Light flashed, too slow to be storm-glow, the thunder-pulse with it too quick, too near. Gunfire? The sluggish thought trickled down through the layers of his awareness.
Tarikus jerked his hand away. ‘Who are you? What is happening?’
Harsh laughter answered him. ‘So many questions. Be still, warrior. All will be made clear.’ One of the shadows came closer, looming large. ‘Don’t fight it, Tarikus. Let it happen.’ He heard another low, callous chuckle. ‘It will be less painful.’
There was heat at his back, burning and steady like the beating of a pitiless sun; and in the air about him, he perceived motes of dust falling in a slow torrent. He saw steel walls. Chains and broken glass. ‘What is happening?’ he shouted, but his words were lost in the blazing roar of a weapon. He knew that sound: a heavy bolter on full automatic fire, impacts cutting into flesh and ceramite.
‘You have done well,’ he was told. ‘Better than we could have expected. You opened the way for us.’ The shadow-man came closer. ‘Our perfect weapon.’
‘What?’ Tarikus raised his hands in self-defence. ‘I do not understand–’
‘Then look at me,’ said the voice. ‘And know the truth.’
The light chose that moment to come again, and in its hard-edged, unflinching glare Tarikus saw a thing that resembled an Astartes, but one made of flayed meat, broken bone and corroded iron. A face of gallows-pale flesh leered at him and twisted in amusement. Beneath it, on the figure’s chest, was the design of a star with eight razor-tipped points.
‘Traitor!’ Tarikus shouted the word.
The corrupted warrior nodded. ‘Yes, you are.’
He stumbled backwards, shaking his head. His skull felt heavy and leaden. ‘No…’