Soul Drinker

by Ben Counter

  Wordlessly, the three strode into a small cartographic cham­ber, where a large star map glimmered beneath the glass top of a table. Other hand-drawn maps were displayed on the walls or rolled up in racks, for Callisthenes Van Skorvold had counted such tilings amongst his collecting passion.

  Onto the star chart table Sarpedon placed the ceremonial golden chalice that hung at his belt. It was old and despite his dutiful care of all his equipment there was a cordon of tar­nish building up around the deep carvings. It had been presented to him upon his ascension from scholar-novice to Librarian, more than seventy years before - a time that felt so distant that Sarpedon sometimes wondered if he had been the same man at all. It was as if he had always been a Librar­ian of the Soul Drinkers, his life a cycle of battle and honour-reaping, his driving force a fierce devotion to the eradication of the enemy and an unbreakable code of martial dignity.

  Michairas took a canister from his belt, the type used by the apothecaries when transporting samples of unusual xenos the Soul Drinkers had fought. In it was a mass of pulpy tissue, taken from the brain stem of the huge mutant Tellos had fought and slain. It would have been improper for Tellos to carry it himself for he had already taken one trophy - a massive horn shorn from the beast's brow.

  The bloody, pulpy matter was poured into the chalice and Sarpedon took it in his gauntleted hand.

  'Know your enemy.' intoned Tellos. They were the only words permitted to be spoken in this ceremony, an ancient and hallowed one, yet one kept small and simple to ensure clarity of mind.

  As commander, it was now Sarpedon's right to observe the soul of the vanquished foe. He tipped his head back and poured the semi-liquid mass down his throat. Swallowing it, he placed the chalice back on the table and ran through the mental exercises that would begin the rite.

  There was a spirit's eye inside him that saw what the phys­ical senses could not. He imagined it opening, drinking in the light after so much darkness, careful not to blind it with the glare of knowledge. There was a warm electric sensation in his stomach and he knew it was working.

  He felt a film over his body like dirt that wouldn't wash off. His limbs were clumsy and ungainly - there was an unclean taste in his mouth and a dull churning in his ears. He glanced around the room and saw his two brother Marines as if through a gauze, their faces distorted, the room's many maps shifting and untrue. His organs were tight and ill-fitting - he felt wrong, completely wrong, like a picture of a man drawn by a child, ugly and crude. A pressure bore down on him - the rest of humanity, this whole universe, that felt such revulsion at him that it had imprinted itself on his very soul and pressed like a weight on his shoulders. He was human, but less. He was alive, but didn't feel it.

  He was unclean, bathed only in shadow where the light of the Golden Throne should be. He couldn't get out - he was trapped here in this tainted existence, trapped forever. He felt panic rising in him, for he would be like this forever until death, and after death there was nothing. Nothing, just the blank finality of knowing that he was not even supposed to have been born...

  With a start, he slammed the eye shut again and his vision lost its dirty tint. Michairas looked worried, for he had not witnessed the ceremony of the chalice before and Sarpedon must have appeared weak and scared in a way not proper for a Space Marine. But it had been worth it. He knew his enemy that little bit more, and knowledge was power in war.

  Due to the Soul Drinkers' gene-seed the omophagea, the organ implanted in every novice during his conversion to a Space Marine, was different to that of most other Chapters. Its purpose was to absorb racial memories and psycho-genetic traces from ingested organic matter - allowing the Marine to gain intelligence on how to use the enemy's weapons, into their beliefs and morale, sometimes even bat­tle plans and troop locations. The Soul Drinkers' omophagea was overactive compared to those of other Marines, deliver­ing an experience both more intense and less precise. It was one of the cornerstones of the Soul Drinkers' beliefs that they could experience the thoughts and feelings of their enemies and come out sane and uncorrupted, furnished as much with disdain for their inhumanity as with knowledge of their behaviour.

  And it had served well here. Sarpedon had felt the mutant's uncleanliness, the sin inherent in its existence. Huge and mighty it had been, but without duty or purpose. It believed in nothing and survived only for the sake of existing. They were better off dead - he and his Marines had done them a favour this day by sending so many of them to the inky black­ness of death.

  'I am well, brothers. My gratitude for attending upon this ceremony. But though the victory has been won it is not yet complete.' He flickered a retinal icon and his vox-link switched to the all-squads frequency. 'Soul Drinkers, with­draw patrols and muster inside the primary defences. It is time.'

  CALLISTHENES VAN SKORVOLD had not held out for long. Once Sarpedon had picked him up by the throat and held him up against the wall of the shell, he had told them everything - the many and various crimes committed by his sister in maintaining her profits, the illicit dealings made to assemble his collection, and many other things that Sarpedon would rather not have heard. Callisthenes had proven himself to be that particular type of criminal who commits wrongs through boredom and idle curiosity rather than the urge to survive, and whose depravations become gradually worse until he is no better than the heretic in the gutter.

  Sarpedon wasn't interested in any of this. But in the mid­dle of his garbled confessions Callisthenes Van Skorvold had mentioned the star fort's brig dating from its days as a PDF orbital defence platform, which had been refurbished and expanded by generations of Van Skorvolds into a solid vault for keeping prized valuables. It was this brig that eventually became the home to Callisthenes's collection of tech and alien curiosities. This was what the Soul Drinkers had come for. And though it had cost them the life of the commander, it was where they would enter the annals of the Chapter's glo­rious deeds.

  Sarpedon had led a strike force through the tangle of con­duits and machinery and into the location of the brig. The Chapter serfs went with them, cutting gear at the ready, along with Tech-Marine Lygris. The mutant defences were, as sus­pected, non-existent, but they were closing in on the location of the Objective Ultima and there was no excuse for laxity. The Soul Drinkers approached the great metal slab of the brig cautiously, and in strength.

  When they arrived, the things they saw were enough to take even a Space Marine's breath away.

  'Do you think we could take a prize of conquest, sir?' It was Luko's voice, breaking the hush as only he could. This was only the first vault of the star fort's brig and with one glance they had seen enough decadence to elicit horror and admira­tion in equal measure. There was no denying it - some of this was beautiful, and that was what made it dangerous.

  The floor was carpeted a deep blue and the walls hung with tapestries. Spotlights in the ceiling picked out glass display cases in which glimmered some of Callisthenes Van Skorvold's beloved collection. One case held half-a-dozen antique pistols, one an extraordinary compact melta-weapon, another with multiple barrels and a chunk of glowing crystal for ammunition. There were statues of women with insect heads and semi-humanoid figures made from petrified vines like bundles of snakes. There was a com­posite bow of horn and matt grey metal as long as a Marine was tall, with a quiver of arrows tipped with barbed reptilian teeth, and a suit of armour made with sheets of diamond and silver links.

  The Marines waited for Sarpedon's lead. He stepped through the massive brushed metal vault door and into the room, his psychically sensitive mind fairly humming with the cold, sharp resonances of rarity and high technology. He felt uncomfortable - there was too much unknown here, too much forbidden. He decided that much of this would be taken to the flamer as soon as they were done, and that Luko would be castigated for suggesting the Chapter sully itself with xenos tech and forbidden devices, even in jest. They were no experts in archeotech, and they had no way of knowing what was dangerous. Better destroy it al
l than risk impurity.

  'Librarian Sarpedon?' came a voice over the vox-net, crack­ling with distortion as the signal passed through the massive bulkheads of the star fort's inner structures. 'Squad Vorts. We're encountering civilians here.'

  'Civilians?'

  'Cargo, sir. Slaves or prisoners.'

  'I thought there was no cargo on the star fort. There were no transports docked.'

  'Must be runaways, sir, escaped from the transports. We've got a civilian named Yser, seems to be some kind of priest for them. Sounds like they want to help.'

  Vorts and about half the Soul Drinkers were deployed in concentric rings of mobile defence around the vaults. There was little danger of the shattered defenders mounting a con­certed counter-attack but the Marines had already lost a commander to a treacherous slay and no more chances were being taken. The assault had taken place when there were no large prisoner transports docking to avoid cargo humans get­ting in the way, but it seemed like there were some on the station anyway - runaways who had made their homes in the guts of the station.

  Sarpedon didn't have time for this. He wanted to end this now, before the dark clouds gathering over the mission began to rain further misfortune. 'Relay to all defensive units. Keep civilians clear. We shall be gone soon and we can ill afford complications. Leave any dregs for the Guard to deal with.'

  A sequence of acknowledgement runes flickered. A troop of serf-labourers and Tech-Marine Lygris had filtered through the exhibits and were working on a couple of massive techno-locked doors at the far end of the first hall.

  The labourers kept their eyes from the exhibits, knowing that undue curiosity would earn them the severest of repri­mands. They were a good example of what even lesser-quality humans could do, thought Sarpedon - owned by the Chapter from birth and schooled to respect their superiors in all things. A crypto-drone skimmed behind Lygris and settled like a fat insect on the glowing runepad of the first door, bands of light across its curved metal body flickering as it worked on the door code algorithms. There was a beeping sound and a deep thunk as the restraining bolt drew back.

  As the serfs attached chains to the door and prepared to haul it open, Sarpedon glanced again at some of the objects Callisthenes had assembled. Beside him hung a banner seemingly woven from hundreds of shades of human hair, and a perfect replica human skull carved from deep crimson stone the lustre of jade. Callisthenes Van Skorvold had col­lected an astounding range of forbidden objects in his lifetime - how many alien slavers and noble degenerates had he dealt with to do it?

  Sarpedon could not deny many of these things were beau­tiful, but he could feel the corruption that surrounded them.

  These trinkets would not deceive the Emperor's chosen war­riors as they had Callisthenes Van Skorvold.

  The door was open. At Sarpedon's signal the closest tactical squads stalked carefully through the vault, wary of traps or ambushes. He would not put it past the Van Skorvolds to sac­rifice some of their prized possessions just to spite the Emperor's servants.

  The door opened on a corridor lined with cages in which scuttled a small alien menagerie, hooting and chattering. Sarpedon stopped the tactical squads and waved forward Brother Zaen, flamer-bearer in Luko's squad. Zaen stepped carefully into the corridor past eight-legged monkeys and birds with feathers of glass. Sarpedon saw a pair of servitors trundling along the carpeted floor of the corridor, simple waist-high automata designed to deposit pellets into feed bowls and scrape the cage floors free of excrement. It had doubtless pleased Callisthenes Van Skorvold to have a private zoo beyond the doors of the brig, maintained by servitors, where even servants would not be permitted.

  'Threat nil,' voxed Zaen.

  Sarpedon followed him and felt the crude thoughts of the animals. He could not receive any impressions from intelli­gent creatures, for he was a transmitter rather than a receiver and intelligence was too complex and fluid for him to pick up. Nothing here had enough cunning to do them harm from within their cages. He considered flaming them anyway, but that would slow them down and he wanted the objective recovered as quickly as prudence would allow. A tiny pair of sapphire-blue eyes glared at him from within a symbiotic knot of snakes and something half-plant whumped at him dolefully. Callisthenes had strange tastes.

  The corridor opened up into a room with walls of brushed steel, large but shadowy and sparse. A single spotlight shone down on a simple table in the centre of the room.

  On the table was the Objective Ultima: the Soulspear.

  THE STORY WAS carved into the walls of the chapels and medi­tation cells throughout the fortress-monastery that was spread out across the Soul Drinkers' fleet. It was the first thing the recruits learned before they were ground down by pun­ishing training and volatile chemo-engineering until there were but a handful left fit to become novices. In the origins of the Chapter could be found the seed for the fierce martial pride that became a fundamental part of every Marine. With­out it, they were less than nothing. With it, they could not be stopped.

  Rogal Dorn, the perfect man created by the Emperor as the greatest of his primarchs, gave his genetic blueprint to the Imperial Fists legion that followed him like sons into battle. Ten thousand years before Sarpedon first shed his novice's habit and took up the armour of a full Soul Drinker, the Impe­rial Fists had fought on the very battlements of the Emperor's Palace on Terra against the besieging forces of the Traitor legions under Horus. Abbots taught children the tales of that terrible conflict in the Schola Progenia, and it became legend to the untold billions who swore fealty to the Imperium.

  When Horus was slain and the rebellion broken, the remaining loyal legions were broken up into Chapters so no man would have power over so many Space Marines at any one time. Dorn knew the pride his sons took in the glory of the Imperial Fists, and fought to have his legion left intact. But he bowed to his fellow primarchs, and his Marines became a multitude of Chapters, one retaining the name of the Imperial Fists, the others taking on new names and her­aldry, ready to forge new paths into Imperial history.

  Crimson Fists. Black Templars... Soul Drinkers.

  To each of them was given a symbol of their sacred pur­pose, gifted by Dorn himself so they would remember that his spirit was with them always, that his glory was theirs also. The Soul Drinkers, formed from the fleet-based shock attack elements of his legion, received the Soulspear. Dorn himself had found it on a dark and lonely world during the Great Crusade - with it he had speared great warp-beasts and from it had hung his banner on a hundred worlds reconquered in the Emperor's name.

  Such a tale was taught to the recruits brought in by the Chaplains before they were put through the savage meat grinder of selection, so they would have some inkling of the ideals for which they were suffering.

  Sarpedon had been taught it himself, as had all the Marines under his command. He had come through the fire and the agony of selection and training, received the Space Marine's new organs and psycho-doctrination. Through it all, the Soulspear had been a symbol to hold on to - and for his generation, something more: a reason for vengeance, a cata­lyst for the sacred hatred that served a Marine so well in the fires of battle.

  For the Soulspear had been lost for a thousand years, since the Soul Drinkers' flagship Sanctifier had been lost on a warp jump. Now it had been found in the collection of a degener­ate who had no comprehension of its true significance. With their commander dying, it was Sarpedon who would bring it back to his Chapter's embrace.

  THE SOULSPEAR WAS as long as a man's forearm, gloss black, and inlaid with intricate circuitry that shifted and changed before the eye. There were smooth indentations where fingers far larger than a normal man's would fit, each one with a laser-needle surrounded by a ring of gene-sensitive psychoplastic.

  Even Callisfhenes had seen enough in its simple elegance to give it a chamber to itself. But to Sarpedon it shone like a beacon of hope, rage and righteousness, as if everything he had fought for - his Emperor, his primarch, the place of man
kind at the head of the galaxy and the sacred plan that would lead to humanity's ascendancy - was embodied in this one sublime artefact.

  Zaen froze beside him, and Sarpedon could sense he was holding his breath in awe. The Tactical Marines following were similarly dumbstruck.

  'Prep the corvus pods to disengage.' he voxed quietly. 'We have found Objective Ultima and are ready to withdraw.' Then, on the local frequency - 'Squad Luko, Squad Hastis, with me. Honour guard duty.'

  Then, the world turned black.

  HE SHOOK THE darkness out of his head and tried to get his bearings - he was down on the floor, half-lying on his back with Zaen beneath him. He heard confusion welling up around him as his inner ear recovered from the massive Shockwave of noise that had washed over him.

  A bomb? That would be just like the Van Skorvolds. But the Tech-Marines had swept the place. It was possible but unlikely. What, then?

  His vision returned and the dimness sharpened before him. Then light, bright and sudden. He hauled himself further upright and saw he had been thrown halfway back up the cor­ridor - the cages were smashed and any alien creatures still alive were scampering about in confusion. He could hear the pinking of breaking glass as Marines picked themselves up from the glass-strewn floor of the first chamber, where they had been blasted back through the display cases.

  There were figures moving ahead. Dark, cloaked, a dozen of them crowding the Soulspear room. Rust-red with hooded faces.

  Not a bomb then... a teleporter - but how? Teleporter technology was rare in the extreme, and the Soul Drinkers' own such devices had not worked for centuries. Not only that, but this was a small, precise target in the heart of a large and complex space station. It was madness, no one could do it.

  There was a greasy reek in the air and Sarpedon spotted knots of twitching flesh on the floor of the room, tangled with scraps of dark red fabric and twists of metal. Some of the arrivals had not arrived intact: whoever had activated the device had been willing to lose some men in getting them here.