by Ben Counter
An explosion bloomed towards the stern of the Glory, where the fuel pods fed into the reactors. A white ring of fire suddenly burst from the heart of the ship and sheared it in two, spouting burning fuel and debris. Two of the strike cruisers were caught in the expanding disc of plasma-fire and had their hulls ripped open like foil. Another charge blew the prow off the Carnivore - with its structure terminally violated the ship imploded, the shock of its death spewing storms of hull fragments tens of kilometres into space.
Slowly, silently, the Soul Drinkers' fleet died. Charges carefully planted at the key points shattered power feeds and cracked open reactor cores. It took perhaps an hour for the destruction to unfold, and Sarpedon watched it all until the end.
They had saved what they could - records, equipment, the librarium and apothecarion, several serf-labour battalions. But there must have been so much lost that the Soul Drinkers Chapter that had once existed could be said to have died, and a new Chapter to have taken its place.
That was how it should be. They were not Imperial Space Marines any more - they were beholden to no one save the Emperor, who voiced His approval through the visions and miracles granted to them. At last, the Soul Drinkers were free. At last, they could begin to redeem themselves after centuries of pandering to the tyranny of the Imperium.
When all that remained of the fleet was a handful of burned-out husks, Sarpedon and Lygris watched them drift for a while, feeling the weight of history lifting off their shoulders. All these years, they had been nothing. But now they could start again, and this time they would carry the light of the Emperor into the darkness.
'Lord Sarpedon.' crackled a voice in a vox-interrupt burst. 'Sergeant Salk here, supervising labour unit secundus. We're working on a machine-spirit housing in the Sector Indigo and we've uncovered an anomaly. Requesting specialist assistance, technical and medical. And a Chaplain.'
'A Chaplain?'
'Yes, sir. I believe we are in the presence of a moral threat.'
Sarpedon snapped the link shut and opened another net-wide channel. He felt his pulse quickening. 'Sarpedon to all points. Specialists to Sector Indigo. Moral threat, moral threat.' The Soul Drinkers had done a thorough job in scouring the Brokenback for anything suspicious, but there had always been a possibility something had survived here. No chances could be taken.
'Lygris, with me,' said Sarpedon. 'I want to see this for myself.' His multitude of limbs gave him far greater ground speed than another Marine and he soon left Lygris behind as he hurried across the observation gallery and down along the ceiling of the corridor.
SECTOR INDIGO WAS a research ship, a squat blocky craft filled with galleries of man-sized specimen jars full of milky fluid. The markings of the Adeptus Mechanicus Xenobiologis were on every piece of equipment, and the bridge bristled with mind-impulse units for the crew. But there was nothing alive on die ship and everything had been perfectly preserved by the craft's sterilized air systems, even after the ship had been swallowed by the bulk of the Brokenback.
The machine-spirit was the prize here. It was held in a ceramo-plastic core just behind the bridge - a room-filling sphere of circuitry, its surface studded with valves and slots for punch cards. Initial inspection had suggested it was something beyond the scope of the Mechanicus to create from scratch, and if it could be made to work it might provide a means to control primary systems all over the Brokenback.
So Sergeant Salk went with labour unit secundus to open it up so the Tech-Marines could start working on it.
That was when they found the moral threat.
SARPEDON WAS QUICK but mere was already an apothecary, Karendin, at the scene when he arrived, tending to the wounded serf-labourers in one of the specimen-cargo bays.
'What is our situation, Karendin?'
'Bad, sir.' Karendin was one of the youngest Soul Drinkers to side with Sarpedon - newly inducted into the ranks of the apothecarion, the Chapter war had been a baptism of blood for him. 'We've lost a half-dozen of the labourers.' He looked down at the body lying at his feet - its face had been half-scoured away by acid, which had left an ugly green-black crust around the edges of the wounds. The serf was breathing his last, and four others were lying beside the specimen containers with whole limbs, heads or torsos seared away. A dangerous, acrid smell drifted from the bow of the ship.
'And Salk?'
'By the machine-spirit core, sir. In case it tries to get out.'
Sarpedon hurried up the specimen gallery to where Salk was crouched by the sealed bulkhead, bolter ready, with two of the remaining labourers. Salk's armour was scored and pitted with acid burns.
'Bad, sergeant?'
Salk saluted hurriedly. 'We opened up the sphere and something fired. It took down half the serfs before we got out, nearly took me. It is not my place to suggest such things, commander, but I think it's possessed.'
Sarpedon glanced at the black metal bulkhead door - he could feel the wrongness beyond it, as strong as the reek of decay.
'Commander!' called Lygris as he sprinted down from the specimen gallery. 'Reinforcements are heading in. Three squads from Sector Gladius. Five minutes.'
'Too long. It's awake now, if we give it any more time it could break out or grow stronger.' Sarpedon drew his force staff. He had only just finished scrubbing the filth off it from the encounter with the genestealer, now it would taste corrupt blood again.
'Serf?' said Sarpedon, and one of the labourers hurried up. 'Open it on my mark.'
The labourer put his weight behind the black metal wheel lock. The surface of the door was creaking and bulging beside him.
'Mark.'
The serf rammed the wheel round and died, the door bursting open and vomiting a gout of grey-green acid over him. Sarpedon and Lygris were quicker by far, diving down and to the side as the billowing filth rolled over them.
The air inside would be toxic. But a Space Marine, with his extra biomechanical lung and rebreather implants, could hold his breath for many minutes. There were no excuses.
Sarpedon scuttled over the dissolving body of the serf and into the machine-spirit room, Lygris at his shoulder. The circuitry sphere was half-open, one hemisphere peeled aside. Inside, like the heart of a rotting fruit, was a pit of green-black corruption bubbling with heat and malevolence, spitting gobbets of corrosion and exuding a wave of toxic air.
Sarpedon ran onto the cylindrical wall of the room as Lygris threw a frag grenade into the corrupt core. The dripping filth swallowed the grenade and dissolved it before it could go off.
'Flamers to Sector Indigo!' voxed Lygris. 'Now!'
'Four minutes.' came the reply. Givrillian's voice, realised Sarpedon. Good.
The rear of the sphere was mostly intact, but the plates of its surface were beginning to work loose and green-brown rivulets of ichor were running from the card-slots. By the Emperor, he could feel it, the waves of hatred, the sheer malice of the thing. There was no intelligence here that could have been able to create an emotion - and yet it hated still, as if it was nothing but a receptacle for that hate.
He drove the force staff through the circuitry skin and into the thing's heart. He felt the semi-liquid machinery shredded by the staffs head, but the thing's hatred did not die.
Lygris was pumping shells into it. He must have known this was no mortal enemy that could be killed by bullets. He was trying to distract it, to give Sarpedon the time to kill it for real. Lygris, seemingly like all the Soul Drinkers, had utter faith in Sarpedon's abilities - they had seen the light of the Emperor streaming from him, and the gifts. He had granted their new Chapter Master. Sarpedon hoped he could live up to their trust.
Sarpedon gripped the arunwood tight and channelled his psychic force into the staff, trying to break the thing's grip on life. The waves of malice shuddered, shifted, grew more powerful but less focused.
What was it? Alien? There were tales of creatures that could usurp control of technology. But would they project such horribly fa
miliar, human hatred?
The arunwood squirmed in his grasp as it was repelled by the wrongness of the thing in the machine-spirit core. Sarpedon strode up the wall and onto the ceiling, dragging a long gouge in the core's surface through which bilious filth poured.
Lygris ducked to one side as a tongue of acidic gore spat out at him, lashing deep into the opposite wall with a hiss. The Tech-Marine rolled as he landed, crushing the sorry remains of the final serf-labourer before he came to his knees and pulled a wire from the back of his neck.
'Lygris, no! It'll kill you!' Sarpedon didn't want to risk using up his breath with speech, but he knew what Lygris was trying to do and he knew it would fail. He had barely survived the machine-spirit on the Geryon, and that was but a fraction of the 674-XU28 full consciousness. This was an alien infection or deliberate techno-heresy of some kind, and it would rip his mind apart.
'Hurt it for me, Lord Sarpedon!' came the reply, just before Lygris jammed the cable jack into an infoport and flopped insensible to the floor.
Sarpedon yelled, not caring if there was anything left in his lungs, and plunged his staff-wielding hand up to the elbow into the machine-spirit core. Ichor and entrail-like machinery wrapped around his arm and dragged him further in. Sarpedon twisted the staff head, felt the thing's scream of pain, and knew what he must do.
Lygris convulsed on the floor. Now it was Sarpedon's turn to distract the hideous intelligence, so Lygris might at least have a chance.
ARE YOU IN here? thought Lygris. Are you in here? For if you are not, then all is lost.
I am here, something replied through the din of blasphemous screams. But I cannot fight it.
It is hurting, replied Lygris. We are wounding it deeply, my lord and I. But we cannot kill it without your help, Sector Indigo.
I know. But it is so strong. When I was the research ship Bellerophon, mapped systems unseen by man and catalogued species never even comprehended before. Now I am small and frightened. It is nothing but corruption, Tech-Marine Lygris. It is a specter of corrosion, utterly without remorse, and it has defeated me at every turn.
But it can be beaten, said Lygris. I can show you the way. I can help you. While it is blind with pain, you can cut the primary power feed to the machine-spirit core, where its physical presence resides, and you will starve it to death.
Yes, I can, Tech-Marine Lygris. But if I do this thing, I will die too, for the core is where my mem-banks also reside.
But it will be dead. You can know that in ceasing to exist, you have destroyed a great and terrible thing. You can have revenge, Sector Indigo. Are you willing to make that sacrifice?
Tech-Marine Lygris, this creature is the enemy of everything for which I once strove. You should know, as a Space Marine, that when there is a choice between life and revenge, there is really no choice at all.
SARPEDON WRESTLED WITH the glutinous foulness that threatened to swallow him whole. He was up to his shoulders and his front two legs were thrust deep into the corrosive body of the spirit core, trying to hold his torso out of the quagmire. He held the force staff with both hands now, using both ends to gouge away while the thing fought to wrest it from him.
The armour on his forearms was mostly gone. Already his hands and wrists were burning where the armour seals had been eaten away and acid was leaking in. But the creature was angry now, focused entirely on him. If there was anything Lygris could do, it could be done now, for the monster's back was effectively turned while Sarpedon battled with it.
If it survived, it could escape and have the run of the rest of the Brokenback. The whole Chapter was at stake, then. That made the situation simple - Sarpedon would win or die.
Then there was something else. Fear.
The lights in the room guttered and died. And suddenly Lygris was beside him, the cable still snaking from his neck, slamming his bolter into the rents Sarpedon had opened up, firing explosive rounds into the core.
The thing screamed in terror as blackness opened up all around it, the bottom of its world falling away as the power drained from the core. It fought to the very end, but with its life force hemorrhaging it was no match for the combined anger of two Space Marines and its guts were shredded by bolter and staff.
Sarpedon and Lygris emerged from the machine-spirit room just over three minutes after they had gone in, covered in gore and acid burns, gasping for the relatively clean air of the specimen deck. They met the first of the reinforcements coming in, bearing flamers and plasma guns to cleanse the chamber. Karendin immediately left the dying serfs and saw to the wounds of his commander, as Salk directed the flamer troops in scouring the spirit core room.
Givrillian strode up to where Karendin was peeling the armour from Sarpedon's blackened arms. Givrillian's scar was a bright livid red and the old wound had opened up - from between folds of rent skin peered a half-dozen eyes which glanced here and there constantly. They gave the already grizzled Givrillian even more presence and importance - the sergeant's alteration was just one more of the many uncanny gifts the Architect of Fate had granted the Soul Drinkers.
'Commander, are you hurt badly?'
Sarpedon shook his head. 'A few courses of synthiflesh will suffice. I have had much worse.'
'Sergeant Givrillian,' said Lygris, his voice harsh from the rawness of his gas-burned throat. 'What we fought was in there for a purpose. I don't think it was xenos, either. If I may make a suggestion, I would have you gather the Tech-Marines and librarium adepts and find out what information remains in there.'
'Agreed.' said Sarpedon. 'If there is another force on the Brokenback, we must know of it.'
Givrillian saluted and moved off to prepare for the investigation.
Lygris turned to Sarpedon. 'It was trying to take over, commander. And it wasn't doing it for its own benefit.'
Mutant.
A month had passed since the machine-spirit in Sector Indigo had been purged. In that time the exploration of the Brokenback had continued, the mem-banks salvaged from the fleet now being filled with information about the Chapter's new home. There had been sixteen separate component craft identified - some were rotted husks, others as clean and pristine as the day they sailed off their manufactoria docks. There was a flight of pre-heresy fighter craft fused and welded into a jagged starburst of metal, and an orbital generatorium platform that the Tech-Marines were activating and re-routing to power the hulk's myriad warp drives, and a ship-bound Schola Progenium habitat being divided into monastic cells. The hulk was gradually being mapped and adapted - soon, it would be as formidable a fortress-monastery as any Chapter could claim to possess.
Sarpedon's wounds had been severe but they had been quick to heal. The charred, blackened skin on his forearms had flaked away to reveal strong new flesh. The weeping acid burns that ran right up his arachnoid legs had been washed clean with the apothecaries' balms and now only tough ridges of chitinous scar remained. The sinews that had burned away grew back over a matter of days, and the rugged exoskeletal limbs were packed with new-grown muscle.
And that was, perhaps, the problem. As Sarpedon walked through the cavernous gun decks that formed a giant cavity within the body of the Brokenback, he knew that the strength he felt all throughout him was something not entirely natural.
Mutant. They had used the word to his face when the Chapter had fended off meltdown in the days following his victory over Gorgoleon. Michairas had gurgled it as Sarpedon strangled the life out of him - mutant: unclean, an aberration, a sinner by its mere existence. It was one of the gravest insults that could be slung at a fellow Space Marine, and Sarpedon had killed many of them for it. And yet on one level he could understand them, if not forgive them.
The gun decks had once bellowed the fiery rage of an Imperial battleship, the same craft that formed perhaps half the bulk of the Brokenback's forward sections. The ship's name, Macharia Victrix, was struck onto every bulkhead and stanchion, for this was once a proud ship which, judging by the kill
tallies etched into the gun casings, had fought the misguided fight of the Imperial cause for many centuries. But at some point it had become lost and the Brokenback had swallowed it, leaving the guns to fall silent and corrode.
There were powdery piles of bones dotted in the shadows of the immense tarnished gun casings, where stranded crew had gathered in darkness as the madness of the warp took them. Some of the bones had teeth marks.
Sarpedon broke into a ran, feeling the steel-taut tendons in the joints of his legs and the bunches of muscles contracting. Eight talons struck sparks from the iron-grated floor as he sprinted and skidded, testing the limits of his altered body. There was no pain any more - it was as if the new-grown flesh was stronger still.
To an unbeliever's eyes, he must have been a monstrous sight - a spider-centaur; half-man half-arachnid. A Space Marine was fearsome enough, but Sarpedon knew he would look truly terrifying to those who had not witnessed his triumph at the Cathedral of Dorn. Those novices had not felt the true sacred strength of the Soul Drinkers, or seen the halo of the Emperor's glory that had surrounded Sarpedon at the moment of his victory. Their minds had still had room for doubt, where a true Marine knew none. They had seen a monster and assumed mat Sarpedon was a monster indeed, without feeling the magnificent truth.
But Sarpedon knew he was no monster. He knew as surely as he felt the eyes of Dorn and the Emperor upon him. For he knew what it meant to live under the taint of the mutant. He had consumed the flesh of the mutant slain by Tellos on the star fort, and remembered every detail of what he had felt - the ugliness covering him like a film of dirt, the aura of loathing that the whole universe projected towards him. The curse of the mutant was something terrible and all consuming - and Sarpedon felt none of it now. He felt only the divine strength of the Architect of Fate coursing through him, directed through his altered limbs and the newfound power in his arm.