Arxis clenched his fists impotently as the floor caved in completely, taking Lanspur with it, and a much larger insectoid lumbered into view.
Men were being flayed alive outside…
One creature, its carapace glistening silver and suggestive of an arachnid construct, became three. Sytner’s las-bolt caromed ineffectually off the hide of the first. Its mandible claw snapped out and severed the man in two. To his credit, Sytner didn’t scream.
The choirmaster did, just as his face and torso were melted off by the second spider’s beam-spike. It started as a death-shriek then ended in a wet gurgle of sloughed flesh and matter.
The rest of the command staff didn’t last much longer. Scarabs claimed them – the lord governor could think of no better way to describe the beetle swarms – or the arachnids butchered them.
Arxis was alone, surrounded by foes, trapped by the illusory protection of his own Proteus bunker.
He had time to kneel before he died; a prayer to the Emperor on his lips and the barrel of a laspistol to his temple.
When he squeezed the trigger, the weapon groaned and failed. Exhausted during those first frantic moments, the power pack was out.
Arxis closed his eyes before the claws took him.
Phalanx
Ben Counter
Chapter 5
‘It will not hurt, brother,’ said Sister Solace to Brother Sennon. In the cramped cell, once the living space of an engineer among the cavernous workings of the Phalanx, a few candles guttered, giving a struggling yellowish light. In Solace’s hands was a wide-gauge needle hooked up to a pump and an intravenous bag.
‘I do not fear pain,’ replied Sennon, who lay bare-chested on a mattress. Sweat beaded on his face in spite of his words, and his voice came from a dry throat. He had never looked younger. In the shadows he seemed a child, defying the cowardice that his youth should have brought him.
‘We need not make ourselves suffer now,’ replied Solace. ‘The time for such things is over. Let the Emperor’s kindness soothe you, and I shall make you as comfortable as possible.’
Sennon swallowed, and winced as the tip of the needle touched the vein Solace had located on the inside of his elbow. The needle slid under his skin, the pump began to work and the intravenous bag filled up. Solace hooked up a second bag, this one filled with a clear bluish liquid.
‘Speak to me, my brother,’ she said as Sennon’s eyes drifted out of focus. ‘What can you see?’
‘I see you, my sister,’ said Sennon. His throat constricted and he grimaced as he fought to breathe. Solace took his hand and squeezed. ‘I see… this place is gone. There are no walls. The Phalanx is gone.’
‘What is it? What do you see?’
‘I see… a battlefield.’ Sennon’s body relaxed and his eyes seemed to focus on a point far off, past the ceiling of the cell with its rag-tag collection of mementos from a life among the engines of the Phalanx. Cogs and valves were piled up on a shelf beneath a metal icon painted with the symbol of the Imperial Fists. A few ragged sets of protective clothing were hung up above an alcove containing three pairs of battered steel-toed boots. A paltry collection of religious verses and children’s stories filled a small cupboard beside the mattress on which Sennon lay, and on the ceiling a previous occupier had drawn images of stars and crescent moons. Sennon saw none of it. Solace thought for a moment that she could see an endless landscape of rolling plains and mountains reflected in the youth’s eyes as his pupils expanded to black pools.
‘It goes on forever,’ said Sennon, his breath hushed. ‘They are all there, all those who have died in the Emperor’s name. They are there to join him in the battle at the end of time.’
‘Tell me,’ said Sister Solace. She adjusted the pump, which hummed louder as the liquid coursed faster through Sennon’s veins. Gauges on the side of the pump read various pressures and she tried to keep them aligned. Too fast or too slow and the youth would die.
‘I see billions of them, the uniforms of the Imperial Guard,’ said Sennon. A million regiments, bayonets fixed, stretching across a world. And others too, ordinary men and women in a great throng. All the pious souls that have ever died. And at the forefront are the Adeptus Astartes, the Angels of Death!’
Solace looked up. A trickle of blood ran from Sennon’s nose. ‘As Gyranar told us?’ she asked.
‘Yes! Oh, sister, they are beautiful! Their armour gleams, and they have wings of gold on which to fly!’ Sennon’s face spread into a rapturous smile, even as blood collected in the corner of his mouth. ‘Their eyes are aflame! Mighty blades shine in their hands. But… but the Enemy is here also. The Adversary. All the foul tongues of the warp have spoken into existence an army even greater!’
Sennon’s body began to shudder. Solace took the youth’s pulse from his wrist: his heart was hammering, his face now showing an awestruck fear.
‘Speak to me of them, brother,’ said Solace. ‘There is nothing to fear in them. They cannot harm you. Speak to me.’
‘Monsters without form. Flesh turned liquid, bathed in fire. Legions of the hateful warp-spawned, like regiments on the parade ground. Things of living corruption, smothered under a blanket of flies, seething masses of filth! Mountains of rot that vomit torrents of their progeny onto the field! And worse… sister, worse things, so sinful and lascivious in form that I cannot look away! Tear my eyes from them, sister, before they infect my soul!’
‘Do not fear, brother. I am with you. The Emperor is with you. No harm can befall you, for you are under His protection. Believe in Him, believe, brother!’
‘And still more,’ continued Sennon, his voice speeding up into a near-gabble. ‘The generals and the overlords of the Adversary. They tower! Their shadows cast whole continents into darkness! Mighty horned things, wielding blades wreathed in flame! I see a beast with a hundred heads, crowned with laurels of entwined bodies. I see… I see a creature red-skinned and immense, its wings blocking out the sun, the axe in its hand oozing blood! I can see all the galaxy’s hatred in its twisted face. But it cannot harm me. Though its eyes fall on me, it cannot harm me!’
‘No,’ said Solace. ‘It cannot.’ She lacked the equipment to read Sennon’s vital signs properly, so she had to do it by eye, reading the youth’s pulse and the dilation of his pupils, the spasming of his fingers and toes, the alternating rigidity and weakness of his limbs. The Phalanx had some of the finest medicae facilities in the Imperium within its apothecarion and the sickbays used by the crew, but Solace had to do this work away from the eyes of the Imperial Fists and the Phalanx’s crewmen. It had to be done this way.
And if Sennon died, there were others. She would go through the whole Blinded Eye if she had to. If it came to it, she would do this to herself.
‘I see the gods of the warp!’ gasped Sennon. ‘Saints take my eyes! Faithful hands strip me of my senses! I see such things that creation cannot contain! Talon and hateful eye, wing and feather, an ocean of rotting flesh and the awful knotted limbs of the eternal dancer! And yet… and yet they are in shadow, cast by a far greater light…’
Solace checked the gauges. Most of Sennon’s blood was gone. The fluid that replaced it was pumping through him, but it might not be fast enough. This was the most dangerous point, where the body hovered between bleeding to death and being suffused with its replacement blood.
‘The Primarchs stand ready to command the host. Sanguinius the Angel paints his face with a million tears, one for every blood-brother who stands by his side. Russ and the Lion are side by side, their hatred for one another gone, the Wolves of Fenris and the Dark Angels standing proud. Guilliman and his host, vaster than any other army ever assembled. The Khan, the Iron-Handed One, and Vulkan, all gathered exhorting their brothers to war! And Dorn, holy Dorn, sacred Dorn, the greatest of them, I see the banner in his hands spun from the starlight of every sun within the Emperor’s domain! He is the Champion of the Emperor, the first to fight, the tip of His spear and the lightning that shall be cast down
among the enemy! He shines like gold, such a blaze of fire that the enemy are blinded and they howl in anguish at the presence of such holiness!’
Sennon gasped and his eyes rolled back. Solace grabbed his hand and squeezed it tighter. ‘Brother! Keep talking, brother! Tell me what you see! Sennon, tell me what you see!’
Sennon just gasped in response, spraying flecks of blood down his chin.
Solace scrabbled in the meagre selection of medical gear that lay on the floor around her. She found a syringe and tore its wrapping open. The syringe was pre-loaded with a fat needle as long as a finger and a steel cylinder of a body. Solace held the syringe point-down over Sennon’s chest, muttered a prayer, and stabbed down.
The needle punched between Sennon’s ribs. The liquid inside flooded into his heart and his whole body juddered as if hit with an electric shock. Solace had to lean over him and put her body weight on him to keep the needle from breaking off or tearing too big a hole in the youth’s heart. Sennon gasped, sputtering more blood. A mist of it spattered against the side of Solace’s face. His body tensed and arched, joints creaking.
Sennon slumped down again. He let out a long rattling breath from a painfully dry throat.
‘I see the Emperor,’ he murmured. ‘He tells me not to be afraid. He tells me to fight.’
Solace looked down at the gauges and readouts again. They had stabilised. The exchange was complete.
She withdrew the needle from Sennon’s arm and placed a dressing on the wound. She wiped the blood from his face with a wet cloth.
‘You will fight, my brother,’ she whispered. ‘I promise.’
In the tumult following Librarian Varnica’s evidence, Chapter Master Vladimir had called an adjournment to the trial. Sarpedon had been led back to his cell, the Imperial Fists refusing any answer to his requests to speak with Daenyathos. The alleged presence of the Philosopher-Soldier still had his mind in a whirl. The dismay that he had felt to have Abraxes’ existence revealed to the trial was a new counterpart to that confusion. Piece by piece, everything he had been sure of was falling apart.
He was grateful for the cell, though he had never thought he could think so. Its cramped walls and deadening psychic wards, smothering though they were, were preferable to the hatred that surrounded him in the courtroom. He crouched against one wall, and stared for a few minutes at the heap of crumpled papers, all that remained of his attempts to pen final words to his battle-brothers.
What could he say? What would make any difference? He had thought he would face this trial with dignity and courage, perhaps even to make his execution, when it came, a reluctant act on the part of the executioners. Now even that small victory felt very far away.
‘I will not kneel,’ he said to himself. ‘I will not despair. I am Adeptus Astartes. I will not despair.’
‘I fear for your sake, Chapter Master, that whether to despair is not your decision to make.’
Sarpedon’s eyes snapped to the opening in the cell door. It was not the voice of a Space Marine – it was a woman. This one had a note of familiarity to it, though.
Sarpedon scuttled up to the door. Beyond it, flanked by a pair of Imperial Fists with bolters at the ready, was Sister Aescarion of the Adepta Sororitas. She, like the Space Marines, wore her full armour to the trial and still had it on now, a suit of polished black ceramite emblazoned with the iconography of the Imperial Church. Her own weapon was the power axe but it was strapped to the jump pack of her armour now and she did not have it to hand. She was a full head shorter than a Space Marine for she was not augmented like them, and had a stern, angular yet handsome face with red-brown hair tied back in a ponytail.
‘I recall you from Stratix Luminae,’ said Sarpedon.
‘An encounter I would sooner forget,’ replied Aescarion.
‘None of us wish to remember the sight of an adversary who departs the battlefield alive.’
‘And you are still my adversary,’ said the Battle Sister. ‘Nothing has changed on that score. You are a traitor.’
‘And yet,’ said Sarpedon, ‘you willingly exchange words with me. It seems women are as a strange a breed of creature as men say.’
‘Not as strange as a condemned prisoner who makes light of his situation,’ said Aescarion with a withering look that had no doubt been the scourge of the Sororitas novices she had trained.
‘I trust you have not come here to swap insults, Sister,’ said Sarpedon.
Aescarion glanced at the Imperial Fists flanking her. ‘If you please,’ she said to them. ‘A few minutes are all I ask.’
‘Stay in sight,’ replied one of the Imperial Fists. The two Adeptus Astartes parted and walked several paces down the corridor outside Sarpedon’s cell, out of earshot.
‘They run a tight ship, these sons of Dorn,’ said Sarpedon, As strait-laced as they come. It must be a comfort to be in the presence of Space Marines who jump when Terra demands it.’
‘I find no comfort while enemies yet live,’ replied Aescarion sharply. ‘But I have nothing but admiration for the Imperial Fists, it is true. I find a little of my faith in humanity restored.’
‘I have faith in humanity as well, Sister. It is not the people of the Imperium I have ever had a problem with. It is the structures by which the Imperium maintains itself, clinging to existence through blood and cruelty. I have seen them over and over. And you have too, Sister Aescarion. Worlds condemned to misery or death. Freedom and rebellion given the same names and crushed beneath the mass of the shiploads of captives sent to Terra to–’
‘Enough! Do not speak of such things.’
‘And pretend, instead, that they never existed?’ Sarpedon reared up and put his face close to the window in the cell door.
‘No! Accept them as necessary for the survival of the human race, and turn our minds instead to the glory of our survival! That is how the Sororitas are taught.’
‘You think this is survival?’ Sarpedon held his arms wide, indicating not just his cell but everything beyond. ‘The human race is in its death throes! It inflicts miseries upon its people to protect them from its enemies, and yet it is those miseries that bring such enemies into being! Why do so many desperate people turn from the Emperor’s light and make pacts with the Dark Powers? Why do they cry out to be delivered and so walk right into xenos hands? The Imperium inflicts these wounds upon itself. It is nothing more than the slow death of mankind.’
‘You will need to find a far better orator than yourself, Sarpedon, to sway the mind of a Sister of Battle,’ retorted Aescarion sourly. ‘I did not come here to let you practice your closing arguments on me. I am here about my late master, Inquisitor Thaddeus. You know of him?’
Sarpedon sat back down on his haunches. ‘Yes. I knew him.’
‘Personally?’
‘A little.’
‘Thaddeus had the chance to take you down on Stratix Luminae. Perhaps kill you. But he did not take that chance. I was with him at the time and I did not understand his decision. I still do not. I want to know why Inquisitor Thaddeus, a servant of the Emperor and sworn enemy of all that hates mankind, chose to let you go.’
Sarpedon’s memories of Inquisitor Thaddeus were of a man who, at first sight, was completely out of his depth. He had looked like a functionary of the Administratum, some middle-ranking nobody. Some Inquisitors proclaimed their office with the most obvious and terrifying battlegear they could find, huge retinues of warriors and experts, even fleets and armies of their own. But Thaddeus walked softly in his duties.
‘After Stratix Luminae he tried to keep track of us, even after the Inquisition ordered us deleted from Imperial history,’ said Sarpedon. ‘When he found us on Vanqualis he had been hunting down every rumour of us. He had found… there were legends of us in places I was sure the Chapter had never been. One was of the Black Chalice. Another was the Ashen Grail. I did not give much thought to them at the time but now I fear there is some web that has been spun out there, in which the Soul Drinkers have their par
t but of which they are ignorant. Thaddeus was trying to unravel it.’
‘But he did not succeed,’ said Aescarion.
‘No. I imagine he is dead. The Howling Griffons crossed our path there, perhaps Captain Borganor can tell you more after he stops complaining about me cutting off his leg.’
‘But Thaddeus knew none of this on Stratix Luminae. Why not kill you then when he could?’ insisted Aescarion.
‘Perhaps,’ replied Sarpedon, ‘he knew we were right?’
Aescarion lost her cool for a second. She slammed the palm of her hand into the cell door. ‘You dare!’ she hissed. ‘He would never have thrown in his lot with your kind. Thaddeus was a good man. The best of men.’
‘But you want me to tell you that he was not corrupted. That hardly suggests you have great confidence in the man.’
‘You are just toying with me, Sarpedon. I will not provide you with any more amusement. You don’t know Thaddeus’s motives and I will content myself with that.’ Aescarion turned, about to rejoin her Imperial Fist minders and leave.
‘He tried to warn us,’ Sarpedon said. ‘The Ashen Grail and the Black Chalice, and everything else he found, it all pointed to something he was trying to warn us about. I don’t think even he knew what he had found, but his misgivings were deep enough for him to defy the deletion order and seek us out.’
‘Then he was leading you into a trap,’ said Aescarion.
‘And you have misgivings too. Otherwise you would not have sought me out here. How many lashes would a Sororitas receive for conversing with a known heretic? And yet you come to my cell looking for answers. You see it too, just like Thaddeus did. Something about this trial is wrong and you know it. Daenyathos’s return, here of all places, is no coincidence.’
Hammer and Bolter Year One Page 58