The Emperor's Gift

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘If that’s the last thing you saw, you’ve been gone for most of the day. Almost eight hours, now. Even once the Great Beast fell, the battle raged on.’

  He was looking at me, almost cautiously. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘The way you broke the blade… That was…’

  ‘Duty.’ I moved away, seeking my other brothers among the slain. ‘How many of my order have you found alive?’

  ‘A handful. No more. We’re surprised any of you are still breathing. Tough bastards, you sons of Titan.’

  ‘You aren’t even supposed to know we exist. It’s strange to hear you refer to us like that.’

  He shrugged. Such thoughts clearly didn’t worry him.

  I turned to look at him. ‘What of Captain Taremar?’

  Rawthroat shook his head. ‘A hero’s death, that one. I’ll never forget the sight.’

  Taremar was dead. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. I scarcely knew him; he’d seemed a cold and unwelcoming soul to call a brother, but his list of heroic deeds rivalled the Grand Masters of the Eight Brotherhoods. This would surely be the capstone to a knight considered a legend by future generations of our order.

  I made my limping way over the blasted earth, seeking the others. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘With your golden captain? He stood before the beast after you broke the blade. He fought it. He killed it. That’s what happened.’

  ‘How descriptive.’ I looked back over my shoulder for a moment. ‘The sagas on Fenris must be singularly dull.’

  Rawthroat snorted. His scratchy, deep voice turned even that into a bass rumble. ‘You asked. I told you.’ He was flexing and tensing his arm, clearly sore from his own share of wounds.

  Bodies carpeted the ground. I’d paid such little heed in the battle – focusing only on slaughtering the Neverborn – but red-clad Legiones Astartes warriors and corrupted human bodies lay in profusion among the bloody puddles. How many had we killed? Did such a number even matter, in the shadow of the Great Beast’s banishment?

  I found Enceladus a short distance away.

  He was slumped in a graceless, lifeless crouch, his head lowered to his chest. A host of enemy dead kept company with his corpse, each one bearing the marks of death by sacred shells and infused blade. His sword – recovered somehow from the primarch’s forearm – stood tall as a banner pole, impaling the breastplate of a fallen warrior from the desecrated World Eaters Legion.

  Enceladus’s slack hands rested in his lap, as if he merely sat in prayer. But for the shaft of a spear driven through his chest, he seemed almost serene.

  My first instinct was to reach out and pull the weapon free, but I felt a sudden reluctance to touch him at all. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see his final moments.

  +Hyperion. My boy.+

  I flinched back. Rawthroat went for his weapon, teeth already showing in a snarl.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  Enceladus slowly raised his head, meeting my eyes. The movement revealed the slit throat that had come within an inch of ending his life, even without the impaling spear.

  +Malchadiel,+ he sent. +Malchadiel is still alive. I stood above him, as Galeo stood above you.+

  I was scarcely listening, already voxing any Imperial forces for a trained medicae or a Wolf-trained Apothecary. I couldn’t risk teleporting Enceladus like this. He’d never survive it.

  ‘Hold,’ I said to him. ‘Help is coming.’

  +Malchadiel,+ he sent again, straining now.

  That’s when I saw the silver gauntlet, streaked by blood, beneath three mutilated armoured bodies. The first I shoved aside with a telekinetic pulse, sending the dead World Eater rolling off the pile. Even that effort left me staggering, greyness threatening my sight. I went to my knees, physically pushing the other corpses away.

  Malchadiel lay as I’d last seen him, collapsed on his front, one arm reaching out to one of his fallen swords. In the hours since we’d both fallen, the enemy hadn’t left him untouched. His armour was a wreck beyond even mine – the entire back savaged and reduced to scrap. Chainblade wounds decorated the broken armour at his shoulders and back. His power generator was nowhere to be seen.

  Worse, his left arm ended at the elbow, in a wound of violated ceramite, loose cables, and scabbed-over flesh.

  Without power, his armour wasn’t linked to my retinal display, stealing any hope of seeing life signs. It took intense concentration just to muster enough energy to reach out with my psychic sense, to see if my brother still lived.

  ‘Were these both your brothers?’ Rawthroat asked.

  ‘Hush,’ I snapped back.

  ‘You’re a miserable whoreson, Bladebreaker.’

  ‘Be quiet, please.’ It was no good. I couldn’t focus. I had to pull Mal’s helm free.

  As soon as I worked the seals at his collar, freeing his blood-smeared face, his remaining hand slammed against my wrist. He gripped, and gripped hard, though his voice was a hurt whisper.

  ‘Did we win?’

  I looked over at the bodies surrounding us, and felt the hollowness where once Castian’s presence had lingered in my mind. Enceladus was a fading whisper. Malchadiel was even fainter.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  II

  Back aboard the Karabela, the mood was unsurprisingly sombre. As soon as the bridge doors rattled open, I sensed the crew’s unease, like a drifting scent. Some were grateful to see one of Castian still breathing; others didn’t know any of us well enough to care one way or the other, but feared contamination from what we’d faced on the surface.

  Talwyn Castor rose from his throne and saluted.

  ‘Sir Hyperion.’

  I waved him back into his seat. As I did so, a spark crackled from my damaged elbow joint. My wargear was in horrendous shape; Axium was going to lecture me for hours about it. Malchadiel’s was no better, and Enceladus returned to the ship in wreckage that had had to be cut free.

  ‘Justicar Galeo is dead,’ I told them. ‘As is Dumenidon. The prime enemy is destroyed, and his hosts are vulnerable. Orders will come from Jarl Grimnar within the next few hours – the Karabela will align its weapons batteries with the rest of the fleet and add its strength to the orbital bombardment taking place.’

  Castor gave a crisp nod. ‘Understood, sir.’

  ‘That will be all. I shall be with the Palladium Kataphrakt for a significant duration. Summon me if I am required.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘What is it, captain?’

  ‘Will you be making planetfall again?’

  ‘I intend to, yes. The battle is over; the war is not.’

  ‘May I ask how many of the order survived?’

  I had to swallow before speaking. ‘Thirteen. Thirteen, of one hundred and nine. I am still piecing together the full details myself, but I thank you for your concern.’

  I meant it, too. Few of our servants would have thought to ask, and even fewer would’ve legitimately cared.

  ‘One last thing, sir.’

  ‘Speak.’

  ‘Are you Justicar of Castian now?’

  I hesitated. I’d not even considered that.

  ‘Just… attend to your duties, Talwyn.’

  III

  Axium’s perfectly contoured face regarded me with an exquisite imitation of sympathy.

  ‘Hyperion,’ he started. The entire workshop chamber seemed suddenly quieter.

  ‘Save your words,’ I said. ‘Forgive me, Axium – I simply have no wish to discuss it at the moment.’

  ‘As you wish.’ He stepped back, artificial eyes running along my suit of armour. ‘Oh,’ he said at last. ‘Oh, my.’

  I detached my storm bolter, unlocking its bindings before resting it on the closest table. Every movement sent sprays of sparks from my elbow.

  ‘Your left arm’s olecranon servos are suffering to a terminal degree.’

  I held the trembling arm before him. The neural links that made the armour so responsive were now giving me ra
ndom muscle spasms, in my arm more than anywhere else.

  ‘Oh,’ he said again, watching my fingers twitching. ‘That won’t do at all.’

  I dearly wanted to be free of this limping, constricting Terminator warplate. My own armour remained where I’d left it: in compartmentalised and sealed storage against the work-chamber’s eastern wall.

  Axium summoned several servitors to attend him. Like the adepts of the Palladium Kataphrakt, none of the augmented slaves possessed bionics cast from what Axium termed the ‘vulgar metals’: gold, bronze, copper, and so on. Every bionic implant was chromium, iron, steel or – in the rarest cases – solid silver.

  They deployed digital tools and servo-arms, beginning the laborious process of machining me out of the armour plating.

  A few minutes in, and they were pulling away ceramite plates sticky with blood on the inside. Axium paused, his silver eyes meeting mine.

  ‘You are wounded.’

  ‘Blades in the joints, and a spear through the thigh.’

  ‘I am speaking of your face. You looked… pained.’

  ‘I’ll live. The pain is in my thigh.’

  ‘Yes, yes, the joining muscle-cables around the adductor brevis muscle of your right thigh.’ He leaned down. ‘I see it now.’

  ‘I’ll live, Axium. Just get me out of this.’

  Despite my weariness, I still sensed her coming. I looked up a few moments before the chamber’s doors opened.

  ‘Hyperion,’ Annika said. She walked in alone, her warband nowhere to be seen. ‘Blood of the Emperor, you look…’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Yes. Well. Throne, you’re bleeding.’

  The pressure in my head was immense, and she wasn’t helping.

  ‘The blood is old and the wounds are sealed.’ I didn’t enjoy others circling me like this, picking at me like vultures over carrion. As Annika came closer, the servitors extracted several more restraining bolts, freeing another layer of subdermal armour over my shoulders and arms.

  She looked untouched. Tired, but untouched by the battle itself beyond the marks of wear and tear on her bodysuit plating. True to her word, she’d fought at the war’s edge, holding back with the reserve regiments.

  ‘Have you heard what the Wolves are calling you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bladebreaker.’

  ‘I said I’d heard.’ Perhaps I spoke harsher than I’d intended. She flinched back, looking at me for a long moment.

  ‘Hyperion…’

  ‘Galeo and Dumenidon are dead.’ I rolled my shoulders as the last of the armour there came free in two servitors’ industrial clamps. ‘Malchadiel and Enceladus yet live, though Enceladus will never wear armour again, such is the damage to his flesh. Mal’s memory and spine no longer function.’

  That made her blink. ‘Malchadiel can’t walk?’

  I’d carried him off the battlefield myself. It was agony, to feel him questing to connect to the rest of Castian – and worst of all to feel him reaching for Sothis – and finding nothing. He was a blind boy, lost in the woods.

  +Sothis?+ he kept sending as I carried him to the gunship. +Sothis? Sothis?+ I felt the name brushing across my consciousness, feeble as a cobweb across the face. +Sothis? Sothis?+

  ‘His spine is shattered. I was unconscious after I broke the blade; I don’t know what happened. It’s possible the damage occurred when the beast broke our kine-shield.’

  Annika took it in with admirable calm, her thoughts slowed by her weariness. ‘I see.’

  ‘The war isn’t over. I’ll get back into my armour, and face the enemy as the Emperor intended.’

  She looked at me strangely. ‘Alone?’

  ‘Thirteen of us survived. Four of us are still able to fight. Axium will do what he can for Malchadiel, while our survivors return to the battles below.’

  ‘The Great Wolf said you weren’t to appear before the general population.’

  ‘His orders mean exactly nothing to me, inquisitor. Impure souls still walk down there. I am the hammer that will break them, no matter where they hide. More of my order will come, Annika. This world needs us. Mark my words, the Inquisition will call for more of us.’

  She nodded, still looking hesitantly at me. ‘I understand that. But… you look sickly. Wretched, even. Your wounds–’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘But Hyperion–’

  ‘Will you cease mothering me? I am a Grey Knight of Titan, not a child.’ One of the servitors missed a pinning socket on my forearm, his drill bit scratching across one of the remaining pieces of subdermal armour. I backhanded the useless creature, and felt its jaw break. ‘Get away from me. Axium, get the rest of this armour off. Now.’

  The servitor I’d struck was struggling to rise. It was difficult to see through my blurring vision. A moment later, the ship tilted beneath my boots, causing me to stagger.

  ‘We’re under attack! Captain Talwyn?’

  Voices pressed back against me. I couldn’t tell them apart. Hands joined them, pushing against my armour. Annika was one of them. Axium was another. They were unimaginably tall.

  I shoved them back with a focused pulse of kinetic force. Only… they didn’t move a muscle.

  +Sothis?+ Malchadiel’s voice reached me from where I’d left him in the medicae bay. +Sothis?+

  Was I on my knees? I was. I was on my knees.

  ‘Help me up,’ I said.

  ‘…kind of cerebrovascular incident…’ Axium was saying.

  ‘…haemorrhage…’ said a voice. A female voice. Soft. I wondered if she could sing. My grandmother used to sing to me, in another life.

  ‘…into stasis. By the cog, get him into stasis…’

  I laughed. By the cog. What did that even mean? Martian swearing made no sense to me.

  +Help me stand,+ I sent in a vicious wave.

  No one replied. Not even poor, broken Malchadiel.

  ‘Help me up. I don’t want to die on my knees, like Galeo.’

  I reached for one of the arms in front of me. It was silver. In my grip, the forearm bent and warped, too soft and fragile for my fist.

  From somewhere else, I heard Axium scream. I’d not even known he could. Blinking did nothing to clear my vision.

  Someone said my name. I think it was Annika. Someone else said something about stasis.

  ‘I am a Grey Knight of Titan,’ I said. ‘I… I am the hammer.’

  And then, blackness.

  EIGHTEEN

  SCARS

  I

  I opened my eyes to the sterile blue lighting of an apothecarion. Not the medicae chambers of the Karabela; this was a fully-equipped apothecarion capable of tending to the needs of an entire brotherhood at war.

  I knew this place. How could I not? This was the surgery chamber aboard the Fire of Dawn, flagship of the Eighth Brotherhood. Ranks of monitors and the shining steel of medical machinery lined the walls.

  I sat up, pulling bio-monitor plugs and nutrient feed lines from my skin.

  ‘The dead rise,’ said a voice from behind me.

  I knew him even before I saw him, and was saying his name even as I turned. ‘Nadion.’

  He was clad in a loose grey robe – the humble attire of an unarmoured knight, engaged in meditation or study. The sleeves were rolled up, leaving his arms covered only in gloves of clear, thin plastek to prevent accidental contamination or infection.

  Nadion’s shaved head showed no shortage of immaculately shaped bionics. Half of his skull had been replaced only a few years before I’d earned my armour.

  ‘I’d not expected you to rise for another hour or so,’ he said. ‘How do you feel?’

  Cataloguing my hurts seemed churlish. ‘I’ve felt better,’ I admitted, hoping that would be enough. ‘I don’t remember much of what happened.’

  ‘Your executor primaris, Axium, saved your life. He interred you in a stasis chamber when you suffered a… well. Suffered a host of severe reactions to your psychic outpouring. I’ve prepared
a list for you to access at your leisure. I hope you’re prepared to read the words ‘haemorrhage’, ‘embolism’, and ‘risk of neurological damage’ a great many times. You were lucky to survive unleashing your powers like that. Had you been fully human, you’d have died before being able to hold the blade at bay for a second, let alone break it.’

  ‘We weren’t spoiled by choice, Nadion. I had to do something.’

  ‘I wasn’t criticising, brother. Still, I’ve recorded the bio-auspex results for you, as well. The damage to your nervous system and a host of blood vessels was almost terminal. Indeed, it was terminal, had Axium not locked you in stasis until my arrival.’

  Throne, it was still so hard to think straight. I remembered losing consciousness. Barely. Even that felt as much a dream as a memory.

  ‘When did you arrive?’

  Nadion had the ageless quality of most warriors ascended into the ranks of the Adeptus Astartes. We told our age by the scars we wore. Those of us who fought on unscarred tended to look any age between twenty or fifty, with characteristics of youth and middle-age in equal measure.

  The arcane genetics involved in our creation never really ceased to surprise me. Some things, you simply couldn’t get used to.

  The Apothecary keyed in several buttons on the hololithic projector by my slab of a bed. He was calling up the details of my surgery, answering as he cycled through visual archives.

  ‘We arrived nine standard days ago. Others from the order reached here much earlier than us, of course. And I’ll answer your next question before you can ask it. You’ve been unconscious for a hundred and thirty-one days. I’ve been tending to you for the last two days and nights.’ He looked at me, his dark eyes unblinking. ‘How is your head?’

  ‘A hundred and thirty-one days?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, the repetition proves your hearing is functional, at least. Now please answer my question.’

  ‘But what of the war?’

  ‘The war’s over, Hyperion. The war was over the moment you and Taremar killed the Blood God’s princeling. All that remained was a purge of the lingering taint.’