Lucius: The Faultless Blade

by Ian St. Martin

  A series of cells lined the walls, filled with thick, oily fluid. Lucius could just barely make out the shapes hanging immobile within the cells. Their forms were occluded, but no one born of the Legions could fail to recognise the silhouette of Space Marine power armour, even if in this case it was twisted, bulky and overly elaborate.

  ‘And these would be?’ Lucius nodded at the cells.

  ‘They are none of your concern,’ replied Bile with finality.

  The eldar took up its klaive at its hilt, and at a second grip halfway along the back of its blade. Holding the weapon across its chest, it punched it forwards, thudding the flat of the blade into Lucius’ back.

  Lucius stopped. He looked back over his shoulder at the eldar, ­staring into the alien’s mask.

  ‘Try that again. Please.’

  ‘Leave us,’ said Fabius.

  The eldar held Lucius’ stare, clearly unwelcoming of the notion that a human would presume to command it, before turning and striding silently back through the passageway. They had arrived at a curved doorway, which slid open smoothly as Bile stood before it.

  Lucius crossed the threshold, and immediately the heady tang of counterseptic assailed his senses. The frigid air prickled at the skin of his face. Steel slabs held restrained creatures in various states of vivisection. Chattering machines studded the walls, alongside racks of crystal specimen flasks. There was a bizarre synergy of human and eldar technology, all devoted to the arcane art of the fleshcrafter. It was a laboratorium and torture chamber at once.

  ‘So,’ said Lucius, poking at a skinless creature that writhed and screamed silently upon its slab. ‘This is what betrayal has bought you.’

  Bile chuckled, a thoroughly ugly noise. ‘Betrayal. Do not presume to lecture on that subject. There is not a single one of us in our imprisonment that can do so from steady ground. But that hardly means we cannot still cooperate.’

  The Chief Apothecary stopped at a standing restraint harness at the end of the laboratory. ‘Come,’ he motioned to Lucius. Standing beside the harness, unhelmed, was Cesare.

  ‘What is this?’ Lucius eyed Cesare and the harness warily. ‘Good to see you, brother. Glad to see how the trust I place is so richly rewarded.’

  ‘Oh, come now, Lucius,’ said Bile. ‘Cesare was never yours.’

  He smiled at Cesare, provoking a grimace from the other Apothecary. ‘One never truly leaves the Consortium. They come and they go, they may even think that they serve other masters, but they always belong to the one who made them what they are.’

  Lucius bit back a reply as a lance of acid pain exploded in his head. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as the press of screaming rattled to a crescendo in the meat of his mind.

  ‘Yours is a curious case, brother,’ said Fabius, watching as Lucius struggled inwardly. ‘Consistently exposing yourself to the extra-dimensional intelligences that you and our deluded brethren worship has provoked a uniquely malignant form of schizophrenia to take root within your mind.’

  Fabius circled around Lucius as he stumbled forwards, hands clasped behind his back. The arms of his chirurgeon ticked and whirred as they moved around the Apothecary, seemingly through a will of their own.

  Lucius gripped the sides of his head. Blood trickled from his nose, hot and dark as it dripped to the floor. He snarled as one of Fabius’ mechanical limbs stabbed a syringe into the base of his skull, depressing a plunger of ochre-green fluid into his spinal column.

  At once, the voices grew muted and withdrawn. Whatever Fabius had introduced into his bloodstream, it had nullified the crushing advance of his killers across his mind. His senses sharpened, nerves long dormant firing in clean, pure feedback. It was as though he had ingested Cesare’s ambrosia, but more refined by an order of magnitude and sublimely more potent.

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Fabius. ‘Where did you think our dear Cesare learned to craft his little concoction, hmm?’ He withdrew the syringe. ‘Now cease being such a recalcitrant child.’

  Paranoia was a necessary trait to those within the Eye. Truly, with the frequency of betrayals and perfidies that the broken Legions perpetrated upon one another and themselves, it could simply be seen as prudence. Such thoughts counted doubly so with regard to the Primogenitor. Lucius would never trust the vile creature, but the glorious effect of Bile’s stimulant swayed his judgement. He straightened, basking in a clarity he had not experienced in a lifetime, and allowed Fabius and Cesare to lock him into the harness.

  The Composer grinned as the plates of his armour began to ­twinkle with whorls of hoarfrost. His cloak twitched and prickled with gooseflesh at the onset of unnatural cold. The targeting reticules of his helmet visor struggled to bracket the figure standing at the opposite end of the corridor, blinking in and out as they danced across his vision.

  But he could see him clearly.

  He was another sorcerer. One of Hakith’s pets, a thought that brought a smile to the Composer’s face. He stood within a shell of scraped grey ceramite, bearing no heraldry or iconography beyond the glyphs that were etched into every inch of the plates. With a casual questing of his mind, the Composer knew everything about him, effortlessly drinking in his identity.

  He was not one of the Legions. The blood coursing through his veins told him that much. The son of some thin-blooded Chapter, the history and name of which would have been simple to glean for the Composer, but was of no real interest.

  The Composer sensed power within the other warrior. There was potential there, and with sufficient time and the right hand to guide him, his destiny could blossom into one of great power indeed.

  A pity, then, that his life was now measured in moments.

  Bolts of coruscating green energy smashed against the kine shield the Composer summoned around himself in shimmering thunderclaps. The dome sprang into being at less than a thought. It required the effort anyone else would have required to blink their eyes.

  The Composer walked calmly forwards into the immaterial fusillade, his staff clicking against the deck plating with the even rhythm of a metronome. Direnc screamed inside his environment suit as he cowered behind the sorcerer, hugging closer with each deflected bolt of warpfire. He watched as the Composer raised his free hand, and despite the insulated layers of his suit, he felt the fall in temperature like daggers.

  With a patient, almost amused slowness, the Composer began to lower his hand. The magi at the end of the corridor continued his assault, until he sagged down to one knee. He raised his fists up level with his head, limbs trembling, as his body continued to sink lower and lower towards the deck.

  It was at that moment that Direnc realised he was not kneeling. He was being crushed.

  The warrior’s silver helm began to buckle. Cries of anger quickly became ones of pain as his hands were reduced to powder inside his flattening gauntlets, followed immediately afterwards by his forearms. Blood sprayed out from splitting armour seams. Ceramite squealed, like teeth on edge. It fractured. It shattered.

  All the while, the Composer slowly, calmly, moved his hand down.

  When it was over, an irregular disc of battered silver was set into a shallow crater in the deck, like a jewel embedded in a crown. Ribbons of pulverised meat hung around its edges like grotesque streamers. Every square inch of the surrounding walls, ceiling and deck was dripping with blood, from where the unsustainable pressure had sent it flying out from the dying witch’s flesh.

  ‘Do try to avoid slipping in that,’ said the Composer as he and Direnc passed by the horrid scene. ‘It would be a most embarrassing death, hmm?’

  The Composer ignored the slave as he retched into his mask. He was focused instead on the fleeing presence that had been present to witness its minion’s annihilation. He followed the mental spoor as it withdrew, knowing where it would lead him, and who it would lead him to.

  The bridge of the Elypsis was cramped and
austere by the standards of a III Legion warrior. It was a pity; the sons of Magnus were admirable craftsmen when proper inspiration struck. Aesthetics were sparse across the walls of stone and bronze, beyond the avian gargoyles encircling the command deck, and the artful mounting that rendered the ship’s oculus viewscreen as being set within a golden eye.

  It was also in flames. The Composer admitted to himself that this was a factor in his disappointment. He would reserve his judgement then, until he was able to appraise a Prosperine vessel he wasn’t actively ripping apart.

  Dead littered the deck of the bridge, along with the dying who would soon be joining them. The heady scent of burning flesh mingled with melting plastek and scorched metal in a suffocating pall. The chamber was lit scarlet by emergency lights, but its alarms were silent, either through malfunction or the crew’s resignation to oblivion.

  The Composer crossed the short distance from the main bulkhead to the command dais, where seated upon the throne, his cream robes burned to blackened cinders, slouched Hakith. A section of the ceiling struts had collapsed during the void battle, sending a jagged spar knifing downwards, its end protruding from the centre of the exiled Thousand Son’s chest. Blood sluiced down his armour, pattering softly into a spreading pool between his boots. The huddled shapes of dead mortals, witches and lesser psykers by their esoteric robes, encircled him, dead servants gathered to accompany their master into the life beyond.

  ‘A pity you were not Pavoni,’ chuckled the Composer as he came to stand before Hakith’s slumped form. ‘I have witnessed their gifts with reknitting wounds first-hand – truly exhilarating to behold.’

  The strut emitted an aching whine as Hakith struggled to rise. His legs gave, and he collapsed back into the throne.

  ‘No, no,’ said the Composer. ‘No need to get up, Hakith. I can claim what I need with you right there.’

  ‘How…’ The rasp rattled from Hakith’s helm from punctured lungs. ‘How did you–’

  ‘Find you?’ the Composer interrupted. ‘How did I know that you had found what you were looking for? My dear Hakith, I have known all along!’

  Direnc peered out from behind the Composer, stepping around the charred remains of a deck officer.

  ‘I have been with you since the beginning,’ said the Composer. ‘You were one of many, many little seeds I cast out across the Eye. As you sprouted, I watched over your progress. I cultivated and, in the most discreet and subtle of ways, I guided. I was the invisible hand, always by your side to give you the best possible chance of achieving my desire.

  ‘And you did!’ The Composer laughed. ‘Some I had sent for know­ledge, others for relics, but only the ones who were special to me were sent to find the webway. You were one of those special ones, Hakith. Your star shone brightly, and here we are, because of you. You, who succeeded where the others failed.’

  The Composer sank to a crouch before Hakith, bringing their eyes level. ‘You should be quite pleased with what you have achieved. None of the others had the resourcefulness to have accomplished what you have. Let that be of consolation to you, as we come to the end of our time together.’

  Hakith raised a weak, trembling hand towards the Composer. ‘Let me…’ His hand wavered, just in front of the sorcerer’s mask, before dropping back into his lap with a dull thud. ‘Just let me see inside.’

  The Composer tilted his head. Silence reigned for a handful of moments, pressured by the wash of flames and sparking consoles. The Composer reached towards Hakith’s throat. He disconnected the collar seals of the stricken magi’s helmet, pulling the shattered mask free from his head. Broken and bloody, the proud face of a philosopher king, a being who could weave the currents of the eternal ocean of the warp to his will, stared at the Composer. The face of a thief and a murderer stared as well from the same eyes.

  ‘I am sorry,’ answered the Composer as he stood. ‘Were you in a better state I might have considered such a reward for what you have found for me. But alas, what I do now will most likely be the end of you, dear Hakith.’

  The Composer placed his hand upon Hakith’s skull, the tips of his fingers pressing tight to the dusky flesh.

  ‘Goodbye, Hakith,’ said the Composer, before he ripped open the sorcerer’s mind.

  III.V

  The effects of Bile’s compound did not last long before dissipating into nothing within Lucius’ bloodstream. Just as any other kind of stimulation did. As glorious and invigorating as the brief period of sensation had been for him, it was quickly eclipsed by the crash back down into the dull needles of numbness that dragged at his sagging limbs, now as leaden and unresponsive as they had been before.

  Fabius and Cesare had worked diligently once Lucius had got into position. The former circled the Eternal like a predator, the limbs of his chirurgeon prodding and clacking against armour. The latter had remained impassive and still, his eyes flicking between Fabius, Lucius and the data streaming from his narthecium gauntlet.

  Lucius watched as the Apothecaries pored over his warped armour. He tested his bonds, eliciting a subtle groan of protesting iron. He could not stop his mind from going back millennia, to the night he found himself staring down at the figure of his primarch beneath Fabius’ chirurgeon, chained by his own sons.

  ‘I certainly hope that little shot wasn’t your gift, Fabius.’

  ‘No,’ replied Bile without looking up. ‘That was merely a confirmation of one of a multitude of potential hypotheses.’

  Fabius came to a halt in front of Lucius.

  ‘I am going to enact a modification to your armour,’ said Bile. He opened a casket from a workbench, retrieving a bulky device and a trio of armourglass tubes capped in brass, trailing a mane of wires and injection feeds.

  Lucius arched an eyebrow.

  ‘This is a chemical delivery system, with portions adapted from what knowledge and materials I have gleaned from this place, applied to specifications of my own design,’ said Fabius. ‘Once connected, it directly interfaces with power armour, allowing for the introduction of a variety of chemical compounds into the wearer. In your case, potent stimulants.’

  Fabius looked up from the device to Lucius. ‘I studied you and your hangers-on in transit here. Such strain.’ He shook his head. ‘Such extremes you have placed upon your nervous system through your debaucheries. Synapses exhausted. Reflexes gone. It is no wonder you can feel nothing at all any longer. Cesare has shared his own observations of your condition with me as well. But, with the proper synthesis of materials, introduced in specific amounts over a consistent time frame, I could remedy such an affliction.’

  Lucius’ eyes turned upon Cesare, then back to Bile. ‘And what exactly is it that you gain from all of this?’

  ‘You are a deviant, Lucius, but you are hardy. You possess a resilience beyond the loftiest dreams of those who laboured during the creation of the Legiones Astartes, and thus you can endure certain extremes where other beings–’

  ‘Lesser beings,’ Lucius interjected.

  ‘–would not,’ Bile grimaced. ‘Through my work, I create thousands of chemical compounds. In the majority of cases, their effectiveness can be applied, studied and determined through vat-grown means, but there are more potent mixtures that require a sturdier subject. Like you.’

  Bile paused, raising a finger. ‘Be forewarned – the compounds you will be ingesting are extremely formidable in nature. Take multiple doses of any of them in a short period and you will die. Mix the separate compounds or imbibe them simultaneously, and you will die.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Lucius grunted. ‘And all of these compounds that would kill me, they are your creations?’

  Bile straightened. ‘They are.’

  ‘And you take pride in their synthesis, I may assume?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fabius answered flatly.

  ‘Then for your sake,’ Lucius grinned, ‘I should hope they do not kill me
.’

  The Primogenitor held Lucius’ stare for a moment, before leaning forwards to return to his work.

  ‘You would have me be one of your experiments,’ said Lucius. ‘Even here, surrounded by this xenos filth, you are a cold creature.’

  ‘The environment here is ideal. I have the compounds, the subjects and the proper means to test them.’ Fabius gestured to the ceiling and the arena above them.

  ‘And if I should refuse?’

  Bile’s face pinched in an ugly approximation of a smile. ‘Oh, my brother, this was never a negotiation. I thought it generous to explain what is about to transpire, out of respect to our shared history.’

  He stepped closer to Lucius. ‘But make no mistake, I will install this device, and it shall be tested. Your thoughts and desires in this regard are irrelevant.’

  Lucius surged forwards like a feral beast. His chains screamed as they snapped taut. Barely a hand’s breadth separated the two legionaries. Lucius smiled wolfishly.

  ‘Then why are we still talking?’

  ‘Indeed.’ Bile stepped back from Lucius. He nodded to Cesare, who approached Lucius with a tray of exotic tools.

  ‘There will be a not insignificant amount of pain,’ said Fabius as he walked behind Lucius. An arachnoid limb, tipped with a monomolecular drill apparatus, hovered over the Eternal’s power pack.

  ‘Oh Fabius,’ Lucius smiled. ‘How you tease me so.’

  The chirurgeon filled the air with a keening scream as the drill activated.

  ‘Then let us begin.’

  The Composer stood in the rattling hold of the Talon Queen as the gunship arrowed through the gulf between the Elypsis and the ­Diadem. He had established vox contact with the strike cruiser once they had reached a certain distance, communicating with the warship’s bridge. A concentrated salvo from her lance batteries slashed over the Thunderhawk in a blinding tide. The Elypsis was a vessel that bore a proud history, having had the honour in ages past of pushing out the frontiers of the Great Crusade to forge the Imperium of Mankind in the vanguard of the expeditionary fleet of Magnus the Red. Here, in the rotting morass of Eyespace, she was consigned to an ignominious fate as her superstructure was obliterated. The cloud of molten shards that was all that remained of the frigate stretched out in a perfect sphere, before the particles were swept and divided up by the churning currents of psychic energy.