by Guy Haley
‘Seven!’ bellowed the daemonic voice.
A hot, corrosive wind blasted from the rift. Huge shapes rode it, approaching from the horizon of that infernal landscape.
Varens was wracked with sudden, burning pain. Lesions opened on his skin, allowing the vermin breeding inside him to fall softly to the earth. His belly distended. His fingers twisted; his back hunched. His eyes moistened and became soft as part-cooked eggs. His cheeks melted like wax in a fire, reforming his features. His skull felt like it was trying to burst itself in two. Relief came suddenly, when a rotting, stubby horn emerged slowly through his forehead and twisted upwards.
The pain got worse, but it didn’t bother him any longer. He giggled at it.
The thing that had been Varens opened a single eye on a blighted world. With warp-born sight, he perceived a viscous net of befouled spiritual power linking him and the six dead soldiers, stretching from their maggoty hearts out into the stars. Questing tendrils extended themselves further over Iax as he watched. All of the seven chosen were marked by Nurgle in their own way: by obvious trauma, minor scratch or unnoticed wound. Varens’ own mark had been a fly bite, dismissed in a moment! How bountiful his new lord was. The thing was pleased at the honour, and the last of Varens died under its pleasure.
‘One, two, three. Four, five, six, seven.’ The plaguebearer counted the approaching shapes coasting through the hellish sky, and awaited its masters.
Chapter Fifteen
Greyshield
Captain Felix had considered taking off his armour before he went to see his erstwhile comrades. He disliked the distance the unmarked ultima on his shoulder pad put between him and the others. In the end, however, he kept his battleplate on. He was an Ultramarine now. He should not dishonour that, even if he did not yet feel fully part of the Chapter.
His cobalt blue was the same shade as the older Ultramarines in the fleet, but he was bigger than his new brothers, stronger, and more capable. The differences extended from the Irradial Whorls that marked his hands to the extra organs deep within his brain. Physically, Felix was closer to the primarchs than any of the generations of Space Marines who had fought and died for the Imperium before him.
His battleplate further set him apart.
Aggressor power armour was more sophisticated than any comparable rating of battleplate in the Ultramarines armoury. A heavy gorget projected from the breastplate, guarding his vulnerable neck. Cowling covered his helmet. The reactor was larger to support the more powerful sub-systems, its built-in power field and the armour’s sophisticated cogitator and sensorium suite. Although slightly less resistant to fire than Terminator plate, the heavy armour worn by the Ultramarines’ existing veterans was the only thing that approached Aggressor armour’s capabilities, and Felix was far more nimble than warriors in tactical dreadnought armour.
Felix was glad there were hundreds of other Primaris Ultramarines in the crusade. He could imagine how strange it must be for those of the Unnumbered Sons who had been assigned to existing Chapters in dribs and drabs.
Being the primarch’s equerry was an honour heavy with many burdens. And they shall know no fear! The Emperor’s commandment to His Space Marines echoed down the millennia to the present day, and generally, a Space Marine was afraid of nothing. However, being fearless did not stop Captain Felix from worrying.
The crux of it was that Felix had already been admitted formally into the Ultramarines, though he had no company of his own to command officially. Guilliman’s earlier equerries had gone on to do great deeds as captains and masters of many Chapters, but only after leaving Guilliman’s personal service and receiving orders of assignment. That path was not open to Felix. His swift induction to the primarch’s own Chapter had been… odd.
There were a number of reasons why Guilliman had chosen Primaris warriors as equerries over more experienced Space Marines.
The first, Felix surmised, was that the primarch wanted to show that the Primaris represented the new Space Marine paradigm. The second – and this was no theoretical, as the primarch had told him so – was that the Primaris Space Marines lacked political experience. Guilliman placed great import on non-combat skills. To him, statesmanship was as important as warcraft.
Archmagos Cawl’s prolonged hypno-indoctrination had given the Primaris Space Marines none of that, so the primarch appointed many of their number into important but non-crucial roles as aides to various adepta, or as assistants to established Space Marine officers, and that included those he took as his own equerry. Guilliman changed the holders of these offices frequently to help disseminate the experience that the Primaris Space Marines gained in his direct service. He took on only those who showed exceptional promise, and afterwards they were given permanent positions of grave responsibility. Felix was honoured to have been so chosen, and he strove daily to live up to the primarch’s faith in him.
Thirdly, Felix reasoned, the primarch wanted to observe his new warriors at close hand. The Primaris Space Marines had been created at Guilliman’s behest, but they were creatures made by Cawl. If he were Roboute Guilliman, Felix would not have trusted the archmagos either.
None of this was what worried Felix. It was logical, rational and completely in line with the primarch’s preference for long-term planning. But there was a fourth reason in Felix’s hypothesising, and it was this last one that troubled him.
Felix had been born on Laphis not long after the end of the Great Heresy War. He remembered his childhood better than any of his peers appeared to, and that meant he recalled the Imperium as had been long ago, when there was still hope. He remembered old Ultramar, the Imperial Truth and the rekindling of optimism as the threat of Horus receded. He had been thirteen years old and ready to join the Legion as a neophyte when Cawl’s representatives had come calling, bearing the highest seals of all, and Felix had had one future taken away and this nightmare substituted in its stead. But he had kept all of his past, through millennia of stasis. He had forgotten nothing.
The past was what Guilliman wanted from him.
The primarch often spoke of those times. Felix struggled to see Guilliman as wistful – he was too matter-of-fact a being for that – but it was plain that he harboured nostalgic tendencies. The fourth theoretical worried Felix because it suggested that the primarch was perhaps lonely. If he were, then he was all too human.
Seeing Guilliman as a man perturbed Felix. The Imperium needed someone above humanity to lead them, not a man with a man’s faults.
In Felix’s theorising, Guilliman had made Felix an Ultramarine earlier than he had with any of his other equerries because Felix remembered. It could have been that Felix was intended to perform important duties within the Ultramarines at some later date, but they were the most glorious of Chapters, and that line of reasoning skirted dangerously close to arrogance. Felix was a humble man.
The lonely demigod. The thought made Felix’s spine shiver.
His somewhat maudlin thoughts passed as the lighter he was aboard approached the Rudense’s small port hangar. The ship passed through the atmospheric field and into a space busy with servitors. Felix was seized by an impatience to disembark before the lighter had even settled into its landing gear.
Felix could recite the Rudense’s specifications without thinking. He knew exactly how to use it in battle; it was a ship to fire the heart of any who appreciated the art of void war. But its utility and grace could not explain the deep significance it held for him. Felix loved the Rudense because it had been his home. Before Guilliman had called upon Felix, the Rudense had been his to command, and the men aboard it were as close to family as he would ever know.
As soon as the lighter’s landing lumens changed to green, Felix was out of the door and heading into the ship towards the barracks. Though Guilliman prized Felix for his memories of the times before, the ones he had of the Rudense were most precious. He had not been back to Laphis.
If he were honest, he had no desire to. He had heard it had become a shrine world and its wide prairies encrusted with cathedra and temples to the Emperor, who the people of this time worshipped as a god. The thought of seeing his home so changed by a foreign ideology saddened him.
Perhaps he was like the primarch: homesick for something that no longer existed.
Everyone needed something stable in their lives, some shared purpose and origin. Let the primarch turn to him. Felix would turn to his brothers. He had that, for a few more weeks at least.
The familiar sights and smells of the ship mellowed his sadness into a sweeter melancholy. As he thought, he let his feet lead him from the portside hangar up towards the spinal way. When he emerged into its avenue, his spirits lifted further. Every part of the ship was familiar to him: the companionways which clung to the sides of the corridor; the regularly repeated stamp of the Machina Opus on the bulkheads; the massive blast door housings; the way the starlight slanted in through the spinal way’s high armourglass windows. The ship was small enough that the footings of its dorsal fortresses projected into the spinal way as large plasteel cubes, their lower levels joined together by catwalks and sealed ammunition tubes. A figure shrunken by perspective was moving across the network up there, like an arachnid in its web.
Small was a relative term regarding Imperial voidcraft. The spinal way was fifteen metres wide, and almost three times as tall. Compared to the Macragge’s Honour, the Rudense was a minnow, but it was still large enough to get lost in.
Felix laughed at himself. Who was he to fret over Guilliman’s yearning for the past, when he was becoming overly sentimental himself? Why else would he be there, on his way to deliver orders that could have been sent by a simple datasquirt? What was he doing? Did he crave his brothers’ approval? Did he wish to impress them, to remind them he was still part of their fraternity? Did he fear that he was not?
He was no longer a Greyshield, of course. Not any more. He missed that; he missed them. The others would miss it too, now it was over.
The spinal way ended abruptly, narrowing to a steep funnel. The funnel further split into three separate corridors and two flights of stairs that led into the maze of holds, stores and generatoria that sat forward of the enginarium and the thrumming reactor-heart of the ship.
The leftmost corridor led him towards the Space Marines’ accommodation. The Primaris armouries were that way, as were their training rooms and the small apothecarion, sited amidships, safely away from the hull. The equipment required for a demi-company occupied a lot of room. He passed a garage where five Repulsor grav-tanks waited in silence, bolted down to the floor around the gaping shaft of a vehicle elevator.
He rounded a corner and heard voices. There were warriors in the refectorum, though not all of them were there. He quickened his pace. His augmented hearing identified the gruff laughter of Bjarni Arvisson, and there were three others in there at least. He heard Justinian Parris speak, and Bjarni laugh again. Then came the quiet voice of Kalael, gene-kin of the Lion. As he neared, their words became more distinct and he eavesdropped on their conversation. There were sounds indicating perhaps six more of his brothers, their low conversation muffled by the hard metallic sounds of weapons being taken apart and cleaned.
He was almost sixty metres from the refectorum. As he approached, a Primaris Space Marine in a day robe emerged from a side room, carrying a dented vambrace and a tool roll. His eyes rose in surprise.
‘Brother-captain!’ he said.
‘Solus,’ said Felix. He halted before his old comrade, and the two of them clasped arms. Felix reached up and disengaged his helm, lifted it over his head and tucked it into the crook of his elbow.
Laphis was further out from Macragge’s star than the capital world, but the skies were thin, and the sun burned easily. Felix’s skin was light brown, his hair black. It was long for a Space Marine, its fringe swept over light grey eyes that conveyed an impression of utmost seriousness.
Solus was of Sanguinius’ line and was as pale and beautiful as his gene-lord had reputedly been. His eyes were a colourless blue. Though the Unnumbered Sons wore armour coloured the same as the First Founding Chapters they were kin with, their day robes were grey. Solus, however, had dyed his red when Felix had been aboard, in honour of Sanguinius.
‘To what do we owe this pleasure?’ asked Solus.
‘The pleasure is mine, my brother,’ said Felix.
Solus gave him a quizzical look. His lips parted, showing sharp eye teeth. ‘You seem distracted.’
Felix smiled. ‘It is good to see you.’
‘That means you have bad news,’ said Solus. ‘I can see it, brother.’
‘Am I really that transparent?’
‘I do not need to be of the Librarius to read your face, Felix. You are not a man who dissembles well.’
Felix reached out and grasped Solus’ shoulder.
‘The news is both good and bad, my friend. Good and bad. Come, I will share it with all of you. You deserve to hear it from me – it is the least I can do.’
There was a horrendous crash, and a roar of laughter went up from the refectorum, most of it Bjarni’s feral bellow.
‘Do I have to say that half of them are in there?’ said Solus.
‘I hear them, though Bjarni Arvisson makes the noise of ten men. It is good. I want to speak with them all.’
‘Then I shall fetch the others. I will spread the word, captain.’
‘Is Lieutenant Sarkis on board?’ asked Felix.
‘He is in the armorium.’
‘Tinkering with his battleplate again?’
‘What else?’ said Solus. ‘I shall fetch him first.’
Solus hurried away. Felix stalked down the corridor. The refectorum door was closed but not latched, and he pushed it open stealthily. He looked inside, his mind flooded with memories. Twenty Space Marines were dotted around the long tables filling the room. None of them noticed him stood there. Oil cloths were spread out before them, the components of weapons laid out for cleaning, and they were engrossed in their work. The place smelled of men, gun oil, lapping powder and yesterday’s nutrient gruel. Regulations said they should not undertake such work in the eating area, but they gathered there because there was nowhere else of size besides the training ground to congregate. The armorium was out of the question. That was small, and Lieutenant Sarkis’ pet projects had overtaken the space even in Felix’s time. It had got worse since Sarkis had taken command.
Though the Unnumbered Sons were formed into temporary Chapters of their own kind, Guilliman had decreed that they spend time fighting in mixed squads in order that the differing gene-lines would learn each other’s strengths, and how to best work together. As more of the Unnumbered Sons had been assigned to their permanent homes and their numbers in the crusade decreased, each rotation had been longer, and Felix’s demi-company had been fighting together for the better part of a decade.
Most of the Primaris Space Marines present were of Roboute Guilliman’s line. Five were not. Bjarni’s gene-seed obviously came from Leman Russ, and his skin was covered in faded Fenrisian tribal tattoos. Then there was Aldred and Urstan, who were kin to Dorn, Lei Jian of Chogoris, and Kalael. All, however, were Primaris Space Marines, and that bound them together when their differing heritages might have set them apart.
After a century of war, the Primaris Space Marines still seemed new. The Imperium was used to technological stagnancy. The Primaris warriors were shocking: a blasphemy against the holy works of the Emperor-Omnissiah to some, a sure sign of the deity’s work in the world to others. It was probable, Felix thought, that only the primarch’s presence had prevented the advent of the Primaris Space Marines sparking yet another war between the Imperium’s brawling factions.
The less theologically inclined cared only about the Primaris Space Marines’ effectiveness in combat. They were bigger and stro
nger than the older type of Space Marine, and equipped with potent new weapons. There were other less obvious differences between the two types as well, but though the unseen was more essential to the salvation of the Imperium, when one witnessed the Primaris Space Marines in battle, these deeper differences seemed of lesser importance.
Most of the noise in the room came from Bjarni. It was always Bjarni. He was taking aim with a light throwing axe at a stack of empty nutrient cans. The wall behind was scarred by repeated impacts. Kalael was half a metre away, sharpening the teeth of his chainsword, unconcerned by the target practice taking place so close to his face.
The others Felix knew well, but none so well as Justinian Parris who, along with Solus, was his closest friend.
‘I will split the third one from the left, second row,’ said Bjarni, weighing his axe in his hand.
‘What will you wager?’ said a warrior of the line of Guilliman named Ciceron.
‘Does it matter? I never miss!’ bragged Bjarni.
‘You nearly hit me once,’ said Kalael. ‘That was a miss.’
‘It was not. I intended to give you a fright, brooding angel,’ said Bjarni wolfishly. His hair was grey and shaved into a tall mohawk. His beard retained some red, but he appeared older than he was. His nose was crooked from an ancient break. Not all the scars that criss-crossed his body had been won in service; several he attributed to the attentions of Fenris’ notorious wildlife during his childhood.
‘You cannot brag without betting, Bjarni,’ said Justinian. ‘Come on, put down a bet.’
Justinian was typically Macraggian in appearance, though he hailed from the hive world of Ardium rather than the capital world itself. He was tall and blonde, with aristocratic features that could have seemed cold had he not smiled so generously.