Hammer and Bolter 6

by Christian Dunn

  The Imperial Fists closed in around Sarpedon, shepherding him back towards the Observatory of Dornian Majesty. Sarpedon glanced back at Borganor, who followed. There was nothing in the Howling Griffon’s demeanour to suggest he had any intention but to pull Sarpedon apart piece by piece, regardless of what Vladimir decreed.

  But he would decree execution, whatever form it was to take. There had been no doubt about that from the moment Sarpedon had squared up to Lysander on Selaaca. He had come to the Phalanx to die. He had taken comfort that his Chapter would be executed under the eye of Rogal Dorn, who at least would know that the Soul Drinkers were not the traitors the Imperium perceived them to be… But now, with Gethsemar’s revelation, even that was in doubt.

  Sarpedon would die alone. The galaxy was too cruel, he supposed, to have expected anything else.

  ‘It is done,’ said Brother Sennon. He clambered to his feet, unsteady, his knees having locked up during his long prayer.

  ‘What did you ask Him for?’ said Luko. There was sarcasm in his voice, but Sennon didn’t seem to have picked it up.

  ‘I asked Him for what He promises everyone. He grants us, if there is any piety in our hearts, a second chance. In our final moments we can be redeemed, if we are pure of heart when our souls come to be weighed against His example.’

  ‘We must leave,’ said one of the Imperial Fists escorting Sennon. ‘Time in the heretics’ presence is rationed. They are a moral threat.’

  ‘My soul is steeled against such things,’ replied Sennon. ‘I am frail on the outside, but there is none stronger within than a follower of the Blinded Eye.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ said the Imperial Fist, ‘we all have our orders.’

  ‘Of course.’ Brother Sennon looked up and down the corridor of the Atoning Halls. At one end was a complicated rack, where Imperial Fists in the past had mortified their flesh to atone for some slight against the honour of their Chapter. At the other was a pair of blast doors, sealed. ‘Is this where the Dreadnought is held?’ asked Sennon, walking towards the doors.

  ‘It is,’ replied the Imperial Fist. ‘We have no business there. Daenyathos, if it truly is he, will be dealt with separately when the judgement has been pronounced.’

  ‘To think of it,’ said Sennon. ‘He must be six thousand years old. He fought at Terra, you know, during the Wars of Apostasy. To us a time of legends, to him, living memory.’

  ‘Past deeds mean nothing when corruption rules the present,’ said the Imperial Fist. ‘Brother Sennon, we must leave.’

  Sennon was right in front of the blast doors now. He placed a hand against them, as if feeling for a heartbeat. ‘Just a moment more,’ he said. ‘Just a moment.’

  Sennon turned back towards the Imperial Fists, a smile on his face like that of a saint rendered in stained glass. He seemed about to speak again, and then Brother Sennon exploded.

  The court was full, all the Space Marines in attendance to witness the condemnation of Sarpedon. After him the rest of the Soul Drinkers would be filed through here to receive their death sentences, but it was Sarpedon’s that really counted. In the eyes of those who wanted vengeance against them, Sarpedon was the Soul Drinkers, and his fate fell on them all.

  Reinez stood, arms folded, waiting for the sentence as if he were in attendance as executioner. It was more likely that Captain Lysander would do the deed, standing as he was beside the pulpit with his hammer in his hand. Commander Gethsemar wore his weeping mask again, perhaps to remember the Space Marines who had died at Soul Drinker hands. N’Kalo wore his helmet again – presumably it had been hammered back into shape in the forges of the Phalanx, and N’Kalo’s twice-ruined face was hidden once more. Chapter Master Vladimir stood among the Imperial Fists, ready to pronounce his findings.

  ‘The accused will take to the pulpit,’ said Vladimir.

  Sarpedon did as he was told. If there had been a time to fight back, save for the ill-fated lashing out in the Apothecarion, then it had long since passed. It would serve no purpose, either. He had no particular hate for the Space Marines who had gathered here to see him killed. He had been like them once, except perhaps a little more prideful, a little more arrogant. He did not even hate Reinez. A moment of pity, perhaps, but not hate.

  ‘Sarpedon of the Soul Drinkers,’ began Vladimir. ‘Words have been said for and against your conduct. The evidence gathered has been examined with criticism as well as zeal. I am confident that honour and tradition have been served in every action of this court, and that the conclusions we draw are true and just before the sight of Rogal Dorn and the Emperor Most High.’

  ‘May I speak?’ said Sarpedon.

  ‘Speak if you will,’ said Vladimir, ‘but our conclusions have been arrived at, and need only pronouncement. Your words will mean nothing.’

  ‘My gratitude, Lord Justice,’ said Sarpedon. ‘Space Marines, I call you brothers, though I know you think yourselves no brothers of mine. When I turned on Chapter Master Gorgoleon and took command of my Chapter, I did it because I saw in us a terrible corruption. Not the corruption of the warp, nor some darkness of the xenos, but a very human corruption of the soul. We believed ourselves to be superior, to be the shepherds of the human race, for we were ordained within the priesthood of Terra with the role of watchdogs and executioners. Yet that priesthood, and the Imperium it ruled, were the true enemy. For every human killed or made to suffer by the predations of the warp or the alien, a billion more are dealt the same fate by the Imperium. The Emperor is just a hollow figurehead now, an excuse for the cruelty the Imperium inflicts, yet when He walked among us He strove for the safety and glory of every man and woman. Would you have me grovel and beg for forgiveness, for leading my Chapter to do the will of the Emperor when it conflicted with the malice of the Imperium? The death of every Space Marine weighs on me. The Howling Griffons and Crimson Fists who died in our conflicts I feel as sharply as the deaths of my own brothers. But I will not say that I am sorry. I have done nothing wrong. And if the story of the Soul Drinkers causes any one of you to doubt the right of the Imperium to oppress and murder the Emperor’s faithful, then our deaths will not have been in vain.’

  Reinez met Sarpedon’s words with sarcastic applause, slow hand claps that echoed in the Observatory of Dornian Majesty. Everyone else was silent.

  ‘Then I pronounce on you the sentence of death,’ said Vladimir, ‘to be administered by the Imperial Fists swiftly, as befits the death of another Space Marine, and the striking of the name Sarpedon and those of all the Soul Drinkers from any bonds of oath or honour. To carry out this sentence I appoint Captain Lysander as executioner and Apothecary Asclephin as overseer. Sarpedon, you will be taken from this place to the Chapel of Martyrs where you will be killed, your body incinerated and any remains jettisoned into space. Your battle-brothers will follow. That is the pronouncement of this court.’

  Sarpedon bowed his head. It was as good as he could have expected.

  A stirring in the assembled Space Marines broke his train of thought. Several of them were looking upwards, through the dome. The smeared lights of the Veiled Region silhouetted a form approaching rapidly – a spaceship, smaller by magnitudes than the Phalanx, its engines burning full thrust as it hurtled right towards the dome.

  Fire spat towards it. The automated turrets of the Phalanx had activated in time and the shape exploded in the brief burst of flame that was sucked away by the vacuum a split second later. But the ship was not vaporised, merely blown apart, and a chunk of its hull still spun on its original course towards the dome.

  ‘The pilgrim ship,’ said Lysander. ‘Close the dome!’

  The dome was protected by armour plates that began to close like the lids of a huge circular eye, but every Space Marine could see it would not close fast enough.

  ‘Everyone out!’ yelled Vladimir. ‘We are betrayed! Enemies abound! Brothers, flee this place!’

  ‘The condemned seeks vengeance!’ shouted Reinez over the growing commotion as the Spac
e Marines left their seats and headed for the exits, the burning mass of the pilgrim ship’s hull looming larger through the dome. ‘His allies want to take us with him! I will not flee while this traitor yet lives!’

  ‘Damnation, Reinez!’ yelled Lysander. ‘Get–’

  The hull segment crashed into the dome. The armoured shutters were halfway closed when it hit. The dome shattered, shards of thick armoured glass falling like knives. The air boomed out and a terrible half-silence fell, the shrieking of metal and the howling of flame muffled as if coming from beneath the earth.

  Sarpedon’s augmented lungs closed his windpipes to preserve what air he had in his body. The disaster unfolded around him in slow motion. Space Marines were diving for cover from the chunks of burning metal raining down. In surreal slow motion, one Imperial Fist lost his leg at the knee, sheared off by a shard of the dome. Another, along with a Howling Griffon, disappeared under a torrent of twisted steel and fire. Space Marines were thrown aside as Vladimir’s honour guard fought to force him through the doors. Gethsemar’s Angels Sanguine leapt from the seats out through the entrances on the exhaust plumes of their jump packs.

  All was chaos. The bulk of the pilgrim ship’s hull was wedged in the blinded eye socket of the dome, but it had split open along the lines of its hull plates and was spewing torrents of burning wreckage into the dome. Sarpedon couldn’t see Reinez or Lysander, the two Space Marines who had been closest to him, and his body instinctively fought against his restraints.

  One part of him was screaming that he had no air, and that even a Space Marine’s three lungs could not hold out for long in hard vacuum. The other part fought to escape. Sarpedon had never tested his bonds in the pulpit properly, for there had never been any chance of him escaping beneath the sight of so many Space Marines. Now he pulled against the manacles and shackles with strength he was not sure he still had.

  The structure of the pulpit gave way. Hardwood and steel broke under the force. Sarpedon ripped his manacles off and grabbed the struts of the shackles that held his six remaining legs in place. They broke away, too, and Sarpedon, though still dragging his restraints behind him, was free.

  He ran for the nearest exit. A sheet of steel, a section of the pilgrim ship’s deck, fell like a giant guillotine blade, and he skidded to a halt just before it sliced him in two. He scrambled up it, almost as nimble over a vertical surface as a horizontal one, and saw ahead of him the blast doors closing. A klaxon was blaring, the sound transmitted through the floor and his talons, explosions like dull thuds all around, the whole chamber vibrating as metal tore. He saw a dying Howling Griffon, one side of his torso opened up, organs trailing from his torn armour. His eyes were rolled back and he was convulsing. Sarpedon could not help him.

  Sarpedon jumped and skidded through the blast doors. A tangle of wreckage was blocking them from closing completely. He hauled the twisted metal free and the doors boomed close, air howling around him and screaming in his ears as the corridor beyond repressurised.

  Sarpedon took a breath. It felt like the first in a lifetime. His throat was raw as he gulped down air. His mind, tight and dull in his head, seemed to flow back to full capacity with the return of oxygen.

  Sarpedon looked around him. He was in a tech lab, with benches heavy with verispex equipment and banks of datamedium racked on the walls. It was where Techmarines and their assistant crewmen would conduct experiments on captured tech, or craft the delicate mechanisms of bespoke weapons and armour. The walls were inlaid with bronze geometric designs and a cogitator stood against one wall like an altar, its brass case covered in candles that had half-burned away. The floor was scattered with broken equipment and the detritus of their work, thrown about by the gale of escaping air.

  Sarpedon paused. He did not know the layout of the Phalanx. He remembered the way back to his cell well enough, but he doubted there was any point in returning there.

  What point was there in doing anything? He could not escape the Phalanx, surely. The Imperial Fists would be hunting him down as soon as they had counted their own dead. He was free, but what did it matter?

  It had to count for something. He fought the fatalism that had weighed him down since his capture. While he still lived, he could still fight, he could still make his life mean something…

  ‘Sarpedon!’ yelled a voice that he recognised with a lurch.

  Reinez, his pilgrim’s tatters even more ragged and his face scorched, limped from a doorway into the lab. He had been caught in the flames and the edges of his armour were singed, but he had not lost his grip on the thunder hammer that served him like an extension of his own body.

  ‘Captain Reinez,’ said Sarpedon. ‘I see that neither of us is easy to kill.’

  ‘You are not free, traitor!’ barked Reinez. ‘There is no freedom under my watch! I sought your execution, and it will happen this day!’

  Sarpedon was unarmed and unarmoured. He had not fought for what was, by his standards, a long time, and his lungs and muscles still burned. But he was still a Space Marine, and the moment did not exist when a Space Marine was unprepared to fight.

  Reinez charged, yelling as he held his hammer high. It was a move of pure anger, reckless, unthinking. Wrong. Sarpedon scuttled up one wall, talons finding purchase in the raised designs, and Reinez’s hammer slammed into the wall behind him. The hammer ripped a deep dent in the wall, wires and coolant pipes spilling out as he wrenched it free.

  Sarpedon clung to the web of lumen-strips and wires that covered the ceiling. Reinez yelled in frustration and swung up at Sarpedon, but he dropped down onto a lab bench in front of him and kicked a complex microscope array into Reinez’s unprotected face. Dozens of lenses and sharp brass struts shattered and Reinez stumbled back, blinded for a moment.

  Sarpedon pounced on him, front limbs striking down, back limbs wrapping around. Reinez fell back with Sarpedon on top of him, fighting for the hammer which was the only weapon between them. Sarpedon tore it from Reinez’s hands and threw it aside, the power field discharging like caged lightning as the weapon tumbled across the room.

  Reinez punched up at Sarpedon. Sarpedon batted Reinez’s fist aside and followed up with a punch of his own, his knuckles cracking against Reinez’s jaw. With his armour on, a gauntleted fist would have broken the jaw – as it was Reinez was merely stunned for a moment, long enough for Sarpedon to roll him over, lift him up off the floor and drive him head-first into the cogitator against the room’s back wall.

  Power flashed. Components pinged out of the ruined machine, valves popping, cogs firing out like bullets. Reinez pulled himself free, blood running down his face and the pitted surface of his tarnished breastplate.

  ‘You are no executioner!’ yelled Sarpedon. ‘You failed! You have become this unthinking, hating creature, because you cannot accept that you failed! If you killed me your failure would still stand and your life would mean nothing! You should be grateful I never gave you the chance!’

  Reinez coughed up a gobbet of blood. He was still standing, but he wavered as if his legs wanted to give way. ‘Heretic,’ he slurred. ‘Vermin. You were never any brother of mine. The warp took you long ago. Your whole Chapter. Stained… tainted… down to your gene-seed… Even Dorn’s blood rejects you!’

  Reinez’s hand flashed down to his waist and a bolt pistol was in his palm. He raised it in a flash.

  Reinez was a fast draw. Sarpedon moved faster. He crouched down onto his haunches, behind one of the lab benches. The bolt pistol barked and hit the lab bench, blasting sprays of hardwood and bronze shrapnel. Another few shots and it would come apart.

  Sarpedon dropped his shoulder and barged into the bench. It came off its moorings and he powered it towards Reinez. The bench crunched into Reinez, pinning him against the wall and trapping the wrist of his gun arm.

  Sarpedon reached over the bench and tore the pistol out of Reinez’s hand. As quickly as Reinez had drawn it, Sarpedon had it against Reinez’s temple.

  ‘I let you l
ive,’ said Sarpedon. ‘Remember that, brother.’

  Sarpedon smacked the butt of the pistol into the bridge of Reinez’s nose, crunching through cartilage and stunning Reinez again. The Crimson Fist’s head lolled, insensible. Sarpedon let go of the bench and Reinez clattered to the floor. Sarpedon left him there, scuttling from the tech lab into whatever paths the Phalanx had laid out for him next.

  The liquid explosive with which Brother Sennon had replaced his blood ignited, and incinerated him in an instant. The door to Daenyathos’s cell was ripped off its mountings. The Imperial Fists accompanying Sennon were blown off their feet and hurled down the corridor of the Atoning Halls, their armoured weight crushing the rack that stood at the intersection.

  Luko was knocked senseless by the shockwave. When his senses returned, his vision shuddered and his ears were full of white noise. He did not hear the footsteps of the Dreadnought emerging from the smouldering hole, but he saw the rubble-strewn ground shaking. Soul Drinkers stumbled from their cells, for the walls of the Atoning Halls had been forced out of shape and cell doors had sprung open. One or two of them had used shrapnel to lever their restraints open, and helped their fellows in neighbouring cells do the same. Two of them were on the Imperial Fists, who were still stunned and could not fight back as the Soul Drinkers grabbed their boltguns, combat knives and grenades.

  Luko kicked against his own cell door. It was still held fast. A shadow fell over him, and silhouetted in the hazy light was Daenyathos. The Dreadnought body, even disarmed, was a powerful and terrible thing. Luko, still deafened, did not speak. The Dreadnought looked at him, the dead eyes of its mechanical head focussing, and then it walked on, disappearing into the swirl of dust and smoke.

  Sergeant Salk appeared in the Dreadnought’s wake. He had a pair of shears for cutting through chain or bone, likely taken from one of the cases of torture implements with which past generations of Imperial Fists had purified themselves. Salk shouted something that Luko could not make out, then worked on the hinges of the cell door until Salk could wrench it free.