Ultramarines

by Graham McNeill

  Activating the command vox, Cassius stared with hatred at the hive ship and asked a simple question.

  ‘What is it to be a Space Marine?’

  ‘I am the Undying. I am doom incarnate…’

  It towered over me, this monster of living metal. It wore a crown with a red gemstone, torcs banded its mechanised arms and an azure pectoral hung around its neck. These were royal trappings. Here I fought a king of the dead, a robotic anachronism of an old and conceited culture, full of darkest anima.

  Necrons, they were called. Its regal status only spurred me on.

  ‘We are the slayers of kings!’ I declared, spitting the words in anger at the gilded monster before me.

  We fought alone, the monster and I. None interfered. I had drawn only my sword. For my victory to have any meaning, this was how it had to be. Even terms, its crackling war-scythe matched against my venerable Tempest Blade. But in the end, it was not my sword that was found wanting…

  After a savage duel, it cut me deeply. No foe had ever done that before. And with blood filling my mouth, I fell. I, Cato Sicarius, Master of the Watch, Knight Champion of Macragge, Grand Duke of Talassar and High Suzerain of Ultramar, fell.

  And as the veil of darkness wrapped around me like a funerary shroud, I heard the monster’s words again…

  ‘I am doom.’

  I came around coughing up amniotic fluid, spraying the inside of the revivification casket. I roared, thundering my fist against the glass, my muscles and nerves suddenly aflame.

  ‘Release me!’ I spat, half-choking.

  Locking clamps around the casket disengaged, admitting me back to the world of the living. I arrived breathing hard, sitting in a half-capsule of briny, viscous liquid and murderously staring down my Apothecary.

  ‘Welcome back, brother-captain.’

  Lathered in gelatinous filth, I scowled. ‘Venatio.’

  My Apothecary had the good grace to nod.

  He was wearing his full armour-plate, white to identify his vocation as a medic rather than the ubiquitous Ultramarine-blue of our Chapter, but he went without a helmet. An ageing veteran of my command squad, Venatio’s hair was fair, closely cropped, and he had dark green eyes that had seen too much of death.

  It was dark in the apothecarion, shadows suggesting the shape of various machines and devices the Chapter medics employed in the service of preserving life. The air reeked of counterseptic and a fine mist clouded the floor. It was clean, cold; a desolate place. How many had come through these halls bloody and broken? How many had arrived and never left? Always too many.

  I made to rise but Venatio lifted a gauntleted hand to stop me.

  ‘Don’t presume you can keep me from climbing out of this casket,’ I warned him.

  The hand gesture became placatory. ‘Let me at least run a full bio-scan first.’

  Venatio had the device in his other hand and was already conducting his test, so I endured the amniotic filth a little longer. When he was done, I refused his proffered hand and extricated myself without his help. My side ached. Once I was out of the casket and standing on the tiled floor, I looked down and saw why. An angry scar puckered my flesh from where the Undying’s war-scythe had cleaved me.

  ‘It’s remarkable you are even alive, let alone walking, brother-captain,’ the Apothecary said, consulting biometric data from his scanner.

  ‘I’ll do more than walk,’ I promised vengefully, but realised I had no knowledge of what had happened after I had collapsed. ‘What of Damnos? Were the Second victorious?’

  Venatio’s already severe expression darkened, pinching together the age lines of his face.

  ‘After your defeat, Agrippen and Lord Tigurius rallied the men. But we had badly underestimated the enemy and were forced to evacuate. Damnos is lost.’ He lowered his voice. ‘So too Venerable Agrippen.’

  I clenched my fist so hard that the knuckles cracked. It was a sparse chamber we occupied; much of the apothecarion’s equipment was situated at its periphery with only my amniotic casket within striking distance. I hit it hard, putting a fissure in the glass. Had I my Tempest Blade at hand, I might have cut it apart. Galling was not the word.

  I was about to ask Venatio to tell me more when another voice from the shadows, a presence I hadn’t noticed in my recently revived state, interrupted.

  ‘I had to see it for myself…’

  A son of Ultramar, the son of Ultramar, if some amongst the Chapter were to be believed, stepped into the light. He too was fully clad, his plumed helmet sitting in the crook of his left arm, a ceremonial gladius strapped to his left leg. Gilt-edged shoulder guards and breastplate shone in the lambent lumen-strip above us, and his war-plate was festooned with the laurels of his many years of vaunted service.

  ‘Severus.’ I bowed my head out of respect for the veteran, but his stern expression, hardened further by his scars and the platinum studs embedded in his bald forehead, suggested he came here with ill news.

  ‘Cato.’

  I hated the fact he used my given name, though I knew he hated me for doing so first. We were rivals, he and I. Severus Agemman was my predecessor as Captain of the Second. He in turn succeeded Saul Invictus after the great hero fell at Macragge. Now he stood as Calgar’s right hand, and I beneath him. We were rivals because our war philosophy was very different. Agemman was a blunt but effective adherent to the Codex Astartes, whereas I interpreted our primarch’s teachings and was less predictable. Some have said reckless. Only Agemman has ever said so to my face.

  He smiled, but it was a cold, pitiless gesture.

  Out with it then.

  ‘I wish I could I report I was here merely to see the dead brought back to life…’ Agemman gestured to the formidable scar raking my side. The smile faded to the thin, hard line of his mouth. ‘But, I cannot. You are to stand before Lord Calgar. The Chapter Master would have knowledge of what happened on Damnos and why we returned to the empire in ignominious defeat.’

  My eyes narrowed, but I held my temper. An argument here, now, with Venatio looking on, would serve no good purpose.

  ‘And am I to be held responsible for this defeat? I know that whilst I yet stood, the warriors of the Second were not routed.’

  Agemman refused to be baited. He was rigid, and a pain in the arse for that.

  ‘You have six hours to prepare your testimony.’

  ‘My testimony? Am I to be judged then?’

  My opponent betrayed no emotion, though I refuse to believe he did not take some petty pleasure in all of this.

  ‘The events on Damnos were disastrous. Questions must be asked.’

  I began to walk towards the chamber door, still dripping.

  ‘Then let us go now. I have nothing to hide and don’t need six hours to realise that.’

  Agemman put his armoured bulk in my path.

  ‘Cease this wanton disregard for orders, Sicarius! Your reckless behaviour is what has brought you to this point.’ He calmed down, though it took some effort to reassert the mask of control he had been wearing ever since addressing me from the shadows. ‘It seems you have yet to learn that.’

  ‘Don’t speak to me like a neophyte, Agemman,’ I warned. ‘As they have on countless occasions, my swift actions prevented an earlier defeat. I prefer to win hard battles, not easy campaigns and reap the hollow glory. Next time you behold my banner on the field, look at the victories upon it and then look to your own.’

  I goaded him out of a desire to return the disrespect he had just afforded me. I vaunted the First, and their captain. They were some of the bravest and most capable warriors in the Chapter, but that didn’t mean I had to like them.

  Agemman had every right to strike me. To my irritation, he resisted, but as he spoke through clenched teeth I knew he’d come close.

  ‘Six hours.’

  Agemman left the ap
othecarion without another word. He’d be saving them for my trial, no doubt.

  To his credit, Venatio said nothing. He merely gave his professional report.

  ‘You are fit to resume your duties, brother-captain.’

  At a command from the Apothecary, a serf entered the room from a side chamber and began scraping the remaining amniotic gel from my skin.

  Still seething after Agemman’s exit, I nodded to Venatio.

  ‘Tell me, Brother-Apothecary. Where are my armour and weapons?’

  ‘The Techmarines have been repairing them. I understand there was much damage to the war-plate in particular. You’ll find them in the armourium. East wing.’

  Dismissing the serf, I grunted a word of gratitude to Venatio and left for the weapon workshops. Something in the penumbra around the apothecarion had set me on edge and I desired the return of my war trappings as soon as possible.

  The Fortress of Hera is a vast and near-impregnable bastion. It is the noble seat of Macragge, the slab-sided barrack house of the Ultramarines Chapter, and has always been so. Its armouriums, battle cages and shrines are many. We all worship at them in our own way, these temples of violence and honour. I found Tech­marine Vantor easily enough.

  Like the apothecarion, the armourium was dark, but far from cold. It radiated heat that prickled the air and raked my nostrils. There was smoke and flame, ash and the taste of metal. Great engines tended by serf-engineers and cyberorganic servitors pummelled iron and steel. Here, the artefacts of war were repaired and manufactured. On a metal dais, a Rhino armoured transport lay gutted, whilst incense was burned and canticles of function were invoked. At a great anvil, blades were tempered and honed by hammer-armed servitors. Workshops were arrayed in multitudes with their rows of dark iron benches and churning machineries.

  All of this fell into insignificance, however. For nearest to me was a servo-armed Techmarine, stooped over a suit of magnificent power armour.

  It was good to see it again. It would feel even better to don it.

  ‘Brother…’ I announced my presence at the armourium’s door, which had slid open to admit me into the expansive workshop.

  Vantor turned at the sound of my voice, his bionics grinding noisily as he moved.

  He bowed slightly. ‘Captain Sicarius, I have almost finished my ministrations to your armour.’ Spoken through the vox-grille covering his mouth, the Techmarine’s voice was as mechanised as his right arm and leg. ‘I’m sure you’ll be pleased to learn that, like you, it yet lives.’

  I always found it curious, the way the adherents of the Cult Mechanicus regarded inanimate adamantium and ceramite. Vantor had not only been repairing my armour, but also had been soothing its machine-spirit too. As a Techmarine, Vantor wore not the blue of the Ultramarines but the red of the Martian world where he had received his clandestine training. Only his shoulder pad remained the blue of Ultramar as a concession to his dual fealty.

  ‘Indeed I am, brother. I long to wear it again, and feel the grip of my Tempest Blade in my–’ I stopped abruptly, my eye drawn to a work-team of servitors labouring at the back of the chamber.

  I could not disguise my anger. ‘What in Terra’s name is that?’

  Beyond the honest industry of the armourium, beyond the slow beaten battleplate and forged blades, the tanks and engines, was an abomination.

  Vantor turned, incredulous.

  ‘Frag, shrapnel. They are what remnants of the enemy we managed to salvage before the evacuation.’

  Ranked up, steadily being logged and categorized, examined and tested, were pieces of the necron. Heads, fingers, limbs, even broken portions of their weaponry, were under heavy scrutiny by the Techmarine’s lobotomised serfs. I counted over twenty different benches of the material.

  The urge to grasp my sword deepened.

  ‘They are inactive, I take it?’

  Vantor nodded. ‘Of course, but by studying even the inert pieces of necron technology we can develop our knowledge of them.’

  The fact that the Techmarine could neither see nor appreciate the danger in bringing this flotsam into our fortress-monastery only served to show the gulf between us in sharper relief.

  I walked through the workshop, Vantor following, and approached one of the work benches where a servitor was toiling over an array of limbs, heads, even torso sections. I reached out to touch one of the silver skulls, its rictus grin mocking me even in destruction, but fell just short of touching it.

  ‘How are they even here? I am no expert on the necron, but aren’t they supposed to disappear when destroyed?’

  Vantor came to stand beside me. A blurt of binaric dismissed the servitor and set it to another task.

  ‘Apparently, the Damnosian natives found a way to retard that ability through magnetism.’

  I frowned at Vantor. ‘Really? A human colony with rudimentary engineering ability, using only electromagnets and a theory, achieves what the Mechanicus couldn’t?’

  ‘I was similarly unconvinced, and yet…’ He gestured to the workshop full of deactivated components.

  ‘I would not have sanctioned this research,’ I declared. My gaze lingered on one skull in particular. There was something strangely familiar about it.

  He blinked, his very human eyes like flashes of burned umber.

  ‘Lord Calgar agrees that our knowledge of this enemy is of paramount importance if we are to fight it effectively.’

  ‘We fought effectively enough,’ I replied, my manner absent-minded as I drew closer to the skull. Like a siren it seemed to call to me, beckoning, reminding…

  I felt the darkness close, the veil around me tightening and suffocating. Vantor’s next words were lost in this fog as was my response. All I could see was the skull, the eyes aglow and its rictus grin. I reached for my blade but grasped air, neither hilt nor scabbard. Legs buckling, unable to hold my weight, I fell to my knees and gasped. The air would not come. I was drowning with no ocean for miles, save the one of oil and blackness devouring me. Everything surrendered to the dark: Vantor, the armourium, the serfs, my armour – all was consumed. Only I remained, staring down the lidless orbs of that gilded, grinning skull.

  ‘I am doom…’

  The last of my breath ghosted the air as an icy chill came over me. I felt ice underfoot, though I was still inside the fortress-monastery, and a low rumbling tremor in its frigid depths…

  I breathed and the darkness crowding my vision bled away at once like ink dispersed in water. The ice melted and I resurfaced. The necron skull was in my hands, grasped tight. Its eyes were lifeless, dead in their sockets, a rusty patina weathering cheeks, pate and temples of gunmetal grey. Not gold. Not the king. Not here.

  Vantor was gone – only the servitors were left and I assumed he had let me stay here to peruse the battlefield relics as if I alone could unlock some secret by merely looking at him. He hadn’t realised I had become lost in a dream.

  The wound in my side flared anew and I grimaced to keep the pain at bay.

  My armour was waiting for me, a gift from Vantor.

  I took it, eager to leave the armourium and the unquiet resonance it had stirred inside me. I needed to ease my mind. It had been never so pure and focused as when in combat. I headed at once for the battle cages.

  I found an old comrade in the lonely arena.

  Daceus was the only warrior sparring that night and I crossed a gloomy threshold of empty cages, their servitors dormant and inactive within, to reach him.

  ‘Brother-sergeant,’ I called up to him, having to raise my voice above the punishing din of his sword blade striking the vital kill-points of the combat servitor he had chosen to pit himself against. It was a grossly uneven contest, of course. Daceus could have wrecked the machine many times over but was here to practise his form and test his stamina, not incur the wrath of the Techmarines by needlessly dismantling ser
vitors.

  ‘Pause routine,’ he uttered breathlessly and looked down at me, his face mildly beaded with sweat. Daceus saluted, sword in front of his body. ‘Brother-captain, I am glad to see you returned to us.’

  ‘I hoped to bless the reunion with honest combat.’

  Ever the martial exemplar, Daceus stepped aside and hammered the icon which opened the cage door with his fist.

  ‘Then let us see what benedictions you might offer.’

  Already, he was measuring my combat efficacy, observing, strategising. My brother-sergeant wanted to know how sharp my fighting edge was. So did I.

  Using the Tempest Blade in the battle cage would dishonour the weapon and put me at an unfair advantage, so I selected a training gladius from the rack to match the one wielded by my opponent. The balance was good, the blade straight and sharp despite the many hours of practice bouts it must have endured. It was no master-crafted weapon, but it was a worthy one.

  ‘Helmets on or off, brother?’ asked Daceus. Here in the cages, once blades were drawn, rank ceased to have meaning.

  ‘Off. I want to be able to breathe and use my senses without hindrance.’

  ‘Agreed. No strikes above the neck then. First to three hits?’

  I nodded, taking up a fighting stance in my power armour. Vantor would be annoyed if I scratched it so soon, but I believed war-plate needed scars before going into battle proper.

  ‘Begin.’

  Daceus’s first thrust was quick and aimed at my torso. I barely parried it before a second lunge caught me off guard and took a chip out of my plastron.

  We paused and returned to our initial engagement positions.

  ‘First hit is yours, brother.’ I tried, and failed, to hide my annoyance. ‘Again.’

  Daceus chopped downwards, high to low, and I managed a hasty block in response. Stepping back, I invited him to advance, which he did with a swift back to forehand slash. I used a hilt guard to protect myself and forged a jab of my own, but Daceus deflected it easily and used the kinetic momentum to rotate his blade into a half circling up and over slash that smashed against my clavicle and put me down on one knee.