The Gildar Rift

by Sarah Cawkwell

  Ultimately, although the words were not spoken aloud, the decision was simple. What other Chapters did not know could not give rise for concern. It was a little unsatisfactory, but for now at least, Volker’s existence needed to remain as secretive as possible.

  The Silver Skulls had no way of knowing that Huron Blackheart had been given a momentary glimpse of what it was that they would now be hiding.

  Stowing away the dark thoughts of the Chapter’s necessary concealment, Correlan concentrated on his work. Behind him, Jeremiah jabbered away happily to Volker, not interested in the slightest whether or not the Resurgent responded. Every once in a while, Volker would make an encouraging noise or ask a pertinent question. It was more than enough to keep the Navigator happy. Volker’s tone was invariably clinical and detached. It was a shared general opinion now amongst all those who knew him that whatever shred of humanity remained of Volker Straub had been so deeply absorbed into the Dread Argent that it was not even a spark. Yanus had shared with Correlan that horrible moment he had seen through to Volker’s human soul, but it had not happened since. That moment of fleeting humanity was long gone.

  Yet these little moments that Volker shared with Jeremiah were touchingly poignant in their own way. It was almost as though the little Navigator offered Volker the last refuge of humanity that he could find nowhere else.

  After the sacrifice the youth had made, Correlan didn’t feel that he could deny him anything.

  The light in this room was lower than the cell in which they had kept him and it took a moment or two for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. As he moved forward, the shackles around his legs and wrists clanked ridiculously loudly. The chain that threaded through the manacles and attached them to another loop on the collar he wore hindered his movement drastically.

  ‘Why are you showing me this?’ He asked the question of the figure behind him. ‘I have already told you that I will not serve you or your foul master.’

  ‘I am showing you this because you need to understand, brother.’ The softly spoken words were earnest and drew nothing but a scowl from the chained warrior.

  ‘Never call me that. I am not like you. I will never be like you. I am Apothecary Ryarus of the Silver Skulls Fourth Company. I am no traitor.’

  ‘Perhaps you are all those things,’ said the Corpsemaster, sliding from the shadows behind Ryarus and moving into the dim half-light of his most secret laboratory. ‘But above all else, you are an Apothecary. Look around this place. Tell me what you see.’

  Despite himself, Ryarus moved forward a few shuffling steps and leaned in to the closest vessel. Throughout the chamber, tanks of fluid bubbled and hummed softly with the power that was diverted to them. Low, violet lights uplit the room casting bizarre shadows and generally giving it an otherworldly, horrific caste.

  The vessel into which Ryarus now peered was small, barely wider around than his own thigh and within the milky contents floated something disturbingly familiar.

  ‘Do you know what that is, Ryarus?’ The Corpsemaster was breathless, as though the presence of all these objects excited him. Revulsion turned Ryarus’s stomach.

  ‘Yes,’ he acknowledged reluctantly. ‘It is a biscopea. What my people call the Warrior’s Vigour.’ He looked around. In various tanks, other implants were being stored. Harvested or grown, he could not tell.

  ‘This particular organ was harvested from a Blood Angels warrior who fell many decades ago. A Devastator if memory serves. That one there is from a White Consul. This here...’ Garreon pointed to another tank. It was clear that he was deeply enjoying this personal tour of his grisly hoard. ‘This secondary heart was taken less than a year ago from the body of one of your own battle-brothers. A Silver Skulls Assault Marine.’ Delighted at the look of outrage on Ryarus’s face, the Corpsemaster dug the knife deeper. ‘I also have a store of progenoids from every Chapter you could name. And soon, we will no longer be dependent on receiving those who have seen the corpse-Emperor’s lies for what they are.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Our numbers swell from time to time when the disillusioned turn to the light of my master’s truth. But we need the ability to create our own warriors.’

  Ryarus was disgusted. ‘They would be mongrels. Made from disparate body parts that you harvest on the battlefield? There would be no telling what abomination you would forge. You would need the talents of the greatest Apothe...’ His voice tailed off and he bit back the rest of his sentence. But the Corpsemaster simply nodded.

  ‘You see at last, brother, why it is that we have kept you alive. Your skills and your knowledge are worth far more to us than any of the goods we stole from the planets in the Gildar system. My previous apprentice...’ The ugly face darkened. ‘Is no longer with me. He chose another path.’

  ‘I will not help you in this heresy. I would die first.’

  The Corpsemaster shrugged, indicating his indifference to Ryarus’s needs or desires. ‘Help me willingly or not. If you choose not to, you will simply be used as a vessel to mature progenoids. I will keep you here for as long as it takes to build up our stock. Who knows? In several generations’ time, the bloodline and pedigree of the Silver Skulls could course through every servant of Lord Huron.’

  The Corpsemaster’s taunts cut Ryarus’s soul into shreds and he felt physically nauseous at the implications of what was being suggested.

  ‘I would die first,’ he repeated, raising his head high.

  ‘Ah, cousin,’ said the Corpsemaster, his cold eyes taking in the shackled Apothecary. ‘You and I both know full well the truth of being an Adeptus Astartes. Being functionally immortal outside of a battlefield...’ He moved in and Ryarus’s head jerked back involuntarily at his rancid breath.

  ‘It merely means that you will have a very long time to consider your options.’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘Return him to his cell. I have work to do.’

  The Gildar Rift

  In geostationary orbit above Gildar Secundus

  ++ Six weeks later ++

  The radiant light of the Gildar star bled through the stained windows of the Dread Argent’s chapel. It fell on the floor in a myriad glorious colours, catching in the motes of swirling incense smoke that had burned continuously since the battle of the Gildar Rift. It was held briefly in the silvered trophies, the macabre skulls of the Chapter’s enemies gleaming in shades of green, red and blue.

  Barely an hour before, the chapel had been filled with the remainder of Fourth Company and others, too. Many from Daviks and Sinopa’s companies had travelled across to pay their respects. So many Silver Skulls gathered together in the Dread Argent’s chapel had been an inspirational sight in itself, raising the spirits of Fourth Company.

  Brand and Inteus had shared the duties of reciting the battle honours of the fallen, giving special recognition for the heroic efforts of Porteus’s team. Although the former sergeant was not present to receive the praise due to him, Brand ensured that both he, and Curis, the only other survivor of that mission, had their names entered in the Book of Honour, standing resplendent on its plinth at the front of the chapel. Had it not been for Porteus and his squad’s tenacity in securing the communications tower, things may well have been far worse.

  Acknowledging the efforts of a shamed battle-brother caused a wave of scandalised murmurs to ripple through the chapel, but at a look from Brand, the noise had stilled. The service for the fallen had ended on a positive note as the announcement that the Dread Argent would return to the home world in order to bring back the bodies of the dead raised levels of morale. Fourth Company and their honoured guests had filed out. Daviks and Sinopa had lingered a while, soaking in the ambience of this most sacred of places but in due course, they too had returned to their duties. Inteus and Brand had not spoken to one another. Not in words, anyway. The psychic interchange between the two, however, had been enlightening and Brand had much to consider.

  Then they had all gone, leaving Brand alone once more in the vast ch
amber.

  Kneeling before the altar, his head bowed low, the Prognosticator murmured his own personal prayers and litanies of remembrance for all those who had fallen over the course of the battle. So many heavy losses had hit Fourth Company hard and for days since the last world had been cleansed, the remaining warriors of Captain Daerys Arrun’s command had spent countless hours in prayers for the departed. This service marked the end of that observance. Now, perhaps, they could regroup and rebuild themselves to the supreme fighting force that Arrun had commanded.

  In the end, it had taken a number of weeks to fully cleanse the Gildar system of the filth that had infiltrated it. The Manifest Destiny had sent a series of astropathic messages back to Varsavia giving updates on the situation but they had yet to hear back from their home world. The decision was taken to send the Dread Argent back, as Brand had known it must be. Despite its triumph and uniqueness, it was a ship in crisis.

  The astropathic choir remained in tatters. The number of psyker casualties, their brains broken by the strain of communication, had been huge. There had been no satisfactory explanation as to how Huron Blackheart had instigated such a powerful psychic block and there was little point in pondering the matter now beyond the whispered rumours of his vanguard of Chaos sorcerers. There had often been talk that he commanded his own warp entity as well. There was perhaps truth in that.

  The choir was now, at best, broken and at worst useless. Although he was Adeptus Astartes, although he considered himself genetically superior in every way, Brand still felt a keening loss at the deaths. The psychic song of the astropaths was one of those background emanations that until it was shattered had never even really been noticed. Every one of them had perished in service to the Golden Throne and every one of them had given their all. The waste of life sat heavily.

  The Head Astropath himself had been a ruined man; his grief absolute. He had gone to see Apothecary Naryn barely hours before the service for the dead and had begged pitifully for the Emperor’s Peace. Every shred of his former arrogance had melted away and all that remained was a terrified shell of a man. He carried the weight of his choir’s losses on his own shoulders and he had been unable to cope with the pressure.

  Much as it had pained him to see one of their own so deeply scarred and damaged, much as he pitied the human’s terrible pain, Naryn had refused to give him what he had asked for.

  Scant hours later, his body had been found hanging from a girder. The magnitude of his actions had rippled through the ship causing unrest and disquiet in both human and Adeptus Astartes camps. All of them knew the real truth of the matter. All of them knew why the Head Astropath had taken this terminal step. Far better death than a slow, horrific and potentially lethal descent into the madness of the warp.

  Thus, even as he remembered his deceased battle-brothers, Brand murmured prayers for the human casualties, too.

  On their return to Varsavia, there would be further rites and rituals held in accordance with the full Orthodoxy to honour the dead. Then there would be the ritualistic cremations, but for now, the best the Prognosticator could do was to remember them.

  We are sorry to disturb you at this time, Prognosticator Brand.

  The voice was Volker’s. It had become so much a part of daily life aboard the Dread Argent that Brand no longer marvelled at it. The eyes of the ship were everywhere. There was nowhere on board where privacy could be assured. Volker was always there, listening and monitoring.

  ‘Speak, Volker.’ Slowly, Brand got to his feet, making the sign of the aquila before the statue.

  There are matters on the bridge that demand your attention. Deck Officer Eduar Yanus has asked us to let you know that they need your abilities prior to leaving the system.

  ‘Inform Yanus that I will be there imminently.’

  Yes, Prognosticator Brand.

  ‘Volker?’

  Yes, Prognosticator Brand?

  ‘I need something from you. Just for a few minutes. Would you… turn your sensors away from the chapel? I need a moment to gather my wits about me and with the very greatest of respect, I wish to be alone.’

  Protocol Epsilon-Gamma four nine two...

  ‘Protocol override. Listen to me. Really listen to me. I beseech the human part of you that remains. Volker, leave me in peace for a while. Please.’

  Perhaps it was the simple plea at the end but whatever the reason, there was a fleeting hesitation, and then there was nothing. Despite no words of confirmation, Brand knew that Volker was gone.

  For several more minutes, Brand allowed himself to let go of the tight hold on the grief he felt for his fallen brothers. Sadness and anger mixed with feelings of deep regret and shame that his abilities to read the omens had not prevented such heavy losses. The years of being taught to keep his emotions in check aided him in levelling out his rage and finally, with a final litany of sworn vengeance, he nodded firmly. He turned to face down the length of the chapel.

  ‘They are with the ancestors now and they will never be forgotten,’ he said. His voice was low and yet the acoustics of the vast chamber carried his voice far. It echoed from the walls and buried itself in the niches bearing the skulls of the Chapter’s many enemies. ‘And on the witness of the Emperor and here, on the skulls of the fallen, we continue the battle in their name. For Varsavia. For the Emperor.’

  Brand stood in contemplation for a moment longer, then in a single fluid motion, pulled his hood back up and over his eyes. He strode with purpose from the chapel, the richly embroidered robes of ritual sweeping the floor. The time for mourning was at an end. It was time to move onwards and continue what it was they had been created for.

  As he strode down the length of the chapel, the Prognosticator’s robes flared behind him, creating a gust of shifting air. Dust was stirred and in the wake of his passage, glittered briefly in the candlelight. A row of candles had been lit in memory of the dead and had burned steadily throughout the two-week mourning period. Now though, as Brand passed by, the flames flared once, guttered and then died.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sarah Cawkwell is a north-east England based freelance writer. Old enough to know better, she’s still young enough not to care. Married, with a son (who is the grown up in the house) and two intellectually challenged cats, she’s been a determined and prolific writer for many years.

  When not slaving away over a hot keyboard, Sarah’s hobbies include reading everything and anything, running around in fields with swords screaming incomprehensibly and having her soul slowly sucked dry by online games.

  For my mum, who always told me I could, but never got to say ‘I told you so’, and to my dad – for everything.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  Published in 2011 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

  Cover illustration by Jon Sullivan

  Maps by Rosie Edwards and Adrian Wood.

  © Games Workshop Limited, 2011. All rights reserved.

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  ISBN 978-0-85787-332-3

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