by Ben Counter
Phalanx
By Ben Counter
Chapter 1
ITS LIKE HAD never been built before, and would never be
built again. The secrets of its construction dated from
before the foundation of the Imperium of Man, its immense
golden form crafted by engineers dead long before the
Emperor first united Holy Terra.
The hull of the ship was many kilometres long,
triangular in cross-section with its upper surface bristling
with weapons and sensorium domes. Two wings swept
back from the hull, trailing directional vanes like long gilded
feathers. Every surface was clad in solid armour plating
and every angle was covered by more torpedo tubes and
lance batteries than any Imperial battleship could muster.
Countless smaller craft, repair craft and unmanned Scouts,
orbited like supplicants jostling for attention, and the wake
of the titanic engines seemed to churn the void itself with
the force of its plasma fire.
The fist symbol emblazoned on the prow was taller
than the length of most Imperial spacecraft, proudly
claiming that the ship belonged to the Imperial Fists
Chapter, one of the most storied Space Marine Chapters in
the history of the Imperium. The pale light of the star
Kravamesh, and the lesser glow of the Veiled Region’s
boiling nebulae, played across thousands of battle-honours
and campaign markings all over the beak-like prow. The
ship had carried the Imperial Fists since the Horus Heresy,
and its eagle-shaped shadow had fallen across a hundred
worlds that had later shuddered under the weight of a
massed Fists assault.
This was the Phalanx. Bigger than any ship in the
Imperial Navy, it was a mobile battle station the size of a
city that dwarfed any Space Marine Chapter’s mightiest
battle-barge. It might have been the most powerful engine
of destruction in the Imperium. It was a symbol of
mankind’s very right to live in the stars. Its most potent
weapon was the sheer awe that the golden eagle inspired
when it appeared in the night sky over a rebellious world.
The Phalanx at that moment was not at war, but it
was there for a conflict just as bitter. It was to be the seat
of a trial at which the soul of a Chapter would be weighed,
a stain on the Imperial Fists’ honour would be cleansed
and retribution would fall as sternly as if it had rained down
from the Phalanx’s guns.
There was no doubt among the Imperial Fists that
their mission was as vital to the Imperium as any crusade.
For it was on the Phalanx that the Soul Drinkers would
surely die.
‘YOU WILL WISH,’ said the Castellan of the Imperial Fists,
‘that you still called us brother.’
The Castellan seemed to fill the cell, even though it
had been built to accommodate a Space Marine’s
dimensions. Its walls were plated in gold, studded with
diamonds and rubies in the shape of the constellations
across which the Phalanx had carried its Chapter in
countless crusades. The channels cut into the floor formed
intricate scrollwork. Even the drain for bodily fluids was in
the shape of an open hand, echoing the fist symbol that
was everywhere on board.
The Castellan nodded to one of the Chapter
functionaries through the small slit window. The
functionary, a shaven-headed, drab man in a dark yellow
uniform, activated a few controls on his side of the wall and
the Pain Glove apparatus shuddered as power flowed into
it.
Brother Kaiyon hung in the Pain Glove. He had been
stripped of his armour, and the input ports set into the
black carapace beneath the skin of his chest were hooked
up to bundles of cables hanging from the ceiling. The Pain
Glove itself resembled some strange mollusc, a lumpy,
phlegmy membrane that covered Kaiyon from neck to
ankle. It writhed against his skin, as if trying to ascertain
the shape of its captive by touch.
‘This one,’ he said, ‘was one of the flock.’ The
Castellan’s words were no longer directed at Brother
Kaiyon. ‘He was broken-minded even before we brought
them here. I think, my lord, that he will either tell all, or be
broken to gibberish.’
‘You take eagerly to your task, noble Castellan,’ came
a voice in reply from the room’s vox-caster. It was an old
and experienced voice, almost wearied with knowledge.
‘So ready a hand at the tormentor’s tools would be a sin in
any but one of your responsibilities.’
The Castellan smiled. ‘That, my lord Chapter Master,
is as high a compliment as I could hope to hear.’
The Castellan’s armour was crenellated like the
battlements of a castle around its collar and the edges of
its shoulder pads, and the vents around his torso echoed
tall pointed windows or arrow slits. He looked like a
walking fortress, even the greaves around his shins
resembling the buttresses of two towers on which he
walked. His face was branded with a grid pattern – a
portcullis, a forbidding entrance to the fortification he
represented.
Kaiyon’s face was scarred, too. The Space Marine
seemed unconscious, but he proclaimed all his
allegiances in the chalice symbols he had carved into
himself. His scalp was red with raised channels of scar
tissue. Though the rest of his body was hidden in the Pain
Glove, the Castellan knew that the rest of Kaiyon told the
same story. Kaiyon was a Soul Drinker. He had written
that fact into his flesh.
‘I know,’ said the Castellan to Kaiyon, ‘that you are
awake. You can hear me, Kaiyon. Know, then, that
nothing you do here, no token effort of resistance, will gain
you anything whatsoever. Not even the satisfaction of
delaying me, or frustrating my intentions to break you.
These things mean nothing to me. The mightiest of
fortresses will fall, though we can chip away but a grain of
sand at a time. The end result is the same. Your Chapter
has secrets. The flock of Iktinos has secrets. I will have
those secrets. This is a truth as inevitable as your own
mortality.’
Kaiyon did not speak. The Castellan walked right up
to Kaiyon, face to face.
The Soul Drinker’s eye was slitted. He was watching
the Castellan, and even in that tiny sliver of an eye, the
Castellan could see his hate.
‘What,’ said the Chapter Master over the vox, ‘if this
one does not talk?’
‘There are others,’ replied the Castellan. ‘More than
twenty of the Soul Drinkers’ surviving strength are
members of this flock. I’ll wager you’ll have your answers
with twenty renegades t
o break.’
‘So long as Chaplain Iktinos himself is not reduced
thus,’ replied the Chapter Master. ‘I wish him in
possession of all his faculties for the trial. Justice is a
mockery when it is administered on one already forsaken
by sanity.’
‘Of course, my lord,’ said the Castellan. ‘It will not
come to that.’
‘Good,’ said the Chapter Master. ‘Then proceed,
Brother Castellan.’
The vox-link went dead. The Chapter Master, as was
traditional, need not witness this least delicate of the
Castellan’s duties. The Castellan gestured to the crewman
at the controls, and a metal panel slid shut over the slit
window.
‘You have,’ said the Castellan, circling Kaiyon, ‘one
final chance.’
Kaiyon’s hate did not falter.
‘You understand, I must make this offer. I know as
well as you do, between us two Astartes, that it has no
meaning. There are traditional forms that must be
followed.’
The Castellan flicked a few switches on the control
console mounted on the wall, one from which snaked the
wired now hooked up to the interfaces in Kaiyon’s body.
The Pain Glove slithered over him as if agitated.
The Pain Glove was a complex device. Controlling its
many variables was akin to directing an orchestra, with
great skill required in keeping every variable in harmony.
Just a taste of the Pain Glove was enough to break normal
men. A Space Marine required far more finesse – the Pain
Glove was even used as a conditioning tool for the
Chapter’s novices in its less intense configurations.
The Castellan was a maestro with the device. The
membrane excreted chemicals that laid open every nerve
ending on every millimetre of skin. The pulses of power
humming through the cables stimulated every one of them
into extremity.
Brother Kaiyon, in that moment, discovered just how
much it took to make a Space Marine scream.
WHAT WILL THE universe remember of us?, wrote
Sarpedon.
What does it matter our deeds, the principles of our
character, if it is the memory of the human race that
matters? The future for us, when we are gone, is surely
determined not by our deeds but by what is remembered
of our deeds, by the lies told about us as much as by the
truths of our actions.
Sarpedon put the quill down. The Imperial Fists had
taken his armour and his weapons, and even the bionic
which had replaced one of his eight arachnoid legs. But
they had left him with the means to write. It was a matter
of principle that this cell, even though it was windowless
and cramped, and allowed him no communication with his
fellow Soul Drinkers, had a quill, a desk and a pot of ink.
He was to defend himself before a court of his peers. He
was at least entitled to the means to prepare his defence.
They had left him his copy of the Catechisms Martial, too,
the manual of the Soul Drinkers’ principles and tactics
authored by the legendary philosopher-soldier Daenyathos.
Sarpedon thought for a few long minutes. The pages of
parchment in front of him were supposed to hold every
argument he might make to justify his actions. Instead, he
had poured out every thought into them in the hope that at
least he would understand what he thought.
The galaxy will not think well of us, he wrote. We are
traitors and heretics. We are mutants. Should truth have
any value in itself then it will do us no good, for these
things are true. My own mutations are so grotesque that I
wonder if there will be anything thought of me at all, for
there is little room in any man’s recollection for anything
but this monstrous form.
What does it matter what the galaxy thinks of us when
we are gone? It is the only thing that matters at all. For we
will surely die here. There is only one sentence that our
brethren can lay upon us, and that is death. I must take
what solace I can from what we will leave behind, yet there
can be no solace in the story the Imperium will tell of the
Soul Drinkers. Those who can will forget us. Those who
cannot will hate us. Though I seek some victory for myself
and my battle-brothers even in this, I can find none.
Perhaps one of my brethren can draw something other
than defeat from our situation. I cannot. I look deeper into
my heart than I have ever done, and I find nothing but
failure and desolation.
Sarpedon looked over what he had written. It
disgusted him. He screwed up the parchment and threw it
into a corner of the cell. A Space Marine did not succumb
to self-pity, no matter how true his failure seemed to him.
He would lie to himself if that was what it took.
A gauntleted hand boomed against the cell door.
Sarpedon looked round to see a window being drawn back
to reveal a face he had last seen on the surface of
Selaaca, looming over him as he lost consciousness. It
was the face of Captain Darnath Lysander of the Imperial
Fists First Company, a legend of the Fists and the man
who had bested Sarpedon to take the Soul Drinkers into
custody.
‘I trust,’ said Sarpedon, ‘your captive is a wretched as
you hoped.’
‘Bitterness becomes not an Astartes,’ replied
Lysander. ‘I take no joy in the fall of another Space Marine.
I have come not to gloat, if that is how low you think of me.
I have come to give you the chance to confess.’
‘Confess?’ said Sarpedon. ‘With no thumbscrews?
With my skin still on my frame?’
‘Do not play games,’ snapped Lysander. ‘We took
those you call the flock, those who follow your Chaplain
Iktinos. Their minds were broken before we ever took them
in. Whatever influence your Chaplain had on them, it
changed them. One of them has broken in the Pain Glove,
and told us everything. Brother Kaiyon is his name. He
thought the Lord Castellan was Rogal Dorn himself, and
spoke your Chapter’s secrets to him as if the primarch had
demanded it.’
‘I have heard of your Pain Glove,’ said Sarpedon.
‘Then you know it is a part of the initiations every
Imperial Fists has undergone. I myself have been subject
to it. It served no more than to shake Brother Kaiyon out of
the fugue the flock have fallen into since their incarceration
here. He is insane, Sarpedon. He spoke through madness,
not pain, and that madness was not our doing.’
‘Then he could have spoken lies in his madness,’
retorted Sarpedon.
‘He could,’ replied Lysander. ‘My Chapter is even now
ascertaining the truth of his words. This is why I have
come here. If you confess, and that confession matches
what Kaiyon had told us and can be proven true, then there
may be some leniency won for your compliance.’
‘Leniency?’ Sarpedon rose up on his ha
unches. He
had originally had eight legs, arranged like those of an
arachnid, spreading from his waist. He had lost one on an
unnamed world, ripped off by a champion of the Dark
Gods. Another had been lost on Selaaca, mangled in his
fight with the necron overlord of that dead world. He still
had six, and when he rose to his full height he still towered
over even Lysander. ‘You talk to me of leniency? There is
not one Imperial Fist who will abide anything but our
execution! Our death sentence was decided the moment
we surrendered!’
‘Ours is a Chapter with honour!’ shouted Lysander.
‘Your trial is more than a mere formality. It is our intention
to see every correct procedure and tradition adhered to, so
that no man dare say we did not give you every chance to
redeem yourselves. You will die, yes, I cannot lie to you
about that. But there are many ways to die, and many
matters of honour that can accompany your death. If you
deserve a good death then you and your battle-brothers
shall receive it. You can win a better death if you tell us
now what we shall soon discover. Deceit, however, will win
you nothing but suffering.’
Sarpedon sank back down to his haunches. He could
not think what Kaiyon might have told the Imperial Fists
interrogators. The Fists knew the Soul Drinkers were
mutants – one glance at Sarpedon was enough to tell
them that. The Fists had collected evidence of the Soul
Drinkers’ deeds, including many that had pitted them
against the forces of the Imperium from which the Soul
Drinkers had rebelled. He could think of nothing more
damaging than any of that.
But what had happened to the flock? They were the
Soul Drinkers whose officers had died in the gradual
erosion of the Chapter’s strength, and who had turned to
Chaplain Iktinos for leadership. They had become intense
and inspired under Iktinos, but insane? Sarpedon did not
know what to make of it.
‘I don’t know what Kaiyon told you,’ he said to
Lysander. ‘Good luck with confirming his words. I doubt
whatever you find can make our fate any worse.’
‘So be it, Sarpedon,’ said Lysander. ‘The trials will
begin soon. The fate of your Chapter rests in no little part
on what you will have to say to yourself. I suggest you
think on it, if you believe your brothers deserve more than a
common heretic’s death.’
