Soul Drinkers 06 - Phalanx

by Ben Counter

  trial. Your presence here, however, must be at the

  sufferance of the Chapter Master. I permit you entrance,

  but only he can permit you to stay, and should he

  withdraw my decision of welcome then you will be ejected.'

  'We understand,' said the leader of the Blind

  Retribution. 'And we will obey. Might we beg of your crew

  some place to stay?'

  'I shall have the crew find you lodgings,' replied the

  Castellan. 'You can expect no more than an unused cargo

  bay. The Phalanx is large but it has no shortage of

  population.'

  'We would ask nothing more,' said the leader. 'Ours is

  a way of poverty and denial. Indulgence dulls the sharp

  edge of justice, and luxury dims the focus. Now we take

  our leave, lord Castellan. There are prayers and devotions

  to be made before our souls are fit to look upon the

  business of the Emperor's justice.'

  Leucrontas watched as the pilgrims finished filing into

  the docking bay. They took loops of prayer beads from

  their robes and spoke droning prayers of thanks and

  humility.

  The pilgrims were a small matter. The crew officers,

  who maintained the day-to-day workings of the Phalanx

  while the Imperial Fists attended the matters of war, could

  deal with them. Leucrontas had many more duties he had

  to see to before he could give the Blind Retribution another

  thought. Soon the Soul Drinkers would be in the dock, and

  many more powerful observers than the Blind Retribution

  would be watching the results closely.

  THE FIRST SIGHT Sarpedon had of this place was of the

  hands over his face, clamping the mask down.

  Even then, barely conscious, the soldier's part of his

  mind demanded to know how he had been taken. Nerve

  gas, pumped into his cell? A rapid, merciless assault?

  Some drug administered by a sly needle or dart? He was

  angry. He wanted to know. His memory of the last few

  hours was a dark fog.

  He thrashed. The hands clamping the mask to his

  face snapped away. They were not the gauntlets of

  Astartes - Sarpedon was in the custody of Imperial Fists

  functionaries, unaugmented men and women who served

  the Fists as spaceship crew and support staff. The

  Phalanx was full of them. Somehow it was a greater insult

  that it did not take Space Marines to hold Sarpedon down.

  Sarpedon struggled. He was held so fast he would

  have snapped his limbs before he loosened them.

  Incoherent voices shouted, medical code words barked

  between the staff of the Phalanx's Apothecarion. Cold

  rivers wound through his body as sedatives were pumped

  into his veins.

  Sarpedon was being wheeled on his back through a

  corridor with a ceiling that looked like the negative cast of

  a giant spinal column. The walls were webs of bone.

  The sedatives took hold. Sarpedon couldn't even flex

  the muscles that had forced uselessly against his bonds.

  His eyes still moved - he looked down at his body and saw

  metal clamps around each of his limbs, holding them fast

  to the metal slab on which he lay. The Phalanx's crew

  must have had to make the restraints specially to fit his

  six remaining legs.

  Sarpedon was also aware of a constriction around the

  sides of his head. No doubt it was an inhibiting device to

  dull his psychic powers. His cell had been fitted out to hold

  a psyker - the wards and anti-psychic materials built into

  its construction had rendered him completely blunt, unable

  to even taste the psychic resonance of his surroundings.

  The hood holding back his head made him similarly

  useless psychically. Not that he would have needed his

  psychic prowess to kill every one of the crewmen dragging

  him through the Apothecarion, if only he could get free.

  But they were just ordinary men and women,

  Sarpedon told himself. They believed as much as he did

  that their work was the work of the Emperor. Perhaps they

  were right.

  Sarpedon passed through into a hall where the gnarled

  walls were lined with ceiling-high nutrient tanks, each with

  cultured organs suspended in viscous fluid. Gilded

  autosurgeons were mounted on the ceiling.

  The next face that loomed over him was that of an

  Astartes - close-cropped hair, hollow cheeks and a sharp

  chin and nose, with a bionic like a miniature microscope

  mounted over one eye. An eyebrow arched up.

  'Behold the enemy,' said the Space Marine. It was an

  Imperial Fist by the symbol on his shoulder pad, and an

  Apothecary by the white panels of his armour. 'What

  manner of creature has the galaxy placed this time upon

  my slab? Many foul things have I seen, and some of them

  once human in form. But this! Ah, this shall be a challenge

  and a privilege. The imager!'

  An ornate piece of machinery, like an arch of inscribed

  panels, was slid over Sarpedon. Sarpedon wanted to

  speak, if only to tell the Apothecary that he was no

  enemy, but a Space Marine as the Apothecary himself

  was. But his tongue was as paralysed as the rest of him.

  He had only his senses.

  Speckles of light played against Sarpedon's retinas as

  lasers measured every aspect of him. A screen unfolded

  from one wall, in glowing green lines displaying Sarpedon's

  skeleton and the complex pattern of a Space Marine's

  organs.

  'The weapons carried by an Astartes begin with those

  augmentations within him,' said the Apothecary. 'All are

  present. Evidence here of extensive wounding and healing

  internally, as typical of a veteran Astartes. Most recent are

  extensive fractures to the skull and ribs. Note the abnormal

  shape of the omophagea, typical of this Chapter's geneseed.'

  The crewmen, the orderlies of the Phalanx's

  Apothecarion, were scribbling down the Apothecary's

  pronouncements with autoquills.

  'And he is awake,' continued the Apothecary, noticing

  the movement of Sarpedon's eyes. 'We have an audience!

  What think you, Lord Sarpedon, of the hospitality aboard

  the Phalanx?'

  The imager moved down over Sarpedon's body. The

  orderlies had to manoeuvre it past Sarpedon's restrained

  legs.

  'The mutations,' said the Apothecary, 'are implicit

  throughout. The subject's musculo-skeletal strength is at

  the top end of Astartes maximum. I doubt there is any

  man-mountain of a Space Wolf who can match him.

  Material mutations begin with the thickened lumbar spine

  and the pelvis.' Again the Apothecary addressed

  Sarpedon. 'And what a pelvis! All the scholars of Mars

  could not machine such a hunk of bone! I have no doubt

  the strengthening properties of its shape shall make it a

  classic of its kind. I shall have it preserved and gilded, I

  think, and keep it here among my most prized samples.

  Perhaps the Mechanicus shipwrights can use it to develop

  some new form of docking clamp. Certainly I shall not

  permit i
t to be incinerated with the rest of you.'

  The imager moved lower. Now on the screen were the

  muscle-packed exoskeletal segments of Sarpedon's legs.

  'The subject's legs number six,' said the Apothecary.

  'These are the most significant material mutations.

  Originally they numbered eight; note the remnants of the

  bionic joint around the centre left and the recent partially

  healed damage to the rear right socket. The structure of

  the legs is roughly arachnoid but has no direct analogue.

  The uncleanliness of such deformities is profound. I have

  no interest in these. They can burn after the execution.'

  The imager was withdrawn. Now Sarpedon found

  points of pain all over his body as the orderlies worked over

  him. They were looping wires and thin tubes around him,

  fixing them with needles in the gaps around his black

  carapace and in the muscles of his abdomen. One was

  slid into a vein in his neck, another on the underside of one

  wrist.

  'Begin,' said the Apothecary.

  Sarpedon was bathed in pain. It was a pure, unalloyed

  pain. It was not like a blade in his skin, or scalding-hot

  liquid, or any other pain he had suffered. It was completely

  pure.

  Sarpedon's mind shut down. Nothing in his

  consciousness found purchase in the endless, white

  landscape of pain. Time meant nothing. He no longer felt

  his restraints, or his anger at the arrogance of the

  Apothecary in dissecting him like any other specimen. He

  no longer felt anything. He was made of pain.

  The sensation of tearing ligaments loomed through the

  pain. It was subsiding, being replaced with the normal

  input from his senses. His legs had forced against the

  restraints. His neck muscles had almost torn against the

  psychic inhibitor holding his head in place and his lungs

  burned against the breastplate of fused ribs in his chest.

  He gasped, unable to control his body's reactions to the

  onslaught.

  'Note the reaction to pain,' the Apothecary's voice

  continued. 'It is within normal tolerances. So we see the

  core of an Astartes is present, but much embellished by

  corruption. I have no doubt that this subject can be

  considered a Space Marine by most definitions and can be

  tried as one.'

  One of Sarpedon's legs hurt more than the others. It

  hurt more because it had some freedom of movement in

  the hip joint. The restraint holding it just above the talon

  was coming loose.

  And he could move. Just a little, but he could do it.

  The sedatives were wearing off. The dose was too low. He

  had greater body mass than a normal Astartes thanks to

  his mutated legs, and the less obvious mutations inside

  him had changed his metabolism. He was getting

  movement back.

  Sarpedon fought against it. The Apothecary was

  describing the results of some blood and tissue sample

  tests to the orderlies. Sarpedon ignored them. The

  restraint was working loose. With the greater range of

  movement afforded to his other limbs, he could gain more

  leverage against their restraints and they, too, were giving

  way.

  Sarpedon took in a breath. He forced his chest

  upwards and dug his talons into the slab, trying to level

  himself off it.

  The ping of snapping metal alerted the Apothecary,

  who broke off his talk mid-word.

  Bolts sheared. Metal bands fractured. Sarpedon's

  lower body ripped itself free. He thrashed one arm free in a

  matter of seconds, the orderlies starting back at the sight

  of their captive's lower limbs slashing around him.

  Sarpedon reached up to the head restraint and tore it

  off its moorings. He rolled off the slab and sprawled on the

  floor. The drugs in his system were still powerful enough to

  rob him of his coordination and he could not get all his legs

  moving him in the same direction at once. He yanked the

  remaining arm free just as the Apothecary drew his plasma

  pistol.

  'What are you?' slurred Sarpedon. He clawed at the

  inhibitor device still clamped around his temples. 'What

  can you claim to be that you judge me? I am not some

  xenos thing on a slide! I am Astartes!'

  'You are a traitor,' said the Apothecary. He had his

  plasma pistol levelled at Sarpedon's head. 'The dignity we

  give you in trying you before true and loyal Space Marines

  is more than you deserve.'

  'But try me for what?' demanded Sarpedon. He lost his

  footing and crashed into one of the specimen tanks. The

  glass broke and the thick, cold nutrient fluid washed out

  over him, lapping around the feet of the orderlies who

  cowered against the far wall. 'How many enemies of man

  have fallen to the Soul Drinkers? How many catastrophes

  have we averted?'

  'And how many Space Marines have fallen to you?'

  retorted the Apothecary. 'Our brethren in the Crimson Fists

  and the Howling Griffons could attest to that. If you had

  lost as many of your own to an enemy as mankind has to

  you, you would not hesitate to seek that enemy's death!'

  Sarpedon tried to get to his feet, leaning against the

  wall behind him to force himself up. He tried to find a

  weapon among the debris around him, a shard of glass or

  a medical implement, but his head was swimming and he

  couldn't focus.

  'If you had seen,' he said, 'what we had seen, then you

  would cross the galaxy to join us, though a legion of your

  own stand in your way.'

  'Had I my mind, traitor,' said the Apothecary, 'I would

  have had you executed as soon as Lysander had brought

  you in, as a mercy to the human race so that you would

  be excised like the cancer you are. But the Chapter

  Master has said you must stand trial. He has more mercy

  in him than I, or any battle-brother I know. You should be

  sobbing your gratitude to us. Enough of this.'

  The Apothecary operated a control on a unit attached

  to the waist of his armour. A white, dull sensation throbbed

  through Sarpedon's head, conducted from temple to

  temple by the inhibitor. Then Sarpedon was falling, his

  mind ripped free of his body. His sight failed and everything

  went white as he fell, and he did not stop falling until he

  could feel nothing at all.

  THE FIRST TO arrive to take their part among a jury of the

  Soul Drinkers' peers were the Crimson Fists. On their

  strike cruiser Vengeance Incandescent, the whole Second

  Company attended their representative to the Phalanx. The

  Crimson Fists, a brother Chapter to the Imperial Fists just

  as the Soul Drinkers had once been, claimed a special

  place in the forthcoming trial, for they had suffered more

  than most at the hands of the renegades.

  Chapter Master Vladimir had left his usual place

  among the tactical treatises and fortification maps of the

  Librarium Dorn, to welcome Captain Borganor as he

  boarded the Phalanx. Attended by the ninth company'sr />
  honour guard, Borganor descended the embarkation ramp

  of his shuttle with a slight limp given him by the bionic with

  which his right leg had been replaced. His quartered yellow

  and red was swathed in the deep blue cloak embroidered

  with his personal heraldry, an image in gold and black

  thread of a Howling Griffon with his head bowed in shame

  and his hands at prayer. Borganor was as blunt and crude

  as his gnarled features suggested, and with a clap of his

  hand against his gilded breastplate he acknowledged

  Vladimir's salute.

  'Chapter Master, it is an honour,' said Borganor.

  'Would that I stand in your presence on a happier

  occasion, and without the stain of failure that still lies upon

  my Chapter.'

  Vladimir Pugh of the Imperial Fists nodded sagely. He

  was, above all other things, a master tactician, a man of

  solemn and slow manner with a habit of dissecting a

  situation as cold-bloodedly as he weighed up potential

  recruits. The golden yellow of his artificer armour was

  polished to a mirror finish, and the red closed fist symbols

  on his shoulder pads and breastplate shone as if they were

  cut from rubies. The intelligent face beneath his closeshorn

  hair suggested something more than a mere soldier.

  'Long have I lamented the loss of Lord Mercaeno at the

  hands of the renegades,' he said to Borganor. 'It is an ill

  that will surely be repaid when justice is pronounced upon

  them.'

  Discomfort broke through Borganor's features for a

  moment. Librarian Mercaeno was the greatest Howling

  Griffon hero of the current age, the slayer of the daemon

  Periclitor and avenger of Chapter Master Furioso's death.

  Mercaeno had fallen in battle with Sarpedon, and a

  thousand oaths had been sworn to see Sarpedon dead

  before the pain of his loss could begin to subside.

  Borganor, who had taken over the depleted company, bore

  no little responsibility for Mercaeno's death and the escape

  of the Soul Drinkers.

  'No doubt,' said Borganor. 'I wish to request one favour

  from you, however, before proceeding on.'

  'Name it, brother-captain,' said the Chapter Master.

  'That before Sarpedon is executed, I am first given

  liberty to remove his limbs, and leave him with a single leg,

  as he left me.' Borganor's eyes flitted to his bionic leg.

  'Mercaeno's death is shared by all Sons of Guilliman, by

  every Space Marine, and so vengeance for it shall belong