by Ben Counter
'My own work,' said Demenos.
'Then you need to learn how to balance a hilt. Good
work, though.' Lysander spotted Voar trundling between
the forges towards him. 'Archmagos! I am glad you could
come. I think perhaps this place is more suited to your
tastes than the rest of the Phalanx.'
'I have no tastes,' replied Voar. 'A magos
metallurgicus could gain no little pleasure from the
specifications of your forges, no doubt, but my specialities
lie in the fields of reverse engineering and theoretical
mechanics.'
'Well, be that as it may,' said Lysander, 'the Crucible
itself is not why I requested your presence. This is.'
Lysander took from a compartment in his armour a tube of
black metal, as long as a normal man's forearm. Its
surface was knurled into a grip and on one end it had a
small control surface with indented sensors. 'Perhaps you
recognise it?'
Voar walked up to Lysander and took the cylinder.
Voar's bionic hand did not fit the grip well - it was sized for
a Space Marine's hand.
'This is the Soulspear,' said Voar flatly.
'As seized at the Lakonia Star Fort,' said Lysander.
'The seed of the conflict between the Priesthood of Mars
and the Soul Drinkers. We recovered it from the
Brokenback before it was scuttled. I understand that it is
to be considered your property. It was taken from you by
the Soul Drinkers, and as heretics they have no right to it.
Therefore its possession defaults to the Adeptus
Mechanicus. Specifically, you.'
Voar turned the weapon over in his artificial hand. 'I
confess that my dealings with emotive matters are long
behind me,' he said, 'but still I have the impression, a
remnant of some human sense if you will, that you are not
happy about this situation.'
'The Soulspear is a relic of our primarch,' replied
Lysander. 'Rogal Dorn himself found and re-engineered it.
By rights it should belong to one of the successors of
Dorn's Legion, the Imperial Fists or one of our brother
Chapters. I have no shame in that belief. Any son of Dorn
would say the same. But my Chapter Master has no wish
to see another rift between the Adeptus Astartes and the
Mechanicus, and I must bow to his decision. Here.'
Lysander touched a finger to one of the control
surfaces and a tiny laser pulse punched a microscopic
hole through the ceramite of his gauntlet's finger joint. Twin
blades of pure blackness shot out of each end of the
cylinder. The air sighed as it was cut apart by the voids of
the blades.
'Vortex blades,' said Lysander. 'A vortex field bound by
Throne knows what technology from before the Age of
Imperium. Activated by a gene-lock keyed to the genetic
signature of Rogal Dorn. This was wielded by Dorn's own
hand, archmagos. A man of whom no Fabricator General
can claim to be the equal. The saviour of the Emperor
Himself at the height of the Heresy. The greatest soldier
this galaxy has ever seen, and I say the greatest man, too.
Remember that, whatever you choose to do with this relic.
Fail to show Dorn's own handiwork the proper respect and
the Imperial Fists just might choose to risk a new rift after
all.'
'I see,' said Voar. 'Your information has been logged
and will be made available to all those given the honour of
examining this device.'
'In return for this,' said Lysander with obvious disdain
for Voar's manner, 'the Chapter Master expects the
Adeptus Mechanicus to conduct their part in the trial with
all the honour that your status as a guest here demands.
This is no place to settle a feud between the Soul Drinkers
and the Mechanicus. No place for vengeance.'
'Your battle-brothers are not all of the same mind,'
said Voar. 'Nor, logic suggests, will many of the visiting
Astartes agree with such a stance. There is a great deal of
vengeance sought on the Phalanx, and the better part of it
stems not from the Mechanicus.'
'Chapter Master Vladimir Pugh has pronounced on the
subject,' said Lysander. 'He has tasked me, among others,
with seeing his word made law.'
'Then it shall be abided by,' said Voar with a nod of his
head. It seemed the archmagos was not capable of any
gesture of greater deference. 'Our interest is in justice.'
'If you cared about justice, archmagos, you would give
the Soulspear to us.'
'And if you cared about justice, brother-captain, then
Sarpedon would have died on Selaaca.' Archmagos Voar
wheeled around and left the forge, the Soulspear clutched
in his bionic hand.
Chapter 3
The cell block had been built for the use of the Imperial Fists’ own
penitents. When battle-brothers believed themselves guilty of some
failure, they came here, to the Atoning Halls. They knelt in the dank,
cold cells lining the narrow stone-clad corridors and prayed for their
sins to be expunged. They begged for suffering with which to cleanse
themselves, a suffering regularly gifted to them by the various
implements of self-torture built into the ceilings and floors of each
intersection. Nerve-gloves and flensing-racks stood silent there, most
of them designed to be operated by the victim, so that through pain he
might drive out the weaknesses that had led to some perceived failing.
The cells had not been built with locks, for all those who had spent
their time there had done so voluntarily. But the Halls of Atonement
had locks now. Its current penitents were not there by choice.
‘Salk!’ hissed Captain Luko. Luko was chained to the wall of his cell,
with just enough freedom in his bonds to stand up or sit down. Like the
rest of the Soul Drinkers imprisoned in the Halls of Atonement, he had
been stripped of his armour, with his wargear kept somewhere else on
the Phalanx to be used as evidence in the trial.
‘Captain?’ came Sergeant Salk’s voice in reply. The Soul Drinkers
officers had mostly been locked in cells far apart from one another, but
the Halls of Atonement had not been built to contain a hundred
Astartes prisoners and so it was inevitable two would end up in
earshot.
‘I hear something,’ said Luko. ‘They are bringing someone else in.’
‘There is no one else,’ replied Salk. ‘They took us all on Selaaca.’
Though Luko could not see Salk’s face, the despondency, tinged with
anger, was obvious in his voice. ‘They must be coming to interrogate
us. I had wondered how long it would take for them to get to you and
me.’
‘I think not, brother,’ said Luko. ‘Listen.’
The sound of footsteps broke through the ever-present grinding of the
Phalanx’s engines. Several Space Marines, and... something else. A
vehicle? A servitor? It was large and heavy, with a tread that crunched
the flagstones of the corridor.
Luko strained forwards against the chains that held him, to see as
much as possible of the corr
idor beyond the bars of his cell. Two
Imperial Fists came into view, walking backwards with their bolters
trained on something taller than they were.
‘Throne of Terra,’ whispered Luko as he got the first sight of what
they were guarding.
It was a Dreadnought. It wore the deep purple and bone of the Soul
Drinkers, but to Luko’s knowledge no Dreadnought had served with the
Chapter since he had been a novice. He had thought the Chapter had
not possessed any Dreadnought hulls at all.
The Dreadnought’s armour plating was pitted with age. Its weapons
had been removed, revealing the complex workings of the mountings
and ammo feeds in its shoulders. Even so the half-dozen Imperial
Fists escorting it kept their guns on it, and one of them carried a
missile launcher ready to blast the Dreadnought at close range.
As it stomped in front of Luko’s cell, the Dreadnought turned its
torso so it could look in. Luko saw that its sarcophagus had been
opened partially, and he glimpsed the pallid flesh of the body inside.
Large, filmy eyes shone from the shadows inside the war machine,
and Luko’s own eyes met them for a moment.
‘Brother,’ said the Soul Drinker inside the Dreadnought, his voice a
wet whisper. ‘Spread the word. I have returned.’
‘Silence!’ shouted one of the Imperial Fists in front of the
Dreadnought. ‘Hold your tongue!’ The Space Marine turned to Luko.
‘And you! Avert your eyes!’
‘If you wish me blinded,’ retorted Luko, ‘then you will have to put out
my eyes.’
Luko had a talent for eliciting a rough soldier’s respect from other
fighting men. The Imperial Fist scowled, but didn’t aim his gun at Luko.
‘Maybe later,’ he said.
‘Daenyathos has returned! said the Dreadnought’
Luko jumped forwards against his chains. ‘Daenyathos!’ he echoed.
‘Is it true?’
‘Daenyathos!’ came another voice, then another. Every Soul
Drinker’s voice was raised in a matter of seconds. The Imperial Fists
yelled for silence but their voices were drowned out. Even the bolter
shots they fired into the ceiling did not quiet the din.
Luko did not know what to call the emotions searing through him.
Joy? There could be no joy here, when they were facing execution and
disgrace. It was a raw exultation, a release of emotion. It had been
pent up in the Soul Drinkers since they had seen Sarpedon fall in his
duel with Lysander, and now it had an excuse to flood out.
Daenyathos was alive! In truth, in the depths of his soul, Luko had
always known he was not truly dead. The promise of his return
seemed written into everything the legendary philosopher-soldier had
passed down to his Chapter, as if the Catechisms Martial had woven
into it a prophecy that he would walk among them once more.
Amazingly, impossibly, it seemed the most natural thing in the galaxy
that Daenyathos should be there when the Chapter faced its
extinction.
Only one voice was not raised in celebration. It was that of Pallas,
the Apothecary.
‘What did you do?’ shouted Pallas, and Luko just caught his words.
They gave him pause, even as his twin hearts hammered with the force
of the emotion.
‘What did you do, Daenyathos?’ shouted Pallas again, and a few of
the Soul Drinkers fell silent as they considered his words. ‘How have
you fallen into their hands, the same as us? Have you come here to
face justice? Daenyathos, warrior-philosopher, tell us the truth!’
‘Tell us!’ shouted another. Those words soon clashed with
Daenyathos’s name in the din, half the Soul Drinkers demanding
answers, the other half proclaiming their hero’s return.
Daenyathos did not reply. Perhaps, if he had, he would not have
been heard. The Imperial Fists hauled open a set of blast doors
leading to a side chamber that had once been used to store the
volatile chemicals required by some of the torture devices. Its
ceramite-lined walls were strong enough to contain the weaponless
Dreadnought. The Imperial Fists marshalled the Dreadnought inside
and shut the doors, slamming the thing that called itself Daenyathos
into the quiet and darkness.
Outside it took a long time for the chants of Daenyathos’s name to
die down in the Halls of Atonement.
More than three hundred Astartes gathered in the Observatory of
Dornian Majesty. Most Imperial battlezones never saw such a
concentration of Space Marines, but these Astartes were not there to
fight. They were there to see justice done.
The Observatory was one of the Phalanx’s many follies, a viewing
dome built as a throne room for past Chapter Masters, where the
transparent dome might afford a dramatic enough view of space to
intimidate the Chapter’s guests who came there to petition the lords of
the Imperial Fists. Vladimir had little need for such shows of
intimidation and had closed off the Observatory for years.
It was one of the few places large enough to serve as the courtroom
for the Soul Drinkers’ trial. The ship’s crew had built the seating
galleries and the dock in the centre of the floor, an armoured pulpit into
which restraints had been built strong enough to hold an accused
Astartes. The Justice Lord’s position was on a throne the same height
as the dock, facing it from the part of the gallery reserved for the
Imperial Fists themselves.
The whole court was bathed in the light from the transparent dome.
The Veiled Region was a mass of nebulae that boiled in the space
outside the ship, nestling stars in its glowing clouds and swamping a
vast swathe of space in the currents of half-formed star matter.
Kravamesh hung, violet and hot, edging the courtroom in hard starlight.
The first in had been Lord Inquisitor Kolgo’s retinue of Battle Sisters,
ten Sororitas led by Sister Aescarion. They knelt and prayed to
consecrate the place, Aescarion calling upon the Emperor to turn His
eyes upon the Phalanx and see that His justice was done.
The Imperial Fists 4th Company took up their positions, a hundred
Imperial Fists gathering to serve as honour guard to their Chapter
Master. Next the Howling Griffons filed in, Borganor scowling at the
Observatory as if its tenuous connection with the Soul Drinkers made
it hateful.
The other captains were next. Commander Gethsemar of the Angels
Sanguine was accompanied by a dozen Sanguinary Guard, their jump
packs framed by stabiliser fins shaped like white angels’ wings and
their helmets fronted with golden masks fashioned to echo the death
mask of their primarch, Sanguinius. Gethsemar himself wore several
more masks hanging from the waist of his armour, each sculpted into
a different expression. The one he wore had the mouth turned down in
grim sorrow, teardrop-shaped emeralds fixed beneath one eye. Siege-
Captain Daviks of the Silver Skulls wore the reinforced armour of a
Devastator, built to accommodate the extra weight and heft of a heavy
weapon, and his retinue counted among the
m his Company Champion
carrying an obsidian sword and a shield faced with a mirror to deflect
laser fire in combat.
The Iron Knights were represented by Captain N’Kalo, an assault
captain who wore a proud panoply of honours, from a crown of laurels
to the many honoriae hanging from the brocade across his chest and
the Crux Terminatus on one shoulder pad. He led three squads of
Astartes, his Iron Knights resplendent in the personal heraldry each
wore on his breastplate and the crests on their helms. The Doom
Eagles came in at the same time, represented by a single squad of
Space Marines and Librarian Varnica. Where Varnica stepped, the
stone beneath his feet bubbled and warped, his psychic abilities so
pronounced that the real world strained to reject him, even with his
power contained and channelled through the high collar of his Aegis
armour.
Finally, Captain Lysander led in Chapter Master Vladimir Pugh.
Vladimir took his place on the throne – as the Justice Lord of this
court he was the highest authority, and it was at his sufferance that
any defendants, witnesses or petitioners might speak. Lysander did
not stand in the gallery, for he was to serve as the Hand of the Court,
the bailiff who enforced his Chapter Master’s decisions among those
present. Lysander looked quite at home patrolling the floor of the dome
around the dock, and his fearsome reputation both as a disciplinarian
and a warrior made for a powerful deterrent. A Space Marine’s temper
might move him to leave the gallery and attempt to disrupt the court’s
proceedings, even with violence – Lysander was one of the few men
who could make such an Astartes think twice.
The tension was obvious. When Lord Inquisitor Kolgo arrived to join
his Battle Sisters, the sideways glances and murmured comments
only grew. Space Marines were all soldiers of the Emperor but many
Chapters did not have regular contacts with others and some
developed fierce rivalries over the millennia. The Imperial Fists had both
retained the livery of their parent Legion, and been feted above almost
all other Chapters for the service to the Imperium – no little jealousy
existed between them and other Chapters who coveted the honours
they had been granted, and no one could say that such jealousy was
absent from the court.
Fortunately, nothing papered over such schisms like a common
