by Ben Counter
But this time, living it all again, Sarpedon didn't care. He might as well have been breaking an eggshell or kicking an obstacle out of his way.
When the third staggered backwards, left arm torn off and still held in Sarpedon's hand, he felt none of the holy triumph that had filled his soul that day. When it fell from the lip of the battlements to land, hundreds of metres below, as a shower of bloody fragments, he did not cheer in victory, though he remembered doing so all those years before.
It had been the moment he had truly proved himself on the battlefield. The junior Librarian with the strange psycho-transmitter power, whose inclusion in the force had been little more than an experiment, had slain three of the treacherous xenos in close combat and held the rearguard of the assaulting force. He had been clapped on the back and saluted in the victory feast as the fortress burned, and known that he had finally earned his place at Dorn's side. Now it didn't matter. None of it did.
The Chapter archivists had even given him a line in the saga of Quixian Obscura. It had been only his third action since novicehood - Daenyathos's words must have impressed the Marine deeply, they said, for him to follow his creed so exactly. It had been an honour afforded few Marines of his status, but somehow, he just didn't care any more.
He knew that he would look around to see Sergeant Kallis slain by heathen power-blades, and would rally the squad's survivors to butcher the surviving aliens before they could carry their attack into the advancing Soul Drinkers. He knew that he would hear the earthquaking rumble of the gates opening and the cheer as ten thousand Guardsmen poured through to flood the fortress with vengeful steel and las-fire. He had been there, and recalled it all a hundred times over. But it felt different now, and he was distant and uncaring. Brother Marines lay dead - what had they died for? Alien vermin were slain beside them - why waste good Marine lives on them? And the swarming, idiot hordes of Guardsmen below - was mere anything for them really worth fighting for, when the Emperor whose name was on their lips as they charged was thousands of light years away, His will distorted and ignored by the men who ruled in His stead?
All this waste. It was a hollow deep within him where his pride should have been.
Caeon, high on the battlements of the gate house and slick with alien blood, turned and fixed Sarpedon with war-honed eyes.
'Die,' he said in the voice of machine spirit 674-XU28.
Sarpedon shook his head violently and the inside of his cell swam back into view. While Marines never truly slept, in their half-waking rest period they could dream, and there Sarpedon had visited the battlements on Quixian Obscura many times. But it had never been like this. He had never felt such emptiness in the face of battle, where a Soul Drinker should revel in the glory of the fight.
The fires of Quixian Obscura finally died down and he was alone in the cell. The walls were bare aside from the pict-slates for reviewing briefings and reports, and the shelf on which stood his volume of the Catechisms Martial. His armour was racked neatly in one corner and his bolter and force staff hung on a weapons rack. There was nothing else in the room, for what need had a Soul Drinker of anything else?
There was so much troubling him that he didn't understand. Seventy years a warrior, and yet what did he really know? He had lost himself in such a cycle of honour and battle and holy anger that he had nothing else. Seventy years, and a hundred battles burned bright in his memory, but somehow they did not fill him with the pride they had done many months before. He looked down on his bare torso and saw the scars from surgery and wounds - a score of scalpel cuts around the edges of his implanted carapace, an ugly tear from an ork's chainblade, the slight colour mismatch of a skin graft and the dozen pockmarked memories of lucky shots. All these and more, and yet he felt that in gaining them he had earned nothing.
A tiny green cursor was blinking in the corner of the ship-comms pict-slate. Sarpedon focused on a retinal icon and the image of Tech-Marine Lygris appeared. He had suffered considerable neuro-trauma during his brush with the machine-spirit, and his facial muscles had been fixed into place with medical staples to stop them from spasming. It looked as if someone else's face had been nailed to the front of his head.
'Commander Sarpedon, we request your presence on the bridge. The serf-crew have picked something up.'
'Something?'
'We have some guesses, but none of us have the necessary clearance. These are some of the highest-level codes we have ever encountered.'
'Enlighten me.'
'Carmine, commander. Level carmine.'
'NOT EVEN OUR most senior tacticians can open level carmine encoding - we'll have to wait for them to come to us, consul, if we are to know who they are.' Vekk was getting the chance to be important for the first time in some months and had his chest puffed out and hands clasped behind his back accordingly. The long-service medals on his chest were probably kept polished just for chances like this.
Talaya looked up from the mostly meaningless data streaming across the screens in front of her. 'Agreed. Preliminary scans suggest a considerable power output potential. I suggest we prime the shields as stated in the standard fleet procedure for the approach of an unidentified ship.'
'And roll out the red carpet in one of the shuttle bays.' continued Vekk. 'Could be a visitor.'
'Very well. Do it all.' Chloure was under no illusions that the decision had been made already - he was barely a rubber-stamp any more. Two fighter wings from the Epic were even now showing as tiny tagged blips on the main viewscreen of the bridge, fanning out to surround the new ship and ran guard-dog duty. Just in case.
'Comms down!' shouted someone and suddenly the dark blood-glow of the warning lights strobed painfully across the bridge. 'We've lost comms control!'
The security troops at the rear of the bridge stomped into the alert formation as several emergency tech-teams, lower-grade tech-priests and attendant servitors bristling with servo-tools, scuttled out of maintenance alcoves and began prying the panels off comm-consoles.
'They've hijacked our vox-casters and transmission network.' said Talaya tonelessly. 'Interdiction and exploitation patterns.'
'Why? Are they hostile?' Chloure had so far avoided participation in a proper pitched space battle and had no intention of breaking the habit.
'Unknown.' said Talaya predictably, the deep red lights picking out her sharp, precise face.
Vekk jumped down into the sensorium readout pit, sunken into the deck of the Diligent, which was populated by a gesticulating gaggle of tech-priests and petty officers trying to interpret the signals pouring in from the ship's sensors. Streams of printouts were spewing from data outputs. 'Here!' yelled Vekk, pointing at a stream of coordinates. 'Get this on screen!'
The ship appeared on screen. And what a ship it was. A bright swell in space, warping the light passing through it so the stars were drawn into long white streaks. The few sensorium traces that Chloure could understand implied the Diligent didn't believe there was anything there at all.
'Are they Imperial?' he asked.
'Probably.' called back Vekk from the sensorium pit. 'It may not be entirely good news for us if they are.'
The vox-casters screamed and Chloure tried to cover his ears, too late. He imagined the same sound screeching through every caster on every ship of the fleet, but fleet comms were still out and he couldn't be sure.
'Helm control lost.' said Talaya just before the lights went out completely.
The crew were silent. Only the viewscreen still lit the bridge of the Diligent, washing the faces of its crew with faint blue-white light.
'In the name of the Immortal Emperor and all His dominions.' spoke a sonorous, throaty voice from every vox-caster in the ship. 'This battlefleet is now under the command of Lord Gorgo Tsouras of the Ordo Hereticus. Your ships are mine, as are your bodies and minds, as tools with which to execute the Emperor's will.'
Chloure could hear the whispers from the petty officers below. In truth, he thought, he
had known this would happen all along. Given the nature of their foe, and the principles at stake, it was perhaps inevitable that this would happen. Chloure would have given anything at that moment to be back managing the sector's largest grox farm, anything to get away from the organisation now claiming command of his fleet.
The image on the viewscreen swam as layers of sensor-shielding puffed away from the newcomer ship in layers of shimmering light. Below them was revealed dark, slick metal, beaten into sensor-deflecting triangular plates, with shiny black viewports like slitted eyes and sharp blades of projector weapons stabbing forward from its sleek bat-shape. The twin engine cowlings flared out behind it like fans of steel feathers, and from its sleek belly tiny gunmetal flakes broke off and sprang to life - drone-ships, tiny blue engines flaring as they formed a shimmering necklace of guard ships around their parent.
The ship was completely bare of paint save for one symbol carved in crimson onto its side. It was a simple image, but it was enough to confirm Chloure's fears and freeze the breath in the throats of the bridge crew. Few of them had ever seen it for real, but every one of them knew what it meant, even if only from stories that preachers told them as children to scare them into obedience.
A huge stylised letter 'I', with a sleek-toothed skull at its head.
The Lakonia Persecution was now officially under the command of the Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition.
Chapter Six
A SINGLE SHUTTLE, of the same bare angular metal and with the same sigil of the Inquisition emblazoned on its hull, weaved dextrously through the tumbling rocks of the Cerberian Field. It was unarmed and transmitting a trace-signal, keeping a respectful distance from the Thunderhawks the Unendingly Just sent out to escort it.
Sarpedon watched the shuttle approach from the bridge of the Just, knowing as soon as the visual became clear that it was an Inquisitorial craft. Chapter-serfs in vacuum gear hauled the docking clamps into place as the sleek craft alighted in the shuttle bay, and hurriedly backed off as its occupants emerged.
Sarpedon waited in the audience chamber, where tapestries of Chapter heroes hung on the age-darkened walls and the flagstones were worn smooth by generations of power armoured footsteps. He watched a holomat image as the shuttle's passengers emerged, always looking with an eye to evaluate potential opponents.
Though the shuttle had come under truce, there was no doubt that the Inquisition's representatives here believed in conspicuous strength. A phalanx of twenty Ordo Hereticus troops marched down the gangplank of the shuttle, clad in glossy dark red combat armour and armed with hellguns. Their faces were masked with veils of scarlet-linked chainmail and bundles of grenades hung at their belts. Towards the back of the group was a figure entirely shrouded in dark grey robes, a large shoulder-mounted hypodermic array pumping murky fluids into its neck.
An astropath, guessed Sarpedon, for rapid psychic communication with the main Inquisitorial craft. Probably an aged and experienced one judging from its stooped, laboured gait.
Flanking the Hereticus troops were two mercenary gunmen. One was a man dressed in battered leather with muscles swarming with gang-tattoos, carrying a shotgun and bearing a bionic eye worth rather more man him. The other was a woman in bulky padded armour, with three pistols at her waist and a burn-scar taking up half her face. Sarpedon had heard tell of the rag-tag miscreants that some less orthodox inquisitors could assemble as field agents and bodyguards, and these two low-lives were in stark contrast to the ordered ranks of Inquisitorial troops alongside them.
At the centre of the phalanx was a man in armour of brass, the barrel chest and gauntlets of his armour imposingly huge. His face was incongruously youthful, sleek-featured and dark-skinned. There was a sword slung at his back with an immense blade, nearly a metre and a half long and half a metre wide, surely too large by far for anyone to wield?
Around his neck hung a solid silver Inquisitorial symbol, a simple and definite badge of office.
There were protocols for this sort of thing. Sarpedon stood at the centre of the audience chamber with Givrillian and his tactical squad at the back of the room, to observe proceedings. The Hereticus troops waited at the opposite end of the room and the visitor strode up to meet Sarpedon.
The man's armour gave him almost the bulk of a Space Marine. The sword at his back still seemed impossibly huge - Sarpedon looked over the man's body and saw there was nowhere another weapon could be concealed.
'Librarian Sarpedon,' said the visitor, his voice slick and cultured. 'I am Interrogator K'Shuk, envoy of Lord Inquisitor Tsouras of the Ordo Hereticus. My master has sent me to convey his demands to you and your men. You have been accused of treachery, heresy by action, and the mutinous killing of the Holy Emperor's servants in the person of tech-guard stationed on the 674-XU28.
You will surrender your ships immediately to me. We shall bring in a containment team who will receive all your weaponry and armour. You will be incarcerated and subjected to an Interrogation Martial and full Oculum Medicae while you are transported to an Inquisitorial fortress-world for processing. You will co-operate with us in all these matters, and failure to comply in any particular of these demands will be considered an admission of guilt.'
K'Shuk folded his hands behind his back, waiting for the answer.
It was as Sarpedon had expected, as soon as it was clear the Inquisition were now involved. Tsouras would take the Soul Drinkers' weapons away, shut them up in a prison-ship, and use all manner of techniques old and new to get them to confess. No matter what the result of the Interrogation Martial, Sarpedon and his Marines would be taken to a planet controlled by Inquisitor Tsouras, tried, and executed. A verdict of guilty and the deaths of his men were inevitable, but that was not the worst. To be disarmed and rendered harmless while they were examined and tormented, unable to fight back and defend the honour that was stripped from them, would be worse than death for any Soul Drinker.
The insult was appalling, worse by far than anything the Chapter had ever suffered before. Tsouras and K'Shuk would be well aware of the reply they would get. But still, there were protocols for matters such as this.
'Interrogator K'Shuk.' began Sarpedon, 'The Soul Drinkers do not recognize the authority of Inquisitor Lord Tsouras or any agent of Imperial authority. The Imperium has been shown to be corrupt and self-serving, its actions a mockery of the most blessed God-Emperor's will. It has robbed this Chapter of its due, then moved to destroy us when we took steps to redress the slight, then pursued us in its anger and sent its agents to demand our humiliation. Your demands are refused, Interrogator K'Shuk. The Soul Drinkers submit only to the will of the Emperor, and you act only for yourselves.'
'Very well.' K'Shuk's face was impassive. 'Commander Sarpedon, it is my duty to inform you that the Soul Drinkers Chapter is hereby declared Excommunicate Traitoris, to be struck from the annals of history. The Chapter's name will be deleted from the scrolls of honour in the Hall of Heroes and wiped from the memories of the Archivum Imperialis. Your gene-seed will be destroyed and your bodies incinerated so that no more will your blood taint mankind. The Imperium of man turns its back on the Soul Drinkers.'
'Confess now, Sarpedon, repent your misdeeds, and it shall be quick for your men. Either way, your lives will end for your sins against the Emperor.'
Sarpedon said nothing. He had known deep down it would happen, but somehow had never accepted it as a possibility. Excommunicate Traitoris. Banished from the human race, cast from the light of the Emperor. Though he and his Marines had learned the true sickness of the Imperium and refused to be a part of it any longer, the concept still filled him with horror. He was Excommunicated from mankind. For so long, there had been no graver fate.
He was horrified, but was also angry that the Imperium would pass such a judgment on those no one was fit to judge. Use that anger, he told himself. Use it, let it keep you sharp, do not turn numb with shock or cold with fear. Stay angry, because you will need it.
K'Shuk reached up the hilt of the huge sword slung at his back. 'You understand, Commander Sarpedon, your conduct here has revealed you to be a dangerous man and a threat to the stability of the Imperium. The Inquisition cannot allow your sins to multiply with your continued existence. I am empowered by Inquisitor Tsouras to perform your immediate execution.'
Sarpedon had known they would try to kill him, just as they had tried before by launching the Geryon to shell the star fort. It was only logical - he had realized what the Imperium really was, and they would do anything to silence that truth. But now it had come to it, here in the age-hallowed audience chamber of the Unendingly Just, he let the anger grow in him again. That anyone would think themselves not just Sarpedon's equal, but his superior, that they could pass a sentence of death on him - that was an obscenity. Daenyathos had written that emotions are the enemy of the common soldier, but for a Space Marine, they were an ally. Use the hate, channel it, turn it into strength.
K'Shuk drew the sword. It seemed impossibly light in his gauntleted hand and Sarpedon's enhanced hearing picked out the faint hum of tiny gravitic motors as the immense blade swung over the interrogator's shoulder. Suspensor units, one in the pommel, one at the tip of the blade. The sword would be light enough to lift with a finger, but utterly unbalanced and so difficult to use that most martial treatises considered such weapons to be useless in combat.
But K'Shuk had been sent here as an executioner, and would be skilled beyond comprehension in the arts of the blade. The interrogator stepped forward, and lunged.
Squad Givrillian and the Hereticus troops didn't move. This was a duel between accuser and accused, and such things were not to be interfered with.
