by Ben Counter
He glanced across at his brother Marines. He saw Tellos, unarmoured as always, and it was somehow no surprise that the hard vacuum didn't seem to affect him. He saw Graevus and Karraidin, Tech-Marine Lygris, Apothecary Pallas and all the other Soul Drinkers who had followed Sarpedon through everything. Most had witnessed the catastrophe of the star fort and the hell of Ve'Meth, and all had fought through the horror of the Chapter war. Sarpedon could have led them through hell and every single one of his battle-brothers, he was sure, would have followed. If he bowed before Abraxes, they would follow him again. And they would follow him to the death if he did not.
Sarpedon's fingers tightened around the Soulspear. He found the row of pits in the cylinder's surface, and felt the tiny lasers punch through the skin of his gauntleted fingertips.
Rogal Dorn had resisted breaking up the Imperial Fists legion until he risked being branded a rebel. When forced to relent he had taken great pains to ensure each of me Chapters who bore his gene-seed were held in equal esteem, infused with the belief in independence and nobility that had characterized the Imperial Fists. Why had he done so? Was it just fatherly pride, for the Imperial Fists and their successors were in many ways his sons? Or was there something else?
Rogal Dorn had realised something that was beginning to dawn on Sarpedon, too. And as it did so Abraxes's spell was breaking. Would the other Soul Drinkers realise in time? Perhaps they were already lost to Abraxes. It some ways it didn't really matter any more.
His blood seeped through the pinprick holes in his fingertips and touched the gene-encoders built into the Soulspear. It was one of the weapon's secrets that it was attuned to the blood of Rogal Dorn, who had first discovered it. Only those whose veins flowed with Dorn's blood - the Imperial Fists or their successor Chapters, like the Soul Drinkers - could wield it. The weapon was hot and thrumming in Sarpedon's hand.
Abraxes stepped back. The shimmering daemons were gathered around his feet. 'Choose, Sarpedon.'
But Sarpedon had already chosen.
Twin spikes of pure vortex leapt from the Soulspear, infinitely darker than even the black backdrop of space. Sarpedon flexed his unholy mutant legs and prepared to run. He would have to be fast, and hope that the ship's gravitic field wasn't damaged. He would need to be strong and accurate, and would have to rely on his battle-brothers to do what was right.
He fixed the Daemon Prince Abraxes with a determined eye. 'This Chapter.' he said grimly, 'is owned by no one.'
Sarpedon charged. There was no way to communicate with his fellow Soul Drinkers, but he didn't need to.
Karraidin closed the fastest, barrelling into the closest daemons, shining creatures of pink and pastel blue light with serpent-fingered hands and huge gaping maws. His storm bolter chattered silently in the vacuum, shells ripping into the luminescent bodies. Tellos was right behind him and literally dived into the fray, blades swinging through daemonic limbs. Streaks of light flickered soundlessly against the blackness of space as every Soul Drinker opened fire, engaging the daemonic horde that had descended onto the Brokenback. Dreo waved the closest Marines towards him and was forming a firebase from which he could send volleys of fire raking across the landscape of twisted metal. Luko was charging across the broken deck, gathering Marines as he did so.
All they had to do was to keep the daemons occupied, while Sarpedon struck.
The missing leg didn't slow him. He propelled himself towards the towering figure of Abraxes, the Soulspear in his hand. The daemon prince's face showed shock and anger as the battle erupted around his feet. The rings of arcane symbols that shone around him turned to angry reds and yellows, his shining eyes turned dark, and ruddy veins stood out against his alabaster skin as he channelled his rage into strength.
'Fools!' Abraxes roared. 'You are nothing! Nothing!'
Sarpedon ignored him, and the only sound was his own breathing. He would have to be fast, and he would have to be accurate. He didn't know if he could do it. But it didn't matter if he couldn't - for if there was one thing that had not changed, it was that to die fighting the Enemy was an end in itself.
Fungus-bodied things, whose arms ended in flame-belching orifices, bounded into Sarpedon's path. Triple slashes of light darted and Luko's lightning claws felled two of the monstrous daemons, chainblades lashing out from the Soul Drinkers at his side. The daemons came apart, their shining flesh disintegrating. Sarpedon ran through them, swinging the Soulspear and carving the scattered daemons in two as he passed.
He drew his arm back, focusing on the huge pale-skinned torso of Abraxes. Silver fire rained from the daemon prince's outstretched hands, punching through Sarpedon's armour like bolts of molten metal but Sarpedon couldn't afford to falter now.
He flexed his seven mutant legs and jumped, tensing his arm. The fire was ripping through him now, shards of pain shearing into his torso. He felt one lung puncture and another leg torn and useless. The glare from Abraxes was blinding - there was bolter-fire stitching across Abraxes's chest and shafts of light were bleeding out into space.
Everything slowed down. There was nothing in the universe but Abraxes, Sarpedon and the sacred weapon in his hand. There was only one sound now, a rhythmic thumping that was getting faster and louder as Sarpedon hurtled closer. It was Abraxes's heartbeat, quickened by anger, pumping silver fire through the daemon prince's veins.
Sarpedon hit, jabbing his talons into the glowing skin of Abraxes's chest. Clinging to the daemon prince, burning with magical fire, Sarpedon drove the point of the Soulspear through the skin and into the huge beating blasphemy of Abraxes's heart.
AFTERWARDS, FOR MOST of the time Sarpedon would remember very little. But sometimes, when before he had dreamt of the battlements on Quixian Obscura, he would dream of a massive flare like the birth of a new sun, a beam of light that ripped from Abraxes's ruptured heart. The pure madness of the warp that was the daemon prince's lifeblood flooded out into space, hurtling Sarpedon away on a tide of fire, pouring out onto the shattered decks of the Brokenback.
He would recall the daemons of the change god drowned in liquid fire, screaming and gibbering even in the soundless vacuum as their flesh dissolved. Then, as the dream faded, the ball of white fire that had been Abraxes would implode into a ball of blackness that sucked in the many-coloured flame and disintegrating daemons. Soul Drinkers clung to the battered metal to avoid being dragged into the vortex. A gauntleted hand - Sarpedon would never discover who it belonged to - grabbed one of Sarpedon's flailing legs and hauled him down to the deck.
Then silence would fall, the light would die, and Sarpedon would awake.
SARPEDON LIMPED ONTO the new bridge of the Brokenback. It had been several months in the construction - a hard armoured bubble in the heart of the space hulk, which acted as a focus for all the many control systems that ran throughout the various component ships. On the cavernous front curve of the sphere was set a huge viewscreen, displaying a composite image taken from all the sensoria studding the hulk's hull.
The place was silent aside from the distant rumble of the engines and the gentle thrum of the control consoles. Sarpedon hobbled across the metal deck of the bridge and up onto the command pulpit. The prosthetic strapped to the stump of his missing leg clacked on the floor as he walked - the replacement bionic would take some time and was providing a learning experience for the Chapter apothecarion. Two other legs were badly fractured and were still splinted - a Space Marine healed quickly but it would still be weeks before Sarpedon lost his lopsided, limping gait.
The control lectern in front of him flashed with readouts and weapons runes. The Tech-Marines kept on finding new directional thrusters and weapon arrays, and it was a race to keep them all connected to the bridge as quickly as they were discovered. It would take years to explore the Brokenback fully, and there were doubtless places and systems aboard that would never be properly explained.
This was the home of the Soul Drinkers now - a space hulk that had been foun
d drifting and polluted, now cleansed and made holy. It was indicative of the Chapter as a whole - they had been cleansed, too, of all the millennia of lies that had afflicted them. It had cost them terribly, with losses bordering on the irreplaceable. But that would not be enough to break the Chapter - the great harvest would begin again, where the Brokenback would descend on scattered backwards worlds and select the bravest youths for induction into the Chapter. It had been Sarpedon's first order when he had woken in the apothecarion, burned and broken - the Soul Drinkers would gather a new generation of novices and begin to replace all that they had lost. It would take time, but they had been lost for so many thousands of years that time was not a worry.
Perhaps some of what Abraxes had said was true. Perhaps the Emperor was nothing more than a corpse on a throne, dead and powerless. Such a thought would be the pinnacle of heresy for a law-abiding Imperial citizen, but the Soul Drinkers had long since ceased to care about such things. Perhaps the Chapter really was alone, without any power to lend them strength and show them the way.
But it didn't matter. The Emperor might be dead, but there were still principles He symbolized that were worth fighting for. The horror of Chaos was very real, and just because the Emperor didn't guide their hand it didn't mean that the Soul Drinkers couldn't follow the ideals He represented. Chaos was worth fighting, not because the Emperor was telling them to but because destroying the enemy was the right and noble thing to do.
The Soul Drinkers had been lapdogs of a corrupt Imperium for thousands of years, and then the slaves of Chaos. But they had thrown aside both these masters - and in any case, they had destroyed two terrible princes of Chaos, and was that not something they could be proud of, no matter that else might have happened?
This was the Soul Drinkers' fate - they would fight Chaos wherever they found it, spurning all masters, renegade and alone. They had been born to fight and fight they would -they didn't need the Emperor or anyone else to give them a reason to take up arms. When Sarpedon had recovered and the Chapter was rebuilt, there would be nothing to stop them. It was a lofty ambition, to be devoted to the destruction of Chaos, when they were hated by Chaos and Imperium alike and could never rely on allies from anywhere. But if that was the only way the Soul Drinkers could fight the good fight, that was how it would be.
Perhaps it was ridiculous, or ironic. Sarpedon was past caring. He would die fighting to fulfil the principles the Emperor had founded the Imperium upon, and which had been betrayed by the liars who ruled in his name.
And so on the bridge of the space hulk, the mutant and excommunicate Space Marine vowed to do the Emperor's work.
About The Author
Ben Counter has made several contributions to the Black Library's Inferno! magazine, and has been published in 2000 AD and the UK small press. An Ancient History graduate and avid miniature painter, he is also secretary of the Comics Creators Guild.
