'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 it 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The imager was withdrawn.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's 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 close-shorn 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 to us all. But my crippling was Sarpedon's doing, and I would repay him for it as a personal debt.'
'We are not here to execute your petty vengeance, captain,' replied Vladimir. 'A far greater vengeance must be satisfied. If it is decided that the traitor Sarpedon is to suffer greatly before death, perhaps you can have a part in deciding the exact manner in which that suffering is to be inflicted. Until that decision is made, make justice your only goal.'
Borganor bowed before Vladimir. 'Forgive me,' he said. 'Such hatred burns in my heart for all those that would befoul the name of Rogal Dorn.'
'That such hatred should have its voice,' said Vladimir, 'is the reason you have your place at this trial.'
Borganor led the seventy Space Marines of the Howling Griffons Ninth Company onto the Phalanx's docking bay. Three companies of the Imperial Fists, numbering more that three hundred Space Marines, were already stationed on the Phalanx - the Howling Griffons would be the next biggest contingent on board. But they would not be the only visitors to the Phalanx for the trial. Sarpedon and the Soul Drinkers had tangled with many Imperial servants, and every one wanted his voice to be heard.
IN A GOLDEN orbital yacht launched from the Inquisitorial escort ship Traitorsgrave, Lord Inquisitor Kolgo made his entrance into the Phalanx. Ahead of him danced a troupe of acrobats and musicians, enacting in elaborate mimes and song the greatest achievements of their master's long career hunting the enemies of the Emperor. Kolgo himself, in jet-black Terminator armour bearing the 'I' of the Inquisition proudly on his chest, was flanked by several battle-sisters of the Adepta Sororitas. They were led by Sister Superior Aescarion, who had requested the duty of accompanying Kolgo so that she, too, could witness at first hand the trial of the renegades whose deeds she had personally witnessed. She had previously been assigned to Inquisitor Thaddeus, and she had no doubt that the Soul Drinkers were responsible for his death since he had disappeared hunting down evidence of their activities.
The Adeptus Mechanicus, who had more cause than most to despise the Soul Drinkers, were present in the form of Archmagos Voar. Voar had been instrumental in the capture of the Soul Drinkers, in doing so helping to set right an age-old debt owed to the Mechanicus by Sarpedon and his renegades. Alongside Voar was a ceremonial guard of gun-servitors, marching precisely in time. Voar's legs had been lost on Selaaca and so he moved towards the engine sections of the Phalanx, where he had been given quarters, on a set of simple tracks he had fashioned to use until more suitable replacements could be found. There was none of the hatred in him that the other attendees flaunted, for Voar was an analytical creature for whom emotion was an inconvenience.
The word had spread beyond those who had personally encountered the Soul Drinkers after they had turned renegade. The Killing Shadow of the Doom Eagles Chapter and the Judgement Upon Garadan of the Iron Knights dropped out of warp near Kravamesh and demanded that they, as loyal Space Marine Chapters, also take part in the trial. Shortly after this they were joined by contingents of Angels Sanguine and Silver Skulls, both Chapters who had heard of the Soul Drinkers' capture and found they had officers stationed close enough to Kravamesh to have a presence at the trial.
Chapter Master Vladimir listened to their petitions. It was down to his judgement whether or not these Space Marines would be welcome. He accepted that the existence of renegade Space Marines was an affront to the whole Adeptus Astartes, and that the crime of any one renegade Chapter was a crime against them all for it blackened the name of Space Marines, their primarchs and even the Emperor Himself. So Vladimir gave the order for the Chapter representatives to be welcomed on board the Phalanx, and quartered among the monastic cells usually used by Imperial Fists who were on operations elsewhere in the galaxy.
Amid the pageantry of so many Chapters all announcing their presence and bringing their own officers and honour guards on board, the existence of a band of ragged pilgrims in the forward cargo sections was all but forgotten.
IN THE DUSTY, long-empty cargo hall, Father Gyranar knelt and prayed. Decades before this place had been crammed with supplies of ammunition, food and spare parts long since used up, and it remained only in the memories of a few crewmen who recalled it when asked if there was somewhere the pilgrims of the Blind Retribution could be quartered. Those pilgrims now knelt on bedrolls or attended to their holy books, preparing their souls for the solemn duty of overseeing the great trial to come. No one had thought to tell them when the trial was expected to begin, but the pilgrims did not care. They would always be ready.
Father Gyranar, who had spoken with Castellan Leucrontas, was the oldest among them, and few of them were young. His own prayers were so familiar to him that he had to stop and think about the words, to stop them slipping through the well-worn channels of his mind. When he murmured that the Emperor's will was his will, he forced himself to pause and consider what that actually meant. That he had no will of his own, that he was the vessel for a higher power, that his own wishes and desires had long since withered away to be replaced with what the Emperor wanted for this particular instrument.
Gyranar carried a prayer book, but he had not opened it in thirty-seven years. He knew it by heart.
His evening prayers complete, Gyranar stood. 'Advance the standards,' he said.
The other pilgrims did not expect this. It was not a part of their normal routine. After a few moments of confusion the standards of the Blind Retribution were unfurled and held aloft.
'This place is now holy ground,' said Gyranar. His voice was brittle and frail, but the other pilgrims listened so attentively that he could have been no clearer with a vox-caster. 'The time for confession has come.'
'Confession, father?' said Brother Akulsan. He was the Blind Retribution's deacon, who oversaw the few permanent places of worship they had established on the worlds where they had settled for a while. On a pilgrimage such as this he became a second leader, a check to Gyranar's authority.
'Indeed,' said Gyranar. 'A confession most vital. There is in us all a sin. The task we undertake here is of such import that I would have it spoken aloud by all of us.'
'Many times have I made confession,' said Akulsan. 'Indeed, the very pride of confessing has itself become as a sin, and required yet more confession. I feel there is little in me that is still dangerous and unspoken, prideful though that thought may be.'
'Sister Solace?' said Gyranar.
'Every night I beg forgiveness for my failures,' replied Sister Solace, in a voice hoarse with endless prayers. Those not familiar with the Blind Retribution sometimes expressed surprise that Solace was a woman, for she had the dusty voice of an old man and beneath her robes it was impossible to tell gender. Most people never suspected there were women in the Blind Retribution at all. 'I yearn to be free of them. What confession can I make now that I have not in every moment before?'
'You know,' said Gyranar, 'of what I speak.' He had been knee
ling but he now stood. He had never been a big man and now he was bent and drained, but still the pilgrims looked down or shied away a little as if he had the presence of an Astartes. 'Though the greater part of your soul may deny it. Though you beg the Emperor that it not be true. Though you have forced yourselves to forget all but its shadow, yet all of you know of what I speak.'
The pilgrims were silent. The only sound was the distant hum of the Phalanx's engines and the pulsing of the air recyclers overhead.
'Then I shall begin,' said Gyranar. 'O Emperor, I speak unto you the darkness of my deeds, and the poverty of this spirit so unworthy to serve you. My confession is of a time long ago, when first I wore the habit of the Blind. In the night as I lay in cloisters, a shadow came to me, clad in darkness. I am sure he was another brother of this order, though I know not his name. Perhaps it was that same father who counselled me in your ways. He said nothing, and did no more than place a chalice beside the slab on which I slept. Tell me, brethren, is there some confession in you that begs to be released, that has some of the same character as mine? Is there some echo of recognition that tugs at you, though from your memory it be gone?'
The pilgrims said nothing. So rapt were they by Gyranar's words that the Imperial saints could have descended in that moment and not broken their concentration on what the old man had to say.
'Then I shall continue,' he said. 'In this chalice was a liquid dark and cold. The shadow bid me drink with a gesture, and I did so, for I was afraid. And then into my mind there flooded a terrible waterfall of knowledge. I saw destruction and suffering! But I saw also the good that would come of it, the sinners that would be purged and the dead flesh of this bloated Imperium burned away. And I saw this time, when the Angels of Death, the Emperor's own warriors, shall be brought to trial before their peers, and I saw the part we were to play therein. The sin I confess is that I have known since that night that this time would come, and that the Blind Retribution must be there not only to observe that justice be done, but to enact a most crucial and terrible act that is the Emperor's will. I have kept it secret, locked up in my soul. Knowing that the day would come everything I saw will come true. That is my confession. Who will follow mine with the excision of their own sin? Who?'
Hammer and Bolter Year One Page 17
