by Henry Zou
Sica lowered his weapon hesitantly. ‘Captain?’
‘Aye, sergeant.’
Spitting in relief, Barsabbas switched off his thermal imaging. It was dark and he blinked several times, rapidly dilating his pupils to increase visual acuity. The formless black shape immediately became that of Captain Argol. Even in the low light, he was unmistakable. Horn plates cauliflowered up his neck and the left side of his face, sprouting, branching and multiplying like saltwater coral. Argol was immensely proud of his gifts and seldom wore a helmet to hide them.
‘You caught us,’ Sica admitted. As if on cue, Hadius and Cython staggered back to their feet, their earlier bravado neutered by the ease of their dispatching.
‘Learn to adapt quickly. Never become comfortable with one kind of enemy,’ said Argol.
Barsabbas knew their captain was right. Space Marine armour was an insulated exterior of ceramite and adamantium, almost invisible to thermal or heat detection. Had they relied on their own hyper-sensitive vision, perhaps they would have spotted their attacker.
‘That’s what makes us dangerous. We are the symbiosis of war machine and human ability,’ Argol continued. ‘Do not rely on gears and motors, remember that you have two hands and a brain.’
Sica unlocked his helmet to reveal a face of heavy cheekbones and long matted coils of hair. His heavy brow ridge was pinched in a grimace. The sergeant did not like being made a fool of, even by the venerable captain. ‘You didn’t come all this way to lecture us on battle theory, my captain. What do you need from us?’
‘Sergeant Sica. Your squad’s performance was less than notable on Govina.’
The mere mention of it made Barsabbas wince inwardly. He knew Sargaul would feel the same.
‘What of it?’ Sica snarled.
‘I know you fought hard. Post-operation data showed pict evidence of heavy tau casualties. Have you had the pleasure of viewing the aerial surveillance? There is a pict-capture of a rock ridge lined with tau bodies in a neat little line. All of them, gunned down in a straight line just like that. Pop. Pop. Pop.’
Sica was not amused. ‘We faced almost five hundred tau foot-soldiers. They are pliable and break open easily, but their guns are difficult to trade shots with. Even their basic infantry rifle cuts through a clear thirty centimetres of brick.’
‘The fact remains – you were defeated, beaten, driven back. It’s brought shame to your squad and, by extension, my company.’
Barsabbas heard Bael-Shura hiss, as if warming up the Betcher’s gland beneath his tongue. For the past ten months, Squad Besheba had become pariahs within the Chapter.
‘What do you need from us?’ Sica repeated warily.
‘I’m giving you a chance to redeem your performance. Five squads from Captain Hazareth’s First Company will be deploying to Hauts Bassiq. Sabtah and Muhr have, for once, agreed to this course of action.’
Barsabbas kept quiet, but his breathing quickened with quiet anticipation. Although it was left unsaid, there was no doubt Captain Argol had requested their presence on this mission. It meant the company, despite their misgivings, still believed Squad Besheba was an effective and dependable squad, but they would need an act to redeem their reputation.
‘This is your chance. I have petitioned Captain Hazareth to augment his forces with Squad Besheba. Hazareth has accepted,’ Argol finished.
Beside Barsabbas, Sargaul slapped his palms in anticipation. A hush fell over the squad.
‘Second Company’s honour is at stake here, Sergeant Sica. There existed a long and violent history when I inherited this company, a reputation for being monsters in fables. Bastion, Cadia, Armageddon, the Medina Corridor, the actions at Dunefall. I hope these wars mean as much to you as they do to me, but Second Company have never been found wanting. Good, noble men fear us. Soldiers of alien cultures know us by name and know of our brutality. We make their warrior castes feel inferior.’
They all nodded.
‘I won’t pressure you, Sergeant Sica. But you must know Squad Besheba carries our history on their shoulders.’
The Blood Gorgons were deploying. Despite the nature of a scouting deployment, the entire Cauldron Born was thrumming with activity.
Muhr’s coven was coaxing the warp drives and daemon spirits. Alarm sirens were blaring, engine slaves were sweating. There was no rest, no pause in labour. Freight docks were ramped, shrines were tended to and everywhere was the synchronised stomp of boots as black turban patrols doubled.
Weaponsmith Linus knew he would not be sleeping for several rotations. The deploying squads had equipment that needed to be repaired and readied for war and already his apprentices were bowed in focused work. Alcestis was stooped at her work bench, a portly woman in her fifties who had once been a respected dollmaker in her home hive of Delaphina. Her hands worked quickly, darting between whetstone, file and a Traitor Marine’s cutlass. At their benches, others were hammering the dents out of water canisters, re-meshing buckle straps or cleaning trophy racks. These were not the sacred power armours or bolters of the Blood Gorgons, for no slaves were allowed to touch, much less be entrusted with, such artefacts. Rather, these were the various tools of the Traitor Marines.
The slaves worked by the light of small gas lamps and candle flame. It was slow, agonising work, but it was better than being a menial. Although their work chamber was a dark box in the ship’s dilapidated lower halls, they were allowed to sleep under their work benches after rotation and were rationed one and half standard meals per day. The walls were covered with old sheets and shredded waste to insulate against the sub-zero space climate. Through an ever-present haze, tabac smoke was chain-lit to help them through their work shifts. Despite these conditions, the mending slaves had come to accept the cubic little chamber as their home. They had learned to make the best of what they had become and even named their portion of the ship the smokehouse.
An entire half of the smokehouse was cramped with racks of axes, boarding pikes and gaudy blades that had been delivered there since morning cycle. Varied were the weapons in the collection, as no two Traitor Marines possessed the same arsenal. These were personal caches collected by each individual over their decades or centuries of service, a veritable history of their achievements. Each Blood Gorgon took great pride in their exotic collections, and any fleck of dust or slight damage would cost a weaponsmith one finger. Already, Linus, meticulous with his work though he was, had lost a little finger and a ring finger, once for sharpening an axe blade against the grain and another for leaving carbon build-up in the pommel of a sword that he could not reach with his tools.
‘There is a boarding axe which needs sharpening and rebinding,’ a young apprentice told Linus. ‘Would you like me to finish it, boss?’
Linus shook his head. The apprentice was a mere boy. In time he would learn the finer points of regraining and weave binding, but for now he was too clumsy to be entrusted with so dangerous a task. ‘Not now, lad,’ replied Linus. ‘Squad Brigand needs a half-hundred leather pouches to be oiled, you get along with that.’
Picking up the short-handled axe, he ran a palm along its edge. Although the slaves were told nothing about the nature of deployment, Linus had been enslaved for long enough that he could judge, by the tools the Traitor Marines chose, what the nature of their mission would be.
This time, there was a predominance of light and concealable weapons. The absence of heavier weaponry such as halberds or polearms suggested that it would be no quick, frontal assault. There was no preponderance of boarding pikes to be re-toothed as there often would be before a boarding raid. Lighter weapons meant utility.
Perhaps a long-distance campaign? A planet of smouldering fields and ash plains? Linus remembered distant planets, exotic in plant life and fauna. He remembered when he was younger, the fields outside his hab had been covered in green grass and the swaying growth of trees. But try as he might, he
could not remember what they smelled like or how they felt to the touch. He knew only the Cauldron Born now and nothing else.
Linus sighed. He often wondered where these Traitor Marines went – even if they were horrifying warzones. Surely anything would be better than a lifetime of enslavement, subsisting on gruel and watery yoghurt?
Barsabbas and Sargaul summoned their retinue sometime around mid-cycle.
Situated in the Cauldron Born’s middle decks the Blood Gorgons’ interior citadels rose along the cliffs and numberless ramparts of the ship’s interior structure. Turreted proto-fortresses loomed along the dark rises and shelves of the superstructure, each housing one pair of bonded brethren. Lighting their way with lamps, the personal slaves went quickly and urgently, together in a hurried flock.
There were the two black turbans in their brass armour, Ashar and Dao, striding imperiously in their upturned and pointed boots. The helm bearers came next, little more than young boys in stiffly embroidered tabards. A train of munitions and armament servitors clattered behind, guarded by a trio of scale hounds. Behind them, appearing unrushed, came the litter of pleasure pets, collected from a double dozen planets, each of the women chosen on the nine Slaaneshi principles of exotic beauty.
The fortresses remained unconnected; the chain-link walkways that had connected them had been destroyed centuries ago and never rebuilt. The Blood Gorgons had not always been a unified Chapter before the reign of Gammadin. During the early stages of their excommunication, intra-Chapter conflict had reduced them to little more than a band of thieves escaping together for survival. It had been a time of turmoil, during which the Blood Gorgons had turned upon one another and walled themselves up within their drifting fortress. Even after Gammadin united the Chapter after the Reforging, the citadels remained as a memorial of past failings.
The retinue of Barsabbas and Sargaul arrived at a grated walkway. Beyond them, spanning an abyssal drop, the walkway led towards blast shutters set in a wall that dropped away like a cliff edge. Swathes of rust honeycombed the citadel across the pit. Flat and imposing, it swept four hundred metres down into shadows and dim pinpricks of strobe lighting.
By the time the retinue had cleared the muzzled gun servitors at the entry shutters, they were already late. Barsabbas and Sargaul had begun their anointments and the seven rituals of predomination were about to begin.
Barsabbas met them at the draw gates, unarmoured and imposing. ‘Do not be late. Tardiness erodes my efficiency. Entirely erodes it. Understand?’
‘Yes,’ the slaves said, bowing and hurrying to their positions.
Each slave within the retinue had a personal task in the pre-
deployment rituals. Gammadin had coined them ‘the Sacrifices of War’, but Barsabbas had quietly referred to them as ‘the Tedium before Battle’.
With a dismissive wave from Sargaul, the sacrifices began without much fanfare. To Barsabbas, it was slightly deflating. The rituals grew tiresome to him. He attributed the tedium to the reverence in which the senior Blood Gorgons held the rituals. The veterans built up such a sense of solemnity and ceremony that when the younger ranks performed it, half-hearted in youth, the sacrifices seemed to lose all meaning.
Barsabbas sighed wearily. First, he and Sargaul reswore their oaths of brotherhood. The Astartes implant known as the omophagea allowed for learning by eating. Through the implant they were able to ‘read’ or absorb genetic material that they consumed, the omophagea transmitting the gained information to the brain as a set of memories or experiences. The Blood Gorgons remembered a time when they had fought against one another. Although they had always been one Chapter, the Reforging was part of their Chapter history. The oaths reminded them of this, or so the veterans said.
Barsabbas could not remember the Reforging. That was before his time and no more than a curious relic of history.
Barsabbas cut a small piece of flesh from inside his cheek while Sargaul sliced open the meat of his right thumb. A tiny sample of blood and flesh was collected into a brass bowl and the bloody tissue was diluted with an alcohol solution. Apparently, the blood was traditionally mixed with fermented mead. These days, honey was a rarity for the Chapter and it was simply more efficient to manufacture an alcoholic solvent. Perhaps Barsabbas would appreciate these rituals if they were not some mere nuisance to be observed for the sake of tradition. He shrugged and slugged down the caustic mixture.
The Sacrifice of Armament followed. Barsabbas and Sargaul were stripped naked and lowered their bodies into a simmering cauldron. The water was hot enough to par-boil the outermost layers of skin. Once bathed, the inflamed skin was then vigorously rubbed with coarse-grained salts. Lastly a thick white salve of woad – a mixture of animal fat, minerals and bio-chemicals – was applied to toughen the skin, numbing it.
Again, Barsabbas found the process unnecessary. The skin was more prone to infection in humid combat zones. Yet they did not argue the procedure. It was something that had always been.
After the skin treatment, the Traitor Marine’s suit of power armour was fitted into place, segment by segment. The plugs, stem cords and synapse wires were connected from the armour to the black carapace. All present began to chant a simple, almost child-like rhyme, in order to placate the armour’s spirit as it was coaxed from its sleep.
Fully suited and armoured, Barsabbas could not help but notice the subtle reaction from his servants. They shied away from him, afraid to be close. It happened often. It was as if normal humans had an instinctive fear of Space Marines, a deeply seeded biological aversion to being close to something so dangerous, so powerful.
Finally came the Sacrifice of Smoke. This was the ritual that Barsabbas found most pragmatic, despite its superstitious nature. While in warp transit, objects were likely to go missing. To a warrior-mind, the phenomenon was unexplainable and oddly disturbing – small items left unlocked or unbolted would disappear. Sometimes these could be vital pieces of wargear, or even the firing pin of a bolter. In order to prevent such warp poltergeist activity, most loyalist Chapters prayed and erected gargoyles.
The Blood Gorgons observed this superstition in their own way by discharging firecrackers and parading in their war helms. It was the Blood Gorgons’ belief that war helms needed to be terrifying enough to scare even the daemons of Chaos, or ill fortune would be invited. Barsabbas’s helmet was terrifying indeed, a screaming bovine sculpt with a narrow slitted vision lens and wide antlers like arms rearing up to frighten away mischievous spirits. He danced a strange, spasmodic dance, executing clumsy movements in his power armour. Their retinue beat drums and cymbals while singing.
With the final sacrifices complete, Barsabbas and Sargaul stood in their full finery of war. He stole a look in the gilded mirror in their chambers. The creature that looked back at him appeared monstrous – a broad framework of engineered bone and muscle. Theatrical yet pugnacious, his mask was strangely emotionless, its exaggerated scream frozen into the rigor mortis of sculpted brass.
He realised he was the most feared fighting unit in the universe. He allowed that thought to settle upon him for a moment. It was intoxicating. They were mobile fortresses, able to bull-charge head first into a storm of enemy munitions unscathed. They were destructive, the firepower at their immediate disposal able to flatten urban blocks. With his hands, gloved in ceramite, he could crush and pry open sheets of metal, maybe even the support girders of a building.
‘Master,’ cried the slaves as the ritual preparations drew to a close. They mewled collectively, scratching pleadingly at their faces as if Barsabbas and Sargaul had forgotten.
Barsabbas watched Sargaul slide a black metal piston from a leather carrier at his thigh plate. The slaves lined up eagerly. One after another, Sargaul viced their jaws in his hand, turning their faces ever so slightly upwards. The piston punched into their cheek scars with a meaty thud. The slaves would wince, flinching away from Sargaul’s grasp with
a weeping wound in their cheek.
They liberated the slaves in turn, extracting the larvae from their flesh. Sargaul hurried through the process without veneration, his movements deftly practiced, yet rough and bored. A young girl with a graceful neck was next in line. Barsabbas had never learned her name. She was just a menial.
Sargaul trapped her timid face between the vice of his fingers. The black tube slid into her cheek like a monstrous syringe. She remained stoic as it retracted, leaving a neat incision below her cheekbone. A hard tap of the piston dislodged a tiny white larva onto the floor, oozing with fluid and pus. It trembled fitfully upon contact with the air, expanding rapidly, its membranous cocoon stretching and straining. As the egg skin peeled away, a fleshy nub of fingers and teeth emerged. The newly birthed creature resembled an arachnid, with a swell of bone-shearing mandibles above its abdominal sac. Black hair, coarse and wet, sprouted wirily from its throbbing skin.
Sargaul set his heel down and crushed the skittering mess.
‘You are all free until our return,’ Sargaul said.
The slaves, some amongst them wadding their palms against bleeding faces, stared at them like a lost herd of particularly dull sheep. Most of them knew no other life than servitude. Some had been born into slavery, their ancestors having dwelt in the slave warrens for many generations.
‘But if we do not return, then you will all die with us, for this is the way the gods will it. You serve only us, and live by virtue of our existence. Without us, you cannot be allowed to live,’ Sargaul announced. ‘It may not make sense to you, but it is our only way.’
In steaming cauldrons and platters on carts, the food was served in the Hall of Solemn Supper. Teeming like colony ants, scullery slaves toiled, the patter of their steps strident across the ancient floorboards.
The Hall of Solemn Supper was a narrow, antiquated chamber deep within the ship’s furnished core, with great wooden beamed ceilings dating from a time when the ship was an abandoned drifter. Arched windows framed with sculpted mer-maidens and harpies were spaced evenly, allowing the hall full view of distant stars and galaxies.
