[Warhammer 40K] - Sons of Dorn

by Chris Roberson - (ebook by Undead)

  And through it all, Jean-Robur’s eyes were fixed on the alabaster countenance of Rogal Dorn, primarch of the Chapter and progenitor of the gene-seed that all Imperial Fists shared. Jean-Robur felt as though he were adrift in a sea of molten fire, swamped by tidal waves of pain, and yet here remained a constant and steady guiding light to lead him safely to the other side. Like a beacon on a shore, lighting the way for wayward ships at sail, the pure white image of Rogal Dorn showed Jean-Robur the way through the pain.

  For year after endless year, it seemed to him, Jean-Robur hung within the grip of the pain-glove. But while the electrofibres and opiate-blocks would not let him grow accustomed to the searing pain, each passing moment as fresh with torment and agony as the first shocked instant, still Jean-Robur kept his eyes on the idol of Rogal Dorn.

  Pain is a lesson the universe teaches us, he remembered the Chaplain reciting. Pain is the alembic which transmutes mere mortal into immortal.

  Jean-Robur would learn this lesson, he swore to himself and to the cold and flawless features of the primarch. He would learn this lesson, survive the purifying fires of this alembic, and emerge on the other side the stronger for it. And he would go on to survive the coming examinations and initiations, the implants and the operations, and take his place among the Adeptus Astartes. And he would not do so for the same reasons that he had laboured to win his spurs on the field of battle, when he had gone to war to earn the privileges due a blooded son of Caritaigne; he would win through because the alternative was a life of miserable servitude, at best, and death and dishonour, at worst.

  He would grit his teeth and accept the pain as his due, and would be the better for it.

  Already an eternity had passed though, Jean-Robur thought. Surely the excruciation of the pain-glove would soon be at an end.

  Zatori Zan and the rest of the Triandrian aspirants had been seated on the front pews, closest to the altar at the apse of the chapel. On one side of him sat a Sipangish youth he recognised from the battlefleet that had sailed to Eokaroe, and on the other sat the Eokaroean tribesman who had stood beside Zatori when they had dared face the Imperial Fist captain on the battlefield.

  Watching his hated enemy writhe in the pain-glove, Zatori felt a mix of emotion. On the one hand, he found some satisfaction in seeing the murderer receive such well-deserved pain; on the other hand, though, and knowing full well that he himself would soon be subjected to the same treatment—perhaps his would be the next name the Chaplain called?—Zatori could not help feeling some faint stirrings of sympathy for the young Caritaigne.

  Now the Chaplain reached forwards and pressed a stud on the altar with a gauntleted finger. Then, as Jean-Robur slumped in the transparent grip of the Glove, Chaplain Dominicus pointed his crozius at the aspirants closest to the steel gibbet, which happened to be Zatori and the Eokaroean sitting beside him.

  “Aspirants Zatori and Taloc,” the voice of the Chaplain echoed through the Chapel. “Step forwards and assist Aspirant du Queste in removing himself from the pain-glove.”

  With a quick glance at the Eokaroean tribesman beside him—Taloc, the Chaplain had said—Zatori rose from the pew and stepped to the edge of the opening in the floor. Then, as the framework opened slowly like the skeletal petals of some strange metal flower, stretching the transparent fabric of the pain-glove, Zatori and Taloc reached in and each took hold of one of Jean-Robur’s arms. With the Caritaigne hanging limp between them, the two aspirants lifted him clear as the scaffolding and the now-empty pain-glove retreated back into the shaft underfoot, and with a whisper the hatch began slowly to iris shut again.

  The three Triandrians stood before the Chaplain, with Taloc and Zatori keeping Jean-Robur between them from collapsing in exhaustion onto the floor.

  “So it should always be with the Imperial Fists,” the Chaplain announced. He leaned his staff against the altar to free his hands, and then raised his right hand balled in a fist. “The one hand clenched in a fist, to strike your enemies.” Then he raised his left hand, palm out and fingers outstretched towards the aspirants as if offering aid. “The other hand held out to your brother, to share your strengths.”

  He paused, and regarded the assembled aspirants.

  “Aspirant Zatori,” he intoned solemnly. “Step forwards and disrobe.” And so it continued.

  In the days and weeks that followed, as the strike cruiser Capulus made its sure and steady way through the insane topographies of the warp, each of the aspirants took their turn in the pain-glove, many of them more than once. Brief encounters to help focus the mind, almost like jumping in and out of a freezing lake in an instant to clear their heads, and longer excruciations to discipline those who had strayed from the path, lengthy baptisms of pain to guide them back to proper conduct.

  The examinations continued, as Apothecary Lakari sampled and studied their bodies all the way down to the cellular level in search of any taint of mutation, while at the same time confirming that they were strong enough to survive the implantation procedures that would follow once they reached the Phalanx.

  Having been psychically screened initially in their first hours onboard the strike cruiser, each of the aspirants were subjected to ever more invasive and lengthy probes as Librarian Borgos dug ever deeper into their minds, past conscious thought and down into the subterranean levels of impulse and urge that the aspirants themselves knew nothing of, searching for any sign of corruption or weakness.

  And the Chaplain continued to gauge their warrior spirits, questioning them on hypothetical scenarios, testing them to see how much they retained of the Chapter Lore and Imperial Dogma he had already doled out to them. Those who failed to recall the proper rites and rituals employed in the worship of the God-Emperor, or who could not recite the rudiments of the Cult of Dorn, found themselves marked out for additional time in the pain-glove, to allow the pain to improve their memories.

  Not all of the aspirants passed each of these tests, of body, mind and spirit, and as day followed day the number of cots occupied in the aspirants’ dormitory began to dwindle as the failures were quietly and without ceremony winnowed away from their fellows. Among the aspirants, in rare moments of rest and privacy, there were whispers of these unfortunate failures being used for experimentation, or transformed at once into half-man-half-machine servitors without even the luxury of first spending a lifetime of backbreaking labour as a Chapter serf.

  And every day that passed brought them that much closer to the rendezvous with the fortress-monastery Phalanx, when the fittest among the aspirants would be welcomed as neophytes of the Imperial Fists. What waited them in the initiation period that followed, though, the aspirants were not entirely sure, and lacked the courage to ask.

  “For ten millennia,” Captain Taelos said, pacing back and forth before the assembled aspirants, his voice booming through the hall, “the greatest threat to the continued existence of the Imperium of Mankind has not been any of the xenos hordes which have harried at our heels, but those sons of humanity who have turned their back on the God-Emperor on his Golden Throne and embraced the vile worship of the Ruinous Powers. Since the days of Rogal Dorn himself have the Traitor Legions waged their Long War against He whom they once served. Those who were once our brothers-in-arms are now the twisted and hate-filled disciples of Chaos, intent on overrunning the galaxy and despoiling all that the Imperium has accomplished. It falls to us of the Adeptus Astartes to see that they do not succeed.”

  He paused at the edge of the rostrum, framed by the holy image of Dorn which hung from the wall behind him.

  “The Imperial Fists are, above all, a brotherhood, bound by bonds of loyalty and duty. It is for this reason that we are committed to defeating those who have broken their covenant with the Emperor, who have betrayed their honour and turned their backs on the Imperium.”

  Taloc s’Tonan lay on his coffin-shaped cot in the dormitory, eyes half-lidded, wishing sleep would come. But exhausted as he was, he was somehow too tired for slumber, and
so instead lay awake, muscles aching and thoughts racing.

  It was only beginning to sink in for Taloc that he would in all likelihood never see the green forests of Eokaroe again, nor would he ever again be in the company of his uncles and cousins in the shadows of the island’s great peaks. More than that, he would never again wield his ironbrand, which had been wrested from his hands on the battlefield by Captain Taelos of the Imperial Fists before the blade had ever earned for itself a name.

  It occurred to Taloc that, in the strictest sense, he would never in fact become a man, denied the tests of the tourney and the battlefield alike, never to win the recognition of his warrior-clan that he had at last attained the status of manhood. If he survived the training and implantations that awaited him on the Phalanx, as they had been explained to the aspirants by their superiors onboard the Capulus, then he might one day be fortunate enough to join the ranks of the Adeptus Astartes, becoming a superhuman engine of war, but there would always be some small part of his mind that considered himself still a youth, denied the validation of his clan.

  Taloc’s head ached with the glut of information that had been forced into him over the previous weeks, both the knowledge that had been implanted by frequent sessions under the hypno-casque, and the lessons he had received verbally at the hands of the Chaplain, captain and sergeants. The knowledge gained through the former—basic concepts of science and technology and biology and interstellar cosmology and more implanted directly into his subconscious—had allowed him to better grasp the substance of the latter—histories of primarch and Chapter and the Imperium, introductory surveys on the nature of humanity’s variegated enemies—but still Taloc found it difficult to digest all that he had been taught.

  Opening his eyes, Taloc lifted his head fractionally off the cot and glanced from one side to the other. The number of aspirants had dwindled in the weeks since they had left Triandr behind, and where a hundred or more cots had been occupied in the first days Taloc had spent in the dormitory, now there were a bare few dozens of cots in use. Taloc tried not to dwell on what might have become of the other aspirants, including the few Eokaroeans who had been brought with him from Triandr. None of them had been of the warrior-clan of Tonan, but they had been kinsmen of a sort to him, and he had drawn some comfort from their presence. Now, he was the last of the Eokaroeans in the dormitory, and there was every chance that he would never again hear the language of his forefathers spoken aloud.

  Only two other Triandrians beside Taloc remained among the ranks of the aspirants, for that matter. The Caritaigne named Jean-Robur, who seemed more concerned with his comfort and appetites than he did with the strangeness of their circumstances. And the Sipangish named Zatori, who held the blood-debt of Taloc’s father Tonan.

  Taloc had learned the names of few of the other aspirants who had already been onboard the Capulus when he and the rest of the Triandrians had been brought to the ship. Given the frequency with which the other youths suddenly disappeared from their ranks, removed for one deficiency or another, at times it seemed hardly worth the effort of establishing any kind of contact with them. He had become somewhat familiar with a bare handful of them—Kelso, Rhomec, Fulgencio, Valen and a few others—but had not engaged in anything like meaningful conversation with any of them.

  But while Taloc’s head throbbed with the knowledge that had been crammed into it, his muscles ached from the torturous examinations to which the aspirants had been subjected. Once their basic tissue and cellular compatibility had been established, their bodies were subjected to extensive examination to ensure that they had the proper resilience and capacity for healing necessary to survive the implantation procedures. Endurance tests followed, endless hours of running and lifting and bending, to measure their capacity for muscle growth and flexibility. After several weeks of this regimen, Taloc felt that there was not a muscle in his body that had not been strained or prodded, not a nerve that had not been plucked and jangled.

  And then there was the pain-glove. Taloc had erred in protocols and procedures several times in recent days, minor infractions all, but onboard the Capulus even the most minor of infractions resulted in time within the Glove. And when he felt that he had just recovered from his disciplinary excruciations in the Glove, it was time for him to undergo his regularly scheduled meditative sessions, though thankfully for lesser periods of time and at lower pain settings. As it was, it seemed that scarcely a day had passed that he had not been subjected to the searing fire of the pain-glove, but Taloc had to admit, if only in silence and to himself, that each time he plunged into the mess of electrofibres he was that much more capable of enduring the pain. Each time he was able to retain more of his focus, to marshal more of his wits and his will, and when he emerged from each session he was less debilitated than he had been the previous time, better able to stand on his own feet without collapsing from the exhaustion of his overloaded nervous system.

  Taloc closed his eyes again, though he knew it was too late now to consider sleeping. In moments, a line of servitors would come into the dormitory through the far door, carrying the aspirants’ morning nourishment, and then the training and examinations of the day would begin. Already the lights set in the ceiling far overhead were beginning to brighten, cycling slowly from the near-complete darkness of the ship’s night to the bright illumination of the ship’s day, like the rising of Triandr’s morning sun in miniature.

  As a child, Taloc had been taught that the sun which shone by day was a symbol of the Great Father in the Sky, who had sent humanity untold ages ago to live in the forests and mountains and plains of Triandr. The red moon which shone by night waxed and waned in symbolic representation of the struggle between the two great brothers of ancient legend, warriors who fought in the Great Father’s name until one of them betrayed his brother and turned his back on the Great Father in the Sky.

  Lying in the lingering gloom of the dormitory, thoughts racing of their own accord, Taloc could not help hearing echoes of those Eokaroean beliefs in the histories he was being taught by the Imperial Fists—the God-Emperor of all humanity, presiding over the Imperium of Mankind from the Golden Throne on Holy Terra, His empire protected by the holy warriors of the Adeptus Astartes. And the story of the Traitor Legions, who turned their backs to the God-Emperor and their brothers-in-arms, siding with the ruinous powers of Chaos against humanity.

  Taloc had been raised to believe that only the warrior-clans of Eokaroe had preserved the true faith of the Great Father in the Sky, remaining steadfast while the faithless wretches of the lands beyond the waves fell from grace and strayed from the path of righteousness.

  Had the teachings of his grandfathers been true, at least in part? Were the beliefs of Eokaroe an echo of true history, and were the Great Father in the Sky and the battle between the two warrior-brothers themselves dim remembrances of the God-Emperor and his Great Crusade, of the Space Marine Legions and the Horus Heresy?

  Taloc was no shaman or scholar, no expert in tales and traditions, but it certainly seemed a possible explanation. But if so, did that mean that Taloc might one day be a great warrior like those brothers of legend? It seemed ironic to think that he, who would never become a full man in the eyes of the Eokaroeans, would instead be elevated to the level of the more revered figures in his people’s traditions.

  Eyes still shut tight, with the realisation of this paradox Taloc’s thoughts began to slow, his mind and jangled nerves slowly beginning to calm.

  His aching muscles relaxed, and as he fancied himself as a great warrior of legend, Taloc could feel himself slowly sinking into slumber.

  Darkness swallowed him, and Taloc drifted off to sleep.

  And in the next moment, the clank and rattle of the servitors bringing the morning meal wrenched him back to full wakefulness. Rubbing his eyes, Taloc sat up and swung his legs over the side of the cot.

  Tomorrow, perhaps, he thought, I will sleep.

  “The Imperial Fists are the uncontested masters of siege
warfare, able to fortify and defend any site against all enemies,” Chaplain Dominicus declaimed, leaning heavily on the altar, “and in recognition of this Rogal Dorn had been charged by the Emperor Himself with fortifying the Imperial Palace on Holy Terra. But you have not yet been told how this led inexorably to a great schism within the ranks of the Legions. Among his many worthy attributes, Primarch Rogal Dorn was always truthful, no matter the circumstances. And when Horus once proclaimed that Perturabo of the Iron Warriors was the greatest master of siege warfare in the Crusade, Primarch Fulgrim of the Emperor’s Children called upon Dorn, asking in jest whether even the defences of the Imperial Palace which Dorn had constructed were proof against the Iron Warriors. Dorn, truthful to a fault, answered that his defences were proof against any assault, so long as the fortifications were intact and well manned. Hearing this, Perturabo flew into a rage, hurling imprecations and a stream of unfounded accusations at Dorn.

  The wedge thus driven between the primarchs grew ever wider, with neither Legion again serving in the same campaign. And when Horus led his treacherous vanguard against the Emperor, Perturabo and Fulgrim were at his heels, while Dorn and his Imperial Fists remained steadfast at the side of the Emperor. Now the Iron Warriors and the Emperor’s Children serve the ruinous powers, and would seek to despoil all the works of man, while the Imperial Fists stand resolute in the Imperium’s defence. But as Rogal Dorn himself taught us, there is no place that an Imperial Fist cannot fortify and defend against all enemies, including the galaxy itself!”

  Zatori Zan sat in rapt attention as Captain Taelos introduced to them the Rites of Battle as laid down in centuries past by the honoured Imperial Fist, Rhetoricus.