Sons of the Emperor

by Warhammer 40K

  A massive explosion shook the image. The view jerked all over the place. Olivier had a fleeting view of an airless sky beyond an armourglass roof as the legionary fell backwards. The warrior recovered quickly, and ran forward again, passing the broken, silver bodies of other Iron Warriors lying between piles of smoking stone-glass. The warrior's breathing rasped in Olivier's ears. An alarm beeped repetitively. Some part of the legionary's armour was damaged. The warrior muttered to his battleplate machine-spirit, rerouting power from one part to another, and the alarm ceased. He did all this while firing. He did not miss.

  The focus and ability of the Legiones Astartes chilled Olivier every time he witnessed it.

  The warrior kicked down a howling fanatic brandishing a warhammer equipped with multiple chainsword-like tooth tracks. Suddenly there were dozens of black-robed men everywhere, attacking suicidally. Olivier's host cut them down by the dozen. They were small, feeble as all men are compared to an armoured legionary, but their fervour carried them forward. Olivier saw an Iron Warrior fall, his armour cracked open by repeated blows of the fanatics. His host mowed them down with a burst of automatic fire. He turned back to see the whirring head of a bludgeon slam into his face.

  The view fizzed. The pict-capture cut out.

  Olivier drew a shaky breath, and reached up to remove the immersion device.

  'Wait,' said Krashkalix, his voice intruding into the blackness. 'There is more.'

  A new file began to play. Again, a set of data flicked on and off, too fast for Olivier to see, and another vision of combat burst into life.

  A cyber slave reared up before the Space Marine. Olivier did not know if he was viewing the feed of the same warrior or if that Space Marine had died and this was another. The warrior's opponent looked similar to the servitors used all over the Imperium, but its expression said it knew full well what had been done to it, and had been driven mad in the process. The technology attached to the man was sophisticated, although it had been integrated with his body without any care for his pain.

  A blurring vibroblade attached to the cyber-slave's hand cut across at the Iron Warrior. He dodged back and blasted out the chest of his foe. Blood sprayed all over the Space Marine and ran down his vision slit, staining the view. He fought on unhindered, putting down three more of the constructs.

  Orders crackled in his ears, and he jogged onwards, falling into formation with other Iron Warriors. They ran through a brightly lit operating chamber. Its cleanliness only accentuated the cruelty of the instruments hanging over vivisection tables. Dead legionaries and cyber constructs lay upon the tiled floor in pools of blood.

  They ran into a tunnel lined by murky glass suspension jars, where dismembered bodies floated and twitched. There was a moment of quiet, and then a tremendous screaming that cut out, and the sounds of battle once more boomed loudly as the ad hoc squad ran into a massive hall enclosed by a ribbed roof. Hundreds of the cyber slaves were arrayed there. Behind them were war machines, big as legionary Dreadnoughts and festooned with deadly weaponry.

  'The Black Judges,' whispered Olivier. Stories of their reign of terror had reached as far as the Throneworld. Seeing them so close sent a shiver of fear through him.

  Masses of Iron Warriors were engaged with the erstwhile masters of the Meratara cluster. Perturabo's warriors had come in through the western walls, advancing up long halls, taking shelter from raking energy beams behind piles of their own dead. The casualties, Olivier had read, had been horrendous at every stage of the campaign.

  For all their might, the Black Judges were losing.

  At the centre was Perturabo, flanked by his Tyranthikos Terminators. Corposant and residual teleport mist still wisped from their armour. They had arrived only seconds before.

  As Olivier's host ran into the room, Perturabo was concluding the slaying of one of the judges. He yanked his hand out from the smooth domed front of the vehicle, dragging an ancient human from the interior by the throat. Life support fluid burst from the rent Perturabo had pounded into the casing. Dead wires and tubes ripped from the man's body as Perturabo held him high and throttled the life from him. Lights flickered all over the war suit, and it collapsed to the ground.

  Seeing one of their masters die, the cyberslaves went into a frenzied attack. Perturabo opened fire on them, shooting through the body of the dead Black Judge until the bloody tatters fell from his fist.

  The primarch's wrist mounted cannons blasted swathes of death into the horde. The ammo feeds running from the back of the primarch's bespoke Terminator armour shook as they fed an endless stream of rounds into his guns, but Perturabo did not fire indiscriminately. He switched from target to target with preternatural speed, felling each foe with a single headshot at a rate too fast for the human eye to follow.

  Olivier lost sight of Perturabo for a moment. A musical discharge of purple energy rocked the unnamed Space Marine sideways. A dead Iron Warrior wheeled overhead, black against violet lightning. The view righted, and the warrior ran on to his primarch, firing all the time until his weapon ran dry. He ejected a clip and snapped a fresh one home without breaking stride.

  'Iron within, iron without!' the Space Marines shouted as they crashed, shoulder first, into the mass of horrors around the Lord of Iron.

  The enemy was the stuff of nightmares, an anatomist's collection of flayed specimens brought back to screaming life. Skinless bodies served as carriages for heavy weaponry. Agonised eyes rolled, lidless in bleeding skulls. All of them were shrieking like the damned from some backward religion. Their suffering poisoned Olivier's soul. Over them loomed the giant war suits of the Black Judges themselves, the great monsters of popular legend, a living testimony to how far into evil humanity could fall. They differed in form to one another, but all were deadly. The weapons of the Dark Age of Technology were theirs to command.

  A Terminator died to the blinding white stab of a neutron beam. The warrior whose feed Olivier watched reeled back, his helm alarms tripped by radioactive backwash.

  Perturabo crashed bodily into a Black Judge. The machines stood tall over their altered human slaves, but Perturabo was as big as they, and his shoulder barge sent his target staggering backwards. He opened fire with both of his wrist cannons, driving the machine further back. It staggered, stamping its own warriors into a paste as it struggled to remain on its feet. But the rounds could not penetrate its armoured skin, and its multiple weapons mounts swivelled to bear upon the primarch. Olivier knew all this was history - the campaign had taken place well over a century ago - but seeing it then was like living it, and he feared for the primarch's life.

  A missile on a column of smoke slammed into the Black Judge's side, denting it. A second punched a neat round hole in the skin. A yellow flash preceded a gushing slurry of macerated flesh and life-support fluids that poured from the breach.

  'The Havocs have arrived,' said Olivier's host. It was strange to hear his voice. He was calm, collected, even as he was slowly cooked by the ambient radiation around the Black Judges. 'Press forward. Iron within.'

  'Iron without!'

  Several insane cyber-constructs attacked Olivier's legionary. When the warrior looked again to his primarch, Perturabo was surrounded by the fiery blooms of missile explosions. Ruby las-blasts cut all around him, sectioning the air with a laser grid. Perturabo had pulled a giant hammer from his side. In one hand, he gripped the weapon arm of a war machine the other swung his maul down hard into his assailant. The judge bore a bladed scourge that wrapped around Perturabo's arm, moving with a life of its own.

  A searing light blasted Olivier's warrior to the side. His suit systems shorted out, dazzling Olivier with a confusing display of static and half-formed images.

  Darkness fell again.

  Krashkalix pulled the immersion helm from Olivier's head. Olivier blinked dazedly. The sight of Perturabo surrounded by violence as he brandished his hammer would not leave him. He looked to where Marissa sat, her own immersion helm in her lap. A look of ho
ly joy suffused her. That, more than anything he had seen in the record, appalled him.

  'If you were seeking to shock me, sub-captain, it won't work.' Olivier got shakily to his feet.

  'That was not my intention,' said the Space Marine. 'I wished to show you our lord as we know him, in the midst of battle.'

  'He is no less daunting a figure to me now.'

  An Iron Warriors serf brought Olivier a glass of water. He gulped it down greedily. His head ached from the helmet.

  'Why should he be?' said Krashkalix. 'War is an awful thing. He was made to fight it.' He leaned forward. 'You seem less than respectful of my genefather. The Black Judges were evil men. They sucked the life from others to prolong their own. To do so, they held sway over this entire region of space, bringing their terror even as far as Olympia. In the mountains, the Lord of Iron slew serpents. In space, he toppled ancient evils - they were but the first of many. He works to do so now, against the hrud. Perturabo is no monster, but the slayer of monsters. He is your protector, remembrancer. You should honour him.'

  Olivier gave Krashkalix a grave look. 'I shall be the judge of whom I should honour.'

  Krashkalix stood up to his full height and glared at Olivier. The remembrancer regretted his poor choice of words.

  'Tomorrow, we shall see more.'

  Olivier felt he had seen quite enough already.

  Olivier stood up from the floor and yawned. Documents describing every one of Perturabo's campaigns were heaped around their hospitium suite.

  'He decimated his Legion. The way he makes war is so wasteful. He throws his men away.' He picked up a book and let it fall: Perturabo's History of Olympia. 'You have to wonder why he does it, why he revels in the image he has, this unbreakable, uncaring rock of a man. He's shoving his ruthlessness into people's faces.' He put his face into his hands and ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. 'He's stage-managed his entire life. There's no truth here, only the posturing of an egomaniac. It's no wonder the people are rioting. We should leave. We should go back to Terra, and tell the institute that we can't finish the book. This is the worst assignment yet.' Marissa fell quiet. There were people in the streets again. Olivier heard them chanting in the distance. Their defiance was alluring.

  'It doesn't matter.'

  'What?' he said. He took his hands away from his eyes and looked up. Coloured spots danced in his vision.

  'It doesn't matter,' she repeated. 'Fact is not the same as truth.'

  'You're talking nonsense. We've had this out before. Why do you insist on coming back to this? We are here to write a history.'

  'Our job is to present the subjects as the heroes they are. No great general is without fault. Not one.'

  'What we write is the historical record!' said Olivier. His temper was rising. 'This is too important to fall prey to… to…'

  'Worship?' she said. The truth is more important than the facts,' she said quietly.

  Olivier's tiredness retreated. Irritation drove it out. 'That's not biography, that's hagiography.'

  'Maybe that is what the Imperium needs.'

  'The Imperium needs the facts,' he said. 'I won't be part of myth making.'

  She looked up at him. 'Don't you see, Olivier? The primarchs transcend the truth. They're not people. Does the galaxy need to know the flaws in the Lord of Iron's character? Can't you see highlighting his shortcomings will undermine all that he has achieved? A book like you propose will never be published, and it shouldn't be.'

  'That doesn't matter!' he said. 'The truth matters.'

  'We don't have the truth, Olivier. We don't need it. We're the keepers of modern legends. These books, these eighteen books, they're the beginning of a new scripture.' Her eyes gleamed. The double-headed eagle pendant was displayed openly on the outside of her dress.

  'Is that the real meaning of the Imperial Truth?' he said scornfully. 'Have you cast in your lot with the religious who whisper the Emperor is a god?'

  'The Emperor is a god,' she said fervently.

  'I can't believe you're saying this.' But he could; all the signs were there. He'd ignored them for far too long.

  'The Emperor Protects, Olivier,' she said. Her mask of serenity had fallen, and she looked upset, desperate even. The chanting in the city was coming closer. It grew abruptly louder. The mob had turned a corner and was marching down their road.

  He backed away from her. 'He doesn't. He can't! Look at what's happening outside, and answer honestly, has He protected people from Perturabo's ego? When did you betray all we set out to do?'

  'What we set out to do betrays the Emperor. History isn't important. Finding the transcendental truth is what matters. The… the purity of vision… the quintessence of—'

  'Divinity?' Olivier whispered.

  They stared at each other, strangers at last. The noise grew louder and louder, passing under the windows of the hospitium. The protesters were shouting in Olympian. Olivier could read the language but had not yet mastered it, and he could not understand what they were saying.

  The shrieking thrum of Legion jetbikes raced from one end of the street to the next. Olivier ducked in shock. The crowd howled in fear.

  More jetbikes roared by on a level with the LeBons' apartment, their passing shaking the windows. After came the noise of heavier aircraft engines labouring to land. Something big came very close to their accommodation. Their furniture vibrated across the floor. A lumen fell and shattered upon the parquet. If Olivier had anything to say to Marissa, he would not have been heard. He cowered. She stared at him without making any sign she was aware of the din outside.

  The chanting on the street changed in tone. All semblance of words was lost. The crowd's voice had become an inchoate roar under the scream of thrusters. Glass shattered somewhere nearby.

  The engines cut out. A ramp clanged down.

  Guns barked. People screamed. The thunderous drumming of thousands of people running together shook the hospitium. So many screams at once. Olivier crept to the edge of the blind and peered out of the side of the window, fearful of being seen. The mob had moved on, leaving placards and rubbish behind among bodies broken to pieces by mass-reactive rounds. Stragglers raced up the street. He couldn't see the legionaries. A fire had started in the building opposite.

  After years of cynical detachment, he felt a sudden roaring anger take hold of him.

  'This is what your legend brings you. Oppression, and rebellion,' he gestured out of the window. 'What will this mean for the people of Olympia? I cannot imagine Perturabo will be forgiving.'

  Marissa was close to tears. 'It is necessary. It is all for our good.' She held up her amulet. 'The Emperor protects! Please, Olivier, you have to see!'

  He was disgusted with her. 'It's all a stupid dream,' he said. 'The Imperium, peace, all of it.' He stared out at the deserted street. 'All dreams end, Marissa.' He sighed. A sense of enormous sadness threatened to drown him. 'I cannot go where you are going.' He let the blind drop. He couldn't look her in the face for fear he might strike her. He wondered what to do. Fury made the choice for him. 'I'm leaving. I'd rather take my chances out there than wallow in your hypocrisy. Goodbye.'

  'Olivier!' she called.

  By then he had already walked out of their apartment door, and was heading down the marble stairs. He passed through the deserted lobby, and out onto the street. Smoke was rolling across the road. The dark shapes of powered-armoured legionaries advanced through it.

  He ran from them, glancing behind him all the while, until almost by accident he joined the crowd as the Olympians rallied. At first he was scared, but he was swamped, subsumed within them. He could not escape, so he sank into their fury as if into a warm bath. Years of resentment boiled out of him, at Marissa, and the hollow promises of the Imperium. If it had just been her, a broken heart would have been the only cost. But it was not just her. Too many worlds laboured under the yoke of compliance, liberated from their past masters in name only, while the populace inched closer towards worshi
pful submission.

  Olivier was swept along by the people of Lochos, up towards the shining palace that occupied the highest tier of the city's topography. They spilled into the main square. More aircraft were coming into the city bounds, but they no longer landed unopposed. There was fighting in the streets. The snap-crackle of lasgun discharges responded to the booming of boltguns.

  A woman came onto the balcony. Olivier supposed she must be Calliphone, the primarch's sister. He expected her to speak calming words, to soothe the crowd and tell them to go home. Perhaps the Iron Warriors also expected her to defuse the situation, for they held back.

  She did not.

  She declared Olympia free.

  A moment after she gave her blessing to rebellion, a cohort of Iron Warriors advanced into the square, and opened fire. Human soldiery in the uniform of Lochos responded from the buildings all around the public space. The Iron Warriors were massively outnumbered. Incredibly, it seemed to Olivier, they began to fall.

  Caught in the crossfire the crowd ran again. Olivier fled with them, an animal desire to survive the only thought in his mind. He sprinted from the square as bodies exploded into scraps all around him, leaving the tatters of an impossible dream behind forever.

  Marissa sat immobile, staring at the doorway her husband had left through. She was sure she would never see him again. The crowds were chanting louder than before, their anger echoing all through the warren of streets that made up Lochos. Firelight shone brightly across the road.

  A sigh broke her inactivity. She got up, and opened a drawer to which only she had the key. With careful hands, she pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle and laid it upon the table.

  She spoke a short prayer for protection as she folded back the silk, revealing a book. She bowed her head in respect and opened the cover.

  She read aloud from the Lectitio Divinitatus as the explosions of open revolt rocked the city.

  'I am in blood. Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,