Cyrene hadn’t slept at all. When the sirens wailed and the room shook two days before, she’d known what was beginning. The Word Bearers’ warships commenced their invasion with a full day of cannon-fire. At times, when myriad mechanical processes aligned just right, the main batteries hurled their incendiary payloads at the planet below in a united burst. The thunder rang in her ears for half a minute afterwards, and they were the worst moments: blinded and deafened, completely without senses. Anyone could enter her room, and she’d be none the wiser. Cyrene had lain on her uncomfortable bed in thrall to her imagination, praying not to feel unknown fingers on her face.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said. ‘Did you go to the surface after the sky-fire had ended?’
‘Yes. We landed in view of the only city that remained standing. It had to be destroyed from the ground. Our orbital weapons couldn’t pierce its defensive shield.’
‘You... killed an entire world in one day?’
‘We are the Legio Astartes, Cyrene. We did our duty.’
‘How many died?’
Argel Tal had seen the augury estimates. They put the number at almost two hundred million souls sacrificed that day.
‘All of them,’ said the captain. ‘A world’s worth of human life.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, closing her useless eyes. ‘All those people. Why did they have to die?’
‘Some cultures cannot be re-educated, Cyrene. When a civilisation is founded upon poisoned principles, redemption is a forlorn hope. Better that they burn, than live in blasphemy.’
‘But why did they have to die? What sins had they committed?’
‘Because the Emperor willed it. Nothing else matters. These people spat upon our offers of peace, laughed at our desire to integrate them into the Imperium, and openly displayed the gravest sin of ignorance, forging populations of artificial constructs. The breeding of false life in imitation of the human form is an abomination unto our species, and cannot be ignored.’
‘But why?’ she said. The words were almost her mantra these days.
Argel Tal sighed. ‘Are you aware of the old proverb: “Judge a man by his questions, not by his answers”?’
‘I know it. We said something similar on Khur.’
‘It is used across the galaxy, in one form or another. That was the Terran expression. But there is a Colchisian equivalent: “Blessed is the mind too small for doubt”.’
‘But why?’ the young woman repeated.
Argel Tal bit back a second sigh. It was difficult – the girl was immensely naive and Argel Tal knew he was no teacher – but enlightenment had to come from somewhere. There was no honour in making a secret of the truth.
‘The answer is in the stars themselves, Cyrene. We are a young species, spread thin across thousands of worlds. The space between the stars holds many threats: xenos creatures of countless breeds, evolved for predation. Those that do not immediately fall upon humanity to feed or destroy tend to be dangerous for other reasons. These ancient civilisations are in decline, either because they were too weak to stabilise after their growth, or because their own hubristic, deviant technologies doomed them. There’s nothing to learn from these races. History will discard them soon enough. So do we leave human colonies for aliens to prey upon, or do we claim their precious worlds to feed strength to the newborn Imperium? Do we allow these people to linger in ignorance and risk harming themselves – or us – or do we crush them before they can become a heretical threat?’
‘But–’
‘No.’ Argel Tal’s voice was cold stone. ‘There is no “but” this time. “The Imperium is right, and that makes it mighty”, so say our iterators, so the Word is written, and so shall it be. We succeed where every other human culture has failed. We rise where alien breeds fall. We defeat every solar empire or lonely world that refuses benevolent unity. What more evidence is needed that we, and we alone, walk the right path?’
Cyrene fell silent, chewing her lower lip. ‘That... makes sense.’
‘Of course it does. It’s the truth.’
‘So they are all dead. A whole world. Will you tell me what their last city looked like?’
‘If you wish.’ Argel Tal regarded the young woman for a long moment. She had healed well in the last four weeks, now clad in the shapeless grey robe of a Legion servant. When he’d first seen her wearing the uniform of a serf, she’d asked him what colour her new clothing was.
‘Grey,’ he’d said.
‘Good,’ she smiled at his answer, but didn’t elaborate.
Argel Tal watched her now. She stared at him blindly, her youthful features unclouded by shyness or doubt. ‘Why are you curious about their city?’ he asked.
‘I remember Monarchia,’ she said ‘It is only right that someone remembers this city as well.’
‘I’m unlikely to forget it, Cyrene. Spires of glass, and warriors formed from moving crystal. It was not a long compliance, but neither was it an easy one.’
‘Was Xaphen with you? He’s very kind to me. I like him.’
‘Yes,’ said Argel Tal. ‘Xaphen was with me. He was the first of Seventh Company to see the enemy’s blasphemy, when the city’s force shield came down.’
‘Will you tell me what happened?’
‘Captain,’ Xaphen voxed. ‘You’re not going to believe what I’m seeing.’
Argel Tal advanced through the outlying ruins, flanked by Torgal Assault Squad. His grey-clad brothers moved through the streets, crunching on shards of fallen glass architecture. Idling chainswords rumbled in every warrior’s gauntlets. Each toothed blade bore bloodstains.
‘This is Argel Tal,’ the captain voxed back. ‘We’re to the west – no resistance worth noting. Status report.’
‘Artificials,’ Xaphen’s voice was flawed by vox-distortion, but his disgust came through clear enough. ‘They’re deploying artificials.’
Argel Tal turned to the east, where the city of veined black stone and glass was already beginning to crack and splinter. Fire ran unchecked along the roads winding towards the city’s heart – the clearest sign of the Legion’s advance.
‘Torgal Assault Squad inbound,’ he voxed. ‘Word Bearers, with me.’
The bulky thrusters on his back cycled into life, propelling him skyward with a throaty roar.
The altitude gauge on his retinal display pulsed as it updated, overlaying the blue-tinted view through his eye lenses. Low towers of twisting glass and spiralling streets sailed by below. Here was a culture that bred architects who danced to their own tunes. The captain wasn’t sure if it was artistic license or the work of some logical process he couldn’t fathom. Still, a city of toughened alien glass... Roads of black stone...
It was beautiful, in a way. Madness often possessed a certain loveliness.
‘I see you,’ he voxed to Xaphen. Beneath him, squads of Word Bearers moved through the ruins of a levelled city block, pockets of grey armour engaged against a silver abomination that crackled with unhealthy energies. His armour’s receptive systems picked up on his confusion, and zoomed in on the enemy warriors.
Argel Tal still wasn’t sure what he was looking at.
‘Down,’ he commanded Torgal Squad. Acknowledgement pulses answered over the vox. Argel Tal killed his thrust with an instinctive thought – a flashing Colchisian rune on his visor display changed from red to white. With a judder, the jump pack’s primary boosters cut out. Smoke trailed from the deactivated wide-mouth thrusters as secondary jets fired, slowing his plummeting descent to a speed just shy of terminal.
He came down hard, his armoured boots crunching the road beneath his weight, sending cracks cobwebbing through the black stone. In a wave of howling engine wash and road-cracking landings, the rest of his warriors came down in a loose pack around him.
‘Stars above,’ said Torgal, gesturing over the devastation with his purring chainsword. ‘I see what the Chaplain meant.’
Across the ruined vista of tumbledown glass walls, one of the enemy artificials came on three insectile legs: each with too many joints, and each ending in a blade that spiked the ground with every step. Its torso could almost have been humanoid, but for the fact it was made entirely from moving glass. Beneath its transparent skin, circuits formed veins, metal bars made bones.
‘That has to be ornamental,’ Torgal said over the vox, as the artificial glided closer on bladed limbs. ‘I mean... just look at it.’