The unthinkable
Spirits of the Whisperheads
Compatible minds
Two DAYS BEFORE the Legion's assault on the Whisper-heads, Loken had consented to another private interview with the remembrancer Mersadie Oliton. It was the third such interview he had granted since his election to the Mournival, at which time his attitude towards her seemed to have substantially altered. Though the subject had not been mentioned formally, Mersadie had begun to feel that Loken had chosen her to be his particular memorialist. He had told her on the night of his election that he might choose to share his recollections with her, but she was now secretly astonished at the extent of his eagerness to do so. She had already recorded almost six hours of reminiscence -accounts of battles and tactics, descriptions of especially demanding military operations, reflections on the qualities of certain types of weapon, celebrations of notable deeds and triumphs accomplished by his comrades. In the time between interviews, she took herself to her room and processed the material, composing it into the
skeleton of a long, fluid account. She hoped eventually to have a complete history of the expedition, and a more general record of the Great Crusade as witnessed by Loken during the other expeditions that had preceded the 63rd.
Indeed, the weight of anecdotal fact she was gathering was huge, but one thing was lacking, and that was Loken himself. In the latest interview, she tried once again to draw out some spark of the man.
'As I understand it.’ she said, 'you have nothing in you that we ordinary mortals might know as fear?'
Loken paused and frowned. He had been lapping a plate section of his armour. This seemed to be his favourite diversion when in her company. He would call her to his private arming chamber and sit mere, scrupulously polishing his war harness while he spoke and she listened. To Mersadie, the particular smell of the lapping powder had become synonymous with the sound of his voice and the matter of his tales. He had well over a century of stories to tell.
'A curious question.’ he said.
And how curious is the answer?'
Loken shrugged lightly. The Astartes have no fear. It is unthinkable to us.’
'Because you have trained yourself to master it?' Mersadie asked.
'No, we are trained for discipline, but the capacity for fear is bred out of us. We are immune to its touch.’
Mersadie made a mental note to edit this last comment later. To her, it seemed to leach away some of the heroic mystique of the Astartes. To deny fear was the very character of a hero, but there was nothing courageous about being insensible to the emotion. She wondered too if it was possible to simply remove an entire emotion from what was essentially a human mind. Did that not leave a void? Were other emotions
compromised by its lack? Could fear even be removed cleanly, or did its excision tear out shreds of other qualities along with it? It certainly might explain why the Astartes seemed larger than life in almost every aspect except their own personalities.
Well, let us continue.’ she said. At our last meeting, you were going to tell me about the war against the overseers. That was twenty years ago, wasn't it?'
He was still looking at her, eyes slightly narrowed. What?' he asked.
'I'm sorry?'
'What is it? You didn't like my answer just then.’
Mersadie cleared her throat. 'No, not at all. It wasn't that. I had just been...'
'What?'
'May I be candid?'
'Of course.’ he said, patiently rubbing a nub of polishing fibre around the edges of a pot.
'I had been hoping to get something a little more personal. You have given me a great deal, sir, authentic details and points of fart that would make any history text authoritative. Posterity will know with precision, for instance, which hand Iacton Qruze carried his sword in, the colour of the sky over the Monastery Cities of Nabatae, the methodology of the White Scars' favoured pincer assault, the number of studs on the shoulder plate of a Luna Wolf, the number of axe blows, and from which angles, it took to fell the last of the Omakkad Princes...' She looked at him squarely, 'but nothing about you, sir. I know what you saw, but not what you felt.’
'What I felt? Why would anyone be interested in that?'
'Humanity is a sensible race, sir. Future generations, those that our remembrances are intended for, will learn more from any factual record if those facts are couched in an emotional context. They will care less for
the details of the battles at Ullanor, for instance, than they will for a sense of what it felt like to be there.’
'Are you saying that I'm boring?' Loken asked.
'No, not at all,' she began, and then realised he was smiling. 'Some of the things you have told me sound like wonders, yet you do not yourself seem to wonder at them. If you know no fear, do you also not know awe? Surprise? Majesty? Have you not seen things so bizarre they left you speechless? Shocked you? Unnerved you even?'
'I have.’ he said. 'Many times the sheer oddity of the cosmos has left me bemused or startled.’
'So tell me of those things.’
He pursed his lips and thought about it. 'Giant hats.’ he began.
'I beg your pardon?'
'On Sarosel, after compliance, the citizens held a great carnival of celebration. Compliance had been bloodless and willing. The carnival ran for eight weeks. The dancers in the streets wore giant hats of ribbon and cane and paper, each one fashioned into some gaudy form: a ship, a sword and fist, a dragon, a sun. They were as broad across as my span.’ Loken spread his arms wide. 'I do not know how they balanced them, or suffered their weight, but day and night they danced along the inner streets of the main city, these garish forms weaving and bobbing and circling, as if carried along on a slow flood, quite obscuring the human figures beneath. It was an odd sight.’
'I believe you.’
'It made us laugh. It made Horus laugh to see it.’
'Was that the strangest thing you ever knew?'
'No, no. Let's see... the method of war on Keylek gave us all pause. This was eighty years ago. The keylekid were a grosteque alien kind, of a manner you might describe as reptilian. They were gready skilled in the arts of combat,
and rose against us angrily the moment we made contact. Their world was a harsh place I remember crimson rock and indigo water. The commander - this was long before he was made Warmaster - expected a prolonged and brutal struggle, for the keylekid were large and strong creatures. Even the least of their warriors took three or four bolt rounds to bring down. We drew forth upon their world to make war, but they would not fight us.’
'How so?'
"We did not comprehend the rules they fought by. As we learned later, the keylekid considered war to be the most abhorrent activity a sentient race could indulge in, so they set upon it tight controls and restrictions. There were large structures upon the surface of their world, rectangular fields many kilometres in dimension, covered with high, flat roofs and open at the sides. We named them "slaughterhouses", and there was one every few hundred kilometres. The keylekid would only fight at these prescribed places. The sites were reserved for combat. War was forbidden on any other part of their world's surface. They were waiting for us to meet them at a slaughterhouse and decide the matter.’
'How bizarre! What was done about it?'
'We destroyed the keylekid.’ he said, matter of factly.
'Oh.’ she replied, with a tilt of her abnormally long head.
'It was suggested that we might meet them and fight them by the terms of their rules.’ Loken said. 'There may have been some honour in that, but Maloghurst, I think it was, reasoned that we had rules of our own which the enemy chose not to recognise. Besides, they were formidable. Had we not acted decisively, they would have remained a threat, and how long would it have taken them to learn new rules or abandon old ones?'
'Is an image of them recorded?' Mersadie asked.
'Many, I believe. The preserved cadaver of one of their warriors is displayed in this ship's Museum of Conquest,
and since you ask what I feel, sometimes it is sadness. You mentioned the overseers, a story I was going to tell. That was a long campaign, and one which filled me with
misery.'
As he told the story, she sat back, occasionally blink-clicking to store his image. He was concentrating on the preparation of his armour, but she could see sadness behind that concern. The overseers, he explained, were a machine race and, as artificial sentients, quite beyond the limits of Imperial law. Machine life untempered by organic components had long been outlawed by both the Imperial Council and the Mechanicum. The overseers, commanded by a senior machine called the Archdroid, inhabited a series of derelict, crumbling cities on the world of Dahinta. These were cities of fine mosaics, which had once been very beautiful indeed, but extreme age and decay had faded them. The overseers scuttled amongst the mouldering piles, fighting a losing battle of repair and refurbishment in a single-minded obsession to keep the neglected cities intact.
The machines had eventually been destroyed after a lasting and brutal war in which the skills of the Mechanicum had proved invaluable. Only then was the sad
secret found. The overseers were the product of human ingenuity,'
Loken said.
'Humans made them?'
Yes, thousands of years ago, perhaps even during the last Age of Technology. Dahinta had been a human colony, home to a lost branch of our race, where they had raised a great and marvellous culture of magnificent cities, wim thinking machines to serve mem. At some time, and in a manner unknown to us, the humans had become extinct. They left behind their ancient cities, empty but for the deathless guardians they had made. It was most melancholy, and passing strange.'
'Did the machines not recognise men?' she asked.
'All they saw was the Astartes, lady, and we did not look like the men they had called master.’
She hesitated for a moment, then said, 'I wonder if I shall witness so many marvels as we make this expedition.’
'I trust you will, and I hope that many will fill you with joy and amazement rather than distress. I should tell you sometime of the Great Triumph after Ullanor. That was an event that should be remembered.’
'I look forward to hearing it.’
There is no time now. I have duties to attend to.’
'One last story, then? A short one, perhaps? Something that filled you with awe.’
He sat back and thought. There was a thing. No more than ten years ago. We found a dead world where life had once been. A species had lived there once, and either died out or moved to another world. They had left behind them a honeycomb of subterranean habitats, dry and dead. We searched them carefully, every last cave and tunnel, and found just one thing of note. It was buried deepest of all, in a stone bunker ten kilometres under the planet's crust. A map. A great chart, in fact, fully twenty metres in diameter, showing the geophysical relief of an entire world in extraordinary detail. We did not at first recognise it, but the Emperor, beloved of all, knew what it was.’
"What?' she asked.
'It was Terra. It was a complete and full map of Terra, perfect in every detail. But it was a map of Terra from an age long gone, before the rise of the hives or the molestation of war, with coastlines and oceans and mountains of an aspect long since erased or covered over.’
IThat is... amazing,' she said. He nodded. 'So many unanswerable questions, locked into one forgotten chamber. Who had made the map,
and why? What business had brought them to Terra so long ago? What had caused them to carry the chart across half the galaxy, and then hide it away, like their most precious treasure, in the depths of their world? It was unthinkable. I cannot feel fear, Mistress Olitan, but if I could I would have felt it then. I cannot imagine anything ever unsettling my soul the way that thing did.’
UNTHINKABLE.
Time had slowed to a pinprick point on which it seemed all the gravity in the cosmos was pressing. Loken felt lead-heavy, slow, out of joint, unable to frame a lucid response, or even begin to deal with what he was seeing.
Was this fear? Was he tasting it now, after all? Was this how terror cowed a mortal man?
Sergeant Udon, his helm a deformed ring of bloody ceramite, lay dead at his feet. Beside him sprawled two other battle-brothers, shot point-blank through the hearts, if not dead then fatally damaged.
Before him stood Jubal, the bolter in his hand.
This was madness. This could not be. Astartes had turned upon Astartes. A Luna Wolf had murdered his own kind. Every law of fraternity and honour that Loken understood and trusted had just been torn as easily as a cobweb. The insanity of this crime would echo forever.
'Jubal? What have you done?'
'Not Jubal. Samus. I am Samus. Samus is all around you. Samus is the man beside you.’
Jubal's voice had a catch to it, a dry giggle. Loken knew he was about to fire again. The rest of Udon's squad, quite as aghast as Loken, stumbled forward, but none raised their bolters. Even in the stark light of what Jubal had just done, not one of them could break the sworn code of the Astartes and fire upon one of their own.
Loken knew he certainly couldn't. He threw his bolter aside and leapt at Jubal.
Xavyer Jubal, commander of Hellebore squad and one of the finest file officers in the company, had already begun to fire. Bolt rounds screeched out across the chamber and struck into the hesitating squad. Another helmet exploded in a welter of blood, bone chips and armour fragments, and another battle-brother crashed to the cave floor. Two more were knocked down beside him as bolt rounds detonated against their torso armour.
Loken smashed into Jubal, and staggered him backwards, trying to pin his arms. Jubal thrashed, sudden fury in his limbs.
'Samus!' he yelled. 'It means the end and the death! Samus will gnaw upon your bones!'
They crashed against a rock wall together with numbing force, splintering stone. Jubal would not relinquish his grip on the murder weapon. Loken drove him backwards against the rock, the drizzle of meltwater spraying down across them both.
'Jubal!'
Loken threw a punch that would have decapitated a mortal man. His fist cracked against Jubal's helm and he repeated the action, driving his fist four or five times against the other's face and chest. The ceramite visor chipped. Another punch, his full weight behind it, and Jubal stumbled. Each stroke of Loken's fist resounded like a smith's hammer in the echoing chamber, steel against steel.
As Jubal stumbled, Loken grabbed his bolter and tore it out of his hand. He hurled it away across the deep stone well.
But Jubal was not yet done. He seized Loken and slammed him sideways into the rock wall. Lumps of stone flew out from the jarring impact. Jubal slammed
him again, swinging Loken bodily into the rock, like a man swinging a heavy sack. Pain flared through Loken's head and he tasted blood in his mouth. He tried to pull away, but Jubal was throwing punches that ploughed into Loken's visor and bounced the back of his head off the wall repeatedly.
The other men were upon them, shouting and grappling to separate them.
'Hold him!' Loken yelled. 'Hold him down!'
They were Astartes, as strong as young gods in their power armour, but they could not do as Loken ordered. Jubal lashed out with a free fist and knocked one of them clean off his feet. Two of the remaining three clung to his back like wrestlers, like human cloaks, trying to pull him down, but he hoisted them up and twisted, throwing them off him.
Such strength. Such unthinkable strength that could shrug off Astartes like target dummies in a practice cage.
Jubal turned on the remaining brother, who launched himself forward to tackle the madman.
'Look out!' Jubal screamed with a cackle. 'Samus is here!'
His lancing right hand met the brother head on. Jubal struck with an open hand, fingers extended, and those fingers drove clean in through the battle-brother's gorget as surely as any speartip. Blood squirted out from the man's throat, through the puncture in the armour. Jubal ripped his hand out, and the brother fell to his knees, choking and gurgling, blood pumping in profuse, pulsing surges from his ruptured throat.
Beyond any thought of reason now, Loken hurled himself at Jubal, but the berserker turned and smacked him away with a mighty back-hand slap.
The power of the blow was stupendous, far beyond anything even an Astartes should have been able to wield. The force was so great that the armour of Jubal's
gauntlet fractured, as did the plating of Loken's shoulder, which took the brunt. Loken blacked out for a split-second, then was aware that he was flying. Jubal had struck him so hard that he was sailing across the stone well and out over the abyssal fault.
Loken struck the arching pier of stone steps. He almost bounced off it, but he managed to grab on, his fingers gouging the ancient stone, his feet swinging above the drop. Meltwater poured down in a thin rain across him, making the steps slick and oily with mineral wash. Loken's fingers began to slide. He remembered dangling in a similar fashion over the tower lip in the 'Emperor's' palace, and snarled in frustrated rage.
Fury pulled him up. Fury, and an intense passion that he would not fail the Warmaster. Not in this. Not in the face of this terrible wrong.
He hauled himself upright on to the pier. It was narrow, no wider than a single path where men could not pass if they met. The gulf, black as the outer void, yawned below him. His limbs were shaking with effort.
He saw Jubal. He was charging forward across the cavern to the foot of the steps, drawing his combat blade. The sword glowed as it powered into life.
Loken wrenched out his own sword. Falling meltwater hissed and sparked as it touched the active metal of the short, stabbing blade.
Jubal bounded up the steps to meet him, slashing with his sword. He was raving still, in a voice that was in no way his own any longer. He struck wildly at Loken, who hopped back up the steps, and then began to deflect the strikes with his own weapon. Sparks flashed, and the blades struck one another like the tolling of a discordant bell. Height was not an advantage in this fight, as Loken had to hunch low to maintain his guard.
Combat swords we're not duelling weapons. Short and double-edged, they were made for stabbing, for battlefield onslaught. They had no reach or subtlety. Jubal hacked with his like an axe, forcing Loken to defend. Their blades cut falling water as they scythed, sizzling and billowing steam into the air.
Loken prided himself on maintaining a masterful discipline and practice of all weapons. He regularly clocked six or eight hours at a time in the flagship's practice cages. He expected all of the men in his command to do likewise. Xavyer Jubal, he knew, was foremost a master with daggers and sparring axes, but no slouch with the sword.
Except today. Jubal had discarded all his skill, or had forgotten it in the flush of madness that had engulfed his mind. He attacked Loken like a maniac, in a frenzy of savage cuts and blows. Loken was likewise forced to dispense with much of his skill in an effort to block and parry. Three times, Loken managed to drive Jubal back down the pier a few steps, but always the other man retaliated and forced Loken higher up the arch. Once, Loken had to leap to avoid a low slice, and barely regained his footing as he landed. In the silver downpour, the steps were treacherous, and it was as much a fight to keep balance as to resist Jubal's constant assault.
It ended suddenly, like a jolt. Jubal passed Loken's guard and sunk the full edge of his blade into Loken's left shoulder plate.
'Samus is here!' he cried in delight, but his blade, flaring with power, was wedged fast.
'Samus is done.’ Loken replied, and drove the tip of his sword into Jubal's exposed chest. The sword punched clean through, and the tip emerged through Jubal's back.
Jubal wavered, letting go of his own weapon, which remained transfixed through Loken's shoulder guard. With half-open, shuddering hands, he reached at
Loken's face, not violendy, but gently as if imploring some mercy or even aid. Water splashed off them and streamed down their white plating.
'Samus...' he gasped. Loken wrenched his sword out.
Jubal staggered and swayed, the blood leaking out of the gash in his chest plate, diluting as soon as it appeared and mixing with the drizzle, covering his belly plate and thigh armour with a pink stain.
He toppled backwards, crashing over and over down the steps in a windmill of heavy, loose limbs. Five metres from the base of the pier, his headlong career bounced him half-off the steps, and he came to a halt, legs dangling, partly hanging over the chasm, gradually sliding backwards under his own weight. Loken heard the slow squeal of armour scraping against slick stone.
He leapt down the flight to reach Jubal's side. He got there just moments before Jubal slid away into oblivion. Loken grabbed Jubal by the edge of his left shoulder plate and slowly began to heave him back onto the pier. It was almost impossible. Jubal seemed to weigh a billion tonnes.
The three surviving members of Brakespur squad stood at the foot of the steps, watching him struggle.
'Help me!' Loken yelled.
To save him?' one asked.
'Why?' asked another. 'Why would you want to?'
'Help me!' Loken snarled again. They didn't move. In desperation, Loken raised his sword and stabbed it down, spearing Jubal's right shoulder to the steps. So pinned, his slide was arrested. Loken hauled his body back onto the pier.
Panting, Loken dragged off his battered helm and spat out a mouthful of blood.
'Get Vipus.’ he ordered. 'Get him now.’
S S S
BY THE TIME they were conducted up to the plateau, there wasn't much to see and the light was failing. Euphrati took a few random picts of the parked storm-birds and the cone of smoke lifting off the broken crag, but she didn't expect much from any of them. It all seemed drab and lifeless up there. Even the vista of the mountains around them was insipid.
'Can we see the combat area?' she asked Sindermann.
'We've been told to wait.'
'Is there a problem?'
He shook his head. It was an 'I don't know' kind of shake. Like all of them, he was strapped into his rebreather, but he looked frail and tired.
It was eerily quiet. Groups of Luna Wolves were trudging back to the stormbirds from the fastness, and army troops had secured the plateau itself. The remembrancers had been told that a solid victory had been achieved, but there was no sign of jubilation.
'Oh, it's a mechanical thing,' Sindermann said when Euphrati questioned him. This is just a routine exercise for the Legion. A low-key action, as I said before we set out. I'm sorry if you're disappointed.'
'I'm not.’ she said, but in truth there was a sense of anticlimax about it all. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but the rush of the drop, and the strange circumstance at Kasheri had begun to thrill her. Now everything was done, and she'd seen nothing.
'Carnis wants to interview some of the returning warriors,' Siman Sark said, 'and he's asked me to pict them while he does. Would that be permissible?'
'I should think so.’ Sindermann sighed. He called out for an army officer to guide Carnis and Sark to the Astartes.
'I think.’ said Tolemew Van Krasten aloud, 'that a tone poem would be most appropriate. Full symphonic composition would overwhelm the atmosphere, I feel.’
Euphrati nodded, not really understanding.
A minor key, I think. E, or A perhaps. I'm taken with the title "The Spirits of the Whisperheads", or perhaps, "The Voice of Samus". What do you think?'
She stared at him.
'I'm joking.’ he said with a sad smile. 'I have no idea what I am supposed to respond to here, or how. It all seems so dour.’
Euphrati Keeler had supposed Van Krasten to be a pompous type, but now she warmed to him. As he turned away and gazed mournfully up at the smoking peak, she was seized by a thought and raised her picter.
'Did you just take my likeness?' he asked.
She nodded. 'Do you mind? You looking at the peak like that seemed to sum up how we all feel.’
'But I'm a remembrancer.’ he said. 'Should I be in your record?'
We're all in this. Witnesses or not, we're all here.’ she replied. 'I take what I see. Who knows? Maybe you can return the favour? A little refrain of flutes in your next overture that represents Euphrati Keeler?'
They both laughed.
A Luna Wolf was approaching the huddle of them.
'Nero Vipus.’ he said, making the sign of the aquila. 'Captain Loken presents his respects and wishes the attention of Master Sindermann at once.’
'I'm Sindermann.’ the elderly man replied. 'Is there some problem, sir?'
'I've been asked to conduct you to the captain.’ Vipus replied. This way, please.’
The pair of them moved away, Sindermann scurrying to keep up with Vipus's great strides.
What is going on?' Van Krasten asked, his voice hushed.
'I don't know. Let's find out.’ Keeler replied.
'Follow them? Oh, I don't think so.’
'I'm game.’ said Borodin Flora. 'We haven't actually been told to stay here.’
They looked round. Twell had sat himself down beside the prow landing strut of a stormbird and was beginning to sketch with charcoal sticks on a small pad. Carnis and Sark were busy elsewhere.
'Come on.’ said Euphrati Keeler.
VIPUS LED SINDERMANN up into the ruined fastness. The wind moaned and whistled through the grim tunnels and chambers. Army troopers were clearing the dead from the entry halls and casting them into the gorge, but still Vipus had to steer the iterator past many crumpled, exploded corpses. He kept saying such things as, 'I'm sorry you had to see that, sir.’ and, 'Look away to spare your sensibilities.’
Sindermann could not look away. He had iterated loyally for many years, but this was the first time he had walked across a fresh battlefield. The sights appalled him and burned themselves into his memory. The stench of blood and ordure assailed him. He saw human forms burst and brutalised, and burned beyond any measure he had imagined possible. He saw walls sticky with blood and brain-matter, fragments of exploded bone weeping marrow, body parts littering the blood-soaked floors.
Terra.’ he breathed, over and again. This was what the Astartes did. This was the reality of the Emperor's crusade. Mortal hurt on a scale that passed belief.
Terra.’ he whispered to himself. By the time he was brought to Loken, who awaited him in one of the fortress's upper chambers, the word had become 'terror' without him realising it.
Loken was standing in a wide, dark chamber beside some sort of pool. Water gurgled down one of the black-wet walls and the air smelled of damp and oxides.
д dozen solemn Luna Wolves attended Loken, including one giant fellow in glowering Terminator armour, but Loken himself was bareheaded. His face was smudged with bruises. He'd removed his left shoulder guard, which lay beside him on the ground, stuck through with a short sword.
'You have done such a thing,' Sindermann said, his voice small. 'I don't think I'd quite understood what you Astartes were capable of, but now I-'
'Quiet.’ Loken said bluntly. He looked at the Luna Wolves around him and dismissed them with a nod. They filed out past Sindermann, ignoring him.
'Stay close, Nero.’ Loken called. Stepping out through the chamber door, Vipus nodded.
Now the room was almost empty, Sindermann could see that a body lay beside the pool. It was the body of a Luna Wolf, limp and dead, his helm off, his white armour mottled with blood. His arms had been lashed to his trunk with climbing cable.
'I don't...' Sindermann began. 'I don't understand, captain. I was told there had been no losses.’
Loken nodded slowly. That's what we're going to say. That will be the official line. The Tenth took this fortress in a clean strike, with no losses, and that's true enough. None of the insurgents scored any kills. Not even a wounding. We took a thousand of them to their deaths.’
'But this man...?'
Loken looked at Sindermann. His face was troubled, more troubled than the iterator had ever seen before. 'What is it, Garviel?' he asked.
'Something has happened.’ Loken said. 'Something so... so unthinkable that I...'
He paused, and looked at Jubal's bound corpse. 'I have to make a report, but I don't know what to say. I have no frame of reference. I'm glad you are here, Kyril, you of all people. You have steered me well over the years.’
'I like to think that...'
'I need your counsel now.'
Sindermann stepped forward and placed his hand on the giant warrior's arm. 'You may trust me with any matter, Garviel. I'm here to serve.’
Loken looked down at him. This is confidential. Utterly confidential.’
'I understand.’
There have been deaths today. Six brothers of Brake-spur squad, including Udon. Another barely clinging to life. And Hellebore... Hellebore has vanished, and I fear they are dead too.’
This can't be. The insurgents couldn't have-'
They did nothing. This is Xavyer Jubal.’ Loken said, pointing towards the body on the floor. 'He killed the men.’ he said simply.
Sindermann rocked back as if slapped. He blinked. 'He what? I'm sorry, Garviel, I thought for a moment you said he-'
'He killed the men. Jubal killed the men. He took his bolter and his fists and he killed six of Brakespur right in front of my eyes, and he would have killed me too, if I hadn't run him through.’
Sindermann felt his legs tremble. He found a nearby rock and sat down abrupdy. Terra.’ he gasped.
Terror is right. Astartes do not fight Astartes. Astartes do not kill their own. It is against all the rales of nature and man. It is counter to the very gene-code the Emperor fused into us when he wrought us.’
There must be some mistake.’ Sindermann said.
'No mistake. I saw him do it. He was a madman. He was possessed.’
"What? Steady, now. You look to old terms, Garviel. Possession is a spiritualist word that-'
'He was possessed. He claimed he was Samus.’
'Oh.’
You've heard the name, then?'
'I've heard the whisper. That was just enemy propaganda, wasn't it? We were told to dismiss it as scare tactics.’
Loken touched the bruises on his face, feeling the ache of them. 'So I thought. Iterator, I'm going to ask you this once. Are spirits real?'
'No, sir. Absolutely not.’
'So we are taught and thus we are liberated, but could they exist? This world is lousy with superstition and temple-fanes. Could they exist here?'
'No.’ Sindermann replied more firmly. There are no spirits, no daemons, no ghosts in the dark edges of the cosmos. Truth has shown us this.’
'I've studied the archive, Kyril.’ Loken replied. 'Samus was the name the people of this world gave to their archfiend. He was imprisoned in these mountains, so their legends say.’
'Legends, Garviel. Only legends. Myths. We have learned much during our time amongst the stars, and the most pertinent of those things is that there is always a rational explanation, even for the most mysterious events.’
'An Astartes draws his weapon and kills his own, whilst claiming to be a daemon from hell? Rationalise that, sir.’
Sinderman rose. 'Calm yourself, Garviel, and I will.’
Loken didn't reply. Sindermann walked over to Jubai's body and stared at it. Jubai's open, staring eyes were rolled back in his skull and utterly bloodshot. The flesh of his face was drawn and shrivelled, as if he had aged ten thousand years. Strange patterns, like clusters of blemishes or moles, were visible on the painfully stretched skin.
These marks.’ said Sindermann. These vile signs of wasting. Could they be the traces of disease or infection?'
'What?' Loken asked.
'A virus, perhaps? A reaction to toxicity? A plague?'
Astartes are resistant.’ Loken said.
To most things, but not to everything. I think this could be some contagion. Something so virulent that it destroyed Jubal's mind along with his body. Plagues can drive men insane, and corrupt their flesh.'
Then why only him?' asked Loken.
Sindermann shrugged. 'Perhaps some tiny flaw in his gene-code?'
'But he behaved as if possessed,' Loken said, repeating the word with brutal emphasis.
We've all been exposed to the enemy's propaganda. If Jubal's mind was deranged by fever, he might simply have been repeating the words he'd heard.’
Loken thought for a moment. You speak a lot of sense, Kyril.’ he said.
'Always.’
'A plague.’ Loken nodded. 'It's a sound explanation.’
You've suffered a ttagedy today, Garviel, but spirits and daemons played no part in it. Now get to work. You need to lock down this area in quarantine and get a medicae taskforce here. There may yet be further outbreaks. Non-Astartes, such as myself, might be less resistant, and poor Jubal's corpse may yet be a vector for disease.’
Sindermann looked back down at the body. 'Great Terra.’ he said. 'He has been so ravaged. I weep to see this waste.’
With a creak of dried sinew, Jubal raised his head and stared up at Sindermann with blood-red eyes.
'Look out.’ he wheezed.
EUPHRATI KEELER HAD stopped taking picts. She stowed away her picter. The things they were seeing in the narrow tunnels of the fortress went beyond all decency to record. She had never imagined that human forms could be dismantled so grievously, so totally. The stench of blood in the close, cold air made her gag, despite her rebreather.
'I want to go back now.’ Van Krasten said. He was shaking and upset. There is no music here. I am sick to my stomach.’
Euphrati was inclined to agree.
'No.’ said Borodin Flora in a muffled, steely voice. We must see it all. We are chosen remembrancers. This is our duty.’
Euphrati was quite sure Flora was making an effort not to throw up, but she warmed to the sentiment. This was their duty. This was the very reason they had been summoned. To record and commemorate the Crusade of Man. Whatever it looked like.
She tugged her picter back out of its carry-bag and took a few, tentative shots. Not of the dead, for that would be indecent, but of the blood on the walls, the smoke fuming in the wind along the narrow tunnels, the piles of scattered, spent shell cases littering the black-flecked ground.
Teams of army troopers moved past them, lugging bodies away for disposal. Some looked at the three of them curiously.
Are you lost?' one asked.
'Not at all. We're allowed to be here.’ Flora said.
Why would you want to be?' the man wondered.
Euphrati took a series of long shots of troopers, almost in silhouette, gathering up body parts at a tunnel junction. It chilled her to see it, and she hoped her picts would have the same effect on her audience.
'I want to go back.’ Van Krasten said again.
'Don't stray, or you'll get lost.’ Euphrati warned.
'I think I might be sick,' Van Krasten admitted.
He was about to retch when a shrill, harrowing scream echoed down the tunnels.
What the hell was that?' Euphrati whispered.
JUBAL ROSE. THE ropes binding him sheared and split, releasing his arms. He screamed, and then screamed again. His frantic wails soared and echoed around the chamber.
Sindermann stumbled backwards in total panic. Loken ran forward and tried to restrain the reanimating madman.
Jubal struck out with one thrashing fist and caught Loken in the chest. Loken flew backwards into the pool with a crash of water.
Jubal turned, hunched. Saliva dangled from his slack mouth, and his bloodshot eyes spun like compasses at true north.
'Please, oh please...' Sindermann gabbled, backing away.
'Look. Out.’ The words crawled sluggishly out of Jubal's drooling mouth. He lumbered forward. Something was happening to him, something malign and catastrophic. He was bulging, expanding so furiously that his armour began to crack and shatter. Sections of broken plate split and fell away from him, exposing thick arms swollen with gangrene and fibrous growths. His taut flesh was pallid and blue. His face was distorted, puffy and livid, and his tongue flopped out of his rotting mouth, long and serpentine.
He raised his meaty, distended hands triumphantly, exposing fingernails grown into dark hooks and psoriatic claws.
'Samus is here.’ he drawled.
Sindermann fell on his knees before the misshapen brute. Jubal reeked of corruption and sore wounds. He shambled forward. His form flickered and danced with blurry yellow light, as if he was not quite in phase with the present.
A bolter round struck him in the right shoulder and detonated against the rindy integument his skin had
become. Shreds of meat and gobbets of pus sprayed in all directions. In the chamber doorway, Nero Vipus took aim again.
The thing that had once been Xavyer Jubal grabbed Sindermann and threw him at Vipus. The pair of them crashed backwards against the wall, Vipus dropping his weapon in an effort to catch and cushion Sindermann and spare the frail bones of the elderly iterator.
The Jubal-thing shuffled past them into the tunnel, leaving a noxious trail of dripped blood and wretched, discoloured fluid in its wake.
EUPHRATI SAW THE thing coming for them and tried to decide whether to scream or raise her picter. In the end, she did both. Van Krasten lost control of his bodily functions, and fell to the floor in a puddle of his own manufacture. Borodin Flora just backed away, his mouth moving silently.
The Jubal-thing advanced down the tunnel towards them. It was gross and distorted, its skin stretched by humps and swellings. It had become so gigantic that what little remained of its pearl-white armour dragged behind it like metal rags. Strange puncta and moles marked its flesh. Jubal's face had contorted into a dog snout, wherein his human teeth stuck out like stray ivory markers, displaced by the thin, transparent crop of needle fangs that now invested his mouth. There were so many fangs that his mouth could no longer close. His eyes were blood pools. Jerky, spasmodic flashes of yellow light surrounded him, making vague shapes and patterns. They caused Jubal's movements to seem wrong, as if he was a pict feed image, badly cut and running slightly too fast.
He snatched up Tolemew Van Krasten and dashed him like a toy against the walls of the tunnel, back and forth, with huge, slamming, splattering effect, so that
when he let go, little of Tolemew still existed above the sternum.
'Oh Terra!' Keeler cried, retching violently. Borodin Flora stepped past her to confront the monster, and made the defiant sign of the aquila.
'Begone!' he cried out. 'Begone!'
The Jubal-thing leaned forward, opened its mouth to a hitherto unimaginable width, revealing an unguess-able number of needle teeth, and bit off Borodin Flora's head and upper body. The remainder of his form crumpled to the floor, ejecting blood like a pressure hose.
Euphrati Keeler sank to her knees. Terror had rendered her powerless to run. She accepted her fate, largely because she had no idea what it was to be. In the final moments of her life, she reassured herself that at least she hadn't added to brutal death the indignity of wetting herself in the face of such incomprehensible horror.