Spear of the Emperor - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Read online

  This was martyrdom, and as distasteful as it was unwelcome. I told him so, and he showed his broken teeth in a ruined smile. It unnerved me, though I couldn’t say why, that they’d shattered his teeth but left most of his face unscarred. It seemed to hold a significance beyond my reach.

  Amadeus grunted in denial. ‘Not. What I mean. You did well. Both of you. I should have. Fought harder.’

  I said nothing. I stood there, trembling with nameless emotion, as he slipped into another healing sleep after that final remembrance. He was sorry for what happened to Tyberia. He should have fought harder for her. For us both. As if there was anything more he could have done.

  In that moment, he’d spoken as an angel of Imperial myth. The kind of angel that the ignorant masses believed all Space Marines really were.

  Those words saved his life, for they were what made me get back to work.

  2

  Chief Medicae Officer Owyn interrupted me when I was ­trying to work. This was two days after he’d replaced my eye. Amadeus hadn’t surfaced from his slumber.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Owyn asked.

  ‘You’re a senior medicae technician on an Adeptus ­Astartes strike cruiser. You can see what I’m doing.’

  Owyn clucked his tongue. ‘Anuradha, has anyone ever told you that you’re an extremely disagreeable patient? The Spears informed me you were a timid and compliant little thing.’

  That was before I spent months as a slave on the Venatrix, and realised I was on the wrong side of the galaxy with no one by my side except a traitor and a dying master.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘No one has told me that. Only you.’

  ‘Then I’ll rephrase: Why are you doing this?’

  I looked away from where I’d bathed the wall in a hololithic spread of my master’s internal scans. When Owyn met my eyes, the contact only lasted a moment. I caught him smoothing his surgical apron and glancing down. The bastard was trying not to smile.

  ‘I see your eyes are still blinking out of alignment.’

  ‘I’m glad it amuses you,’ I said. ‘It’s giving me some punishing headaches.’

  All of this was true. Every time I blinked, one eye would close and open, and then the new replacement would mimic it a half-second later. I wasn’t blinking, any more. I was winking twice.

  ‘I’ll retune the new eye again,’ Owyn said. ‘Now, as to what you’re doing…?’

  I was already looking back at my work. ‘I’m cataloguing the damage to Amadeus.’

  ‘His injuries have already been extensively catalogued.’

  I wasn’t ready to discuss my own findings, yet. I waved my hand at the wall, and the receptors on my new palm blanked the images from existence. I tried to keep the pique from my tone. Throne, but I’ve always hated distractions when ­trying to work.

  ‘Is there something I can do for you, medicae officer?’

  The blue Kavalei tattoo at his temple straightened as he arched an eyebrow. I was struck by the fact that even here was a blend of Nemetese tribalism and traditional thraldom. In this life, Owyn was a respected scholar and medical expert. If he’d been left on Nemeton, likely he’d have been a simple barbarian sailor or warrior. Maybe a village shaman.

  ‘You were the one to request I come to you,’ he pointed out.

  Had I? Truly, my memory was in pieces. The answer came to me after a moment’s reflection.

  ‘Oh. Yes. I need to speak with Kartash. Would you inform him for me?’

  Owyn exhaled slowly. ‘Do you take me for a messenger servitor, Anuradha?’

  I tried to look sincere, but my eyes blinked out of time again. ‘Please?’

  3

  Kartash was far more cautious this time. He watched me as if I were an animal that might slip its leash and go for his throat. His tone was honey itself.

  ‘I trust you’re calmer now?’

  I had Amadeus’ hololiths laid out along the wall, projected from my handheld auspex. Our master slept across the room, dead to our voices. Today, he was back to breathing through machinery.

  ‘Helot Secundus?’ Kartash was still holding back near the door.

  I indicated the wide spread of holo-images, which weren’t just the Spears’ scan results and findings, but my own extrapolations.

  ‘What do you see here?’ I asked my former tutor.

  Instead of examining what I’d brought him here to see, he cringed back as if I’d threatened to strike him.

  ‘I’m not entering this chamber until you assure me of your intentions.’

  ‘Have you become a coward in the months I was gone?’

  ‘Anuradha, you threatened to kill me the last time we spoke.’

  And it was a promise I intended to keep, but that hardly needed mentioning now. For now, I needed his eyes on a problem we shared.

  ‘I’m calm,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘I’m better today, Kartash. I’m healing.’

  The hunchback sagged with relief. He limped in, still hesitant but no longer openly fearful.

  ‘Before we speak of this,’ he gestured to the arranged hololiths, ‘have you been told of the prisoner taken by the Lions?’

  I wanted to spit. The disgust must have shown clearly on my face, for Kartash flinched, almost reaching out a hand towards me in benediction.

  ‘Nar Kezar.’ I made the name a curse. ‘May he burn for his heresy.’

  ‘Ducarius and another of his druids are interrogating him for information.’

  ‘Good.’ This time I did spit. ‘To the abyss with the Pure.’

  Kartash wrung his hands, squeezing them together. He had all the poise of an inexperienced diplomat confronting an unreasonable ruler, and the nervousness, too.

  ‘What?’ I asked. ‘Just say it.’

  ‘I thought we could petition Lord Brêac for you to speak with the enemy commander. Seeing this Nar Kezar in captivity might alleviate some of your nightmares. I don’t suggest he’s suffering as you suffered, but you might at least see he’s in no position to harm you any more.’

  It’s hard to hate someone when they’re being so considerate. I felt genuine shock at the offer, and softened my tone in reply.

  ‘I appreciate your concern, Kartash. I’ll think about it. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ He waved it aside. ‘What is it you wished to discuss? Amadeus’ injury record?’

  ‘Yes and no.’ I returned my newly repaired gaze to the holo-display. ‘What do you see here?’

  Kartash turned his attention to the hololiths, doing exactly what I thought he would: bending his analytical mind to perceiving what lay beneath the surface details. He sought a truth deeper than the obvious ones.

  ‘Stop,’ I warned him at once. ‘This isn’t a cognitive training ­puzzle. Don’t look past the surface layers of data. Look at them, and nothing else.’

  He stared for several minutes, adjusting several of the holos himself, turning three-dimensional scans to new angles and scrolling through data-feeds for any nuggets of insight.

  ‘You’re still looking too deeply,’ I said.

  ‘I confess, all I see are his injuries catalogued in meticulous detail and the various treatments to restore as much of his function as possible. Percentages, inhibiting factors, areas of risk…’ Kartash shook his head. ‘Forgive me, Anuradha, I don’t know what I should be seeing.’

  I was smiling, though this was anything but amusing. If I was right, our master’s life rested on the thinnest of gambles.

  ‘Ignore all of Owyn’s findings and Ducarius’ plans. Amadeus can’t be healed. We know that. So if he can’t be healed to a degree he’d find acceptable, what would you do with a warrior that had sustained this much damage? What would the Mentors do? Maybe not with a line soldier, but with a warrior of Amadeus’ rank?’

  The hunchback stared at the data, stripped o
f all other notation. ‘They would inter him.’

  I sighed my annoyance. ‘Do you think I’d call you here just to point out something we can’t do? The Spears have already said they won’t inter him in a Dreadnought, and the cranial scans show he’s had the necessary receptors burned away. Are you blind? Weren’t you trained in Space Marine physiology? Just look. What else do you see?’

  ‘There is nothing else.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I was beginning to fear I’d been wrong. ‘The Spears are focused on limited restoration and prolonging his life. But what might we know, that they don’t?’

  I bade him look again. Kartash stared. It took several minutes, but he finally breathed out, soft and slow, as his mouth hung ajar.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes.’ My hands were fists, clenched tight with my eagerness. ‘Am I right? Do you see it, too?’

  ‘I… I think so.’

  My heart pounded. ‘We have to speak with Lord Brêac.’

  4

  Brêac ran a hand over his scalp. His hair was beginning to grow back, and the passage of his palm whispered over the stubble. We had gathered in the Immortals’ inner chambers, where the squad stored their banners and trophies, in a chamber that served as the hub of their arming rooms. The Spears were inveterate takers of skulls, and dozens of them hung on chains against the walls, many from alien species I didn’t recognise. I counted at least thirty white helmets that had been taken from corpses of the Pure. Several were sword-split.

  Images showing my master’s organs and muscles and bones, hololithically flayed, rotated slowly in the cold air.

  Ducarius, black-clad and solemn, looked on with crossed arms. Tolmach’s absence left a wound in the room, though Morcant was present, briefly turning his sentry duty over to one of the Spears under his command. Owyn had arrived last. He stood away from the Spears, stiff-backed in his jacketed uniform and concentrating.

  Brêac didn’t take his eyes from the hololithic display when he spoke.

  ‘This isn’t possible.’ He shook his head. The emotion written in his eyes was as much awe as doubt. He wanted to believe, but he just couldn’t.

  ‘It’s not only possible,’ I said, ‘it’s been done before.’

  Brêac looked to Ducarius, then to Owyn. ‘Cousins of the Kavalei, can either of you do this?’

  ‘No,’ Owyn said at once. ‘This is far beyond my skills, lord.’

  I was sweating from the strain of remaining on my feet. My healing wounds and new augmetics were aching in time with my pulse. I’d already dismissed Owyn’s concern when he threatened to lecture me for being out of bed this long. Worst of all was my new leg. Much like my replacement eye, it was still adapting to my nervous system and muscle fusions, moving a half-second after I needed it to move. When it did obey me, it overcompensated, striking the deck too hard with every step. It was strange not to stand on two feet, but a foot and an industrial claw. The bionic was both more stable and constantly at risk of making me fall over.

  Ducarius took longer to answer. The hololithics bathed his tattooed face in flickering light.

  ‘The odds aren’t good,’ he said. ‘But there’s a chance. And I’d need Deacon Vectragos to parse a lot of this data for me, as well as handle much of the microsurgery.’

  When he spoke of the Bellonan chief engineer aboard the Hex, I nodded. ‘This ritual requires a tech-priest, aye.’

  Morcant snorted. ‘Did you just say Aye?’

  I flushed at the slip; a habit forming without me realising. No one else commented on it. They were all focused on the hololithic, considering it variously fascinating, audacious and nonsensical.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you share this lore with us at once?’

  ‘I can’t speak for the whims and commands of the Mentor Legion, Lord Brêac. My Chapter is a secretive one. Keeping it from you would serve no purpose, and it’s possible sharing the information was part of the deployment’s objectives. If I was to venture a guess, I’d say Amadeus did intend to share this lore with you… once we returned to Nemeton.’

  ‘“Once we returned to Nemeton”,’ Ducarius repeated with a wry glance. ‘You mean, once he’d seen all the way across the Veil and decided whether he could trust us.’

  I didn’t answer, and I didn’t need to. They didn’t need me to confirm something so utterly obvious.

  ‘You said this has been done before,’ Brêac prompted.

  I nodded. ‘It has. Not often, and success rates are low.’ I swallowed, praying they’d believe my next words. ‘We call these surgeries the Calgarian Rites.’

  Every head swung towards me. The Spears’ seriousness was practically a physical sensation against my skin.

  ‘I’m not certain I follow,’ Owyn admitted. ‘I take it that’s a name of some renown on the other side of the Rift?’

  ‘That it is,’ Brêac said, his voice low. ‘Speak the truth, Anuradha. You say Marneus Calgar himself underwent this surgery?’

  ‘I swear it. He did, and it worked.’

  ‘Who is that?’ Owyn asked.

  It was Kartash who answered. ‘Marneus Calgar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, sword-brother to the Primarch Reborn, and Lord Defender of Greater Ultramar.’

  ‘Some of those titles are new,’ Morcant said with a cannibal sneer. ‘He isn’t called all of that in our archives.’

  ‘A great deal has changed since you were cut off from the Imperium,’ Kartash said respectfully.

  ‘The point is, it worked.’ I tried to steer everyone back to the matter at hand. ‘The most noble Ultramarines–’ Here, I ignored Morcant rolling his eyes and Brêac chuckling, ‘–disseminated their surgical schemata after the ritual’s success. We received the lore mere months before we set sail, and other Chapters were beginning to try it. I have the data memorised. All helots with my cranial modifications and specialty do, as part of our anatomical mastery training. If I replicate it for your druids and tech-priests…’

  Ducarius scratched his short beard. He was the one. He was the one I needed to win over.

  ‘What if it’s corrupted? Bluntly, Anuradha, no one has any reason to trust your memory.’

  ‘My memories from before the Venatrix are uncorrupted by my injuries. My cranial wounds are anterograde.’

  ‘They appear to be,’ said Ducarius, with heavy inflection. ‘But will Amadeus let you gamble his life on what appears to be true?’

  Morcant grinned at that. Kartash awkwardly shifted from foot to foot.

  ‘Yes. If he surfaces again, I’ll ask him myself. But if you’re worried about my memory, the information is within the deep-core archives aboard In Devout Abjuration. I can exload them from there.’

  ‘Kartash holds seniority.’ Morcant sounded so viciously casual about it. And Kartash himself nodded sagely, burdened by the gravity of the decision he believed rested on his shoulders.

  But I wouldn’t be torn from my path. Not with this. ‘Kartash holds no authority at all. The decision whether to trust me is yours, War-priest Ducarius. The decision whether to fight to save my master’s life is yours, too. You’re the one who’ll remake my master or let him die. What Kartash and I want is meaningless.’

  Seconds passed in silence. ‘Will you trust me, Ducarius?’

  It wasn’t altruism I saw in his gaze. Not merely loyalty to a cousin from another bloodline; it would be moronic to pretend so. The value of the information we carried, and the possibilities it held for the Spears? That motivated Ducarius. But the endgame was the same.

  His eyes stayed locked to my face. ‘I believe I will.’

  XX

  THE CALGARIAN RITES

  1

  He should have died.

  Several times during the procedure, he did die. Ducarius, clad in a surgeon’s plastek-sheet robes, resuscitated him each time his bio­codes streamed null across the monitors. Even
I had to help, up to my wrists in my master’s bloody chest, massaging one of his enhanced hearts between my palms. I forced it to beat in time with Ducarius’ spoken count.

  Everything in his carved-open body was enhanced and oversized, and all of it was damaged. Ducarius and his attendants, Owyn among them, layered temporary synthflesh over the most savage wounds inflicted by the Exilarchy, until cloned grafts could be grown and used to replace them. The surgery itself took nine days and nights. Teams of attendant-surgeons, tech-priests and two lesser Spear druids operated with Ducarius, Owyn, Kartash and myself. Minute by minute we worked with the risk he’d die at any moment, and all our efforts would come to naught.

  Kartash was relentlessly guarded, his pessimism masquerading as pragmatism. He pointed out that the Calgarian Rites offered poor chances of success even in ideal conditions, with fully briefed indent medicae staff and a healthy patient. Here, we were on the frontier, and Amadeus was already half-dead before we even began. When I told him to stop calculating and repeating the odds against us, he bristled.

  ‘I am stating the facts, Helot Secundus.’

  ‘You’re not, though. You’re whining.’

  ‘The fact remains that even if the Rites are successful, the chances of rejection in an adult host are–’

  ‘The only fact here, Kartash, is that the odds don’t matter. We do this or Amadeus dies. There’s nothing else to talk about. Were you always this much of an insipid worm? Did I just not see it before?’

  He didn’t say anything back. I girded myself against the hurt in his eyes.

  Morcant, who had been standing guard at the chamber’s edge, indicated Kartash with a grinding purr of armour joints.

  ‘The little hunchback has a point. Don’t shoot him down for telling the truth.’

  It was like this a little too frequently for comfort. In my absence, Kartash had established himself with several of the Spears. He was useful to them, a source of lore on the true Imperium, and a thrall with skills beyond any serf trained by any other Chapter. Trying to convince Morcant of Kartash’s treachery was a useless endeavour. The Helot Primus had started tending to the battleguard’s weapons; Kartash had already half abandoned Amadeus, making himself a valuable servant to a new master.