Spear of the Emperor - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Read online

  For the first time in our association, Amadeus looked uncomfortable. Guilty, even. Caught looking at something shameful.

  ‘Helot Secundus. You were not summoned. You will debrief me regarding your geas later. I am occupied at the moment.’ Even in his disregard for the Nemetese practice, he was neutral enough not to spice the word with a sneer.

  ‘This isn’t solely about the witch’s prophecy, master.’

  ‘Noted. Well, I have no need of your service at this time.’

  ‘I understand, master. However, I have need of yours. Will you indulge me? It pertains the deployment, of course.’

  He raised a black eyebrow. That was encouraging. By his standards, it was positively expressive. I took it as permission to continue.

  ‘Have you reviewed my pict imagery from the surface?’

  ‘Twice,’ he said. Nothing less than I expected from him.

  ‘May I ask your thoughts on what I saw in the tomb?’

  ‘My thoughts are as follows. Firstly, it is a quaint local custom in keeping with the signifiers of a tribal culture. Secondly, whatever trials they underwent in implementing the Primaris gene-strains, they overcame them and eventually met with success. That is admirable. Thirdly, the caretaker you saw, the failed Space Marine that still lived, should have been executed as an abomination of the Emperor’s pure intent. And finally, I see the obvious correlation between the witch’s words and the malformed Primaris warrior you encountered. However, nothing he said could be construed as a promise. Does this answer your queries?’

  ‘Not all of them, master.’

  He was giving me his full attention. ‘If this is an attempt at idle discourse, it is both ill-timed and ill-reckoned.’

  ‘It’s neither,’ I assured him.

  Amadeus key-typed in the air in front of his chest. The inscribae thimbles on his fingertips pulsed as they connected with the hololithic interface only he could see. In response, one of the monitors flicked to the gallery of stills I recorded in the Nemetese tomb. I saw that dark place again, my own memories desaturated through image resolvers and beamed onto my master’s screen. The flickering images ceased cycling, pausing on one of the deformed corpses.

  ‘Speak,’ Amadeus bid.

  ‘These warriors…’

  ‘These failures,’ my master corrected me.

  ‘Failures. Yes. These dead men, and the Spears we have seen thus far, were all born of the Second Generation. Yet I can find nothing in the archives relating to the Indomitus Crusade reaching Elara’s Veil. Is this knowledge sequestered?’

  ‘No.’ Amadeus didn’t even attempt to bring anything up on the monitor. ‘Not sequestered, merely unworthy of detailed record. Lord Commander Guilliman and his crusade never reached Elara’s Veil. The Emperor’s Spears and Celestial Lions received the data-threads to create warriors of the Second Generation, but no Primaris-breed soldiers already at full maturation. Such was a common occurrence in the earliest years of the Rift. The knowledge of creating Second Generation ­warriors mattered to Chapters’ futures far more than a brief influx of men and mat­eriel. So the knowledge was delivered to them.’

  ‘This Chapter suffered gravely before they refined that knowledge into something usable.’

  ‘It did,’ conceded my master. ‘As have others, I am sure. Necessity is an ugly overseer.’

  ‘And who brought that knowledge across the Great Rift?’

  Amadeus deactivated the monitor. All curiosity had left his features now. ‘An Imperial strike team. A small force led by agents of the Adeptus Custodes. It hardly matters. Where is this avenue of query leading, Helot Secundus?’

  I thought of the dead cities, abandoned generations ago, on the surface of Nemeton. Those places civilisation failed to take hold. I thought of the Spears’ hostility to my master, as a brother of the Mentor Legion. I thought of Brêac’s refusal to show his face to the tribe that birthed him. I thought of mothers shielding their sons as the Space Marines passed, covering their children’s eyes.

  ‘I seek context, master. I seek to understand the Chapter you have been deployed to assess.’

  ‘That is admirable, yet you are doing so in a clumsy manner. My time is precious. You know this. It vexes me that I must remind you of it. Persist, and I shall note your lapse in the mission archive.’

  That stung, but I refused to let it show. ‘Do you like them, master?’

  He scowled. It was the most expressive I had ever seen him, though I could not tell if it was anger or surprised confusion.

  ‘Do I what?’

  ‘The Emperor’s Spears, master. Do you admire them?’

  ‘What relevance does this triviality have on the Nemeton Deployment?’

  I stood my ground. ‘As I said, I seek context. Would you tell me of the Spears through the lens of your perception? What do you see when you look upon them?’

  I was sure then that he believed I was wasting his time. He considered this beneath him. I braced for the dismissal I was certain was coming, but instead, he surprised me.

  ‘I had hoped they would welcome word from the Imperium, even if the messenger wore the colours of our Chapter.’ He hesitated then, unsure if he wished to continue. This was outside the common remit of master and thrall exchange, bordering on personal reflection, and Amadeus wasn’t one of the officers that liked to indulge in such sharing. On the rare occasions he stooped to it, he’d chosen Kartash for conversational musing, not Tyberia or myself.

  But I wanted the insight. I pressed for more, and Amadeus granted it.

  ‘Did your training aboard the Mitrah delve into the Mentor Legion’s prehistory?’ he asked.

  I nodded, for although I knew little more than the basics of the Mentors’ foundations, it was still a trove of knowledge beyond what other humans outside the helot caste could possibly possess.

  ‘We are a young Chapter,’ my master allowed, as if I’d passed the judgement myself. ‘Not even half a millennium old. What do you know of the original Chapter 888, the ­warriors that wore our colours?’

  I knew what most helots knew. I knew that the Star ­Scorpions were victims of degenerating gene-seed, their bloodline tragically unsustainable, and their Chapter dissolved with honour – to be reborn centuries later with a new genetic lineage. The new Chapter, clad in the Star Scorpions’ colours and assigned the same number in the great Index Astartes, was envisaged not as a blunt front-line instrument, but as a surgical tool. They were gifted superior and occasionally experimental wargear by the Adeptus Mechanicus priesthood, and assigned to support, train and, in some cases, judge other Imperial factions. This newborn Chapter took the keen, proud raptor as its symbol, and was granted the name Mentor Legion.

  I related this to my master.

  He shook his head at once. ‘The Scorpions, whom the Spears mourn as fallen brothers, did not perish from genetic instability. Not entirely. That was their death sentence, and the degradation of their bloodline shortened the life of their Chapter to mere decades. They would have died out all too soon. But their destruction came about through other means.’

  He halted at the look on my face and cut off my objection. ‘Be calm, Helot Secundus. This lore is sequestered from the thrall caste, but not forbidden.’

  He meant he would not need to kill me for learning what he now taught. My relief must have shown, for his eyes flickered with what might have been his cold version of amusement.

  ‘The Scorpions, still strong despite the affliction of their gene-seed, were lost on crusade.’

  Lost on crusade. Words of honour masking the blackest fate a fleet could suffer, being devoured by the warp. My master saw my understanding.

  ‘There were communications,’ he added. ‘Abortive fragments, with little in the way of clarity. Astropathic cries from a fleet trapped in the warp, mortis-calls from dying minds…’ Amadeus waved the ideas away, for they were
speculations and he cherished only precision and fact. ‘Adeptus Astartes records state the Chapter was destroyed in the warp, and the Bell of Lost Souls tolled for them on Terra. And years later, when our Chapter was founded with the uncommon privilege of wearing a dead Chapter’s colours and assuming their place in the rolls of the Index Astartes, the Emperor’s Spears sent ambassadors to vociferously argue against our birth. They claimed it dishonoured their fallen brethren.’

  Were they right? I wondered. Did my master wonder the same thing? Something in his gaze told me I shouldn’t stretch our tenuous bond further and ask him.

  ‘With this in mind,’ Amadeus admitted, ‘it makes it difficult to think in terms of admiration or antagonism. Our Chapters were set at odds the moment the Mentors were born.’

  ‘But do you admire them?’

  He blinked slowly, as close as I’d ever seen him come to sighing at my presence. I could almost see the mechanisms of his mind turning, searching for the words that would translate his trans­human judgements to my human understanding.

  ‘Ruins dot the Nemetese landscape. The barrow you found is near some of them. I trust you realised those ruins were once part of a settlement.’

  I confirmed that I did.

  ‘And you have studied the chorography of Nemeton?’

  I confirmed that I had.

  He nodded, expecting no less, and his tone turned thoughtful. ‘There is a story in the geology of this world’s skin and bones. Every civilisation eventually overreaches, Anuradha. It is the nature of empire. This is the moment rot sets in. When border kingdoms begin to resist acclimatisation, when cultures throw off the shackles of their subjugation. Nemeton is one such world. For whatever reason, the Ultramarines pushed their luck here. They established temples and academies and cities, as they had throughout the realm of Ultramar. Believing, I have no doubt, that it would strengthen the tribal warriors destined to become Space Marines.’

  There was precedent for what my master said. Many later Adeptus ­Astartes foundings had remade planetary cultures in their image, or grafted values and mythological elements of their choosing onto native cultures.

  But not all. Even the most disciplined Legions and Chapters had, in the past, preferred to harvest recruits from barbarous cultures without altering the world at all. Were these ruins simply an echo of Ultramar’s arrogance, or an experiment of some kind? An attempt at innovation? Perfecting something perceived as flawed?

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why did they seek to alter Nemeton in this way?’

  He looked at me with naked conjecture in his eyes. ‘I do not know, and it is not in the archives. The whim of a new Chapter Master, perhaps. A proud, disciplined warrior from a noble Ultramar bloodline, appointed in a new role of great honour, yet dismayed at the barbaric gene-stock he was commanded to harvest from.’

  I inclined my head, signalling my understanding.

  ‘What matters,’ Amadeus continued, ‘is that everything these Ultramar overseers tried to achieve eroded in time. They sought to stamp civilisation onto the clans of Nemeton, and the clans resisted it. The barbarians left the cities, returning to their way of life, allowing the marble monuments to fall into ruin. Which brings us to Nemeton here and now, and the Chapter we are dealing with. The Emperor’s Spears are one of the more barbaric bloodlines of the Thirteenth Legion dynasty. You ask if I admire them? The answer is a complex one, for they are scarcely above the barbarians they are drawn from. Much of what I have seen so far persuades me that they are brutes clad in civilised regalia. But their purity of purpose is worthy. The fact they are a single Chapter spread thin over territory that once needed three to defend it. The defiance that sent their ancestors away from the marble cities and back into barbarism is the same defiance that keeps them fighting now. All of this, I admire. Even if it is fortitude in the face of futility.’

  That word rung out between us, icy and unexpected. I ­echoed it back to him. ‘Futility?’

  My master recalled the cancelled images of Elara’s Veil as if my words were a summons. Khamun-Sen flashed back into being on his centre screen: a dead world closely orbiting its vicious white sun. We watched it spin, marked by the emblem of the Star Scorpions. I saw the hololithic reflection in his dark eyes.

  ‘The Androctonus Astra are dead,’ he said, using the Chapter’s prouder High Gothic name. ‘Hundreds of years gone. The Celestial Lions were teetering on the edge of extinction a century ago, even before they were cut off from the Imperium. I doubt their rebuilding efforts have thrived in the intervening years. The Emperor’s Spears have a ragged flotilla of press-ganged vessels in orbit around their home world, and have been fighting almost alone for the last ten decades. Hardly an inspiring picture, Helot Secundus. It does, however, highlight a stark truth – a truth that we on the Imperial side of the Great Rift grow evermore aware of with the passing of time. A truth that the souls on this side of the Rift need to accept before their stubbornness sees them destroyed.’

  He didn’t need to say it. I saw it myself. ‘They’re losing this war.’

  Amadeus gave a subtle shake of his head. ‘This war, against this Exilarchy they speak of? Perhaps, perhaps not. I refer to the wider conflict.’

  Now I understood. ‘Imperium Nihilus.’

  ‘Yes,’ my master said. ‘And that is why the Spears resent us. Our arrival teaches them the one lesson they do not wish to learn. The Dark Imperium is lost. This half of mankind’s empire will never be reconquered. There are tacticians within Lord Commander Guilliman’s councils that put forward the notion of abandoning Imperium Nihilus entirely, that its remaining defenders and resources be brought back across the Rift to reinforce the territory that remains pure.’

  I’d never heard the sentiment spoken so blandly, as a matter of practical fact. The abandonment of half the Imperium. The surrender of half of our worlds, half of our populations, half of our empire, never to be reclaimed. Madness. Absolute madness. And the sheer scale of such an undertaking made it an utter impossibility.

  ‘Do you believe that, master? Honestly?’

  ‘I was ordered to believe it. Reinforcements are never coming, not in the numbers required to retake Imperium Nihilus. Elara’s Veil is the fallen half of the empire in microcosm. Perhaps it can hold for another decade. Or a century. Or a millennium. What difference will it make?’

  ‘To the Imperial souls on this side of the Rift, master, I’d say it would make all the difference.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘You are being obtuse, slave. I find it tiresome.’

  ‘Forgive me, master. I have simply never heard the evacuation and surrender of half of the Imperium phrased as a practicality.’

  Amadeus’ lips twitched in the approximation of a smile. How animated he was, when speaking of this bleakest of subjects. ‘Practicalities are all that interest me, Helot Secundus. Emotion and tradition have no place in a war of survival.’

  But I wondered. Truly I did. And I wondered what he believed, beneath the orders commanding his compliance.

  ‘Then what of Khamun-Sen, master? Why were you studying it when I entered? Just a matter of practicality?’

  ‘This conversation is concluded, Helot Secundus.’

  I bowed, but hesitated once more. ‘Were you commanded here, master? Or did you volunteer?’

  He regarded me with his usual icy ambivalence. ‘You are becoming inappropriately personal with these queries. Allow me to answer your question with two of my own, thrall. When the witch said you despised me, what was she speaking of? What truth was there in her words?’

  ‘None, master.’

  What little amusement there was had faded from his face. ‘You are lying now, as well as being obtuse. But my point is simple – discussion of emotion and personal thought has no place in your servitude. Violate that precept a second time and I will see it noted in the deployment records. Do you understand me?’

&nbs
p; I understood.

  He dismissed me with a gesture of his hand. ‘Leave, Helot Daaz.’

  I left.

  3

  Within the hour, the Spears made contact. We were invited, in language that made it clear we were actually commanded, to board the strike cruiser Hex and join the warriors of the Third Warhost in what was diplomatically described as ‘a discussion regarding the fate of our Mentor guest’.

  Amadeus relayed this to us over the vox. ‘Brêac is preparing the warriors of the Third Warhost before they sail from Nemeton. We will join him in his arming chamber for this… trial, of sorts. Also present will be the battle­guards Morcant and Faelan, and two war-priests, Tolmach and Ducarius.’

  This was no normal squad. The names of the ranks were ­unfamiliar to us, but the context was clear. These were elite warriors, the leadership echelon of the Third Warhost.

  ‘I have accepted the offer,’ Amadeus added, as if there could have been any other answer. ‘In addition, we have been granted access to some of the archives aboard the Hex. They are inloading to our datacore as we speak. Make sure you access them before we leave.’

  ‘That bodes well,’ Kartash mentioned, after Amadeus cut the link. ‘They would hardly grant us access to their lore drives if they intended to kill us or abandon us.’

  Tyberia was somewhat less optimistic. ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Truly,’ the hunchback sighed the words, ‘you are a miserable companion, Tyberia.’

  I’d already activated my monitron bracer to scour the Hex’s incoming data stream. The very first spool of information contained, among other things, the name of the Hex’s captain.

  Kartash and Tyberia were looking at me. I’d cursed aloud, without meaning to.