Soul Drinkers 06 - Phalanx Read online

  Phalanx

  By Ben Counter

  Chapter 1

  ITS LIKE HAD never been built before, and would never be

  built again. The secrets of its construction dated from

  before the foundation of the Imperium of Man, its immense

  golden form crafted by engineers dead long before the

  Emperor first united Holy Terra.

  The hull of the ship was many kilometres long,

  triangular in cross-section with its upper surface bristling

  with weapons and sensorium domes. Two wings swept

  back from the hull, trailing directional vanes like long gilded

  feathers. Every surface was clad in solid armour plating

  and every angle was covered by more torpedo tubes and

  lance batteries than any Imperial battleship could muster.

  Countless smaller craft, repair craft and unmanned Scouts,

  orbited like supplicants jostling for attention, and the wake

  of the titanic engines seemed to churn the void itself with

  the force of its plasma fire.

  The fist symbol emblazoned on the prow was taller

  than the length of most Imperial spacecraft, proudly

  claiming that the ship belonged to the Imperial Fists

  Chapter, one of the most storied Space Marine Chapters in

  the history of the Imperium. The pale light of the star

  Kravamesh, and the lesser glow of the Veiled Region’s

  boiling nebulae, played across thousands of battle-honours

  and campaign markings all over the beak-like prow. The

  ship had carried the Imperial Fists since the Horus Heresy,

  and its eagle-shaped shadow had fallen across a hundred

  worlds that had later shuddered under the weight of a

  massed Fists assault.

  This was the Phalanx. Bigger than any ship in the

  Imperial Navy, it was a mobile battle station the size of a

  city that dwarfed any Space Marine Chapter’s mightiest

  battle-barge. It might have been the most powerful engine

  of destruction in the Imperium. It was a symbol of

  mankind’s very right to live in the stars. Its most potent

  weapon was the sheer awe that the golden eagle inspired

  when it appeared in the night sky over a rebellious world.

  The Phalanx at that moment was not at war, but it

  was there for a conflict just as bitter. It was to be the seat

  of a trial at which the soul of a Chapter would be weighed,

  a stain on the Imperial Fists’ honour would be cleansed

  and retribution would fall as sternly as if it had rained down

  from the Phalanx’s guns.

  There was no doubt among the Imperial Fists that

  their mission was as vital to the Imperium as any crusade.

  For it was on the Phalanx that the Soul Drinkers would

  surely die.

  ‘YOU WILL WISH,’ said the Castellan of the Imperial Fists,

  ‘that you still called us brother.’

  The Castellan seemed to fill the cell, even though it

  had been built to accommodate a Space Marine’s

  dimensions. Its walls were plated in gold, studded with

  diamonds and rubies in the shape of the constellations

  across which the Phalanx had carried its Chapter in

  countless crusades. The channels cut into the floor formed

  intricate scrollwork. Even the drain for bodily fluids was in

  the shape of an open hand, echoing the fist symbol that

  was everywhere on board.

  The Castellan nodded to one of the Chapter

  functionaries through the small slit window. The

  functionary, a shaven-headed, drab man in a dark yellow

  uniform, activated a few controls on his side of the wall and

  the Pain Glove apparatus shuddered as power flowed into

  it.

  Brother Kaiyon hung in the Pain Glove. He had been

  stripped of his armour, and the input ports set into the

  black carapace beneath the skin of his chest were hooked

  up to bundles of cables hanging from the ceiling. The Pain

  Glove itself resembled some strange mollusc, a lumpy,

  phlegmy membrane that covered Kaiyon from neck to

  ankle. It writhed against his skin, as if trying to ascertain

  the shape of its captive by touch.

  ‘This one,’ he said, ‘was one of the flock.’ The

  Castellan’s words were no longer directed at Brother

  Kaiyon. ‘He was broken-minded even before we brought

  them here. I think, my lord, that he will either tell all, or be

  broken to gibberish.’

  ‘You take eagerly to your task, noble Castellan,’ came

  a voice in reply from the room’s vox-caster. It was an old

  and experienced voice, almost wearied with knowledge.

  ‘So ready a hand at the tormentor’s tools would be a sin in

  any but one of your responsibilities.’

  The Castellan smiled. ‘That, my lord Chapter Master,

  is as high a compliment as I could hope to hear.’

  The Castellan’s armour was crenellated like the

  battlements of a castle around its collar and the edges of

  its shoulder pads, and the vents around his torso echoed

  tall pointed windows or arrow slits. He looked like a

  walking fortress, even the greaves around his shins

  resembling the buttresses of two towers on which he

  walked. His face was branded with a grid pattern – a

  portcullis, a forbidding entrance to the fortification he

  represented.

  Kaiyon’s face was scarred, too. The Space Marine

  seemed unconscious, but he proclaimed all his

  allegiances in the chalice symbols he had carved into

  himself. His scalp was red with raised channels of scar

  tissue. Though the rest of his body was hidden in the Pain

  Glove, the Castellan knew that the rest of Kaiyon told the

  same story. Kaiyon was a Soul Drinker. He had written

  that fact into his flesh.

  ‘I know,’ said the Castellan to Kaiyon, ‘that you are

  awake. You can hear me, Kaiyon. Know, then, that

  nothing you do here, no token effort of resistance, will gain

  you anything whatsoever. Not even the satisfaction of

  delaying me, or frustrating my intentions to break you.

  These things mean nothing to me. The mightiest of

  fortresses will fall, though we can chip away but a grain of

  sand at a time. The end result is the same. Your Chapter

  has secrets. The flock of Iktinos has secrets. I will have

  those secrets. This is a truth as inevitable as your own

  mortality.’

  Kaiyon did not speak. The Castellan walked right up

  to Kaiyon, face to face.

  The Soul Drinker’s eye was slitted. He was watching

  the Castellan, and even in that tiny sliver of an eye, the

  Castellan could see his hate.

  ‘What,’ said the Chapter Master over the vox, ‘if this

  one does not talk?’

  ‘There are others,’ replied the Castellan. ‘More than

  twenty of the Soul Drinkers’ surviving strength are

  members of this flock. I’ll wager you’ll have your answers

  with twenty renegades t
o break.’

  ‘So long as Chaplain Iktinos himself is not reduced

  thus,’ replied the Chapter Master. ‘I wish him in

  possession of all his faculties for the trial. Justice is a

  mockery when it is administered on one already forsaken

  by sanity.’

  ‘Of course, my lord,’ said the Castellan. ‘It will not

  come to that.’

  ‘Good,’ said the Chapter Master. ‘Then proceed,

  Brother Castellan.’

  The vox-link went dead. The Chapter Master, as was

  traditional, need not witness this least delicate of the

  Castellan’s duties. The Castellan gestured to the crewman

  at the controls, and a metal panel slid shut over the slit

  window.

  ‘You have,’ said the Castellan, circling Kaiyon, ‘one

  final chance.’

  Kaiyon’s hate did not falter.

  ‘You understand, I must make this offer. I know as

  well as you do, between us two Astartes, that it has no

  meaning. There are traditional forms that must be

  followed.’

  The Castellan flicked a few switches on the control

  console mounted on the wall, one from which snaked the

  wired now hooked up to the interfaces in Kaiyon’s body.

  The Pain Glove slithered over him as if agitated.

  The Pain Glove was a complex device. Controlling its

  many variables was akin to directing an orchestra, with

  great skill required in keeping every variable in harmony.

  Just a taste of the Pain Glove was enough to break normal

  men. A Space Marine required far more finesse – the Pain

  Glove was even used as a conditioning tool for the

  Chapter’s novices in its less intense configurations.

  The Castellan was a maestro with the device. The

  membrane excreted chemicals that laid open every nerve

  ending on every millimetre of skin. The pulses of power

  humming through the cables stimulated every one of them

  into extremity.

  Brother Kaiyon, in that moment, discovered just how

  much it took to make a Space Marine scream.

  WHAT WILL THE universe remember of us?, wrote

  Sarpedon.

  What does it matter our deeds, the principles of our

  character, if it is the memory of the human race that

  matters? The future for us, when we are gone, is surely

  determined not by our deeds but by what is remembered

  of our deeds, by the lies told about us as much as by the

  truths of our actions.

  Sarpedon put the quill down. The Imperial Fists had

  taken his armour and his weapons, and even the bionic

  which had replaced one of his eight arachnoid legs. But

  they had left him with the means to write. It was a matter

  of principle that this cell, even though it was windowless

  and cramped, and allowed him no communication with his

  fellow Soul Drinkers, had a quill, a desk and a pot of ink.

  He was to defend himself before a court of his peers. He

  was at least entitled to the means to prepare his defence.

  They had left him his copy of the Catechisms Martial, too,

  the manual of the Soul Drinkers’ principles and tactics

  authored by the legendary philosopher-soldier Daenyathos.

  Sarpedon thought for a few long minutes. The pages of

  parchment in front of him were supposed to hold every

  argument he might make to justify his actions. Instead, he

  had poured out every thought into them in the hope that at

  least he would understand what he thought.

  The galaxy will not think well of us, he wrote. We are

  traitors and heretics. We are mutants. Should truth have

  any value in itself then it will do us no good, for these

  things are true. My own mutations are so grotesque that I

  wonder if there will be anything thought of me at all, for

  there is little room in any man’s recollection for anything

  but this monstrous form.

  What does it matter what the galaxy thinks of us when

  we are gone? It is the only thing that matters at all. For we

  will surely die here. There is only one sentence that our

  brethren can lay upon us, and that is death. I must take

  what solace I can from what we will leave behind, yet there

  can be no solace in the story the Imperium will tell of the

  Soul Drinkers. Those who can will forget us. Those who

  cannot will hate us. Though I seek some victory for myself

  and my battle-brothers even in this, I can find none.

  Perhaps one of my brethren can draw something other

  than defeat from our situation. I cannot. I look deeper into

  my heart than I have ever done, and I find nothing but

  failure and desolation.

  Sarpedon looked over what he had written. It

  disgusted him. He screwed up the parchment and threw it

  into a corner of the cell. A Space Marine did not succumb

  to self-pity, no matter how true his failure seemed to him.

  He would lie to himself if that was what it took.

  A gauntleted hand boomed against the cell door.

  Sarpedon looked round to see a window being drawn back

  to reveal a face he had last seen on the surface of

  Selaaca, looming over him as he lost consciousness. It

  was the face of Captain Darnath Lysander of the Imperial

  Fists First Company, a legend of the Fists and the man

  who had bested Sarpedon to take the Soul Drinkers into

  custody.

  ‘I trust,’ said Sarpedon, ‘your captive is a wretched as

  you hoped.’

  ‘Bitterness becomes not an Astartes,’ replied

  Lysander. ‘I take no joy in the fall of another Space Marine.

  I have come not to gloat, if that is how low you think of me.

  I have come to give you the chance to confess.’

  ‘Confess?’ said Sarpedon. ‘With no thumbscrews?

  With my skin still on my frame?’

  ‘Do not play games,’ snapped Lysander. ‘We took

  those you call the flock, those who follow your Chaplain

  Iktinos. Their minds were broken before we ever took them

  in. Whatever influence your Chaplain had on them, it

  changed them. One of them has broken in the Pain Glove,

  and told us everything. Brother Kaiyon is his name. He

  thought the Lord Castellan was Rogal Dorn himself, and

  spoke your Chapter’s secrets to him as if the primarch had

  demanded it.’

  ‘I have heard of your Pain Glove,’ said Sarpedon.

  ‘Then you know it is a part of the initiations every

  Imperial Fists has undergone. I myself have been subject

  to it. It served no more than to shake Brother Kaiyon out of

  the fugue the flock have fallen into since their incarceration

  here. He is insane, Sarpedon. He spoke through madness,

  not pain, and that madness was not our doing.’

  ‘Then he could have spoken lies in his madness,’

  retorted Sarpedon.

  ‘He could,’ replied Lysander. ‘My Chapter is even now

  ascertaining the truth of his words. This is why I have

  come here. If you confess, and that confession matches

  what Kaiyon had told us and can be proven true, then there

  may be some leniency won for your compliance.’

  ‘Leniency?’ Sarpedon rose up on his ha
unches. He

  had originally had eight legs, arranged like those of an

  arachnid, spreading from his waist. He had lost one on an

  unnamed world, ripped off by a champion of the Dark

  Gods. Another had been lost on Selaaca, mangled in his

  fight with the necron overlord of that dead world. He still

  had six, and when he rose to his full height he still towered

  over even Lysander. ‘You talk to me of leniency? There is

  not one Imperial Fist who will abide anything but our

  execution! Our death sentence was decided the moment

  we surrendered!’

  ‘Ours is a Chapter with honour!’ shouted Lysander.

  ‘Your trial is more than a mere formality. It is our intention

  to see every correct procedure and tradition adhered to, so

  that no man dare say we did not give you every chance to

  redeem yourselves. You will die, yes, I cannot lie to you

  about that. But there are many ways to die, and many

  matters of honour that can accompany your death. If you

  deserve a good death then you and your battle-brothers

  shall receive it. You can win a better death if you tell us

  now what we shall soon discover. Deceit, however, will win

  you nothing but suffering.’

  Sarpedon sank back down to his haunches. He could

  not think what Kaiyon might have told the Imperial Fists

  interrogators. The Fists knew the Soul Drinkers were

  mutants – one glance at Sarpedon was enough to tell

  them that. The Fists had collected evidence of the Soul

  Drinkers’ deeds, including many that had pitted them

  against the forces of the Imperium from which the Soul

  Drinkers had rebelled. He could think of nothing more

  damaging than any of that.

  But what had happened to the flock? They were the

  Soul Drinkers whose officers had died in the gradual

  erosion of the Chapter’s strength, and who had turned to

  Chaplain Iktinos for leadership. They had become intense

  and inspired under Iktinos, but insane? Sarpedon did not

  know what to make of it.

  ‘I don’t know what Kaiyon told you,’ he said to

  Lysander. ‘Good luck with confirming his words. I doubt

  whatever you find can make our fate any worse.’

  ‘So be it, Sarpedon,’ said Lysander. ‘The trials will

  begin soon. The fate of your Chapter rests in no little part

  on what you will have to say to yourself. I suggest you

  think on it, if you believe your brothers deserve more than a

  common heretic’s death.’