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    Soul Drinkers 06 - Phalanx


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      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.’

     


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