Void Stalker (15 page)

They could have been alone, discussing such things in the stillness of a meditation chamber rather than the abattoir of the Primary Apothecarion.

‘I do not know,’ Talos confessed. ‘My memory is a jagged thing of plateau
x
and shadows, ripe one moment, hollow the next. I am no longer sure I even see the future. What little I remember is tangled, like fate’s skeins matted together. It is no longer prophecy, at least not as I understand it.’

If any of this surprised Variel, he didn’t let it show. ‘You told me months ago why you wished to travel here, brother. You told me you’d dreamed of human life on Tsagualsa’s face once more, and that you wished to see it with your own eyes.’

Talos moved aside as two members of Third Claw dragged a slain brother onto a table.

‘Soul Hunter,’ one of them greeted him. Talos gave him a withering look, and led Variel away from them both.

‘I recall no such dream,’ he told the Apothecary.

‘It was months ago. You have been slipping for a long time, but the rate of degeneration is accelerating. Focus on this fact, Talos: you wanted to sail back into these skies. Now we are here. Now those same humans you dreamed of crawl into the earth, weak and weaponless, wailing that we have returned. And even as you fulfil your desire, you are still hollow, still void of memory. You are breaking apart, Talos. Fracturing, if you will.
Why
are we here, brother? Focus. Think. Tell me.
Why?
’

‘I do not remember.’

Variel’s reply was to strike him. The blow came from nowhere, the back of the Apothecary’s gauntlet smashing backhanded into the side of Talos’s face.

‘I did not ask you to remember. I asked you to use your gods-damned mind, Talos.
Think.
If you cannot recall, then work out the answer from what you know of yourself. You brought us here. Why? What benefit is there? How does it serve us?’

The prophet spat acidic saliva onto the floor. When he turned back to Variel, a viperous smile played across his pale, bloody lips. He didn’t strike back. He did nothing but smile with bleeding gums.

‘Thank you,’ he said as the moment passed. ‘Your point is taken.’

Variel nodded. ‘I had hoped it would be.’ He met the prophet’s dark eyes. ‘I apologise for striking you.’

‘I deserved it.’

‘You did. However, I still apologise.’

‘I said it is fine, brother. No apology is necessary.’

Variel nodded again. ‘If that is the case, would you ask the others to cease aiming their weapons at me?’

Talos looked around the chamber. Both members of Third Claw had their bolters raised. First Claw was a mirror of the image, their own guns lifted and aimed. Even several Night Lords on tables awaiting surgery were holding their pistols level and ready to fire.

‘Ivalastisha,’
said Talos. ‘Peace.’

The warriors lowered their weapons at once, in slow unison.

Variel gestured to one of the side chambers. ‘Come. There are tests on your blood that I must–’

‘The tests can wait, Variel.’

Variel’s cold eyes flickered with something, some unknowable emotion never given the grace to flash in full across his features.

‘I believe you are dying
.
’
H
e lowered his voice. ‘I have saved you before. Let me analyse you now, and we will see if I can save you a second time.’

‘A trifle melodramatic,’ Talos replied, though his blood ran cold, feeling like a flush of nerve-killing combat narcotics.

‘Your body is rejecting the modifications wrought by the gene-seed. As you age, as you take wound after wound, your regenerative processes are breaking down. You can no longer heal the damage Curze’s blood is doing to your body. Some humans are simply unsuitable for gene-seed implantation. You are one of them.’

Talos said nothing for a moment. Ruven’s dream-words replayed through his mind, in savage chorus with Variel’s. The prophet’s marble visage turned to the rest of the chamber.

‘This is conjecture,’ he said.

‘It is,’ Variel admitted. ‘I have had little experience in dealing with the physiology of first
-
generation Legiones Astartes. But I was able to sustain my Lord Blackheart’s life for centuries, through a mix of ingenuity, ancient science, and working with fools who practi
s
ed powerful blood magic. I know my art, Talos. You are dying. Your body no longer functions as it should.’

Talos followed him as he spoke. In the side chamber, the Apothecary gestured to an excruciation table replete with chains. The room’s ceiling was given over to a multi-limbed arachnid machine, with various scanners, cutters and probes at the end of each jointed iron limb.

‘There is no need to lie down at first. The more detailed tests will come after these preliminaries, but I wish only to draw blood from the veins in your throat for now. Then we will scan your skull. Only then will we proceed deeper.’

Talos acquiesced in silence.

Another one died
beneath Septimus’s hands. He swore in Nostraman.

The surgeon he was working with wiped bloody hands across his own face, as if it would clean away the stains already there rather than add to them.

‘Next,’ the man said to
the
closest servitors. They dragged a writhing woman in a filthy crew uniform onto the table. She’d lost a leg to a bolter round, but the tourniquet at her thigh had spared her a cold, shivering death from blood loss. Septimus winced at the biological ruin left of her leg below the knee. Her eyes were wide, the pupils narrow. She hissed air in and out through clenched teeth.

‘Who are you?’ he asked gently, in the same moment the medicae said ‘Name and role.’

‘Marlonah,’ she said to Septimus. ‘Starboard tertiary munitions deck. I’m a loader.’ She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment. ‘Don’t servitor me. Please.’

‘He won’t,’ Septimus told her.

‘Thank you. Are you Septimus?’

He nodded.

‘Heard about you,’ she said, and lapsed back onto the table, covering her eyes against the bright glare of the lights above.

The medicae wiped his face again, clearly weighing the effort and value of the diminishing cheap augmetic supplies he had at his disposal. Only officers could count on their chances of a bionic organ or limb, but she was hardly underdeck scum.

‘She can’t do her duty with one leg,’ Septimus said, sensing this game was already lost.

‘Another could perform a loader’s duties just as easily,’ the medicae replied. ‘Menials are hardly difficult to replace.’

‘Primaris,’ Marlonah said, the words hissed through the pain. Sweat bathed her in feverish droplets. ‘Primaris qualified. Not… not just a hauler. Cart driver, too. Cannon loader.’

The surgeon tightened the tourniquet, eliciting a fresh grunt. ‘If I find out you’re lying to me,’ he told her, ‘I will inform the Legion.’

‘Not lying. Primaris qualified. I swear.’ Her voice was growing weaker now, and her eyes unfocused.

‘Record her for omega-grade augmentation after the crisis is over,’ the medicae said to his attendant servitor. ‘Stabilise her, and pitch the stump until then.’

Marlonah was unconscious now. Septimus suspected that applying hot pitch to her raw stump to prevent any future bleeding would rouse her, though. He released a pent-up breath, cursing the Genesis Chapter for their fanatical assault. Throne in flames, they’d given the ship a beating.

The medicae moved away, seeking another patient on another table, in this endless supply of them. As Septimus followed, his glance fell on Octavia across the room. She stood at the heart of carnage’s aftermath, her pale skin ungraced by the blood marking the dead and dying around her.

He watched her retying her ponytail, seeing the hesitance in her fingers as she walked from table to table, careful not to touch anyone. She only paused by the unconscious ones, resting her fingers on their skin, saying a few words of comfort or checking their pulses.

In the middle of this stinking den of dying heretics, Septimus smiled.

Variel tapped the
display monitor, overlaying the hololithic charts.

‘Do you see the correlation?’

Talos stared at the distorted hololithic of conflicting charts and hundreds of rows of runic symbols signifying numbers.

He had to shake his head. ‘No, I do not.’

‘It is difficult to believe you were once an Apothecary,’ Variel told him, in a rare moment of pique.

Talos gestured to the overlaid readings. ‘I can see the flaws and failings in the body’s kinetics. I can see the impairment and the unwarranted spikes in cortical activity.’ How easy it was, to speak of his own degeneration so impartially. The idea almost made him
bare
his teeth in a smile that would have done Uzas proud. ‘I am not saying I cannot understand what I am seeing, Variel. I am saying I do not see what you find so unique in it.’

Variel hesitated, trying a new tac
k
. ‘Do you at least recognise the spikes in limbic activity, and see the other signs listed as potentially terminal?’

‘I recognise the possibility,’ Talos allowed. ‘It is hardly conclusive. This suggests I will be in pain for the rest of my life, not that my life will be cut short.’

Variel’s exhalation trod perilously close to a sigh. ‘That will do. But look here.’

Talos watched the looping results flicker and restart, again and again. The rune-numbers cycled, the charts flowed in some hololithic dance, devoid of all rhythm.

‘I see it,’ he said at last. ‘My progenoid glands are… I do not know how to describe it. They are too active. It seems they are still absorbing and processing genetic markers.’ He touched the side of his neck, recalling the removal of Xarl’s gene-seed only hours before.

Variel nodded, allowing himself the smallest of smiles. ‘Mature progenoids will always react with a subsistent level of activity – a base level of processing genetic matter, collating a biological record of the experiences and traumas of the warrior they serve.’

‘I know how progenoids function, brother.’

Variel raised a hand to placate the prophet. ‘That is my point. Yours have always been overactive, as we already knew. Much too efficient. They rendered your physiology unstable and were, perhaps, the cause of your prophetic vision. Now, however, they are in rebellion. Previously, they were still trying to
improve
you, from human to one of the Legiones Astartes. But that development was a dead end. You could improve no more. You were already one of us. Their overefficiency has now passed a critical juncture. In many cases, the implanted organs would wither and die within the body. Yours are too strong. They are affecting the host, rather than withering themselves.’

‘As I said: pain while I still draw breath, but it is not terminal.’

Variel conceded the point with a flash of thought in his pale eyes. ‘Perhaps. Either way, removal of the progenoids is no longer an option. It would make no difference, for your organs are already–’

Talos interrupted with an irritated wave of his hand, as if giving the order to fire. ‘Enough. I can read the accursed hololithic. Come, Variel. Deal with the wounded, and let us retake Tsagualsa.’

The Flayer exhaled slowly. The dim illumination of the side chamber painted the skinned faces across his pauldrons in a greasy, pallid light.

‘What is it?’ asked Talos.

‘Were you to die, and a suitable host
be
found for your gene-seed organs, there is a chance the new host would carry the same curse as you – but with the ability to control it. Your gene-seed is uncorrupted, but unsuited to you. In a better host, with true symbiosis, they would be…’

‘Be what?’ His dark eyes flickered with thought now, possibilities playing out in their depths.

Variel was staring at the charts. ‘Powerful. Imagine your prophetic gift without the false visions that increase as time passes, or the headaches that drive you to your knees, or the unconsciousness that lasts weeks or months. Imagine it without the broken memory, or the other debilitating symptoms that plague you. When you die, brother, you will leave a powerful legacy for the future.’

‘The future,’ Talos said, his black eyes unfocusing. He almost smiled. ‘Of course.’

Variel turned back from the hololithic. ‘What is it?’

‘That is why we are here
.
’ Talos tongued his split lip, tasting his own blood – a lesser reflection of Uzas and the dead primarch. ‘I know what I want from this world.’

‘I am pleased to hear it. I had hoped this discussion would have that effect on you. Am I to assume you have changed your perspective, or are you still content to allow the Legion to slip its leash and slaughter everyone on the world below?’

‘No. The pure war is not enough. This is Tsagualsa, Variel. The carrion world… now with life tenaciously clinging to its scabbed surface. We can claw more than some tawdry, bloodthirsty satisfaction from this.’

The Apothecary disengaged the hand scanner, letting it power down. ‘Then what, Talos?’

The prophet stared past Variel, stared past the chamber’s walls, looking at something only he could see.