Ostian pulled down his dust-mask as another five identical warriors entered his shuttered studio, followed by a lifter servitor bearing a wide pallet upon which were three irregularly shaped objects draped in white cloth. Ostian immediately recognised the warriors as belonging to the Phoenix Guard, the elite praetorians of…
Fulgrim entered his studio and Ostian was stunned rigid at the towering presence of the primarch. The master of the Emperor’s Children wore a simple robe of deepest red, woven with subtle purple and silver threads. His pale features were powdered, his eyes rimmed with copper ink and his silver hair was pulled back in an elaborate pattern of plaits.
Ostian had dropped to his knees and bowed his head. To be in such close proximity to a being of perfect beauty was like nothing Ostian had ever experienced. Yes, he had seen the Primarch of the Emperor’s Children before, but to be in a confined space and have his dark eyes fixed upon him was akin to being rendered dumb and idiotic in the space of a moment.
‘My lord, I…’ began Ostian.
‘Please stand, Master Delafour,’ said Fulgrim, walking towards him. Ostian could smell the pungent aroma of the scented oils that had been rubbed into his skin. ‘Genius such as yours need never kneel before me.’
Ostian slowly rose to his feet and tried to raise his head to look the primarch in the eye, but found his body unwilling to obey.
‘You may look upon me,’ said Fulgrim. Ostian suddenly felt as though his muscles were under the control of the primarch, and his head came up without any apparent command from his brain. Fulgrim’s voice was like music, each syllable pronounced with perfect pitch and tone as though no other sound could have filled the air so appropriately.
‘I see your work progresses,’ said Fulgrim, walking around the shorn block of marble and admiring his work. ‘I look forward to its completion. Tell me, will it be a representation of any particular warrior?’
Ostian nodded, trying and failing to find the right words to express his thoughts to this magnificent being.
‘Who?’ asked Fulgrim.
‘It is to be the Emperor, beloved of all,’ said Ostian.
‘The Emperor,’ said Fulgrim, ‘a fine subject.’
‘I thought it fitting,’ said Ostian, ‘given the perfection of the marble.’
Fulgrim nodded as he circled the statue with his eyes closed, running his hands over the marble much as Ostian had done only moments before. ‘You have a rare gift, Master Delafour. You bring such life to the stone. Would that I could do similar.’
‘I am told that you have a great gift for sculpture, my lord.’
Fulgrim smiled and shook his head fractionally. ‘I can craft pleasing shapes, yes, but to bring it to life… that is something that frustrates me and with which I would ask your help.’
‘My help?’ gasped Ostian. ‘I don’t understand.’
Fulgrim waved his hand towards the lifter servitor, and one of the Phoenix Guard pulled back the cloths covering the objects on the pallet to reveal three statues carved in pale marble.
Fulgrim took him by the shoulder and guided him towards the three statues. All were of armoured warriors, and, by the markings carved on their shoulder guards, each was a company captain.
‘I set out to sculpt the likeness of each of my captains,’ explained Fulgrim, ‘but as I finished the Captain of the Third, I began to feel that something was wrong, as though some essential truth was missing.’
Ostian looked at the sculptures, seeing the clean lines and exquisite detailing, even down to the perfectly captured expressions of the three captains. Every line of carving was immaculate and not a single trace of the sculptor’s chisel was left upon the marble, as though each image had been pressed from a mould.
Even as he appreciated the perfection of the statues, Ostian felt no passion stirring within him as he would expect to feel from great art. Yes, the sculptures were perfect, but therein lay their flaw, for something of such technical splendour had nothing of the creator in it, no humanity that spoke to the viewer and allowed him a rare glimpse inside the artist’s soul.
‘They are wonderful,’ he said at last.
‘Do not lie to me, remembrancer,’ said Fulgrim, and Ostian heard a curtness in the words that caused him to look up into the primarch’s icy features. Fulgrim stared down at Ostian, and the expression the sculptor saw there chilled him to the bone.
‘What would you have me say my lord?’ he asked. ‘They are perfect.’
‘I would have the truth,’ said Fulgrim. ‘Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures.’
Ostian struggled to think of words that would not offend the primarch, for to do so seemed like the basest behaviour imaginable. Who could conceive of giving insult to someone of such beauty?
Seeing Ostian’s dilemma, Fulgrim placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder and said, ‘A good friend who points out mistakes and imperfections, and rebukes evil is to be respected as if he reveals a secret of hidden treasure. I give you leave to speak freely.’
The primarch’s words were spoken softly but they acted like a key to a locked room within Ostian, opening the door to thoughts that he would not have dared give voice to before.
‘It’s as if… they are too perfect,’ he said, ‘as though they have been carved with the head rather than the heart.’
‘Can it be possible for a thing be too perfect?’ asked Fulgrim. ‘Surely everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.’
‘Great art isn’t about reason, it’s about what comes from the heart,’ said Ostian. ‘You can work with all the technical perfection in the galaxy, but if there’s no passion, then it is wasted effort.’
‘There is such a thing as perfection,’ snapped Fulgrim, ‘and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. Everything that limits us we have to put aside.’
Ostian shook his head, too caught up in his words to notice the primarch’s growing anger. ‘No, my lord, for the artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing. It is the essence of being human that one does not seek perfection.’
‘And what of your own work?’ asked Fulgrim. ‘Do you not seek perfection in it?’
‘People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it,’ replied Ostian. ‘Were I to await perfection, my work would never be finished.’
‘Well, you are the expert,’ growled Fulgrim. Ostian suddenly, horribly, became aware of the primarch’s displeasure. Fulgrim’s eyes were like gleaming black pearls, the veins on his cheeks pulsing with suppressed anger, and Ostian was filled with terror at the depths of yearning he saw within them.
He saw past the primarch’s desire to render beauty in marble or painting to the obsessive compulsion to achieve the impossibility of perfection, a desire that would allow nothing to stand in its way. Too late, Ostian saw that despite asking for honesty, Fulgrim had not wanted honesty, he had wanted validation of his work and honeyed lies to prop up his towering ego.
‘My lord…’ he whispered.
‘It is of no matter,’ said Fulgrim acidly. ‘I see that I was right to have spoken to you. I shall never lay chisel to marble again, for I am clearly wasting my time.’
‘No, my lord, that’s not what—’
Fulgrim raised a hand to cut him off and said, ‘I thank you for your time, Master Delafour, and I will leave you to continue your imperfect work.’
Surrounded by his Phoenix Guard, the Primarch of the Emperor’s Children had left his studio, leaving Ostian trembling with the horror of seeing inside Fulgrim’s head.
Ostian shook off the memory of Fulgrim’s visit to his studio as he realised that he was being spoken to. He looked up and saw the pale-skinned Astartes looking down at him.
‘I am Lucius,’ said the warrior.
Ostian nodded and drained his glass. ‘I know who you are.’
Lucius smiled, pleased at the recognition. ??
?I’m told that you are a friend of Serena d’Angelus. Is that true?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Ostian.
‘Then might you direct me to her studio?’ asked Lucius.
‘Why?’
‘I wish her to paint me, of course,’ smiled Lucius.
THIRTEEN
New Model
Maiden World
Mama Juana
DRESSED ONLY IN his surgical robes, Apothecary Fabius loomed over the operating slab where his subject lay and nodded to the apothecarion servitors. They lifted the chirurgeon device so that it slotted neatly into the interface unit mounted at his waist, and plugged in the connectors that meshed his own senses with the workings of the chirurgeon.
In effect, the device would give him multiple, independent arms that would all work in concert with his own thoughts, responding to his needs far quicker and more skilfully than any orderly or nurse could ever hope to. In any case, the surgery he was about to perform was best kept from the eyes of those who might baulk at what he must do for it to succeed.
‘Are you comfortable, my lord?’ asked Fabius.
‘Never mind about my comfort, damn you,’ snapped Eidolon, clearly ill at ease and feeling vulnerable on the surgical table. The lord commander was stripped out of his armour and fatigues, lying naked upon the cold metal slab as he prepared to go under the Apothecary’s knife.
Hissing, gurgling machines surrounded him, and the flesh of his neck and throat was covered in counterseptic gel. A cold blue fluorescence bathed his skin in a dead light, and the glass jars around the apothecarion were filled with all manner of abominable, fleshy growths, the purpose of which defied understanding.
‘Very well,’ nodded Fabius. ‘I take it you have spoken to the captains under your command regarding their volunteering for augmentative surgery?’
‘I have,’ confirmed Eidolon. ‘I expect most of them to report to you within the next few weeks.’
‘Excellent,’ hissed Fabius. ‘I have such things to offer them.’
‘Never mind about them,’ said Eidolon, the powerful soporifics rendering his voice quiet and a little slurred. Fabius checked the machine monitoring the speed of the lord commander’s metabolism and adjusted the flow of drugs into his system, mixing the composition with some chemicals of his own devising.
Eidolon’s eyes darted nervously over to the spiking lines on the monitor’s screen, and Fabius could see a light sheen of sweat on his subject’s brow.
‘I am sensing a certain reluctance on your part to relax, my lord,’ said Fabius, the cold light gleaming from the multiple scalpel blades he held poised above Eidolon.
Eidolon’s face twisted in anger. ‘Are you surprised, Apothecary? You are about to cut my throat open and implant an organ the purpose of which you still haven’t told me.’
‘It is a modified tracheal implant that will bond with your vocal chords and should allow you to produce a nerve paralysing shriek similar to that employed by certain warrior breeds of the Laer.’
‘You are implanting me with xenos organs?’ asked Eidolon, horrified.
‘Not as such,’ said Fabius with a toothy grin, ‘though there are strands taken from the alien genome I chose to mesh with Astartes gene-seed mutated under controlled conditions. Essentially, I will be adding a new organ to your makeup, one that you will be able to trigger at will in battle.’
‘No!’ cried Eidolon. ‘I do not wish this, not if it requires xenos filth to be implanted in me.’
Fabius shook his head. ‘I am afraid it is too late to back out now, my lord. Fulgrim has authorised my work and you demanded that I work on you upon your return. What was it you wanted? Oh, yes, to be my greatest success, faster, stronger and more deadly than ever before.’
‘Not like this, Apothecary!’ shouted Eidolon. ‘Cease what you are doing now!’
‘I can’t do that, Eidolon,’ said Fabius, matter-of-factly ‘The soporifics are rendering you immobile and the samples I am to implant will not survive if they are not grafted to a host body. Why struggle? You’ll feel so much better when I’m finished.’
‘I will kill you!’ snapped Eidolon. Fabius smiled as he saw the lord commander attempt to free himself. Such efforts were wasted, for the drugs being pumped around his system, and the metal restraints, held him fast to the table.
‘No, Eidolon,’ said Fabius. ‘You won’t kill me, for I will deliver on my promise to you. You will be more deadly than ever before. You should also remember that a warrior’s life is a dangerous life, and that you will be under my knife many more times before this crusade reaches its climax, so do you really want to threaten me? Let the drugs take you, and when you wake you will be the model for how our beloved Legion is to take the next evolutionary leap forward!’ Fabius smiled and the scalpels descended.
EVEN BEFORE THEY reached the ruin on the other side of the valley, Solomon could tell that it was not a ruin after all, its structure intact and showing no signs of having been part of a larger building. However, having no better idea of what the unusual structure was, Solomon decided that ‘ruin’ was as good a word for it as any.
Shaped like the upper half of a bow stave, the curving structure reached to around twelve metres in height, its base set into an oval platform formed from the same smooth, porcelain-like substance as the ruin itself. The arch it described was graceful and alien, though it displayed none of the disturbingly excessive qualities of the Laer architecture.
In fact, thought Solomon, it was beautiful in its own way.
Once again, the Astartes spread out to surround their leaders as they approached the alien ruin. Solomon felt a curious apprehension at the sight of the structure, for it did not look like a building that had been abandoned for millennia.
For one thing, its surface was unblemished by so much as a single stain, moss or weathering, and the smooth stones that dotted its surface gleamed as though freshly polished.
‘What is it?’ asked Marius.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Solomon, ‘a marker perhaps?’
‘A marker for what?’
‘A boundary, maybe?’ suggested Saul Tarvitz to general nods. ‘But between whom?’
Solomon turned to see what Fulgrim made of it, and was shocked to see tears running down his primarch’s face. Julius stood next to the primarch, his own face also streaked with tears. He looked around to see what his fellow captain’s made of this, seeing that they were similarly stunned to see such a sight.
‘My lord?’ said Solomon. ‘Is… is something the matter?’
Fulgrim shook his head and said, ‘No, my son. Do not be alarmed, for I do not weep out of pain or anguish, but for beauty.’
‘For beauty?’
‘Yes, for beauty,’ said Fulgrim, turning and extending his arms to encompass the wondrous landscape around them. ‘This world is incomparable to anything we have thus far seen in our travels, is it not? Where else have we seen marvels laid out before us with such perfection? Nothing of this world is wanting and, were such things possible, I would believe that such a place could not come about by accident.’
Solomon followed his primarch’s gaze, seeing the same natural marvels laid out before him, but unable to feel as moved as his commander. Julius nodded in time with Fulgrim’s words, but of the four captains present, he alone appeared to have been affected in the same manner as the primarch.
Perhaps Marius had been correct to insist on the wearing of helmets, for surely there must be some undetected agent within the planet’s atmosphere that had affected them so. But any agent capable of affecting a primarch would have long since affected him.
‘My lord, perhaps we should return to the Pride of the Emperor,’ he suggested.
‘In time,’ nodded Fulgrim. ‘I wish to remain a little longer, for we shall not return here. We will enter the planet in our records and move on, leaving it untouched, for to despoil a place such as this would be a crime.’
‘My lord,’ said Solomon. ‘Move on?’
&nbs
p; ‘Indeed, my son,’ smiled Fulgrim. ‘We shall take our leave of this place and never return.’
‘But you have already designated this world as Twenty-Eight Four,’ Solomon pointed out. ‘It is a world of the Emperor and is subject to Imperial laws given to us by him to uphold without equivocation. To abandon it without leaving armed forces to impose compliance and defend it against enemies is contrary to our mission amongst the stars.’
Fulgrim rounded on Solomon and said, ‘I know our mission, Captain Demeter. You should not presume that I do not.’
‘No, my lord, but the fact remains that to leave this world unoccupied would be contrary to the word of the Emperor.’
‘And you have spoken with the Emperor on this?’ snapped Fulgrim, and Solomon felt his objections withering under the intensity of the primarch’s gaze. ‘You claim to know his will better than one of his sons? I stood with the Emperor and Horus on the surface of Altaneum as its inhabitants destroyed the planet’s ice caps and flooded their world beneath the oceans to destroy natural beauty that had taken billions of years to form, rather than allow us to take it from them. The Emperor told me that we must not make such mistakes again, for the galaxy will be worthless if we win it as a wasteland.’
‘The Lord Fulgrim is correct,’ said Julius. ‘We should leave this place.’
Solomon felt his resolve harden in the face of Julius’s support of the primarch, for he heard the tone of the sycophant in his friend’s words.
‘I agree with Captain Demeter,’ added Saul Tarvitz, and Solomon had never been so glad to hear another’s voice. ‘A planet’s beauty should have no bearing on whether or not we render it compliant.’
‘Whether you agree or not is irrelevant,’ growled Marius. ‘Lord Fulgrim has spoken and we must obey his will. That is our chain of command.’
Julius nodded, but Solomon couldn’t believe how easily they were going along with what was tantamount to disobeying the word of the Emperor.
OVER THE COURSE of the next two weeks, the 28th Expedition came upon another five worlds of a similar nature to Twenty-Eight Four, but each time, the fleet moved on without claiming it in the name of the Emperor. Solomon Demeter’s frustration grew daily at the expedition’s apparent unwillingness to enforce the Emperor’s will upon these empty worlds, and no one other than he and Saul Tarvitz appeared to find it unusual to find such paradisiacal worlds unoccupied.