DEVASTATION
1
I stared at my new hand. I closed the fingers. I opened them. It was my hand, but not yet mine. It belonged to me, but it was still new enough to be a tool, something grafted onto me instead of a part of myself.
I closed my remaining eye, but it left me at the mercy of my fragmented memories, dragging me back to the screams and burning darkness aboard the Venatrix. I opened it again rather than trigger a reawakening of those scorched memories.
Resisting the memories didn’t always work. It didn’t work then.
The apothecarium aboard the Hex was richly appointed and suffused with a sterile, muted blue-white light that was tuned not to strain the eyes. Since waking, no one had told me anything of worth. We were in the warp, but what of the Venatrix? What of the Blade of the Seventh Son? Where were we headed now, and for what reason?
What of Nar Kezar?
Once, my ignorance had been a shield. I was the perfect thrall, raised among so many other perfect thralls. My masters among the Mentors made every decision in my life, and I expected no enlightenment as to their wishes and plans. I went where they bid, I did as they ordered.
But slavery changes you. It strips you of every decision you can make, even down to eating and breathing and shitting. It flays you of agency. With no control over anything in your life, you are barely human at all.
Now I wanted answers. I needed them, for the sake of my sanity.
They’d told me Amadeus lived, but nothing of his condition. The medicae officer treating me was human, as were the staff working under his direction. They all bore Nemetese tattoos on their faces and forearms. My memory of those weeks is still fragmented from the damage to my cranial data-spools, but I was later told my first action in the apothecarium was to touch the slave scar on my forehead and say, ‘Get this off me. Burn it off if you have to.’
I asked several of the medicae labourers if they’d managed to exload the recordings from my cranial banks. Their answers were all grunted and negative, but for one that elaborated: ‘It’s not going to work. They’re useless. Fragmented. You’re lucky not to be brain damaged.’
‘But you could try again,’ I pressed him. It would be the eighth time, though. Desperation was making me foolish. ‘Please.’
‘There’s not enough unbroken data to even form a visual feed.’ He looked at me as if I were babbling in a tongue he struggled to understand. ‘Your skull was cracked in three places and the optical trauma from losing your terminus-eye rendered everything in your cranial banks unharvestable. You’re lucky you remember anything at all. You’re lucky to be alive.’
‘Yes, but–’
‘I’m not a servitor,’ he said harshly, as if I’d called him an idiot. ‘If you make us keep straining your cognition spools with repeated attempts, then at best you’re going to have memory problems for the rest of your life. At worst, that won’t be a problem, as you’ll be dead of a brain haemorrhage.’
After that, I let it lie.
A Spear stood sentry within the apothecarium at all times. It surprised me to see that it wasn’t merely a line warrior, but Morcant of the Arakanii. The battleguard remained on duty without a break, his crested helm panning left and right over the chamber, ever alert to threats.
I could guess why he was there. His place was to execute any of the injured that showed signs of taint.
Judgement was still out as to my potential corruption. Daily, they drained my blood into vials, scraped skin samples, subjected me to batteries of quick-response questions while monitoring the electrical patterns of my brain and the chemicals that carried thought. I knew I was passing these tests by the fact Morcant didn’t kill me.
We didn’t all pass. Morcant executed one of the recovered thralls in our ward when she wouldn’t stop raving one night. It was merciful, at least in the way you can measure such things. He closed his hand around her throat as she writhed in her bed, and he twisted. Just once. She fell silent, and her heresies died on her lips.
Morcant, on sentry duty, always ignored my repeated attempts to call to him in search of answers to any of my questions. The most responsive he was to one of my questions was when he shook his head in my direction.
‘Be quiet,’ he ordered me.
‘That thrall you killed last night. I knew her. Her name was Lanis.’
‘Be quiet, Anuradha.’
I obeyed, for lack of anything else to say or do.
In addition to refusing to answer any of my questions, the medicae staff also refused to let me see myself in any reflective surfaces. That didn’t bode well. They had replaced my arm with a cruder, simpler bionic limb than the beautiful piece I’d lost in the fight with Kartash. I kept lifting it and watching it move. It was like something an Imperial Guard officer might possess after a battlefield mutilation. Better than what most Imperial citizens could ever hope for, and I was accordingly grateful, but inwardly I looked at the dull metal plating and missed the consummate craftsmanship of my lost arm.
As for my left leg, that was gone before I even had time to think of any sentiment. There was a period of drunkenness from pain-suppressant narcotics, and then I woke to find my leg was new from the knee down. The augmetic replacement wasn’t human in shape, like my new arm. This was a thinner, industrial pylon between a gearworked node that served as my knee, and a four-taloned claw in the shape of a cross that now made up my foot. It would take me months to get used to. Even once I did, I’d never walk without a hitch in my stride again.
The ward’s chief medicae officer, Owyn, was a gaunt man deep into his sixth decade, with half-lidded eyes that missed nothing.
‘Yes, it’s ugly,’ he told me, with a Nemetese drawl, ‘but it’s what we’ve got.’
‘I’m not ungrateful,’ I told him, and I meant it. ‘I’ll get used to it.’
‘Good. I abhor patients that complain. Now, are you ready for your first visitor?’
I can’t recall what I said, only that I was certain, against all the odds, that it would be my master.
Of course, I was wrong.
2
I smelled him before I saw him. That pious, smoky scent of incense. He approached my bed in his familiar crouched gait, his eyes cast down, an expression of patent discomfort on his face. The monitoring machinery by my bedside beeped louder and faster in response to my escalating heartbeat. Owyn was gone, misguidedly believing I wanted privacy.
‘Hello, Anuradha,’ Kartash said.
I drew in breath to call to Morcant, stationed across the chamber. Kartash pressed a finger to my lips, and I lost the shout I’d been building to, as I flinched away from his touch.
‘Anuradha, be calm, be calm.’ The instructive softness of his voice, after everything that had happened, was almost enough to make me scream.
‘Get away from me.’
He jerked in surprise, which was the last reaction I’d expected. ‘What?’ he asked. His eyes shined with sudden hurt. ‘What’s wrong? You’re safe now.’
I think I stammered his words back at him, unable to speak anything worthwhile in the wake of what he said. He reached out to stroke my hair, only stopping – and looking hurt once more –when the bed shivered with my force of my recoil.
‘You’re safe,’ he assured me. ‘You’re safe now. You’re back on the Hex.’
‘I… I know where I am. I’m not delirious.’ It came out in a rush, then. The aborted flight from the astropathic sector. The jade sword he’d used to slay one of the Pure. The way he’d downed Tyberia and hurled me back. The way he’d sealed us in with the animals from the Exilarchy.
Kartash listened to all of it with mounting horror. By the end of my accusations, I was trying to lift myself from the bed while my new arm and leg rebelled and spasmed with nerve-ending misfires.
‘I’ll kill you,’ I said to him, the words a hissing capstone for my anger. ‘For what you did… I will kill you.’
A medicae orderly came to my side, urging me to be calm. Kartash looked mortified, and worse, he looked confused. Morcant loomed over us, a vast presence in his cobalt ceramite, though my relief died in my throat when instead of dragging Kartash away, he stood protectively in front of the hunchback, and glared down at me through red eye-lenses.
‘You will remain calm, thrall.’
‘Morcant, he… he tried to kill us. Me and Tyberia. Kartash tried to–’
The Spear closed his hand great hand around my throat, without squeezing. It would take him no effort at all to end me.
‘Are you calm, Anuradha?’
‘He tried to kill us, Morcant. In the Battle of the Hex.’
Morcant was immovable. ‘I will ask you one more time. Are you calm?’
I wasn’t even close to calm. But I could feign it.
‘Yes, I’m calm. I’m calm now.’
‘See that you remain that way. You’ve shown no sign of taint,’ he said, not needing to add the Yet that lurked on the end of the sentence.
‘She’s confused and disorientated,’ Kartash volunteered. ‘My thanks for your concern, battleguard. She can’t help it, after what she’s been through.’
‘Don’t aggravate her,’ Morcant said to Kartash as he released me. The Spear and the orderly drifted away, leaving me alone with the man Tyberia had asked me to kill.
For a few seconds, Kartash said nothing. He cautiously took his place at my bedside again, seeming to search for the right words.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Anuradha. I couldn’t even find you during the battle.’
Throne, he looked heartbroken. His expression invited me to consider the horrors he’d seen after the Geller field failed, alone as he’d been, without Tyberia watching his back. At least I’d had company as I waded through hell, with the dead walking the halls of our warship.
‘I saw things,’ he said, whispering the words. ‘Things, in that battle, that couldn’t possibly have been real. Didn’t you see anything like that?’
A thousand things, I thought.
‘I saw you, Kartash.’ God-Emperor, I hated the doubt creeping into my voice. ‘Tyberia saw you as well. I saw you with that blade. I know it was you, flooring us and leaving us for the Exilarchy.’
He shook his head, in hopelessness rather than denial. ‘What blade? What are you talking about?’
I had to admit the truth. ‘I didn’t see it clearly. A sword of jade. It was alien craftsmanship.’
I sounded foolish even to myself. Again, he shook his head. ‘And did Tyberia see it?’
My teeth were grinding now. ‘No,’ I confessed.
He ran his palm down his mouth and chin, sighing quietly. ‘Anuradha… Have you asked yourself why I would abandon you like that? To what purpose?’
I had no answer for him, and he sighed again. ‘Never have I wished so ardently for our masters to have granted me remembrance spools. Then you could see the truth through my eyes. I’d never abandon you, Anuradha.’
Throne, he was so sincere. I felt the traitorous urge to break down, to sink back into his comforting tutorship, now the worst of my trials were behind me. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was safe again, at last.
‘Get away from me,’ I said. My voice was shaking.
‘You’ve been through a lot,’ he said softly. He nodded to himself, as if his own diagnosis was confirmed the moment he made it. ‘I’m glad you made it, though. You always showed much more promise than Tyberia.’
My bionic hand snapped the iron bar that served as the bed’s edge. I hadn’t realised I’d been gripping it, let alone so hard.
‘Get away from me,’ I said again. Across the chamber, Morcant was watching me. I tried to look as serene as possible, despite wishing I could vomit all over Kartash’s face. ‘And don’t you ever speak her name in my presence, unless it’s in a prayer for forgiveness.’
Kartash rose. ‘You’re confused, Anuradha. Confused and frightened. That’s perfectly understandable. I’ll check in on you tomorrow.’
‘Don’t. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Stay away from me, Kartash.’
He smiled sadly, indulgently, even offering a knowing nod to the nearby orderlies. Then he limped his way from the chamber, making the sign of the aquila to Morcant as he passed the warrior. Morcant nodded in response, then went back to watching me.
Chief Medicae Officer Owyn returned, raising his thin, grey eyebrows at the damage I’d done to my bed.
‘I see there’s no issue with the grip strength in your new limb. Try not to destroy your bed, however. You’re not getting a new one.’
‘He tried to kill me, Owyn.’
‘Yes, so you’ve said.’
‘What? When?’
‘When you drifted in and out of consciousness in the first few days. We had a servitor record everything you murmured in your delirium, and the Spears have been monitoring it for signs of hidden taint. You also said he had a sword made of alien metals and crystals. I shouldn’t need to point out, but I will anyway, that his quarters and possessions were searched thoroughly and there was no sign of such a weapon.’
Someone had believed me enough to make certain, then. That was a start, even if it resulted in nothing but proving my delusion.
‘There’s some good news,’ Owyn added. ‘We’re going to try something new with your eye tomorrow.’
3
My eye socket itched abominably. There was no chance the Spears’ medicae staff could grant me another terminus-eye, and it wasn’t as if I’d used the one I had wisely or well. Still, it stung to lose such a prestigious gift in favour of a simple bionic.
Dealing with my eye turned out to be a foul process. Owyn had already scraped the socket clean and flushed it with antiseptic fluids, but the infection kept returning. He came to my bed after the second failure, accompanied by a towering figure in growling black ceramite. I recognised his bearded features, with the talon-scar tattoos on his cheeks.
‘War-priest Ducarius.’
‘Anuradha,’ he greeted me in return, distracted and plainly tired. His massive hand gripped the top of my head. He turned my face side to side, peering into the eye that was no longer there. He was less gentle than Nar Kezar, but entirely less unnerving.
‘Hold still.’
I was holding still. I told him so.
‘Then hold stiller.’
I asked him how I could hold stiller than already being absolutely still.
‘Well, you could stop talking,’ he pointed out. Ducarius nodded at whatever he saw in my augmetic eye socket, and clacked his scrimshawed teeth. ‘Here. This’ll do it.’
He drew a glass vial from one of his belt pouches, full of a bubbling white liquid. It took me a second to see it wasn’t a liquid at all, but hundreds of tiny squirming bodies bunched up together.
With a care I’d never believed possible, using tweezers clutched with inhuman precision in his huge hand, the Spear druid placed the maggots, one after the other, in my eye socket.
‘They’ll eat the infected flesh,’ he said to me, and then to Owyn he added, ‘Replace them in two days, before they split and become flies.’
The itching, which had been irritating, now became maddening. Foolishly, I mentioned this out loud.
‘If you want a new eye,’ said Ducarius, ‘you’ll do what it takes to get one.’
With Ducarius here, this was my chance. I had to take it. ‘Where’s Amadeus? They told me he’s still alive.’
Ducarius said nothing for a moment. ‘He’s alive, aye. It remains to be seen for how much longer.’
‘What did the Pure do to him?’
‘Be calm, Anuradha.’
‘Tell me.’
‘This isn’t calm.’
‘Tell me what they did to him!’
‘Restrain her,’ Owyn called to two of his orderlies.
Something a little like Tyberia’s voice broke inside me, and I snapped at Owyn, ‘If you tie me down, you better never set me free again, because I’ll beat you to death with the new arm you gave me. You have your duty, and I have mine. I’m going to do it. I’m going to see my master.’
Ducarius finally nodded. ‘Take her to him.’
4
Tyberia had suffered at the hands of the Exilarchy’s mutants, and what they brought back to me after they’d had their fun had no right to still be alive. Amadeus had endured excruciation far beyond that. He was capable of withstanding far greater physical damage, because of his transhuman form, and he had been in the clutches of Nar Kezar, a true artist of pain, rather than brutal mutants.
The Exilarchy had killed him. He just wasn’t dead yet.
I sat by the slab table where he was cobwebbed in medical cables. The walk here had been difficult and joyless on my new leg, but what awaited offered no solace. My master breathed because machines breathed for him. The devastating thing wasn’t that they’d hacked away at him or removed his limbs. It was that he was still in one piece, with every bone and organ and inch of tissue showing signs of ritual mutilation. They’d taken him apart while keeping him whole.
I looked at the screens that showed me all this, and then I looked at Amadeus, living on the edge of death. His eyes were closed. Even the eyelids were scabbed and scarred.
‘Suspended animation?’ I asked.
‘No.’ Ducarius kept his voice soft. ‘He sleeps. Deeply.’
‘Why haven’t you given him the Emperor’s peace?’
Ducarius looked wearier than I’d ever seen one of the Adeptus Astartes appear. ‘We are the Spears of the Emperor,’ he said bluntly, ‘and we need every warrior we have. We don’t mercy-kill our brethren unless death is absolutely certain.’
I gestured at the ruination that had once been my master. ‘Death is certain. I’m only half-blind, Ducarius. He can’t survive this. No one can.’
He ignored my informality. ‘You’re wrong, helot. I can stabilise him with a little more time. Another few surgeries and he may even breathe on his own.’
Hope flared. The most treasonous of all emotions. ‘You mean to inter him,’ I guessed. ‘You’ll bind him into a Dreadnought.’ I couldn’t equate the image of my master as he’d been, and as he might become, locked within the life support coffin of an Adeptus Astartes war machine. It wasn’t life as Amadeus had known it, but at least it was life.
But Ducarius bristled. ‘No, Anuradha. Internment is a rare and precious rite, and those sarcophagi are treasured rewards for the greatest Spears. The Chapter would never sanction such a sacrifice on your master’s behalf.’
‘What, then? This isn’t life, Ducarius. Amadeus would despise living as this revenant, slaved to machines that force him to exist.’
The druid brought up a hololith from his vambrace, showing yet more of the extensive internal damage inflicted upon my master.
‘He’ll never fight with a blade and bolter again, but he can command ships and give orders to skitarii. He can fight for the Veil, as Serivahn fights. And after the Exilarchy did this to him, he’ll want revenge. We’re counting on it.’
More than anything. I lowered my hands. I’d not realised they’d been pressed to my mouth, as if a barricade over my lips could contain my fears.
‘Captain Serivahn is… malformed,’ I admitted, ‘but my master is devastated. He’ll never walk again. Even his heart tissue is scarred. Both of his hearts. What will be left of him to serve? A brain in a glass tank?’
‘There’ll be extensive augmetic resculpturing,’ Ducarius admitted. ‘I’d say over sixty per cent of his body will require bionic replacement.’
‘To make what? A servitor with a Space Marine’s mind?’
Ducarius met my eyes. His gaze bored into mine, pinning me with merciless patience. ‘You’ve been in the Exilarchy’s clutches, thrall. You’ve seen the Pure. You know what the Adeptus Vaelarii face here in the Veil. We use every weapon available to us. A broken sword still has an edge. A broken rifle still serves as a club. We fight with what we’ve got. After the last two months, you should understand that without reservation. Come. Return to your ward.’
‘I’m not leaving him.’ The steel in my voice surprised me. It wasn’t just duty talking, I knew that even then. With Tyberia gone and Kartash a traitor, Amadeus was all I had. The idiocy of that sentiment didn’t make it any less true. ‘I’m staying here.’
‘Very well.’
With those words, the druid left me alone with my master. I didn’t know what to say to Amadeus. It didn’t really matter. It wasn’t as if he could hear me.
‘My eye socket itches,’ I told him. ‘It has maggots in it.’
Amadeus made no comment.
Within an hour, three of Owyn’s orderlies brought me a new surgical bed, so I might share my master’s chamber. Not long after lying down, I fell asleep to the sounds of Amadeus’ respirator.
Was I free now? Was I no longer a slave to the Mentor Legion?
And if so… What did that mean? What could I do now? Who was I?
I dreamed of fire in black tunnels, not for the first time, and not for the last.