The Beast Arises

‘Let me put it another way,’ Van Auken said. ‘I think your sentimentality a falsehood. You suffer no less from the vagaries of pride than the rest of the priesthood. We are all judged by our work. You fear the Fabricator General’s disappointment, no less than I. You don’t want to be assigned to some Eastern Fringe dead-world research station for eternity, studying fossilised evidence of silica nematodes. The Omnissiah is willing to forgive failure, given that it is a step on the journey to success. Failing to embark on the journey in the first place is the sin of ignorance, and the Machine God and his servants are less willing to forgive you that.’

‘I think you will find the Adeptus Astartes even less forgiving than that,’ Urquidex said.

‘Are you threatening me, magos?’ Van Auken said coolly.

‘Let’s just hope that the Adeptus Astartes never have reason to visit the Eastern Fringe,’ Urquidex said. ‘Will there be anything else, artisan-primus?’

The priests stared at each other through the thick observation-port armourglass.

‘What of the recovered magos?’ Van Auken said finally.

‘Magos Biologis Phaeton Laurentis is now the only official survivor of the Ardamantuan atrocity,’ Urquidex said, turning to where the half-priest lay on his stretcher-slab.

He wasn’t there.

Urquidex discovered that the magos biologis had reached down his stretcher-slab and unlocked the brake before hauling the tracked gurney across the laboratorium by heaving arm-over-arm on a line of cables and data-feeds. His exhausting efforts had brought his stretcher-slab over to where the last Imperial Fist had been surgically butchered and had died. Urquidex and Van Auken watched as Laurentis — his ruined mouth continuing to babble trauma-induced nonsense — placed his hand on the Imperial Fist’s yellow pauldron.

‘It seems that sentimentality is a disease common to your specialism,’ Van Auken accused. Urquidex ignored him and watched the magos biologis with fascination. Pushing himself off the pauldron, Laurentis snatched at the fibre cabling running between the Adeptus Astartes’ body and the auspectoria banks. Moving his smashed, skeletal digits across the instrumentation, the tech-priest fell to adjusting calibrations and auspectra frequencies.

‘Are you going to stand by and allow a delirious patient to disrupt the settings of your equipment, magos?’ Van Auken said. ‘He might be erasing precious data of the previous procedures.’

‘The Third Law of Universal Variance,’ Urquidex murmured.

‘The Bystander Paradox?’

‘Do not interfere,’ Urquidex said.

Slamming his bloodied palm against a fat stud, Laurentis completed his reprogramming of the laboratorium equipment. The flatline feed and mortis-tone died abruptly. It was replaced with a distant, signature life sign. The very faintest beat of twin hearts.

‘What is that?’ Van Auken demanded.

Urquidex walked up to the instrumentation and placed a hand on the forehead of the butchered half-priest. His chest was rising and falling with exertion and his brow was moist. His babblings continued unabated. Looking closely at the field-auspex, he discovered that the magos had set it to a broad-range scan.

‘It’s a fourth life sign,’ Urquidex informed him. ‘Very weak. Buried below the others.’ He began punching buttons and twisting dials on the rune bank. ‘I’m rerouting this data to the bridge. Alpha primus, if you please.’

Through the armourglass bubble-port, Orozko was already on the observation deck vox-hailer. The feeble heartbeats continued. Nothing like the thunder they once must have been, but insistent nonetheless. Both Van Auken and Urquidex looked to the skitarii officer.

‘Ship augur arrays have boosted and traced the signal,’ the alpha primus said finally. ‘The life sign is confirmed as Adeptus Astartes. It’s coming from the wreck of the Amkulon.’

‘Holy Mars,’ Urquidex said. ‘The radiation.’

‘Artisan-primus,’ Orozko said. ‘Several members of your trajectorae team are on the bridge. They say that the signal betrays the trace power signature of recent trans-vectoring.’

‘A teleportation homer?’

‘Yes, artisan-primus.’

‘Van Auken?’ Urquidex called through the armourglass. ‘How can we have only detected this now?’

‘The gravitic disturbances inflicted on the system might have had an inhibiting effect on the teleportation technologies,’ the artisan trajectorae hypothesised. ‘With the removal of the affecting body — the xenos attack moon — the disturbance subsided and the vectoring achieved realisation.’

‘Life signs are extremely weak,’ Urquidex reported.

The artisan-primus nodded. ‘Alpha primus — please select an extraction team from your men. The survivor must be recovered and removed from the toxic environment of the derelict.’

‘Yes, artisan-primus.’

‘Alpha primus,’ Van Auken added, ‘this is a mortis-mission. The skitarii returning from the Amkulon will be compromised and not expected to survive.’

‘I shall send Vanguard units. They are already radiation-compromised,’ Orozko replied dourly before leaving the observation deck.