Aaron Dembski-Bowden - The First Heretic

It was said other Legions worked more harmoniously with the Martian Cybernetica cult, especially the blessed Iron Hands and unbreakable Iron Warriors – both of whom enjoyed the Mechanicum’s immense (and immensely valuable) respect from the first days their forces joined together in the Terran Emperor’s crusade.

But over time, Xi-Nu 73 – who had most humbly risen to oversee a maniple of four robots – came to realise that the Word Bearers were not like their Astartes brothers. It was an opinion shared by others of his rank, on those increasingly rare occasions he established contact with them.

As the fleets moved farther and farther apart since the last grand gathering at Colchis three years before, so too did contact between the Carthage maniples wane. Vox-signals would never reach across such distances. Even astropathy was rumoured to be becoming unreliable – not that Xi-Nu 73 had access to such a talent.

Xi-Nu 73’s principal problem where the Word Bearers were concerned was their fundamental organic nature. In short, they were too human. They valued the flawed aspects of faith, focusing on the flesh and the soul, rather than transcendence through oneness with the Machine-God. They were fuelled by emotion, rather than logic, which affected their tactical decisions and their very goals in the Great Crusade.

Most tellingly of all, many of the Serrated Sun’s warriors seemed uncomfortable around the Mechanicum adepts themselves, as if forever on the edge of voicing some accusation, or framing a grievous complaint.

Too human. That was the problem. Too emotional, too driven by instinctive faith and eloquent diction. Too human, resulting in distance between the factions.

The exception to this distance was a source of disquiet for Xi-Nu 73, because the exception was his own Conqueror Primus.

Incarnadine , blessings upon its brave soul, was sincerely respected by the Word Bearers.

Indeed, they called it ‘Brother’.

He led the Astartes into the preparatory chamber, where his wards were undergoing the final rituals before reawakening. The three armoured machines stood in impassive silence, doted on by Mechanicum menials, all under Xi-Nu 73’s command. Two of the robed attendants were lifting Vermillion’s back-mounted lascannon, hefting it up along its greased runner track, testing the smoothness of motion as they brought it up to the firing position on the Cataphract’s shoulder.

Sanguine , the gangly Crusader-class twin to Alizarin , was almost ready. The juddering clank of autoloaders filled the chamber as its shoulder cannon was fed fresh stores of ammunition. Servitors oiled its joints, only allowed near the war machine now that the vital work was complete.

Incarnadine was waiting for them.

That fact brought a stab of irritatingly human unease to Xi-Nu 73’s thought processes. The robot’s combat wetware was about to be installed, and then Incarnadine would be ready for deployment. But there it was: the anomalous reading in its brain patterns. An attention spike in the otherwise flat-lining rumble of its cognition. This flare of perception, along with the faintest adjustment of its visual receptors, only ever occurred in the presence of Word Bearers.

Like an animal instinctively recognising its kin, Incarnadine knew when warriors of the XVII Legion were near.

This was why Xi-Nu 73’s pride was tainted. The robot’s cortex shouldn’t have allowed for this level of recognition without its combat wetware installed. It shouldn’t be able to distinguish between targets and non-targets – seeing no difference between Astartes, human soldiers, aliens, or anything else.

In fact, it shouldn’t be able to perceive anything at all beyond the presence of walls and floors, with the simple operational understanding not to crash into anything. And yet the robot had been waiting for this moment. Xi-Nu 73 tracked the glitch in Incarnadine’s sensors as the Conqueror Primus recognised the Word Bearers before it.

‘ Incarnadine ,’ said Argel Tal, and the voice broke the adept’s scrambled line of reasoning. The subcommander wore no helm, and Xi-Nu 73 saw the Astartes looking up at the towering machine. With no small reverence, the warrior unrolled a scroll of parchment, and began to read.

‘As a warrior of the Seventeenth Legio Astartes, the Bearers of the Word, a brotherhood born of Colchis and born of Terra, do you swear to fight in the name of Lorgar – heart and soul, body and blood – until the world below, designated One-Three-Zero One-Nine, is brought to lawful compliance with the Imperium of Man?’

Incarnadine stood in silence. Argel Tal smiled, and didn’t look away.

‘ Incarnadine ,’ said Xi-Nu 73 from his position to the side, ‘swears the oath as it is written.’

The Astartes continued as if the adept wasn’t even there. ‘ Incarnadine , your oath of moment is witnessed by your brothers...’

‘Dagotal.’

‘Torgal.’

‘Malnor.’

‘Xaphen.’

‘...and affirmed by myself, Argel Tal, Subcommander of the Serrated Sun.’ The captain affixed the scroll to Incarnadine’s armour plating, mounting it on the hooks designed especially for this use. All five of the Astartes wore similar scrolls attached to their shoulder guards.

Xi-Nu 73’s pride warred with his unfading irritation. Praise to the Omnissiah for the blessing of his own Conqueror Primus being accepted into an Astartes Legion’s ranks, but curse the influence such a loyalty was having on its cortex.

The ritual completed, the Astartes saluted with their fists over their primary hearts, and made their way from the chamber. There’d been a time when the warriors would have made the sign of the aquila, but Xi-Nu 73 hadn’t seen them perform the Imperial salute since the Legion’s shaming three years before.

In the red-lit gloom of the chamber, the adept focused his tri-lens gaze on the hulking form of his favoured ward.

‘Where do your loyalties lie, I wonder?’

Incarnadine didn’t answer. It stood as it had for hours now: silently awaiting the next battle.

The ship shook again – even in orbit, the void around this new world was rich with warp energies, and occasional pulses of force brushed the ship’s skin. Xi-Nu 73 had also stripped his brain function to deplete the fantastical outreaching of his human imagination, and yet the squealing of the storm against the hull sounded like... claws.

He filed the sound in his lobe archives, and went about his duties, only occasionally disturbed by the sound of nails clawing at the metal hull.

The Blessed Lady really needed to put some clothes on.

She reached blindly over the edge of her bed, her hand patting the floor, questing until she found her robe. Cyrene was slipping the garment over her head when she felt Arric’s arms encircling her from behind.

‘It’s still early,’ he said, breathing the words against her neck.

‘Actually, I think you’re already late. That wasn’t the dawn chime, it was the signal for noon.’

‘Don’t joke,’ he said, pulling her closer.

‘I’m not joking.’ Cyrene ran her fingers through her hair, ignoring his as they quested over her. ‘Arric,’ she said, ‘I’m really not joking.’

He rolled out of bed with an ‘Oh, shit... ’ before repeating the curse a number of times, in various languages.

Being in love with an officer could, at times, be an educational experience – especially ones that could swear in eighteen Gothic dialects.

‘Shit,’ he finished the tirade back where he started. ‘I have to go. Where the hell is my sabre?’

She faced him without seeing him. ‘I think it slid under the bed. I heard it scrape on the floor last night.’