Aaron Dembski-Bowden - The First Heretic

Xaphen exhaled misty curls of vapour. ‘This... This is Terra. The Emperor’s gene-laboratories.’

Yes. Many years before the Anathema’s crusade to reclaim the stars. Here, with the full clarity of its emotionless inhumanity, it has finished shaping its twenty children.

The Chaplain crossed to a table, where vials of blood span in a centrifuge, separating into layers within each glass vial. ‘If this is a vision of the past, how could the Emperor destroy us here?’

You are protected for now, Xaphen. That is all that matters. This is what transpires on Terra, as the elder empire burns with soul-fire. The Anathema senses it will soon be time to begin his Great Crusade.

The Word Bearers moved along the rows of tables, their course taking them closer to the central platform standing above the laboratory. A column of black and silver machinery stood upon the decking there, ringed by a wide walkway. Argel Tal climbed the stairs first, his boots echoing on the metal, going unheard by the dozens of technicians nearby. Several passed him, paying no heed to anything beyond the digital streams on their frostbitten data-slates and the sine-wave readings on their handheld auspex readers.

Argel Tal walked across the platform, around the amniotic pods coupled to the main column – bound there by dense messes of wires, chains, cables and industrial clamps. The generators built into the column of metal made the same angry thrum as Astartes back-mounted power packs, and that little detail brought a smile to the captain’s face.

The womb of the primarchs. Here, the Anathema’s sons gestate in their cold cradles.

Argel Tal approached the closest pod. Its surface was unpainted grey iron, smooth in the few places where it wasn’t scabbed by machinery sockets and connection ports. Etched clearly onto its front plating in silver lettering was the Gothic numeral XIII. Beneath the silver plate, an inscription was scratched into the metal in tiny, meticulous handwriting.

The exact meaning of the words escaped Argel Tal – it seemed a long and complicated prayer, beseeching outside forces for blessings and strength – but the fact he could read them was mystery enough.

‘This is Colchisian,’ he said aloud.

It is, and it is not.

‘I can read it.’

The tongue you name Colchisian is a fragment of a primordial language. Colchisian... Cadian... these tongues were seeded onto your worlds in readiness for the coming age. The Emperor’s golden pets could not read those inscriptions, for they do not carry Lorgar’s blood in their veins. All of this was planned aeons ago.

‘And the Cadians?’

Their world was touched, as Colchis was touched. Seeds planted in abundance, all to flower in this moment.

Argel Tal approached the pod marked XIII. A glass screen at eye level showed nothing but the milky fluid within.

And then, movement.

Go no closer.

The briefest shadow of something stirred inside the artificial womb.

Stay back. The daemon’s voice was edged now – sharpened by concern.

Argel Tal stepped closer.

A child slumbered within the gestation pod, curled up in foetal helplessness, its eyes closed. It turned slowly in the amniotic milk, half-formed limbs moving in somnolent repose.

Stay back, Word Bearer. I sense your rising wrath. Do not assume I am the only one who is capable of feeling it. Strong emotion will also alert the Anathema.

Argel Tal leaned closer to the pod. His fingertips brushed frost from its surface.

‘Guilliman,’ he whispered.

The child slept on.

Xaphen moved away from the others, coming to the pod etched with XI. Rather than peer into its depths, he looked over his shoulder at Argel Tal.

‘The eleventh primarch sleeps within this pod – still innocent, still pure. I ache to end this now,’ he confessed.

Malnor chuckled from behind the Chaplain. ‘It would save us all a lot of effort, wouldn’t it?’

‘And it would spare Aurelian from heartbreak.’ Xaphen traced his fingertips over the designating numeral. ‘I remember the devastation that wracked him after losing his second and eleventh brothers.’

Argel Tal still hadn’t left Guilliman’s pod. ‘We do not know for certain if our actions here would change the future.’

‘Are some chances not worth taking?’ asked the Chaplain.

‘Some are. This one is not.’

‘But the Eleventh Legion–’

‘Is expunged from Imperial record for good reason. As is the Second. I’m not saying I don’t feel temptation creeping over me, brother. A single sword thrust piercing that pod, and we’d unwrite a shameful future.’

Dagotal cleared his throat. ‘And deny the Ultramarines a significant boost in recruitment numbers.’

Xaphen regarded him with emotionless eyes, seeming to weigh the merit of such a thing.

‘What?’ Dagotal asked the others. ‘You were thinking it, too. It’s no secret.’

‘Those are just rumours,’ Torgal grunted. The assault sergeant didn’t sound particularly certain.

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. The Thirteenth definitely swelled to eclipse all the other Legions around the time the Second and Eleventh were “forgotten” by Imperial archives.’

Enough of this insipid conjecture, came the disembodied voice again.

Argel Tal looked below the platform, where the scientists laboured at their stations. Most were dealing with bloodwork, or working on biopsies of pale flesh. He recognised the extracted organs immediately.

‘Why are these men and women experimenting on Astartes gene-seed?’ he asked. The other Word Bearers followed his gaze.

They are not experimenting on it. They are inventing it.

Argel Tal watched them work, as Ingethel’s voice hissed on. He saw several of the workers nearby slicing open the pale organs with silver scalpels. Each of them bore the numeral I on the back of their environment suits.

Your Emperor has conquered his own world with the proto-Astartes created in far inferior conditions. Now he breeds the primarchs, and in their shadow, he breeds the warriors he needs to lead the Great Crusade.

He watched them work, but the sight of his genetic genesis left his skin crawling.

These are the prototypical organs that will become the gene-seed for the first true Astartes. You know them as –

‘The Dark Angels,’ said Argel Tal. ‘The First Legion.’ Below him, the biotechnicians scalpelled through malformed organs, threaded veins, analysed with microscopes, and took tissue samples for further testing. The progenoid glands implanted in his own throat and chest throbbed with sympathetic ache. He lifted a hand to rub at the sore spot on the side of his neck, where the organ hidden beneath the skin did its silent work – storing his genetic coding until the moment of his death, whereupon it would be harvested and implanted within another child. The boy would, in turn, grow to become a Word Bearer. No longer human. No longer Homo Sapiens , but Homo Astartes .

It will be many Terran years before the organs below are ready for implantation in human youths. This is early in the process. Most of the flaws in gene-seed structure will be written out in the course of the coming decades.

The captain didn’t like the creature’s tone. ‘Most?’

Most. Not all.

‘The Thousand Sons,’ said Xaphen. ‘Their genetic code was misaligned. The Legion was afflicted by mutation and psychic instability.’