Aaron Dembski-Bowden - The First Heretic

They are not alone in their flaws. The unwinding years will bring these biological errors to light. Gene-seed degeneration resulting in organ failure, stealing the ability to salivate venom; intolerance to certain radiation will alter a warrior’s skin and bones.

‘The Imperial Fists,’ said Malnor. ‘And the Salamanders.’

‘But what of us?’ Dagotal asked.

There was a pause as Ingethel whisper-laughed behind their eyes. What of you?

‘Will we suffer from those... impurities?’

‘Answer him,’ said Argel Tal. ‘He asks what we all wish to know.’

The code written into your bodies is purer than most. You will suffer no special degeneration, and endure no unique flaws.

‘But there is something,’ he said. ‘I hear it in your voice.’

No Astartes is as loyal to their primarch as the XVII are to Lorgar. No Imperial warrior believes in their father’s righteousness with as much faith and ardent devotion.

Argel Tal swallowed. It felt cold, and tasted sour. ‘Our loyalty is bred into our blood?’

No. You are sentient creatures with free will. This is no more than a minor divergence in an otherwise flawless code. Your gene-seed enhances the chemicals in your brain tissue. It gives you focus. It grants you unbreakable loyalty to your cause, and to Lorgar Aurelian.

‘I do not like the turn this revelation is taking,’ the captain confessed.

‘Nor I,’ admitted Torgal.

The surprise you feel is false, Argel Tal. You have seen this before, reflected in the eyes of your brother Legions. Think of the compliance of Cassius, when the pale sons of Corax watched you with distaste, arguing against your savage purge of the heathen population. The Thousand Sons at Antiolochus... The Luna Wolves at Davin... The Ultramarines at Syon...

All of your brothers have watched you and hated you for your unquestioning, focused wrath.

He moved back to Guilliman’s pod, examining it rather than paying attention to the technicians below. ‘I will speak of this no further.’

It is not a flaw to believe, Word Bearer. There is nothing purer.

Argel Tal paid the daemon’s words no mind. Something else had caught his attention and wouldn’t let go.

‘Blood of the... Look. Look at this.’ The captain crouched by the lower half of Guilliman’s coffin-womb. A bulky generator box was half-meshed with the main machinery behind the gestation pod. Coolant feeds quivered as they pumped fluid, and the details that could be made out through gaps in the armoured covering showed the generator’s internal compartments were filled with bubbling red liquid.

Dagotal looked over Argel Tal’s shoulder. ‘Is that blood?’

The captain gave Dagotal a withering look.

‘What?’ the sergeant asked.

‘It’s haemolubricant, for a machine-spirit. These secondary generators are fastened behind each pod. And look, they run along the spinal columns of these structures, up the tower.’

Dagotal and the others looked around. ‘So?’

‘So where have you seen power generators of similar design before? What engine requires a machine-spirit of this complexity to function?’

‘Oh,’ the sergeant said. ‘ Oh. ’

The Word Bearers looked up at the central column, juddering and humming with its machine-parts and multiple power supplies.

At last... Yes...

‘This is more than an incubation tower,’ said Xaphen.

You are so close now...

Argel Tal looked at the pods, each in turn, and the insanely complex array of machinery coupling them to the central column.

Yes... Yes... Witness the truth...

‘This is a generator,’ his voice softened in disbelief, ‘for a Geller Field.’

Xaphen circled the walkway, his clanging boot steps unheard by the horde of technicians working away. Argel Tal watched his Chaplain moving around the pods, a slow suspicion creeping over the back of his neck. Both warriors were unhelmed, and thin sheens of icy sweat glistened on their faces.

‘The most powerful Geller Field in existence,’ Argel Tal gestured to the machinery. ‘The generators on board our vessels, linked with the Navigators... they are a shadow of what we’re seeing here.’

You do not truly comprehend the effect you name a Geller Field. It is more than a kinetic shield against warp energy. The warp itself is the Sea of Souls. Your fields repel raw psychic force. They are a bulwark against the claws of the neverborn.

‘The question we must ask ourselves,’ Xaphen spoke as he stroked the surface of the pod marked XVII, ‘is why these incubators are shielded against...’

Say it.

Xaphen smiled. ‘...against daemons.’

Torgal joined the Chaplain before Lorgar’s pod. He stared inside at the slumbering infant for some time.

‘I believe I know. These children are almost grown to the point of birth. Daemon? Spirit?’

I am here.

Torgal looked acutely uncomfortable interacting with a disembodied voice. ‘The Legions tell the tale of the Emperor’s twenty sons being cast into the heavens by some great tragedy, some flaw in their creation process.’

You have been raised with tales of the primarchs that lead your Legions, but you have been fed centuries of lies. In a matter of moments, you will witness the truth. The Anathema dealt with the Powers of the warp long before he left Earth on the Great Crusade.

The Anathema desired mighty sons, and the gods granted him the lore to forge them with a union of divine genetics and psychic sorcery. He came to my masters, hungry for answers, beseeching the gods for power. With the lore they gave him, he shaped his twenty sons.

But treacheries have occurred. Oaths – sworn in blood and paid in soul – have been broken. The Anathema now refuses to show humanity the Primordial Truth, and the gods of the warp grow wrathful.

The Anathema is keeping its twenty primarch sons and paying no price to the Powers that gifted him with the knowledge to shape them.

Xaphen gripped the handrail to keep from going to his knees. ‘Our father – all of our fathers – are the spawn of ancient blood rituals and forbidden science.’

Argel Tal couldn’t keep from laughing. ‘The Emperor that denies all forms of divinity shaped his own sons with the blessings of forgotten gods. Prayers and sorcery are written upon their gestation pods. This is the most glorious madness.’

Be ready. The reckoning comes. The Powers will reach into the material realm to reclaim the sons they helped breed.

Argel Tal looked at the pods through a smile that wouldn’t fade. ‘This Geller Field. It fails, doesn’t it?’

It will fail in exactly thirty-seven beats of your heart, Argel Tal.

‘And the primarchs are seized – taken by your masters in the warp. That’s the accident that casts them across the galaxy.’

The warp gods are the primarchs’ rightful fathers. This is not to spite your Emperor. It is nothing but divine justice. And as these perfect children travel through the stars, they will grow. This is the first step in the gods’ plans to save mankind.

‘And Aurelian...’

Is the most important one of all. Lorgar’s incubation pod will be carried to Colchis, to walk the first steps to enlightening humanity of the Primordial Truth, and the gods behind the stars. Without the gods, humanity will die, piece by piece, under the predation of the aliens that still lay claim to much of the galaxy. Those that remain will die as the eldar died: in agony, unable to see the Primordial Truth before their very eyes.