Dan Abnett - First and Only

Fereyd laughed. 'Sixty years ago on Geyluss Auspix, a rat-water world a long way from nothing in Pleigo Sutarnus, a team of Imperial scouts found an intact STC in the ruins of a pyramid city in a jungle basin. Intact. You know what it made? It was the Standard Template Constructor for a type of steel blade, an alloy of folded steel composite that was sharper and lighter and tougher than anything we've had before. Thirty whole Chapters of the great Astartes are now using blades of the new pattern. The scouts became heroes. I believe each was given a world of his own. It was regarded as the greatest technological advance of the century, the greatest discovery, the most perfect and valuable STC recovery in living memory.'

That made knives, Bram… knives, daggers, bayonets, swords. It made blades and it was the greatest discovery in memory. Compared to this… it's less than nothing. Take one of those wonderful new blades and face me with the weapon this thing can make.'

'I read the crystal before you did, Fereyd. I know what it can do. Iron Men; the old myth, one of the tales of the Great Old Wars.'

Fereyd grinned. Then breathe in this moment, my friend. We've found the impossible here. A device to guarantee the ascendancy of man. What's a stronger, lighter, sharper, better blade when you can overrun the homeworld of the man wielding it with a legion of deathless warriors? This is history, you know, alive in the air around us. This makes us the greatest of men. Don't you feel it?'

Gaunt and Fereyd both turned slowly, surveying the silent ranks of metal beings waiting behind the grilles.

Gaunt hesitated. 'I feel… only horror. To have fought and killed and sacrificed just to win a device that will do more of the same a thousandfold. This isn't a prize, Fereyd. It is a curse.'

'But you came looking for it? You knew what it was.'

'I know my responsibilities, Fereyd. I dedicate my life to the service of the Imperium, and if a device like this exists then it's my duty to secure it in the name of our beloved Emperor. And you gave me the job of finding it, after all.'

Fereyd set his helmet on the silver floor and began to unlace his gloves, shaking his head. 'I love you like a brother, old friend, but sometimes you worry me. We share a discovery like this and you trot out some feeble moral line about lives? That's called hypocrisy, you know. You're a killer, slaved to the greatest killing engine in the known galaxy. That's your work, your life, to end others. To destroy. And you do it with relish. Now we find something that will do it a billion times better than you, and you start to have qualms? What is it? Professional jealousy?'

Gaunt scratched his cheek, thoughtful. You know me better. Don't mock me. I'm surprised at your glee. I've known the Princeps of Imperial Titans who delight in their bloodshed,

and who nevertheless regard the vast power at their disposal with caution. Give any man the power of a god, and you better hope he's got the wisdom and morals of a god to match. There's nothing feeble about my moral line. I value life. That is why I fight to protect it. I mourn every man I lose and every sacrifice I make. One life or a billion, they're all lives.'

'One life or a billion?' Fereyd echoed. 'It's just a matter of proportion, of scale. Why slog in the mud with your men for months to win a world I can take with Iron Men… and not spill a drop of blood?'

'Not a drop? Not ours, maybe. There is no greater heresy than the thinking machines of the Iron Age. Would you unleash such a heresy again? Would you trust these… things not to turn on us as they did before? It is the oldest of laws. Mankind must never again place his fate in the hands of his creations, no matter how clever. I trust flesh and blood, not iron.'

Gaunt found himself almost hypnotised by the row of dark eye-sockets behind the grille. These things were the future? He didn't think so. The past, perhaps, a past better forgotten and denied. How could any one wake them? How could anyone even think of making more and unleashing them against…

Against who? The enemy? Warmaster Macaroth and his retinue? This was how Dravere planned to usurp control of the Crusade? This was what it had all been about?

'You've really taken your poor orphan Ghosts into your heart, haven't you, Bram? The concern doesn't suit you.'

'Maybe I sympathise. Orphans stick with orphans.'

Fereyd walked away a few paces. You're not the man I knew, Ibram Gaunt. The Ghosts have softened you with their wailing and melancholy. You're blind to the truly momentous possibilities here.'

'You're not, obviously. You said 'I'.'

Fereyd stopped in his tracks and turned around. 'What?'

' ''A world I can take without spilling a drop of blood''. Your words. You would use this, wouldn't you? You'd use them.' He gestured to the sleeping iron figures.

'Better I than no one.'

'Better no one. That's why I came here. It's why I thought you had come here too, or why you'd sent me.'

Fereyd's face turned dark and ugly. 'What are you blathering about?'

'I'm here to destroy this thing so that no one can use it,' said Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt.

He turned away from Fereyd's frozen face and called to Caffran and Mkoll. 'Unpack the tube charges,' he instructed. 'Put them where they count. Rawne knows demolition better than any. That's why I brought him along. Get him to supervise. And signal Corbec, or whoever's left up top. Tell them to pull out of the necropolis right now. I dare not imagine what will happen when we do this.'

In the isolation sphere, Heldane froze and clenched the mirror so tightly that it cracked. Thin blood oozed out from under his hooked thumb. He had entirely underestimated this Gaunt, this blunt fool. Such power, such scope; if only he had been given the chance to work on Gaunt and make him the pawn.

Heldane swallowed. There was no time to waste now. The prize was in his grasp. No Imperial Guard nobody would thwart him now. Discretion and subterfuge went to the winds. He lanced his mind down into the blunt skull of his pawn, urging him to act and throw off the deceit. To kill them all, before this madman Gaunt could damage the holy relic and kill the Iron Men.

Sat at the edge of the Edicule chamber, checking his barb-lance with his back resting against the silver wall, Rawne shuddered and blood seeped down out of his nose, thick in his mouth. He felt the touch of the bastard monster Heldane more strongly than ever now, clawing at his skull, digging in his eyes like scorpion claws. His guts churned and trembling filled his limbs.

Major Rawne stumbled to his feet, sliding a barb-round into the lance-launcher and swinging it to bear.

TWENTY-FOUR

With the sudden reinforcement of Zoren's Vitrians, Corbec's platoons pushed the Chaos elements back into the ruins of the necropolis, slaughtering as they went. The misshapen forces of madness were in rout.

Leaning on a boulder and wheezing at the pain flooding through his ribs, Corbec thought to order up a vox-caster and signal command that the victory was theirs, but Milo was suddenly at his side, holding a foil-print out from a vox-caster.

'It's the commissar,' he said, 'We have to get clear of the Target Primaris. Well clear.'

Corbec studied the film slip. 'Feth! We spend all day getting in here…'

He waved Raglon over and pulled the speaker horn from the caster set on the man's back.

This is Corbec of the Tanith First and Only to all Tanith and Vitrian officers. Word from Gaunt: pull back and out! I repeat, clear the necropolis area!'

Colonel Zoren's voice floated across the speaker channel. 'Has he done it, Corbec? Has he achieved the goal?'

'He didn't say, colonel,' Corbec snapped in reply. 'We've done this much on his word, let's do the rest. Withdrawal plan five-ninety! We'll cover and support your Dragoons in a layered fall back.'