Speculum Enigmate Chapter 43
Pain, that was all he could feel: all-encompassing and crushing pain. It burned his back and sank talons into his bones. It chewed on his muscles and put a vice upon his beating hearts, draining his spirit and leaving him numb. He could feel the weight of stone piled upon his legs and the struggle to breathe as cracked ribs pressed upon his lungs. His implants burned hot in a vain effort to restore his body, even on the verge of death his genhanced body sought to restore itself, trying to make him fit for battle once more. It was pointless, he was too badly damaged. Memnos was going nowhere.
The Apothecary lay face down on the tunnel floor, his lower half buried in the rubble. He had no idea how many hours he had laid like this. He had blacked out for a long time and the Machine Spirit of his armour was offended by the damage it had taken and refused to tell him anything. His vision swam as the Autosenses reset and recalibrated, shifting angles and depths as it tried to restore itself. Memnos could do little about it; he was in no position to commence blessings upon his armour, not when he was buried in the ruins of the battle.
Memnos could remember the desperate fight in the viaduct, the overwhelming swarms of Genestealers rushing towards them and the frantic flight of his comrades. He could remember holding the line, trying to buy a few more precious moments for the evacuation. He had been swarmed, his plate and body violated by claws and talons, penetrating his body and tearing at his implants. He had expected to die but then there had been an explosion. The Melta bombs must have done more damage than expected for half the viaduct's roof had come crashing down, burying Memnos in rubble and leaving him for dead.
Memnos had little idea if any of his comrades had escaped, he did not know if they had reached the Monument and completed their mission or fallen to the claws of the Genestealers. There was no way for him to find out and nothing he could do to aid them. The knowledge of his impotence gnawed at him, it was not in the nature of an Astartes to be helpless. His training and Hypno-indoctrination demanded he rise and fight, everything he had ever been taught screamed at him to move but he couldn't, there was no strength left in him.
Memnos was an Apothecary and a part of his mind drifted into a clinical state, examining his condition from a detached perspective. The fact that his body hadn't healed itself was grim news. An Astartes' implants should be able to repair almost anything. A Space Marine was hard to put down but next to impossible to keep down. Mysterious implants, reinforced bones, a secondary heart, all engineered to get them up and fighting again. Anything that didn't kill a Transhuman outright should be repairable.
Memnos judged his bones were broken in many places and his flesh battered and bruised, while his head span from heavy impacts. His implants must be damaged for them not to be repairing the trauma, but without surgery there was no way for him to inspect them. His arms and shoulders were free of the debris but he couldn't find the strength to unbury the rest of himself. Yet worse than all of this was the fact he couldn't feel his legs, nothing below his lumbar spine could be felt. That was bad, if his spinal cord had been severed then it would require extensive augmetic work and neural shunts to reroute the nerve impulses around the break, something that wasn't going to happen here. If the Emperor was smiling upon Memnos it could just be herniated discs squeezing the nerves bundles, but with his armour faltering there was no way to tell.
Memnos lay silently and considered his options. The Apothecary coda recommended an Astartes this traumatised should engage his Sus-an-Membrane and sink into a homeostatic coma. He could lay here for months, years even, waiting for someone to find him. Assuming it was his brethren and not a Genestealer Memnos would be carried back to the Fortress-Monastery and rebuilt, then sent out to war once more. Memnos found no joy in that prospect. What did he have to live for: shame and denigration, eternal self-loathing? Perhaps it was better to not be found, perhaps it was time for him to lay down his burdens. Yes, Memnos' duty was done and he could at last escape his shame, the peace of the grave lay within his grasp.
Suddenly Memnos' autosenses burst into sharp clarity and he beheld the battlefield. Piles of dead Hybrids lay decomposing where they had fallen and amongst them lay three Primaris Intercessors. A sharp stab of recrimination tore through Memnos at the sight. Their gene-seed was unharvested, the holy Progenoids which were essential to the creation of future generations of Space Marines. Gifts from the Emperor, the blood of their Primarch and a Brother's legacy unto the future, there was no more precious a treasure than they. The sacred trust of the Apothecary order was to collect and preserve the Progenoids, keeping them safe from all harm. Memnos had already failed to collect several Brother's legacies but from these three Brothers an entire squad could be born. Doubly vital since they were Primaris, the new order meant to eclipse the Firstborn Astartes.
Memnos' duty was clear; he couldn't die until he had harvested the Progenoids. His hands rose feebly, shaking with palsy but after only a few seconds they fell back to the ground. Memnos did not have the strength to free himself, his vitality was spent. He was done. Memnos' head rolled to the left and he breathed, "I… I can't… I'm too..."
It was then that Memnos realised that someone was looking at him. He saw a thin pair of legs standing next to him, leading up to a pale body. His eyes rose higher and he saw a young boy in a short shrift, marked with the icon of the Storm Heralds. The child had a shaven head and a face filled with sorrow and pain. Memnos' hearts froze at the impossible sight for he recognised this child. It was Erad son of Erath, one of his experimental subjects. Memnos had inflicted dishonourable experiments upon this child, implanting the Aspirant with perverted Gene-seed and timing how long it took him to die. A betrayal of the Brotherhood of the Chapter, the sacred trust that bound Space Marine to Space Marine, even down to the lowliest Aspirant. Erad had placed his trust in Memnos and the Apothecary had repaid him with cruelty and malice.
Erad said nothing, merely staring at the Apothecary with accusation burning in his eyes. A tiny part of Memnos' mind knew that he was hallucinating, dredging up old memories in his delirious state. Yet the greater part of his spirit ached with shame and guilt. The betrayal of Brotherhood the Apothecary order had inflicted on this boy and others like him had been a disgrace, they had forsaken their sacred trust and played gods with the lives of innocents. Memnos could see them all, all three thousand, seven hundred and thirty names were etched into his memory. He could never forget them, he wouldn't allow it.
Erad was gone but another ghost replaced him, and another. Each of Memnos' victims returning to haunt him and every one of them bearing accusation in their eyes. Memnos' shame burned hotter than ever. How could he think of letting himself die, how could he think to know peace after what he had done? He hadn't earned the right to forget his shame; he hadn't earned the right to die. He had a duty yet unfulfilled and to admit defeat was an insult to all those he had wronged.
Memnos' hands reached out once more and dug Ceramite digits into the stone of the floor. He tensed and searing agony tore through him as a part of him pleaded for this torment to cease. Yet he gritted his teeth and snarled, "I deserve this pain." His arms heaved and his back erupted into fire, searing claws of anguish tearing his body apart from the inside out. Agony, unbearable and all-encompassing, tore through Memnos, making him feel like he was being ripped in half but he only redoubled his efforts. He pulled for all he was worth as he wept, "Erad… Babboa… Kinta… Miwaq… Heyia… Virde…"
The names of his victims drove him on, forcing his limbs to move and then with a screech of Ceramite upon rock Memnos' legs slithered from their prison. The pain did not relent and he could not feel his legs, but he forced himself to crawl forward, dragging himself hand over hand across the filthy floor. He reached the first Primaris and his limbs quivered but he forced himself to release the clamps of the Breastplate then placed his Narthecium over the hearts. The drill-bit extended at a mental command and he gritted his teeth as the juddering saw jerked his damaged frame about. He sawed through the fibre-bundle undersheath and the reinforced ribcage, then a small mechandrite shot into the gaping wound he had made and neatly excised the Progenoid from the surrounding tissue. An auto-recall clamp pulled it free and deposited it in a sterile canopic jar, storing the Gene-seed in preserving fluids.
Memnos repeated the procedure on the throat, then detached the canopic jar and clamped it to his waist, before slotting in a new one. One Brother's legacy had been saved but two more remained. He forced himself to drag his useless form over to the next body, feeling his victims staring at him all the while. His body was broken but his will was unyielding, compelling him to continue until he had all three sets of Gene-seed in his keeping. Then he flopped back, noticing this last Brother had been carrying the Demolition charges. Memnos' duty was fulfilled and now he could allow himself to die.
He lay on his front, staring at the hole he had cut into the dead Primaris and waiting for death to claim him. Yet something was nagging at him. His victims were pointing at something, they were pointing into the hole in the corpse. Memnos couldn't fathom why they were doing it, but they were insistent, jabbing fingers into the hole. Memnos' head craned about and he frowned as he saw the gory chest cavity laid bare. Lungs, hearts, liver, implants, all in perfect detail.
A cold rush ran through Memnos as he realised what his ghosts were trying to tell him. Inside the dead Primaris was a unique implant, something a regular Astartes didn't have. The Belisarian Furnace, that tiny node filled with Hyper-adrenaline and Aggression-boosters. It gave a Primaris a last burst of vitality, fuelling their zeal for a short period and boosting their implant's functioning, increasing strength and cell-regeneration in the recipient. If Memnos could extract those chemicals then he could steal that power for himself.
With shaking hands Memnos extended a tiny needle from his Narthecium and inserted it into the Furnace, drawing forth a cocktail of genically-engineered stimulants. He drained the implant dry and directed the soup into a syringe. His head was swimming but he persisted, filling a vial with the mysterious gift of Belisarius Cawl and then he detached it and leaned his neck over, preparing to inject himself.
He paused as a caution occurred to him. Primaris Marines had other implants: the Sinew Coils to strengthen their ligaments, the Magnificat to amplify and regulate the workings of the other implants. Without that extra augmentation a Transhuman body would turn against itself, doing untold damage to the vital organs. This cocktail was never intended for a mere Astartes to use, one lacking the strengthening and stabilising influence of the other implants. There was no telling what this potion would do to Memnos, it may heal him or it may kill him. Either way one thing was certain: it would be an agonising experience.
Memnos' jaw set as his ghosts stared at him. He had failed them once and would never do so again. Pain, agony and torment were nothing when set against his shame. He would not shirk from pain, he had sworn to suffer whatever torments fate saw fit to place upon him but this… this was something else. Memnos hesitated as he wrestled with the decision but then he looked into the many eyes of his ghosts and his lips parted as he snarled, "I get what I Frakking deserve."
Memnos rammed the needle into his neck and pressed the plunger. Three seconds passed and then the fire hit him. His veins burned with torment as the cocktail hit his bloodstream and his eyes boiled in his skull. His implants flared, each one trying to rip its way out of his body as they were forced into a state of hyperactivity, beyond anything they had ever been meant to know. His bones screamed as they were forced to knit, his hearts beat like drums in his chest and his muscles cramped as they swelled inside his armour. His back arched as the tissues were driven to correct themselves, the potion brute-forcing his body into a healing state beyond the bounds of sanity. No Astartes was meant to undergo such an experience, without the Magnificat his body could not process the chemicals thundering through his veins, without the Sinew Coils his ligaments quivered like bowstrings. His conventional Oolitic Kidney could not clear this foreign chemical from his blood, nothing could stop it running its course.
Memnos let loose a scream of pure agony as a red mist descended over his eyes. Memnos' mind filled with red rage, his sanity dissolving in a flood of aggression-boosters and hyper-adrenaline, replaced with a savage urge to kill and slay. His reason fell apart and his legs jerked, finally responding to commands. He rose to his feet with a roar of savage rage, bellowing with mad fury as he sought to vent his pain in a red-hot rush of violent aggression. Memnos had just enough presence of mind to snatch up the bag of demolition charges, then he was running.
He sprinted into the darkness, seeking an enemy to fight, any enemy. The throes of rabid rage carried Memnos away into the dark, racing towards the faint sounds of battle. He did not know where he was going or how long this artificial madness would endure, but the pounding of his hearts would not let him turn aside. Memnos was racing to war and he would kill anything he found when he got there.
Behind him his ghosts faded away, leaving only silence in the deeps places of the world.
