CHAPTER 1 ~ The Broken Man
"Nec cladem nec ignobilitatem"
(Neither defeat nor dishonour)
- Motto of the Leigoran 32nd Rangers
"I can't go back," the broken man said to the giant.
It still hurt to speak. His face was scored by ugly welts where skin had been rejoined and sutured. He was cross-hatched with such scars, his entire body bearing witness to the remaking of ruined flesh.
The giant did not answer him immediately. Man and transhuman sat in silence at the foot of the stone steps leading to the monastery's great doors, contemplating the estate beyond its walls.
The garden was an improbable idyll, a pastoral scene more suited to an Imperial governor's palace than a fortress hewn from the side of a mountain. Orderly rows of iridescent plants and evergreen trees lined the wide expanse of neatly trimmed grass. Unseen insects buzzed and whirred in the day's rising heat.
Some fifty metres beyond their seat, the immaculate lawn met the edge of the plateau, giving way to a series of staggered terraces which covered the hill's steep descent in concentric rings, each level dedicated to a different class of vegetation. From time to time, the ant-like figures of white-robed menials could be seen moving in and out of the dense flora on the lower terraces, collecting fruit in baskets.
"You don't want to go back," the giant said finally, looking down at his companion. "That is understandable." He lifted a hand then hesitated, as if about to place it on the man's shoulder, then thinking better of it. "Leigora is a shattered world. Your sense of duty might compel you to return, but you would find it only a husk now, the population exterminated, its cities in ruins. It is lost to you."
The man nodded. His gaze remained fixed on the distance where mist circled the neighbouring mountain peaks. "I know. I meant I can't go back to any of it. Not Leigora, not anywhere. I am crippled, Astameus."
The giant made a rumbling noise that may have been a sigh. "Come, Julius. Do not underestimate your value. How many officers of the Astra Militarum have faced traitor astartes and survived?"
The man called Julius laughed sourly, creasing the prominent red scars that ran down his face. "I oversaw a defensive position manned by almost a hundred men. There were eight of those — those things. They slaughtered all but one of my command. I see nothing commendable in the accident of my survival."
Astameus smiled. "Yet, your force killed two of the traitors," he said, "a not insignificant feat. Those warriors fought at the very gates of the palace on Terra and evaded the Emperor's justice for ten thousand years before you ended them. You should take pride in that much."
Julius gave a slow shake of his head. "Yet, we lost and I would be dead had your chapter not relieved us on Leigora, if you had not brought me here. You have remade me, Tutor Astameus. Yet, despite all the artifice employed in restoring me, my hand still shakes too much to aim a las pistol."
"A psychosomatic reaction to the trauma of your experience," the space marine said. "It will pass. You will find your aim greatly improved in time."
"You're not listening to me!"
A passing menial stared in alarm at the sight of a mere mortal addressing one of their masters so. Julius saw his hands had reflexively balled into fists. The technology which had replaced much of his nervous system had a will of its own that he was yet to master. He closed his eyes and breathed out slowly until he felt his locked fingers uncurl. "It's not my physical wounds that trouble me, Astameus, it's merely that I see the futility of it all. The traitors opened my eyes. Leigora was a world with a great martial tradition. We'd provided regiments for the Emperor's wars for longer than anyone can remember. The people were proud of our regiments, our victories and honours, proud of our history."
He turned away from Astameus, gazing once more at the outline of the neighbouring peaks, at this hour just ominous shapes in the early day's mist. "It took those eight monsters a mere four and a half minutes to show me that all our dedication and sacrifice in the name of duty was worth nothing. We are like children compared to you," he said bitterly. "What use are mortal men in a war fought between mad gods and angels?"
The space marine inclined his head slightly, as if conceding the point."The Imperium is aflame, Julius. Everywhere, the enemy advances unchecked. Even with the Primarch returned to us and his numberless sons to reinforce our chapters, the total strength of the astartes is a fraction of that required to turn back the tide." He placed a massive hand on Lakond's arm, making the man's limb appear impossibly thin and frail by comparison."The Imperium has long kept its people vulnerable to the predations of the warp in the false belief that their innocence was a shield." Astameus snorted. "Such hubris! Tell me, how well did ignorance of the traitor legions serve you when you tried to meet a World Eaters' warband with a line of light infantry?"
"We had not considered such a thing possible — to be fighting space marines," Julius murmured. Even now the idea struck him as obscene. "None of our weapons could even scratch their armour, we lacked any means to do them damage." He shook his head. "Since then, all your instruction has done is to prove to me how feeble we truly are in the face of such a foe."
"You were feeble. But you are not the man who first came here." Astameus's expression remained stern."You have been with us for six months. That is long enough to have absorbed the lessons you need. If we are to prevail, then victory must be won by armies under the leadership of ordinary men like you, Julius Lakond, not Adeptus Astartes."
Julius raised a knot of scar tissue where his eyebrow had once been. "What of my man, Sturm — what lessons has he absorbed under your tutelage? What great purpose does he fulfil in the new Imperium?"
Astameus cocked his head to one side. His granite-like features betrayed no suggestion of levity, but Lakond had learnt to recognise this body language as the closest the space marines ever came to amusement. "Corporal Sturm is already everything that The Emperor requires his soldiers to be."
Julius plucked a handful of grass and watched it blow away, carried over the lip of the plateau and beyond. "You sound like you admire him."
Astameus's expression reverted to its usual, serious mien. "That is because I do. It is easy for those such as I, who have received the Emperor's gifts, to be courageous and mindful of our duty. Sturm lacks all my advantages, yet he remains what he is required to be; a weapon to defeat the enemy."
Julius snorted. "Sturm is a thug."
"He accounted single handedly for one of the two World Eaters you killed. If you had commanded a hundred men such as he, the outcome on Leigora may have been very different."
"So what we need is an army of Jens Sturms?" Julius laughed humourlessly.
Astameus frowned. "No. We need men such as you, Julius. The armies of the Imperium of Man require military leadership, not unthinking zealots or nobles who achieved their rank through an accident of birth. If we continue to fight now in the way we have fought every war for the last ten millennia, then we will lose."
Julius raised his head. "And what if I do not believe that such a thing can be achieved by men like me?"
The transhuman warrior leant forward. Eyes as hard and unyielding as adamantium bored into Julius. "Then, Captain Lakond," growled Astameus, "you will lie to yourself and you will lie to the men and women you lead, until you do believe it."