Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 69
"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you," Methuselah growled at the trio of terrified PDF officers.
"Please, we don't..." a pallid-faced one begged.
"You will be amazed at how short my patience is," the Bronze Beast hissed as his lightning claw flexed.
A braver one replied, "We scoured the horizon as soon as the storm passed over, but there was no sign of them. Not a mark anywhere to be seen."
"You didn't find the bodies," Methuselah rumbled, "Again, tell me why I shouldn't kill you."
The three officers quaked in their boots, causing rubber overcoats to shiver. Thin men, with slight muscles and faces gaunt from lack of sunlight. Vitamin D deficiency was rampant on this moon, the scientist in Methuselah reflected, but the warlord in him imagined the number of ways he could end their lives. They certainly deserved it. After the debacle at the Sulphuric Sea the Smoke Jaguars had fled into a stormfront, evading the pursuing platoon. Mortal men couldn't dare approach that maelstrom, even Methuselah had to acknowledge that, but as soon as the rain stopped he'd sent search parties for a hundred kilometres in all directions, only to come up short.
Methuselah had retired to a more comfortable command post, one of the PDF's strategic hubs. An upside-down fortress buried deep, with cunningly designed bunkers to hold off acid rain while allowing guns to be rolled out on a moment's notice. That the PDF could see him was of no concern, there was not a soul on this moon who did not live in terror of the Bronze Beast.
The Colonel's personal quarters were modest, plain furniture, a Hololithic firepit, and a painting of his family rendered by an indifferent artist. To Methuselah it was a rude dwelling, barely able to fit his massively armoured frame, even with his helmet set upon the desk. Still the cooling body of the Colonel lent it a macabre grandeur, the eyes of the lesser officers darting to the crushed neck the Bronze Beast had inflicted when news first came of the missing Astartes. Methuselah ignored the body, killing that fool had barely registered in his consciousness, his attention drawn elsewhere.
"They got away," Methuselah hissed.
A brave officer dared to suggest, "Mayhap their bones were scoured bare by the storm, leaving nothing but flakes on the wind."
"I could survive it," Methuselah growled, "They did too."
"Then they have fled, to call in their Chapter," the man argued making the other two flinch.
"They won't, it is not in their nature, they will come for me, they know no other way. Get out, all of you, go and do not return until you find them!"
The trio fled for the door in relief, desperate to be anywhere but in a room with the Bronze Beast. Methuselah flexed his claw in frustration. He was surrounded by dolts and witless fools. Annoyed he grabbed the corpse on the floor by a heel, effortlessly dragging a grown adult to the door. He threw the body out into the corridor, uncaring for which servant cleared up the mess, then he slammed the door.
"Not so loud," Athaliah winced as she pressed a cold pad to her skull.
"I am angry," Methuselah hissed.
"Take some Blue," she shrugged.
"This goes beyond hormonal manipulation."
Tvos cut in, "Perhaps we should revisit the base composition. The Blue may lose effectiveness as the acidity of your blood increases."
Methuselah spun to confront them, anger bubbling in his breast. The Magos stood impassively in a corner, as emotive as a water-dispenser. Athaliah sat in the Colonel's chair, her boots resting upon his desk. She held a cold pad to her bruised head, nursing the mother of all headaches. She'd been unconscious for a day after the fight, and even days later complained her head throbbed. Methuselah counted her lucky to have been struck by a Scout-novice, a fully grown and armoured Astartes would have spread her brains across the wall. Replacing his one successful Pariah replicae would have been supremely annoying. Damn them, even now the Smoke Jaguars were making him angry.
"Troubling upstarts," Methuselah hissed, "They should be dead, but they had the gall to live!"
"I imagine some folk said the same of you," Athaliah snorted.
"Do not compare us!" Methuselah growled, "The Legiones Cataegis were always superior to their mass-produced replacements."
"You look the same to me," she muttered.
"I need your womb, daughter of mine, I do not require your tongue. Speak so again and I will demonstrate this truth."
Athaliah sank back, cowed into submission but Tvos ventured, "I have compared the genic sequences of our former prisoner to your own and see similar gene-crafting, but significant differences too. That you are both outputs of the same forge is inarguable, but the products are wildly incoherent, beyond the variation of progressive marks one would expect from an increasing knowledge base."
Methuselah gripped his fists as he explained, "The Emperor didn't forge us entirely alone, he had masters of arcane lore and Genewrights sworn to his cause, or taken in battle. Few were his equal in knowledge, and many were less than willing. Thunder Warriors were bespoke creations, each an individual labour to transfigure a grown man into the ultimate warrior. In all creation only the Legiones Custodes were our equal, but they could not match our numbers."
Athaliah lifted the cold pad with a frown, "So why didn't he take you to the stars?"
Methuselah's eyes grew distant, "A question I asked myself for a hundred years. The Thunder Warriors laid waste to Terra, annihilating everything that stood against us. The Emperor spent much time rebuilding in our wake, too much time. I eventually concluded that he deemed it too much hard work to rebuild a galaxy, slowing the epic conquest he had planned. Compliance he sought, the willing submission of his enemies and the adding of their strength to his armies. The Legiones Cataegis were too powerful, too wild, we took the strength of the enemy and made it our own. Each Thunder Warrior was a warlord in his own right and he could not tolerate an army that might outgrow his control. The Legiones Astartes were born out of his need for an army that would obey without question, one that could be kept on a leash, tamed dogs that would come to heel."
"You would have done it differently?" Athaliah sniffed.
Methuselah sneered, "The Legiones Cataegis would have laid waste to everything in our path. Offers of surrender would have been met with scornful laughter. We would have scoured the galaxy bare of all non-imperial culture and left a clean sweep of worlds to be recolonised. Free of Xenos, mutation and religion. So what if it took a thousand years, or ten thousand, there would have been no weaknesses for Chaos to sink its claws into."
Tvos nodded, "A worthy vision, but it was not to be."
Methuselah sighed, "Mount Ararat, our final victory, or so we believed. Barely had the assault begun when our allies opened fire upon us. Shells falling like rain, gunships dropping bombs upon our heads. We thought it was the enemy, but then the Custodes came, hacking us apart with their spears. We fought back and we killed many. I killed one of the golden bastards with my bare hands, but Constantin Valdor led the charge and would not be denied. The Iron Lords fell roaring defiance, my Brazen Bulls were taken down one by one, till we were all laid out in the bloody mud."
Athaliah puzzled, "You were there, I didn't know that."
Tvos cocked his head, "Your survival seems statistically unlikely. How did you escape?"
"Amar Astarte," Methuselah explained.
Tvos's hood clicked with whirring cogitators, "First leader of the Biotechnical division. Credited architect of the Black Carapace. Birthplace: redacted. Recruitment: redacted. Death: redacted."
Methuselah sighed, "She was instrumental in the creation of our replacements, but her work had been stalled by Genic puzzles beyond even her genius. She needed more raw data and so she secretly arranged for our bodies to be delivered to her laboritorums for dissection. The Emperor kept his underlings divided you see, separate projects, isolated workers, only he could be allowed to see the whole picture. Amar thought to glean what she needed from our decomposing remains, imagine her surprise when she discovered a few scores of us still drew breath."
Athaliah smirked, "I would have liked to see her face when you sat up."
But the reply was grim, "I wasn't the first, nor the last. Ushotan was there, Arik Taranis, maybe other leaders, I can't say. We were her lab rats, experimental subjects to be pulled apart under her knives, but all the while I was learning. She made the mistake of speaking to us. I was a limited brute in those days but even then a talent for genecraft glimmered through. She taught me the basics and I lent her a fresh perspective. A few years, that was all we shared, but what years they were."
"You overthrew her," Athaliah guessed.
"I didn't have to," Methuselah explained, "There was an accident, the Primarchs were scattered, I never uncovered the true details of how it happened. Without them Amar came to believe her work was doomed, that the gene-seed could not be stabilised. She despaired and in her distress turned against the Emperor and his schemes."
Tvos' cogitators whirred, "This is not in the records."
"Of course it isn't," Athaliah snorted, "Would you keep records proving your own incompetence?"
"Data is data!"
"And the Mechanicus never hides knowledge?!"
"I fail to see the correlation."
Methuselah ignored their bleating, lost in memory, "Amar set us loose, after fixing our defects as best she could. Arik Taranis disappeared that very night, the rest scattered, some went as far as the asteroid belt to hide. Ushotan wouldn't have it though, he started plotting a counter-attack, thinking to get his revenge on Constantin Valdor. It was suicide, but he didn't care. I however stayed with Amar."
"Sentimental of you," Athaliah grinned.
"Practical," Methuselah spat, "I hadn't yet learned all I needed to know and she no longer cared for secrecy, so she taught me everything. The deepest mysteries of the genewright's arts, showing me the twenty gene-lines of our replacements and explaining their unique features and flaws. On our last day together she told me of the Emperor's plans once the galactic conquest was done, how he schemed to replace mundane humanity with Psykers. Amar was supposed to play a significant role in that forced evolution, but other conspiracies were in motion and she had a date with destiny. I left before she died, avoiding the inevitable retribution. Her attempt to destroy her own work failed, the Emperor was ten steps ahead of her, but I had already left the planet."
"And off into the stars you went," Athaliah snorted.
Methuselah corrected, "First to Luna, and the Selenar cults. I got out before the night of wolves. The Asteroid belt provided brief succour, but Terra's armies came for them too. I kept going, always running ahead of the wave of conquest, sailing with the Rogue Traders who had been forced into exile by his rise. There were many who hated him, even then, the flaws in his Imperium were obvious from the start, its failure was inevitable. About the time Horus turned on his maker I was lurking near Alar-Median, and the rest you know."
"He never suspected one Thunder Warrior survived?" Athaliah probed.
Methuselah growled, "He had new tools to employ and he always played favourites among his creations. Some he raised up, others he cast down, admirable in a way, but his will faltered. He held his Primarchs too precious, he was soft on them, as he never was with us. A sterner hand was required to keep the Twenty in line, but he grew weaker as centuries passed. Ullanor should have been a second culling, the purging of every Astartes and Primarch the instant their purpose was done. Instead he crowned his first among favourites as Warmaster and so his dream failed. I will not repeat his mistakes, I will complete his vision, but in my own way!"
Tvos probed, "You have a plan?"
Methuselah bared his teeth, "I don't need one. The Smoke Jaguars will not give up, they will come for me again. This is certain, they will not rest until my head is in their hands."
"And then?" Athaliah pressed.
"Then I will do what the Emperor could not: I will excise his mistakes from the universe. My strength is not softened by time, I am greater than he ever was, and I shall prove it!"