Chapter 283: You're Going to Get a Beating, Brother
CRACK!
The sound of a metal gate being violently breached tore through the silence of the control room. The psyker-unit led by Azrael poured in like a shadow, their power boots making viscous sounds in the pools of blood.
The scene that met their eyes was a battlefield of utter devastation. Several corpses were strewn before the control console, their armour burst open from the inside, their internal organs sprayed in a radial pattern on the surrounding instruments. This was undoubtedly the work of a psyker.
In the shadows on the other side of the room, a Fallen Angel leaned against the twisted wreckage of a control console. When he sensed the energy signature of the intruders, he slowly lifted his blood-stained helmet.
Whirrr—BANG!
The battle-automata immediately raised their weapons and fired, directly hitting the other's exposed limbs, making his injuries even worse.
"Is this the treatment you promised?" the Fallen Angel asked sarcastically.
"You'll live," Azrael grunted, and had the automata clamp Blackstone chains on him.
The young Dark Angel then quickly opened a comms channel. After receiving confirmation, an Apothecary silently stepped forward. His servo-arm unfolded with precision surgical tools, the cutter vibrating at a high frequency, and began to strip away the severely deformed armour plates one by one.
The Fallen Angel then noticed that the other's power pack seemed to be a fake. It was filled with a large amount of supplies. His body trembled slightly with each cut, the exposed wounds weeping dark red blood, leaving狰狞 marks on his pale skin. The Apothecary's movements were very precise, which lessened the expected pain a great deal.
"Asbael?" the Fallen Angel suddenly felt that the man before him was a little familiar. He raised his blood-stained face, a distant memory flashing in his mind, making his pupils contract slightly.
"Yes, Belphadon. Long time no see," the Apothecary replied silently, his attitude not good. It was clear that after the long debriefing within the Legion, he knew what this man had done.
"I am sorry," the Fallen Angel said after a long hesitation, at the same time carefully watching to see if the other would inject him with poison or something. "When the Lion returned to Caliban, I was very angry. I don't know if I thought what we were doing was right, but the people around me seemed to think so. I certainly wasn't strong enough to voice my opposition to them, so Luther and the others launched the attack first."
"At the time, I kept thinking, I was just following orders. As a soldier, that's what I should do. I am sorry," the Fallen Angel said.
The Apothecary's servo-arm suddenly stopped, hovering in mid-air, trembling slightly. "I know," the Apothecary replied. "We have always had our doubts about the Lion." His rank at the time did not allow him to know certain inside information, but in the long process of reconciliation within the Legion, they had already reconstructed the details of the events of that year.
"Before we arrived, Caliban itself did not allow the Lion to land," the Apothecary continued, the bone saw in his hand humming softly. His fingers tightened, and he pulled a shattered piece of armour from the wound. "Some commanders were worried that he had betrayed the Emperor, that he had returned to Caliban only to claim the resources you had accumulated, so that the Dark Angels Legion could, in the future, defeat the still-loyal legions and thus control the post-rebellion Imperium."
The Fallen Angel's breathing stopped for a moment. The Apothecary's movements were still smooth as he cleaned and repaired the wound.
"And others—" the voice behind the faceplate became deeper. "—were worried that he would execute them upon his return, because they had dabbled in Chaos, had studied those psychic sorceries, had colluded with the ancient civilization's creations on Caliban that had long been corrupted by Chaos—" He pulled out a piece of shrapnel embedded in the muscle and threw it to the ground. "—it was they who brought Caliban to ruin."
The Apothecary's words made the Fallen Angel's mind tense, his throat moving with difficulty. He didn't even know the specifics of these latter matters. He only knew that someone had secretly violated the Edict of Nikaea, which restricted psychic research. And he had never expected that after ten thousand years, these secrets would be so thoroughly analyzed.
"So they, at Luther's instigation, launched the attack," the Apothecary's hand applied a little more force, but he still carefully treated the wound. "You are the former," he stated, his voice firm. "Tell me your reason. I believe that a restrained man like you has his reasons," he questioned.
"Because at that time, the Lion was a fool who was watching the entire Imperium go to its doom and would not let us fight!" the Fallen Angel's voice suddenly rose. "Horus had used all the resources he could, had surrounded Terra, and was about to defeat the Emperor. And now it seems he has succeeded." He looked directly into the Apothecary's eyes.
He really envied these people. He envied them for being able to participate in a great war. They were the participants who would decide the fate of humanity, not worthless like him. "And when Horus launched his rebellion, the Lion chose to watch. He scattered his forces. When the Emperor needed him most, he was still playing house with those damned Night Lords in the Ultima Segmentum. Terra was in desperate need of support. Corswain had chosen to rush to Terra's aid the first time he had returned to Caliban, but the Lion had made thirty thousand Astartes, me, who had participated in the Unification of Terra, sit on a rock that was slowly dying!
"Do you know what we are? We are the war-machines created by the Emperor to save humanity, to conquer the galaxy. This was the situation at that time. In a war that would decide the fate of humanity, we were ignored. The First Legion didn't even touch the edge of the front line. It was more like we were preserving our strength, watching. The entire Great Heresy, the First Legion did not do what they should have done. So our father was either a traitor, or an incompetent fool who couldn't even judge the situation of the rebellion."
"How can you ask me to believe? How can you ask me to believe in the Lion! Am I supposed to admit that he is an incompetent Primarch?!"
The continuous questioning made the surrounding Dark Angels fall silent. Especially Azrael. Fething hell, am I supposed to be hearing this? The Dark Angels of ten thousand years ago are no different.
"I'm starting to understand why the young men of the Chapter are so obsessed with hunting us," the Apothecary said, silently squeezing a tube of bio-gel, the viscous liquid filling the empty tissue in the wound. Anyone would have a hard time if their Legion's seniors were spraying them like this. If it were him, if he had let the first word out, it would have been a sign that he was not loyal enough.
And what if he knew that the Lion, Guilliman, and Sanguinius had formed a second Imperium in the Ultima Segmentum?
"How will you deal with me?" the Fallen Angel finally calmed down, his voice filled with weariness. Having vented at a familiar face, the anger that had been bottled up for hundreds of years had finally been released.
"Did you know that Luther was corrupted by Chaos?"
"No."
"Do you know if the Lion was loyal?"
"He was a traitor."
The atmosphere around them was hard to bear.
"Did you turn to Chaos?"
"No."
"Were you one of the masterminds of the Caliban incident?"
"No."
The Apothecary threw the empty gel tube into the recycling bin, the sound of metal clashing unusually harsh in the silence. "That is enough," he said. "To be honest, I really want to kill you right now."
His voice paused, and suddenly became dangerous and low. "Because back then, your psychic lightning took off half my body. If not for the Prince, I would be a cripple now, lying in a low-quality life-support pod modified from a mining machine. But the Prince has decided to give you a chance, just like he gave me one back then."
He took a step forward, his power boot crushing a dried blood-clot on the ground. "You must understand one thing—" the Fallen Angel unconsciously tensed. The Apothecary's faceplate was almost touching his, the hot air from his respirator grille condensing into fine water droplets on his faceplate. "—unlike in the past, this time, a noble Prince has personally come before us, has asked for our help, has given us salvation, has brought us back into the light. He will personally commend us after the battle, and will also explain the doubts in our hearts. He hopes that we can become his right and left hands."
"Instead of the Emperor forcing another Primarch on us! So—" he suddenly took a step back, his servo-arm re-sheathing its medical tools. "—I will temporarily put aside my personal grudges."
At the same time, the Fallen Angel's anesthesia wore off. The Apothecary brought up a file, the cold blue light illuminating the two of them. "And now, about your resettlement. Since you are a psyker, we will dispatch members of the Pentaculum Wing to conduct a detailed psychological evaluation of you, to determine if you are more suited for resettlement to a second-line position in education or administration, or to join the Legion to fight for the Prince's ideal, and to a certain extent, to respect your opinion."
"Now," the Apothecary tapped the Blackstone psychic inhibitor on the other's wrist and turned to join Azrael's squad. "Come with me. There are still some necessary rituals you need to go through."
Although he had decided not to take personal revenge, the necessary rituals still had to be performed. Visibly, the unrestricted combat tournament on the Silent Vow today would be very lively.
Seeing this, this Fallen Angel also hung his head in resignation, and, clutching the file, chose to follow.
"Yes, my Prince. The clean-up of the outer ring of the fortress is complete. We are currently using battle-automata to clear the hidden passages and to reconstruct the fortress's data-model... Yes, we have gathered many members. There were no casualties on our side. I will go to the Round Table later."
"You have done well."
"It was not difficult!"
With a subconscious snap to attention, Azrael hung up the communication and watched the Fallen Angels depart. The eyes behind his faceplate narrowed slightly. A sense of anticipation for the coming commendation rose in him. Feeling this not-unpleasant emotion, he seemed to have finally understood what the Prince had given the Dark Angels.
Not a distant ideal, but a tangible present.
Not a hollow promise, but a real, tangible future.
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