DOUBT BEGETS HERESY

Gav Thorpe

‘Tylo!’

Lehenhart’s roar across the vox almost staggered the Apothecary in mid-swing. The whirring blades of his narthecium connected with the throat of a combat servitor, spraying blood and thick oil. Tylo stepped back to fire a round from his bolt pistol into the face of another half-machine foe, spattering its lobotomised brains across a bulkhead.

His armour had once been white to denote his specialism, with the dark blue shoulder pads of the Avenging Sons Chapter, but they had all painted over their colours with stark black. Some of the others had taken to decorating their armour with trophies and painting on slogans and symbols as they saw fit, but Tylo had never felt the urge.

‘Willusch, flank hold,’ the Apothecary snapped to one of his com¬panions. ‘‘The Peace of Death’’ was painted in neat script along the rim of Willusch’s shoulder pad. ‘I’m needed.’

‘I heard,’ replied Willusch. He stepped into the gap as Tylo with¬drew, his bolter tearing down another servitor as it clambered up through the ladder access from the deck below. Two others - Kolbarn and Heindreich - were stationed further along the corridor, gunning down the Adeptus Mechanicus half-men coming down the steps from the level above.

‘I’m coming!’ The Apothecary turned and ran as Lehenhart shouted his name again.

He pounded back along the corridor, passing a broad viewing plate that showed a glittering belt of asteroids, the star they orbited just a slightly brighter dot in the far distance. Mining structures and cranes dotted the crater-pocked surface outside and the sky was filled with other rocks and circling platforms. A red from the engines of the Vengeful glowed like a false dawn on the horizon of the airless rock and the glint of starlight on the strike cruiser was a constellation against the spray of the galactic arm beyond. Their Thunderhawk sat on the bare rock less than half a kilometre away, dark against the pale surface.

Gessart had made it sound easy. The Vengeful required constant maintenance, particularly its plasma reactor. The company’s Techmarine had died fighting orks in the Chanadron system and they needed someone versed in the ways of the machine-spirits. Adelphios was a near-automated Adeptus Mechanicus ore-extraction facility, crewed by a handful of tech-priests and a few dozen mind¬less servitors. All they had to do was locate the tech-priests and take two or three of them back to the ship. As Gessart had explained, faced with immediate execution the only logical course of action for their captives would be to abandon their tenuous loyalty to the Imperium and throw in their lot with the renegades.

So far it had been going well, but the tone of Lehenhart’s shouts, the hint of desperation in his voice, told Tylo that the mission was no longer proceeding quite as planned.

He found the others at the top of a set of stairs not far from the airlock where they had entered the processing facility. Lehenhart stood at the top of the steps firing down with short bursts of his heavy bolter, three others with him guarding corridors that splayed to the left and right from the landing. The heavy weapon gunner was easy to spot amongst his brothers, his helm mask painted in a brigh white skull, a bullet hole in its forehead

Nicz was there, as much red on his armour as there was black, painted like gore splashed up his left arm and torso. His chainsword was marked with the bloodied motto ‘‘The Truth Hurts’’, though the writing was obscured with a layer of real blood from the pile of ser¬vitors lying heaped at the Space Marine’s feet.

And amongst them, lying on his side, was Gessart.

Tylo could see immediately that the former captain was in a bad way. Most of the right side of his chest was missing, the armoured plastron cracked and split by some monstrous blow. Blood was still bubbling from the wound and pieces of bones jutted at odd angles.

Nicz turned as Tylo ran up to the other Space Marines.

‘No hurry,’ said Gessart’s self-appointed lieutenant, and it sounded like he meant it. Nicz’s ambition to lead the warband was no secret.

‘If you feel like just walking away, I’ll be sure to remember it.’

‘Don’t you dare, Tylo,’ snarled Lehenhart, hefting up his heavy bolter as he broke away from the stairs. ‘Save Gessart.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Tylo, looking again at the wound and then back and forth between Lehenhart and Nicz. ‘We have to get him back to the ship, I can’t do anything for him here.’

Lehenhart and Ustrekh heaved Gessart’s inert form up onto the examination table. Nicz was like a shadow, his helmet off, dark eyes narrowed and fixed on Tylo as he moved up beside their wounded leader. Some of the others crowded at the door of the apothecarion.

The floor shook as the Vengeful’s void shields intercepted another attack from the facility defences a few kilometres below. The counter¬ship bombardment had started before their Thunderhawk had docked with the strike cruiser, a crude but effective barrage of munitions that lit up several cubic kilometres of space around the vessel.

‘This is Zacherys. We can’t stay here much longer,’ the warband’s Psyker announced over the vox. ‘Who can say how long the void shields will hold without someone to manage the power flow from reactor? If we lose a generator we have no way of getting it back on-line.’

‘Get us out of here,’ replied Lehenhart. ‘Belay that,’ snapped Nicz. He looked at his companions. ‘We came here for a tech-priest. We’re not leaving without one.’

‘Fine,’ said Lehenhart. ‘You go back for a tech-priest, I’ll stay here and keep watch.’

‘I’m not stupid. You’d abandon me down there as soon as I set foot off this ship.’

‘Shut up.’ Tylo’s growl silenced them as he moved from one side of Gessart to the other. ‘I can’t operate with this disruption. Zacherys?’

‘I hear you.’

‘Take us out of range of their cannons.’

‘I’ll do better than that.’

Nicz offered no protest while Tylo busied himself clearing out broken pieces of armour from Gessart’s wound. Suddenly there was a sense of dislocation, a feeling of being turned inside-out and upside-down. Immediately, Tylo felt a sense of pressure at the base of his skull.

‘Did we just translate into the warp?’ Nicz barked. ‘Aren’t we too close to the asteroid field?’

‘I have… my methods,’ said Zacherys over the comm. ‘We are safe in warp space, and can transition back to the asteroid facility to recom¬mence the mission when needed.’

‘He’s getting more powerful every day,’ muttered Lehenhart, speak¬ing over his external address system. ‘I’m not sure I like it.’

‘Something we agree on,’ said Nicz.

Tylo tried to ignore them, but it was difficult to concentrate. He felt out of place and clumsy, as though he were trying to use someone else’s body. He became aware of more voices, close at hand, whis¬pering in his ear.

You have to save him.

Don’t let him die

You’re wasting time, he’s dying.

‘Cease this endless chattering!’ Tylo turned to the others as he straightened. ‘How am I supposed to work with this constant jabber?’

Lehenhart and Nicz exchanged a glance with each other.

‘Nobody’s talking,’ said Nicz.

Tylo shook his head, realising that he could still hear the voices.

It’ll be your fault if he dies. Better not let Nicz take over. It’ll be m bloodbath.

He wasn’t sure if the voices were inside his head. It didn’t feel like his own thoughts.

Tylo looked at the gaping hole in Gessart’s torso and knew that there was nothing he could do. Normally he would use hypnotic induction to help Gessart activate his sus-an membrane, allowing the wounded leader to go into biostasis until they returned to the Chapter fortress-monastery. That was not an option. They were ren¬egades - ‘‘The Exiled’’ Gessart had started calling them - and had no place to go.

‘Is it too late?’ Nicz gloated, recognising something in Tylo’s behaviour as a sign of surrender.

‘If he dies, you follow quickly,’ growled Lehenhart.

The voices were coming more strongly now, telling Tylo that he could not save Gessart. It was hard to argue with them, considering the options left. Then the voices changed, the whispers dying away, replaced by one voice, deep yet quiet.

Give him to us and we shall save him.

Tylo looked around, feeling movement on the edge of his vision as though something else was in the apothecarion with him.

‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Get out!’

‘I’ll be right outside,’ Nicz said, giving Tylo a pointed look before turning away. Lehenhart hesitated and then followed, taking Ustrekh with him. When the chamber door clanged shut and then sealed with a hiss, Tylo slumped against the side of the examination table, head bowed.

If he dies, strife will take you all.

Tylo did not need the mysterious voice to tell him that. Without Gessart’s strong personality to hold the warband together the infighting would soon start - not that Tylo would live long enough to see Lehenhart would make sure of that.

‘I can’t save him,’ Tylo said. It felt refreshing to admit it out loud. ‘There is too much damage and I do not have the supplies I need.’

Have faith.

‘Faith?’ Tylo laughed. He rested a hand on Gessart’s chest. It was gently rising and falling, but the breathing was laboured, the heart-beat erratic and fading. ‘Faith can do a lot, but it cannot cauterize arteries and replace shattered bone.’

Faith can do everything. You simply have to wish and it will be done.

‘Make a wish? It’s that easy, is it?’ Tylo turned and leaned with his back against the table. There was a shadow filling one end of the apothecarion, blotting out the blinking lights and read-outs of monitor stations. ‘I am not a fool. I know what you are. We are in the warp, your home, without Geller fields. Zacherys has already made a bargain with your kind. Show yourself, daemon.’

The shadow coalesced into something semi-solid. The figure was huge and bloated, flesh green and grey and hanging in rotted folds, eyes yellowed and small in its broad face. Things writhed beneath the pox-wracked flesh, churning. The apothecarion usually smelt of sterilising fluid and metal, but now it stank of corruption and gangrene.

‘Give him to me and I will save him,’ said the apparition. Saliva bubbled across its fat lips as a warty tongue bulged between broken stubs of teeth.

‘Why do you want him?’

‘My rival already has one of yours. I cannot allow this advantage.’

‘And what will you do with him?’

‘Whatever I want. His soul will be mine when eventually he dies.’

‘And if I say no?’

‘He dies much sooner, and all of you with him. Do you think your witch and his ally can keep me and my minions at bay forever? I shall seed despair into their minds and they will beg for death when I am finished. Spare them that. Spare yourself that fate.’

‘His soul is not mine to give. I cannot make that bargain on his behalf.’ The apparition started to fade. ‘Wait! Perhaps I can offer you something else. Why take by coercion what might be freely offered?’

‘He is strong-willed, he will not consent if I have him already.’

‘As I thought. But what if I offered something else? What if I freely offer you fealty, and promised you my mortal hands to do your bidding, as Zacherys serves your rival? Surely that is better than a puppet that will fight you every moment?’

‘You would do this for him? You love him so much?’ The ghastly figure returned, more real than before, lips drawn back in a hideous smile. ‘My attentions will not be kind, but I will free you from pain. The pain of flesh and the pain of weakness. Would you suffer for him?’

‘No,’ Tylo said quietly. ‘But I do not want to die. I would rather live in suffering than face oblivion.’

‘Perhaps your future is both. Be careful what you promise. Make your choice now. Your soul or his?’

The door to the apothecarion whined open and immediately Nicz was there, Lehenhart beside him. Tylo stood beside the operating table, and with him was Gessart, one arm draped over the Apoth¬ecary’s shoulders, face waxen, torso plastered with bandages and clumps of dried antiseptic foam.

‘You’re alive,’ snarled Nicz. He glared at Tylo.

‘He saved me,’ Gessart croaked.

Tylo said nothing.