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Pharos - Extract

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ONE

Dishonour
The proving
Secrets and lies

Oberdeii was in danger.

The combat servitor walked into the practice cage, slow and idiot stiff, until the cage door clanged down behind it, its combat protocols engaged, and there was nothing idiotic about it any more. A psychotic, vestigial intelligence glimmered in its eyes. Drool ran in sheets from its mouth, a side-effect of the combat drugs pumping around its body from the brass apparatus embedded in its back. Half the skull was replaced by steel. What skin it had left was corpse grey, puckered and puffy around its implants. One hand had been replaced by a motorised circular blade, the other arm had been severed halfway to the elbow and a wickedly edged sword grafted in its place. Its muscles had been thickened to a grotesque size by growth agents, the legs lent further strength by piston-levered callipers.

The servitor wore the same heavy, rubberised bodysuit that all the servitors Oberdeii had ever seen wore, and when he had activated it for the session it had looked little different from its peaceful peers, those that cleaned, cooked and carried for the XIII Legion without demur.

No longer. Electrical power surging through its remade body revealed its true nature: a murderous machine-man programmed to do its utmost to kill its opponent.

For a moment the neophyte considered that he might have made a mistake. Then the servitor’s saw blade buzzed into life, it lurched into a staggering charge, and Oberdeii had no more time for doubt.

Oberdeii fought with a simple steel gladius taken from the training room’s armoury. He was not yet entitled to his own, and he probably never would be. So alien at first, the heft of the short-bladed sword had become intimately familiar to him. It fit his palm perfectly, it felt right. Now that rightness sickened him. He would never be presented with the blade he had striven so hard to win. The practice sword was the failing promise of a future he would never see.

Only months away from the end of his training, Oberdeii had been tainted, and was therefore unworthy of the Legion.

The servitor swung the heavy buzzsaw up and over its head as it closed. Oberdeii screamed full in its face, giving voice to his anger and shame. Bracing the gladius’ blade against his left hand, he caught the saw blade on his weapon’s edge. Sparks showered from the metal and hissed onto his bare skin. He welcomed the pain. The sense of impending death sharpened his immature reflexes. If he were to fail, he would at least feel like a legionary once.

The servitor was enormously strong. Oberdeii’s muscles protested against the pressure it put upon the blade, and yet they held. The servitor growled, blowing aseptic breath over his face.

Oberdeii went with the servitor’s attack, turned its motion against it to fling its great mass to one side, and he marvelled at his own strength. He was still amazed at the power he had been granted. Not very long ago he had had the spare muscles of any youth, but now his arms were thick and powerful. For the last two years synthetic biochemicals had driven his metabolism into overdrive. Supplementary organs moderated every aspect of his physiology. When their work was finished, they would bring perfection to the randomly created, misfiring systems of nature. What had taken millions of years to evolve into a clumsy, unfinished state, the Emperor had perfected in mere decades.

Oberdeii was four months from his final assessment, and not grown fully. There was still an ache in his throat from the last round of implants. He had yet to attain his full height and his full might. The man-machine he battled was among the most potent training tools in the armoury. It had been created to test a full battle-brother to the limit, and as Oberdeii angrily reflected, he was not a legionary yet.

Animalistic roars blared from the vox-unit implanted into the combat-servitor’s chest. It moved with a smoothness that was an absurd contrast to its ugliness. Turning its stumble into a devastating attack, it swung its entire body around, arms fully extended, sending the gleaming sword-point speeding through the air towards Oberdeii’s midriff. Oberdeii bent his belly back. The tip scraped over his stomach, opening a shallow scratch. The machine whirled, bringing its whirring saw-blade in a horizontal following attack. Oberdeii barely caught the motion in time. A clumsy parry jarred the sword in his hand so hard his fingers became numb. He readjusted his grip as he danced back.

He could almost hear Sergeant Arkus – you’re gripping it too hard, lad! Careless, he scolded himself, unworthy.

The machine circled him. Oberdeii tensed as it came at him again – pistons hissing, heavy-booted feet thundering into the cage’s metal floor – to butt him in the chest with its reinforced skull, driving the wind from the Scout’s lungs and carrying him back hard across the cage and into the bars. The structure vibrated at the impact. The cyborg forced Oberdeii’s sword hand down and back with its forearm, the metal pins securing the prosthetic to its bones digging painfully into the youth’s wrist. Twice it banged Oberdeii’s arm against the bars, until the sword dropped from his treacherous fingers. It put its meaty forearm against his throat, the attached saw-blade burring away deafeningly right by Oberdeii’s left ear. The blade bit into his cheek, splattering them both with blood. Oberdeii jerked away from it. The servitor could have taken his head off there and then. Instead it pushed hard against the Scout’s windpipe, attempting to choke him.

Oberdeii gasped for air. He felt his vulnerable hyoid bone flex under the pressure. The servitor’s eyes glared. There was nothing of humanity in them, only a machine-born hatred and a need to kill.

Oberdeii was going to die, and he welcomed it.

He could not bear the dreams, not any more. A darkness was coming. He had heard the whispers beneath Mount Pharos, and ever since then he had been dogged by fear of a peril so vast and monstrous that it blotted out all hope in his soul, for he could do nothing to avert it.

Knowledge tyrannised him, and it would not let him sleep.

Six weeks in the apothecarion recovering. After lights out he lay with his eyes closed, his nights spent in a feverish non-sleep that took him back into the dark of the mountain and the terrible truths that lived there. When he woke, if he could call it waking, he began every day-cycle with the same foreboding.

Fear and knowledge were why he would fail. Terror was why he had come to the training room in the dead of night.

His throat closed. His physiology went into overdrive to conserve oxygen. The servitor snarled out its programmed fury. Oberdeii’s veins bulged and his face reddened. His eyes felt as if they would burst.

In desperation, he spat in the servitor’s face.

It was a poor spit – with his throat constricted he could not milk his Betcher’s gland effectively, nor propel the poison it produced. Acid sprayed into the servitor’s face in a spattering cloud.

The servitor reeled back, blinded. Oberdeii dived to the side as it recovered and swung its sawblade right through the space where his head had been. The combat augmetic connected with the cage bar with such force it tore through the metal with a horrendous squealing sound.

Its target eluding it, the servitor stopped. Oberdeii froze, his eyes fixed on his dropped blade. The servitor cocked its head to one side, searching for the boy, insensible of the acid burning its face. Oberdeii stifled his urge to draw in huge gasps of air to replenish his empty lungs, in case it heard him. Holding his breath after his choking was an ordeal. Spots whirled in front of his eyes. He should have thought to inflate his multilung before entering the ring. That would have given him minutes more oxygen. He cursed himself for not thinking to utilise his new abilities to their full advantage.

He stayed motionless as the machine-man stepped round in a half-circle. His sword lay on the far side of the creature.

There was only one possible practical. Oberdeii wasted no time on thought. He let out a shout, putting all his frustration into it. The servitor zeroed in on his position instantaneously. Oberdeii rolled as the saw-blade slammed into the floor, bit into the plating and dragged the servitor forward. Darting past his opponent, Oberdeii grabbed his gladius and ran around the inside of the bars, dragging the broad tip over them to make them sing. The servitor followed the noise. Oberdeii stopped, and it leapt. He dodged a sword thrust, grabbed the servitor’s sword arm and pushed it out through the bars, jamming the elbow hard up against a crossbrace. He stabbed through the elbow, then hacked down at the servitor’s legs.

It was an inelegant blow, but it served its intended purpose. Hydraulic fluid spurted from severed lines in the calipers. The left leg sagged. Oberdeii danced away as the servitor thrashed at the cage to extract its paralysed arm. The Scout slashed through the steel-cable tendon of its ankle, then jumped back as the servitor yanked out its ruined arm and came after him. A second of elation turned to dismay as his foot folded under him and he fell backwards.

The servitor took a step, put its damaged leg down, and fell directly on top of the boy.

Oberdeii got his sword-point up in the nick of time. The weight of the servitor forced the weapon through its metal-dense body. The weapon was at an awkward angle, and something gave in his wrist. He ignored the pain and dragged the sword around in the servitor’s innards. The machine made a high-pitched mechanical wheezing. Teeth clacking madly, it jerked atop him with bruising force, then went limp.

The saw-blade spun for a few seconds more, and stopped.

Oberdeii gave his sword an experimental twist. There was no response. The servitor’s running lights were out.

‘You are dead, then,’ he said, and let his head thump back onto the deck plates.

He lay under the machine as his hearts slowed. For a few moments he lost himself in their strange dual beat. Of all the changes wrought upon him, that alteration to the fundamental rhythm of his body had taken the most getting used to.

He heaved the cyborg off and stood.

He looked down upon the shattered body leaking blood and oil in equal measure. Whatever crime the servitor had committed in life to deserve its fate would be forever unknown to Oberdeii. He supposed it had paid its dues in full. Final mercy had been granted at his hand. He felt a shudder of revulsion. If he were judged wanting he might find himself in a similar position, for there were few roles suited to failed aspirants. His arm shook violently as he raised it to wipe the sweat pouring off his forehead. He had been suffering mild palsies when under extreme duress. His implants were still not fully biochemically integrated with his body. Apothecary Taricus assured him it would pass.

A choking noise came from Oberdeii’s throat.

It would not pass. The process would not finish. He would never be an Ultramarine. He was polluted by the touch of the machine in the mountain. The gladius fell from his hands. He felt sick, feeling the shock afresh yet again. No matter how many times he thought on it, the pain did not lessen.

Oberdeii grieved for the man he would never be.

A gentle cough made him turn. He wiped hurriedly at his cheeks.

‘Good morning, Neophyte Oberdeii.’ Sergeant Arkus, his squad leader and mentor, was leaning against the wall by the armoury door on the far side of the training room, a mild, unreadable expression on his craggy face. ‘Are you going to tell me why you are not asleep in the barracks? Taricus released you only yesterday, and you are already overstretching yourself.’

‘Sergeant!’

‘Yes, that is correct. Sergeant. As your sergeant, I asked you a question. As a neophyte, you are bound to answer, yet I hear no answer.’

‘I… I can’t sleep, sergeant.’

‘So you thought you would come and commit suicide instead? That is an extreme cure for insomnia.’

Oberdeii looked down at the dead servitor. ‘I seek to better myself for the Legion.’

Arkus pushed himself off the wall and came into the cage. ‘Ah, now it all makes sense.’

‘Yes, sergeant.’ Oberdeii looked up at his teacher. Arkus was a foot taller than the Scout. ‘How long were you watching?’

‘Long enough to wince at that terrible parry. Hold up your sword.’

Oberdeii stooped for his blade and adopted the stance suitable for unarmoured combat. He gritted his teeth at the pain in his wrist.

Arkus shook his head despairingly.

‘Not like that – like this.’ Arkus’ massive hand engulfed Oberdeii’s own and twisted it. Oberdeii stifled a yelp as the torn muscle twinged in his wrist. ‘Keep the guard angled, blade edge outward towards the parry. If you fight like that a good warrior will have your arm off at the elbow as soon as you point the bloody thing at him!’

‘Yes, sergeant. I am sorry.’

‘Still,’ Arkus said. ‘You killed it.’ He toed the dead cyborg. Arkus wore a sleeveless chiton and loose trousers, the garb of a farmer or artisan. These simple clothes were supposed to bring unity with the people they had been made to protect. No one could ever mistake Arkus for a normal man; he was seven feet tall, his muscles huge and his skin studded with armour interface ports.

‘Thank you, sergeant.’

‘That was not praise, boy. If his pain circuits had been deactivated, you would be a dead man. These combat models do not feel much, but if he felt nothing at all the match would not have gone your way.’

Oberdeii shrugged. ‘I do not know how to turn them off.’

‘There is a reason we do not teach you everything at once, boy.’ Arkus looked down at the ruined combat unit. ‘That was a theta-class servitor. You’re not cleared to face them. It seems we teach you too much as it is.’

Oberdeii opened his mouth to speak, but Arkus shushed him. ‘I do not wish to know how you got the activation codes. You did well to defeat it. I do not know whether to censure you or commend you.’ He hooked his fingers into his broad belt. The Ultima emblem of the Legion gleamed on the buckle.

Oberdeii looked at his master expectantly. Censure, it should be censure. Arkus had been too lenient with him since the incident in the mountain.

Arkus’ mouth became a thoughtful line. ‘Adept Criolus is not going to be very happy with you. But… Impressive. Very impressive. Next time, stick to the combat armatures.’

Arkus smiled sadly.

‘It is time, isn’t it?’ said Oberdeii nervously.

Arkus nodded, and his smile vanished. ‘Yes, Oberdeii. It is time. The Librarian has finished with the others.’

He rubbed his own head hesitantly. Arkus, along with everyone who had spent long periods near the mountain, had experienced the dreams, although no one else had experienced anything as potent as the terrifying visions Oberdeii had when lost in the labyrinth. And that was the problem.

‘He wished to see you last. You must come with me.’

The Scout glanced back uncertainly at the machine corpse as they left. He couldn’t shake the feeling that it would be the last time he would be allowed into the practice chamber.

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First published in 2015
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