Mortarion looked away, glancing at one of the grey-armoured warriors sharing the shuttle’s cargo bay with him. A Dusk Raider, or so they had first been named, one of the tribes of the Emperor’s Legiones Astartes – his so-called Space Marines. They were to Mortarion as Mortarion was to his gene-father, greater than mortal men but still born out of mortality.
One day soon, Typhon, Rask and all the others would be like that one. The common clay of the Barbarun Death Guard would emerge reincarnated, striding into the light to stand side by side with the warrior Legion the Emperor had brought Mortarion as a gift. They would all carry the name from that day onward.
Some would not survive the process, of course. Several had already perished, their bodies unable to withstand the great toll the forced transformation put upon them. And there were more to whom this great boon was denied: those deemed too old or whose chromosomal matrix was incompatible with the Emperor’s bio-altering technology.
A waste of good material, said the voice in his head.
The legionary in grey noticed his primarch’s gaze upon him and came to attention. ‘My lord?’ he asked, taking a step closer. ‘Do you wish something of me?’
He was Terran-born, like all of the Dusk Raiders. By Mortarion’s word, they too were now renamed as Death Guard, but they were very different from the pale sons of Barbarus. They hailed from dozens of disparate ethnicities drawn from the northlands of the Emperor’s distant Throneworld, and the warriors of the XIV Legion were seasoned, hardened by battles in the gene-father’s so-called ‘Great Crusade’.
The warrior was of standard rank, armed with a powerful boltgun. He was one of several assigned as Mortarion’s honour guard, and they were superlative fighters to a man.
‘Your name?’ asked the primarch.
‘I am Brother-Legionary Alexus Xael, my lord.’ He gave a shallow bow.
Mortarion nodded. He remembered this one from recent training engagements on one of the outer worlds of the system.
Good with that gun, he recalled. With a dozen like him, Barbarus could have been freed in days, not years.
At first, Mortarion’s instinct had been to distrust these Terrans. In the wake of the Emperor’s arrival, he’d had an entire army gifted to him, with the express implication that he would step into the role of their commander and lead them in his gene-father’s wars.
But no leader could start from zero. Just as Mortarion had to learn how to use the new weapons and armour the Imperium granted him, so too he learned the tactics and strategy of how to fight with these Legiones Astartes.
He was an exceptionally quick study, and months of wargames and training had brought Mortarion to where he stood now – battle ready, straining at the leash to leave Barbarus behind and venture out into the galaxy beyond.
But more than that, Mortarion had encountered something he had not expected. He had bonded with these Dusk Raiders, in a manner that words could not articulate. In a strange way, it was as if that connection had always been within him. Lying dormant, waiting to be activated.
‘A question for you, Xael,’ he said. ‘Soon we will dock with my father’s command ship. What is the protocol?’
Xael’s brow furrowed. ‘I do not understand…’
‘I am still new to this. What will be expected of me?’
‘Ah.’ The warrior gave a nod as he caught on. ‘There is much of the Imperium that prides itself on great ceremony. This is an important occasion. I imagine there will be many formalities to be observed.’
In the depths of his hood, Mortarion’s gaunt features twisted into a scowl. ‘I have no tolerance for such things.’
Xael smiled slightly. ‘I share your dislike, my lord. But I do not have the rank to ignore those demands.’
‘I do.’ Mortarion rose from the bench and walked toward the portal in the hull.
The rest of the voyage passed in companionable silence, and presently a wall of gold and steel rose up ahead of the shuttle, as the craft oriented itself towards the yawning maw of a huge docking bay.
The great hull of the battle-barge Bucephelus, flagship of the Emperor, extended away in all directions. The craft was a gargantuan work of martial artistry, ornate and menacing in equal measure, bristling with sculpted weapons and fields of shaped ablative armour. The mass of the Bucephelus was so great that it generated its own gravity gradient, making it necessary for the barge to be moored far away, up above the plane of the ecliptic. Had it come too close to Barbarus, the vessel would have exerted a deadly tidal influence on the planet’s already-fierce weather systems.
His father’s ship was mighty, and Mortarion had learned that there were many more craft of such size and scope in the Emperor’s war fleet. Some of them belonged to Mortarion’s gene-brothers, the sibling primarchs who had been – as he was – scattered to all points of the etheric compass before they had matured to adulthood.
After their first meeting, the Emperor spoke in elliptical terms about the matters of that event, showing genuine emotion and heartache at the trials His sons had endured. But when Mortarion tried to learn more about the causes of this ‘scattering’, his father deflected every question.
If He is so powerful, how could He have let such a thing happen? The potential answers to that silent query served only to darken Mortarion’s mood further still.
The shuttle touched down with a soft rumble, and presently the hatchway at the end of the compartment opened like an iris. Heady, perfumed air entered the ship, and with it came a brash chorus of martial trumpets.
The sound pulled Mortarion’s lips into a sneer and he marched out through the hatch, gesturing to Xael and the rest of his honour guard to remain where they were.
He emerged in the battle-barge’s vast docking bay to find ranks of gold-armoured Custodian Guards holding banners and weapons in salute. There were musicians playing an anthem and other figures in over-detailed clothing whose purpose and function were unknown to him. Mortarion imagined that he was supposed to walk between them with measured steps and feigned interest.
He did not.
Mortarion ignored the gathered throng and advanced alone, striding up a tier of low stairs towards a floodlit reception dais shrouded by towering drapes of crimson velvet. His father was not there, but the primarch did not hesitate, the chamber falling to silence around him as the trumpet fanfare faded early. Now the only sound was the hard thud of his armoured boots upon the deck and the hushed whispers of the shocked functionaries.
He was almost at the dais level when a man came out to meet him. A human in a tall hat and a brocade coat bearing several tech-augmentations, the man was trailed by a device that darted about with no visible means of support. The machine resembled the eye of a steel giant gouged out and left to bob in the currents of the air, observing everything the man in the coat said and did.
‘My Lord Mortarion!’ he began, his tone at once fearful and agitated. ‘Forgive me, but your stride was… ah… not as metered as expected!’ He waved at the curtains. ‘The intent was that your father steps forth first, and you–’
The primarch cut him off. ‘Who are you and what is your purpose here?’
The man stuttered, then made a vague attempt to regain his poise. ‘If it pleases the primarch, I am Lackland Thorn, noted remembrancer and documentarian to the Imperial Court, and the–’
Again, Mortarion did not let him gain any momentum. ‘Remembrancer? What is that?’ All eyes were on the primarch now, but he paid no heed to them.