As the squads counted off, Sarpedon estimated that about four hundred and fifty Soul Drinkers had got off Stratix Luminae, leaving the Chapter at less than half its original strength.
THE LAST FIGHTER, having picked up Iktinos and his men at massive risk, made one last pass over the battlefield. Iktinos himself called out over the vox as the craft searched for Tellos and his Assault Marines, last seen cut off and surrounded, taking on tens of thousands of mutants and traitors face-to-face.
The battlefield was in such chaos that it was impossible to find anything, let alone a last stand of so few men against so many. As the fighter was ordered to give up the search and escape before it was shot down, Iktinos found Tellos's vox-channel and tried to contact him one last time.
But all he could hear was screaming.
'NOT ONE AMONGST you does not know fear. If you say any different, then you lie. You are terrified. You are assembled on a space' hulk, surrounded by rebel Space Marines, being lectured by a mutant and a witch. Yes, I am well aware of what I am, and I am also aware of what the Imperium would say if they knew what I was. They would find strong, young, free men like you and they would point me out as a warning of what you might become. Traitor, they would say. Heretic. Unclean. And so another generation would be poisoned against freedom and become a part of the corrupt, crumbling Imperium, a breeding ground for Chaos, built on the backs of slaves.'
Sarpedon gripped the pulpit. He felt the burning of pride on the back of his mind, and though it was pride that had cost the Soul Drinkers so much in the past, he knew that here he had something he could truly be proud of. The novice candidates, three hundred of them, were stood in ranks on the gun deck of a battleship deep in the heart of the Bro-kenback. They were all towards the older end of recruitment age, beyond which the implants and operations that turned a man into a Space Marine would fail. All were strong and fit, not necessarily great warriors but - much more importantly -youths who had proved their bravery and their willingness to face any odds for what they believed in.
Iktinos had selected them, with Sarpedon's approval. After Stratix Luminae the Soul Drinkers had taken back the Brokenback, taking their alien fighters close enough to activate the many combined machine-spirits and causing the hulk to break from its moorings and rendezvous with the fighter fleet again. It had been the best part of a year since then, during which time the hulk had visited hotbeds of rebellion and secession, finding those who had banded together against the might of the Imperium and selecting the bravest of their young fighters.
Many who fought against the Imperium were just bandits and tyrants. But some were driven by an all-pervading hatred of oppression, and it was those that had provided the recruits Sarpedon now addressed. Chaplain Iktinos had selected them for courage, intelligence and dedication, and so the Great Harvest had begun again.
'You will not all survive.’ continued Sarpedon. Three hundred pairs of eyes watched him intently. 'The implant procedures alone will account for some. Training will account for more. But those who survive will be ready to understand some of the truths about mankind and the threats it faces. The Imperium is one of those threats, for it is too obsessed with its own tyranny to face what is truly dangerous to humankind. Daemons, powers of the warp, dark magics and gods you will be forbidden to name - these are the enemies we fight against. These, and no other. For this is the will of the Emperor untainted by the ambitions of the power-hungry. I can offer you a lifetime of battle and pain and the promise of a violent death, and I demand of you your every waking moment. But you will die knowing you have lived fighting for what the Emperor stands for, and that is more than anyone in the Imperium can claim.
'Soon the blood of Rogal Dorn will run in your veins and you will learn of your place in the unending defence of mankind. Until then, think on the unforgiving future I am showing you. If it was easy, it would not be worth doing. I trust that when you take on the mantle of novice and eventually the armour of a battle-brother, you will understand some of what I have told you, and the legacy of the Soul Drinkers will live on in you.’
They were afraid, and they had every reason to be. They were facing the long and trying process of becoming a Space Marine, and Sarpedon could not properly explain to them the constant hardship and pain combined with the ever-present fear of failure. But Iktinos had chosen well, and Sarpedon felt that few of them would fall before they took up the armour and boltgun of a Soul Drinker.
It was a miracle they were here at all. The existing mutations of the Soul Drinkers, including Sarpe-don's arachnoid form, could not be reversed, but the accelerating mutation had been halted thanks to the tireless efforts of Pallas and the apothecarion, using the information they had found on Stratix Luminae. The gene-seed organs recovered from the many dead had been stored and eventually their mutations had been regressed, to the stage that they could now be implanted into the recruits who passed the first stages of their training. The carnage that culminated on Stratix Luminae had been for one reason, and that was to purify the Chapter's gene-seed and make the Great Harvest possible again - it would take a long time before the Chapter approached full strength again, but it would happen, and of that Sarpedon was proud.
Under Iktinos's gaze, the novices filed off the gun deck towards their first training sessions. Graevus would teach them hand-to-hand fighting while Karraidin, who could do little else until the tech-marines and apothecaries fashioned some bionics to replace his lost hand and leg, would school them in the ways of Daenyathos and the sciences of war. Sarpedon wished Dreo was still there to teach them marksmanship, but there were enough crack shots still alive in the Chapter to do an admirable job. Sarpedon himself would have a role schooling that handful of recruits who showed some psychic potential, testing their mental resilience and training them in the use of their powers. And, of course, he would regularly expose all the recruits to the horrors of the Hell, so they would be able to face their fears and keep on fighting.
Sarpedon knew the Soul Drinkers were utterly alone, surrounded on all sides by those who hated them. The Inquisition would not give up hunting them and the daemonic foes they faced would only get more savage. There were doubtless forces more deadly even than Teturact out there, and the Soul Drinkers would have to seek them out and face them if they were to stay true to their purpose. But in spite of it all, Sarpedon knew how grateful he should be. How many men in the galaxy could claim they were truly free? Sarpedon could, and so could his Marines, and in time so would his novices.
In the end, there was nothing else that mattered. The Emperor's message was one of freedom - from the warp-spawned and the tyrannous alike.
mankind was in chains all across the galaxy, and Sarpedon swore to himself that the Soul Drinkers would free it.
Sarpedon stepped down from the podium and began the long walk through the body of the Bro-kenback towards the bridge. The hulk was to head for a silent sector, light years from habitation, where the training and slow rebuilding of the Chapter could begin.
Freedom. It had taken Sarpedon so long to find out that it was the only thing worth fighting for. Freedom was what both the Imperium and the warp feared more than anything. It would take thousands if not tens of thousands of years but if Sarpedon could wield that freedom like a weapon to destroy the enemies of humanity, then the Soul Drinkers might truly be victorious and the Emperor's will might at last be done.