False Gods

Stripped out of his armour and wearing bloody surgical robes, Vaddon was as close to desperate as he had ever been in his long experience as an apothecary of the Sons of Horus. The Warmaster lay before him on the gurney, his flesh exposed to his knives and to the probes of the medicae machines. Oxygen was fed to the Warmaster through a mask, and saline drips pumped fluids into his body in an attempt to normalise his blood pressure. Medicae servitors brought fresh blood for immediate transfusions and the entire theatre fizzed with tension and frantic activity.

'We're losing him!' shouted Apothecary Logaan, watching the heart monitors. 'Blood pressure is drop­ping rapidly, heart rate spiking. He's going to arrest!'

'Damn it,' cursed Vaddon. 'Get me more Larraman serum, his blood won't clot, and fix up another fluid line,’

A whirring surgical narthecium swung down from the ceiling, multiple limbs clattering as they obeyed

Vaddon's shouted commands. Fresh Larraman cells were pumped directly into Horus's shoulder and the bleeding slowed, though Vaddon could see it still wasn't stopping completely. Thick needles jabbed into the Warmaster's arms, filling him with super-oxygenated blood, but their supply was dwindling faster than he would have believed possible.

'Stabilising,' breathed Logaan. 'Heart rate slowing and blood pressure is up.'

'Good,' said Vaddon. 'We've got some breathing room then.'

'He can't take much more of this,’ said Logaan. 'We're running out of things we can do for him.'

'I'll not hear that in my theatre, Logaan,' snapped Vad­don. 'We're not going to lose him.'

The Warmaster's chest hiked as he clung to life, his breathing coming in short, hyperventilating gasps, more blood pumping from the wound in his shoulder.

Of the two wounds the Warmaster had suffered, it seemed the least severe, but Vaddon knew it was the one that was killing him. The puncture wound in his chest had practically healed already, ultra sonograms showing that his lung had sealed itself off from the pulmonary sys­tem while it repaired itself. The Warmaster's secondary lungs were sustaining him for now.

The Mournival hovered like expectant fathers as the apothecaries worked harder than they had ever worked before. Vaddon had never expected to have the Warmaster for a patient. The primarch's biology was as far beyond that of a normal Astartes warrior as his own was from a mortal man, and Vaddon knew that he was out of his depth. Only the Emperor himself had the knowledge to delve into the body of a primarch with confidence, and the enormity of what was occurring was not lost on him. A green light winked into life on the narthecium machine and he lifted the data-slate from the port in its

silver steel surface. Numbers and text scrolled across its glossy surface and though much of it made no sense to him, he felt his spirits fall as what he could comprehend sank in.

Seeing that the Warmaster was stable, he circled the operating slab and joined the Mournival, wishing he had better news for them.

'What's wrong with him?' demanded Abaddon. 'Why is he still lying there?'

'Honestly, first captain, I don't know.'

What do you mean, 'You don't know'?' shouted Abaddon, grabbing Vaddon and slamming him against the theatre wall. Silver trays laden with scalpels, saws and forceps clattered to the tiled floor. 'Why don't you know?'

Loken and Aximand grappled with the first captain as Vaddon felt Abaddon's enormous strength slowly crush­ing his neck.

'Let go of him, Ezekyle!' cried Loken. 'This isn't helping!'

You won't let him die!' snarled Abaddon, and Vaddon was amazed to see a terrible fear in the first captain's eyes. 'He is the Warmaster!'

You think I don't know that?' gasped Vaddon as the others prised Abaddon's grip from his neck. He slid down the wall, already able to feel the swelling in his bruised throat.

'Emperor damn you if you let him die,’ hissed Abad­don, stalking the theatre with predatory strides. 'If he dies, I will kill you,’

Aximand led the first captain away from him, speaking soothing words as Loken and Torgaddon helped him to his feet.

The man's a maniac,’ hissed Vaddon. 'Get him out of my theatre, now!'

'He's not himself, apothecary,’ explained Loken. 'None of us are,’

'Just keep him away from my team, captain,' warned Vaddon. 'He's not in control of himself, and that makes him dangerous.'

We will,’ Torgaddon promised him. 'Now what can you tell us? Will he survive?'

Vaddon took a moment to compose himself before answering, picking up his fallen data-slate. 'As I said before, I just don't know. We're like children trying to repair a logic engine that's been dropped from orbit. We don't understand even a fraction of what his body is capable of or how it works. I can't even begin to guess what kind of damage it's suffered to have caused this,’ 'What's actually happening to him?' asked Loken. 'It's the wound in his shoulder; it won't clot. It's bleed­ing out and we can't stop it. We found some degraded genetic residue in the wound that might be some kind of poison, but I can't be sure,’

'Might it be a bacteriological or a viral infection?' asked Torgaddon. 'The water on Davin's moon was thick with contaminants. I ought to know, I swallowed a flagon's worth of it,’

'No,’ said Vaddon. 'The Warmaster's body is, for all intents and purposes, immune to such things,’ Then what is it?'

This is a guess, but it looks like this particular poison induces a form of anaemic hypoxia. Once it enters the bloodstream, it's absorbed exponentially by the red blood cells, in preference to oxygen. With the Warmas­ter's accelerated metabolism, the toxin was carried efficiently around his system, damaging his tissue cells as it went, so they were unable to make proper use of the reduced oxygen content,’

'So where did it come from?' asked Loken. 'I thought you said the Warmaster was immune to such things,’

'And so he is, but this is like nothing I've ever seen before… it's as though it's been specifically designed to

kill him. It's got precisely the right genetic camouflage to fool his enhanced biological defences and allow it to do the maximum amount of damage. It's a primarch killer – pure and simple,’

'So how do we stop it?'

'This isn't an enemy you can take a bolter or sword to, Captain Loken. It's a poison,’ he said. 'If I knew the source of the poisoning, we might be able to do some­thing,’

'Then if we found the weapon that did this, would that be of some help?' asked Loken.

Seeing the desperate need for hope in the captain's eyes, Vaddon nodded. 'Maybe. From the wound shape, it looks like a stab wound from a sword. If you can retrieve the blade, then maybe we can do something for him,’

'I'll find it,’ swore Loken. He turned from Vaddon and made his way to the theatre door.

'You're going back there?' asked Torgaddon, running to catch up with him.

Yes, and don't try to stop me,’ warned Loken.

'Stop you?' said Torgaddon. 'Don't be such a drama queen, Garvi. I'm coming with you,’

Recovering a Titan after action in the field was a long and arduous process, full of technical, logistical and manual difficulties. Entire fleets of vessels came down from orbit, bringing huge lifters, enormous diggers and loading machines. The delivery vessels had to be dug from their impact craters, and an