The First Heretic

‘This is a truth too ugly to be embraced by the Imperium.’ The captain watched the dead world below. ‘You, creature, know nothing of what you speak. But brother, do you expect us to sail into orbit around Terra and right into the Emperor’s welcoming embrace? The answers we carry home will make a lie of the Imperial Truth. All human emotion takes form as psychic force? Not only is the Emperor’s godless vision a lie, it must be crushed in favour of allying with daemons and spirits?’ Argel Tal shook his head. ‘It will be civil war, Xaphen. The Imperium will tear itself apart.’

The Chaplain gave a threatening growl. ‘This is why we came. The truth is all that matters. You speak as though you expected the primarch to be proved wrong, and panic now he was shown to be right.’

‘But the captain has a point,’ said Dagotal. ‘We will not be showered with medals for bringing home the truth that hell is a real place.’

They all turned as the daemon laughed in their minds.

You have seen nothing yet, but you already judge what is best for your species?

‘What more is there to see?’ asked Argel Tal.

Ingethel beckoned with its gnarled fingers. Close your eyes.

‘No.’ The captain took a calming breath. ‘I am finished with blind indulgence. Tell me what you wish to show us.’

I will show you how your primarch was born. I will show you why the Cadians called him the Favoured Son of the Four. The Emperor is not his only father.

Argel Tal glanced at the others, seeing their eyes already closed, the mention of their father enough to tempt them into obedience. He spoke into the vox, alerting the other squads.

‘Be ready, all of you, for what we see may be a deception.’

You have such little faith, Argel Tal.

The Word Bearer closed his eyes again.

The air’s touch was ice against his skin, and the first thing Argel Tal’s returning vision offered was his own breath misting before him. The smell here was neither the sanguine richness of the alien world, nor the musky odour of oxygen filtered through a vessel’s recycling scrubbers. A certain sharpness hung in the air: the chemical tang of volatile machinery and burning glass.

Argel Tal looked around the laboratory, surrounded on all sides by live generators, cluttered tables and humans at work in pressurised environment suits – some white, some bright yellow and marked by radiological sigils. Frost rimed their faceplates, scuffing away as powder when brushed off by gloved hands.

The Word Bearer had been in scarce few laboratories in the many decades of his existence, so his frame of reference was limited. Still, he could form a fair estimation that a facility this size would only be required for the most vital or visionary work. The walls were lost behind dense cabling and clanking generators; the technicians at work numbered in the hundreds, spread around tables, platforms and desks.

One passed Argel Tal, the figure’s environmental hazard suit rustling as it brushed the Word Bearer’s battle armour. The suit’s faceguard stole any hope of seeing the wearer’s face; either way, the technician ignored the Astartes completely.

Argel Tal reached for the figure.

Don’t.

He hesitated, grey fingers curling back. The tiny servos in his armour’s knuckles whirred as he pulled away from the technician’s shoulder.

Be careful, Argel Tal. These souls remain blind to you as long as you do not interfere with their work.

‘And if I did?’ he asked quietly.

Then one of the most powerful psychic forces in the history of life would be alerted to you, and would kill you where you stand. You are within the Anathema’s innermost sanctum. Here, it breeds its spawn.

‘The Anathema,’ Argel Tal repeated, looking around the colossal facility. The other Word Bearers walked to his side, none of them reaching for weapons just yet.

The Anathema. The creature you know as the God- Emperor.

Xaphen exhaled misty curls of vapour. ‘This... This is Terra. The Emperor’s gene-laboratories.’

Yes. Many years before the Anathema’s crusade to reclaim the stars. Here, with the full clarity of its emotionless inhumanity, it has finished shaping its twenty children.

The Chaplain crossed to a table, where vials of blood span in a centrifuge, separating into layers within each glass vial. ‘If this is a vision of the past, how could the Emperor destroy us here?’

You are protected for now, Xaphen. That is all that matters. This is what transpires on Terra, as the elder empire burns with soul-fire. The Anathema senses it will soon be time to begin his Great Crusade.

The Word Bearers moved along the rows of tables, their course taking them closer to the central platform standing above the laboratory. A column of black and silver machinery stood upon the decking there, ringed by a wide walkway. Argel Tal climbed the stairs first, his boots echoing on the metal, going unheard by the dozens of technicians nearby. Several passed him, paying no heed to anything beyond the digital streams on their frostbitten data-slates and the sine-wave readings on their handheld auspex readers.

Argel Tal walked across the platform, around the amniotic pods coupled to the main column – bound there by dense messes of wires, chains, cables and industrial clamps. The generators built into the column of metal made