Dramatis Personae: Perkûn of the Red Talons
[authval={almir_h/@count.hodo}]
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| [//Master of the Forge Perkûn; the Keeper of Keys; the Equerry+] [//almir_h/@count.hodo+] |
Do not seek a person’s worth in the circumstances of their betrayal, but in the fact that they fell at all. Betrayal is not born of a noble soul, nor is it nourished by an honourable heart.
[//Attributed to Lion El’Jonson, Primarch of the 1st Legion Astartes+]
***
The chamber had been cooled well below freezing point and ice had bloomed all over the steel walls, covering them in hexagrammid lattices of frost. There was no sound here save for the occasional crackle of ice and the soft murmur and whirr of adepts and servitors moving about. The red giant moved slowly, almost ponderously as he inspected the precious cargo.
“Adept-Lord Perkûn,” one of the Techpriests inclined his head, “We have been expecting you.”
The creature – one could scarcely call it a man with its half-arachnid cybernetic body – was hunched over one of the many surgical tables that covered this – and other – halls, its hands knuckle deep in the blackened viscera of a dead Red Talon.
Some three thousand dead Astartes, Perkûn mused, leaning against the shaft of his axe, and those are only the ones that we managed to recover. Is this how it was for Lord Mor, in ages past?
“Who am I speaking to?” He inquired, his reinforced helmet exhaling thick clouds of fog.
“Rhomiun-22, lord,” the techpriest responded before all adepts present in the room levelled their eyes at Perkûn, “We are all Rhomiun-22.”
“Very well.” One of his Mechadendrites extended, its fine appendages plucking away at the flesh, taking probes, measuring nano-teknika levels and sarcosanic saturation, “Has the production of receivers been increased?”
“Naturally, as per lord Mor’s wishes,” Rhomiun confirmed, “Forgeworld Telerac has always obliged and our gifts are yours.”
“As are ours in return.” Perkûn continued on, walking past rows of dead space marines, each one uniquely mutilated by bolts, volkite discharge and the grisly melee that was all too common in astartes-on-astartes combat. Some had lost limbs, or whole portions of their cranium – yet the Red Talons and adepts of Telerac knew well how to replace such… deficiencies with steel and brass and wetware.
Star Wardens, Riven Lords, Jade Talons, Wormwood Sons – and more. The Quadragenta; the Steel of Heliopolis; even the pseudo-Legion they had been sent to exterminate. All of their dead rested here, all those that they could not extract. Their armour had been stripped away, replaced with newly-issued suits produced on Heliopolis – both because their old wargear had been ruined for the most part, and for the sake on anonymity; no ident-runes could be traced back beyond this Sector. The Pentarchy’s authority would not be questioned for years to come, but it always paid well to cover one’s tracks.
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| [//almir_h/@count.hodo+] |
***
To the east of the chamber, Perkûn could see the newly-arrived dead that were still being stripped of their wargear. Some were Carcharodons, and there was a score of Flesh Eaters amongst them as well. He made a note of having their equipment refurbished, their geneseed extracted and prepared for return to their allies. No such gesture would be afforded to the traitors – yet it was owed to their allies, as repayment for the flesh that they would steal from their unburied dead.
Perkûn approached one of the Carcharodon bodies, softly removing the pale helmet to inspect the even paler face beneath. A trail of swirling tatau extended around his nose and cheeks, his desiccated lips gave way to sharpened teeth and strangely purple gums. A closer inspection revealed a slight, almost psoriasis-like scaly texture of the dermis on his forehead.
Strange creatures, the Red Talons' Master of the Forge thought to himself, as he removed a jade tooth pendant from the marine’s shin, leaving the body behind with his curiosity satisfied for the moment.
He needed to prepare. Focus. Though Perkûn had turned the keys many times before, he had never attempted an operation of such scale – but the Maimed desired an army and an army he would deliver unto him. The neural port at the back of his neck still itched from the great linkage with the forge-crypt’s mainframe. The wisdom and personality imprints of all Techmarines, Iron Lords and Masters of the Forge that had or would ever serve the Red Talons were stored in it, ensuring that there would always be a Keeper of Keys.
That the dead would always rise when the Emperor required it.
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| [//almir_h/@count.hodo+] |
***
Further down in the complex, covered with thick sheets of ice, like the carcasses of antediluvian beasts contained within a glacier’s embrace, rested the chapter’s eldest. Those three ancients that the Maimed held in highest reverence, the only ones that could truly sway his mind one way or another. Ancient Varazdhin, whom the chapter’s rolls of honour named the Keen for his skill and precision while using heavy weaponry, had followed him into this second life. To great effect did he utilize the chapter’s rare and esoteric dreadnought cannons and particle cutters.
Ancient Lovron, his Contemptor frame marked by the great skull of gleaming iron that had been emblazoned upon his chest, its circumference crowned by a wreath of lightning bolts. The two Kheres assault cannons at his side spelled death for anyone mad enough to cross their hail of fire. Perkûn had not been there when Lovron had fallen, nor when his frame had been manufactured, but the story of how the latter had come into the chapter’s possession was a favourite amongst the young aspirants.
Upon the plains of Bodt – that benighted recruitment world of the World Eaters – Lord Mor had sought to retrieve rare and strange technology that even he did not fully understand at the time. Nor had it been all that was taken. Geneseed, engines of war, weaponry, nascent recruits. Everything that could be taken, was taken. Amongst those prizes had been a veteran of the World Eaters legion, his Contemptor frame still disconnected from the sarcophagus as Mor had taken to cutting him out of the steel cocoon, like a rotten pit from a most delectable fruit. The maw of the World Eaters still resided beneath that iron skull – yet in death, so too did this shell belong to the Red Talons.
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| [//almir_h/@count.hodo+] |
***
Finally, rounding the pedestal, there Perkûn would find the last elder. A Contemptor frame, massive and heavily-armoured – even more so than the previous two – its limbs ended in long, scything talons that gleamed even through the sheathing ice.
Ancient Skara Brae, Perkûn gazed upon the black and red form that exuded such sheer violence in its comatose slumber, the Survivor of Istvaan. He who saw the killing fields and lived. The one whom the Maimed held above all others.
It was this ancient that he had come to retrieve personally. Skara Brae would walk again at lord Mor’s side and the toll that he would reap amongst the living would be terrible. It would take many hours, perhaps even days.
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| [//almir_h/@count.hodo+] |
“Thus, begins the great linkage,” Perkûn whispered, tapping a sombre rhythm with his axe against the floor, “Thus we raise the dead – ours and theirs alike – so that the Brethren of Mor may march, shrouded in truth and bearing death.”
“We shall reach out and rake across the earth and the sky.”
“We shall rend the heavens and raise the bloody storm.”
“Again, and again.”
“As we have always done, as we always will.”
“Thus I bid you to rise, Ancient Skara Brae, for the Clan Unbroken has need of you.”