Perhaps This Is All a God Is

“Andros. It's me. Roboute Guilliman. Your gene-father.” Guilliman studied his ruined son as he spoke again.

At the familiar voice, Andros cried out in pain. His almost-melted body shook. “Father? Is it you?” Agony filled his voice. “No. Father can never wake. You're another lackey of the Warp. Give up, beast. I will never submit.” His words were disjointed. He could not believe he was truly hearing Guilliman.

After that terrible battle, they had tried almost everything to save their Primarch. In the end, they could only place him in stasis and let him sleep forever. “It is me, Andros. I've returned. Archmagos Cawl woke me from my slumber and gave me the chance to lead the Imperium again.” Grief crept into Guilliman's voice. No one could have seen a once-loyal bodyguard reduced to this without pain.

The Tech-Priests dismantled the section where Andros hung. His flesh had fused completely with the steel. The two could no longer be separated. In one sense, he had become a creature of the Warp. Yet there was one thing to be thankful for: he still held on to his human will. Guilliman laid a hand against his twisted cheek, sorrow in his eyes.

“Father. It really is you.” Beneath Guilliman's touch, Andros finally felt the familiar bond of blood. This was no crude illusion wrought by daemons or traitors. Every Space Marine was created with organs grown from his Primarch's gene-seed. That gave him a bond with his gene-father, and he inherited some of the Primarch's abilities or temperament. With that hand against his face, the lost warrior at last recognized his father.

“You've come back, Father.” Tears welled in his remaining eye. “What happened aboard the Pride of the Emperor was our fault. We failed to protect you.”

“No. It was my fault. I let vengeance overcome reason. Anger clouded my judgment and led us into a trap. I was so consumed by hatred that I failed the Imperium—and you.”

No one would have imagined a Primarch admitting fault. The people now placed Guilliman beside the Emperor himself. One had sat upon the Golden Throne for ten thousand years. The other had brought them hope again. Without ten millennia of faith spread by the Ecclesiarchy, Guilliman might already have taken the Emperor's place in their hearts. Now the man they regarded as a god apologized to Andros.

His recklessness had led the entire fleet into Fulgrim's trap. He did not know how his sons had escaped the encirclement after he fell. The cost must have been terrible. All of it had followed from his own wrong decision.

“No, my lord. You cannot be wrong.” Andros shook his head.

“How did you come to be here?” Guilliman asked. Andros was silent for a moment before he began his story.

“After you entered stasis, we blamed ourselves. We could not forgive our failure. When the Imperium began to stabilize, we set out to hunt the Emperor's Children.”

“I was captain of the First Company. With me were Hill of the Second, Aion of the Seventh, and Nide of the Tenth. We learned that those traitors had been sighted on Mora, a world near the Eye of Terror. We took a force of warriors there to hunt them.”

“Our ambush succeeded. We killed Eidolon, captain of the Emperor's Children's Fifth Company, and destroyed more than ten of their Chaos ships. But anger ruled us. We pursued them too eagerly and fell into a trap set by the Word Bearers and World Eaters.”

“Aion and Nide died first. A blast tore away half my body, and I was taken prisoner. Hill tried to board them, but he and Lucius of the World Eaters killed each other. They hung me here. I watched them behead my men in duel after duel. Then came prisoners from the Chapters they defeated. I stayed here, watching it all, roaring in useless rage.”

“I'm sorry, gene-father. I failed.” The light dimmed in Andros's eye as he finished. His Astartes constitution had denied him even the escape of killing himself. Through all those years, he had been forced to watch one loyal servant of the Imperium after another die at the traitors' hands.

“No. You have done well. These tragedies, this suffering, this pain—none of it should be our species' fate. Humanity has done nothing to deserve it. The blame lies with the so-called gods in the Warp and those who betray their own kind. Every enemy that has preyed upon humanity will pay for its crimes,” Guilliman said.

Using the system's special ability, Guilliman confirmed that Andros had not been corrupted by Chaos. His voice grew solemn. “Andros, I must ask you something. You must answer from your heart.”

“Ask, gene-father. From the moment I swore my oath beneath the obelisk on Ultramar, I have never meant to deceive you,” Andros said sincerely.

“Tell me, Andros. Will you still fight for that great ideal? Will you still strive to win a future for our suffering, despairing species? Tell me your answer.”

“I will. Even if I must enter a Dreadnought, I will not object.”

It took immense courage to accept entombment in a Dreadnought. Once inside, a warrior would spend the rest of his existence in a metal womb. Many Space Marines preferred death. Only those utterly devoted to the Emperor would endure the agony of that life.

“I have other plans for you, Andros,” Guilliman said.

“I am yours to command, gene-father.”

“Good.”

Guilliman turned to the Tech-Priests and ordered them to maintain Andros's life-support systems. There must be no mistakes. “Once you've cleared this ship, blow it apart.” Then he turned and left.

Grief alone solved nothing. To take revenge, he would have to master his anger and sorrow and fight with reason. Sicarius stayed behind to speak with the elder Ultramarine. Only afterward did he leave.

Elsewhere, Chainhammer was an agricultural world of extraordinary abundance. It also possessed advanced medical technology. Before the Great Rift expanded, the Imperium's rich and powerful had traveled there for the finest life-extension treatments. When the Rift opened, many of them were stranded.

Then the Rangdan came. Humans of every rank and station became tools of alien labor. Hundreds, thousands, worked day and night in crude factories. The Rangdan forges operated at a feverish, desperate pace. They built defensive fortresses as high as mountains and strengthened every stronghold until it seemed impregnable.

Their unusual communications had already warned them of humanity's terrifying strength. Several vanguard fleets had been erased in a single strike without even seeing their targets. The Rangdan gathered the weapons built from their remaining blasphemous technology inside their fortresses. They armed masses of slaves, preparing for a grinding war of attrition. Every one of them waited like a condemned prisoner, wondering when the human blow would fall. The two earlier fleets had reported their destruction, but not what weapon had destroyed them. They had died too quickly to send anything useful.

Another Rangdan fleet patrolled the Chainscythe system. It was a motley force. Baroque Imperial warships flew beside huge, ungainly Ork cruisers assembled from scrap plating. Elegant alien craft, crystalline spindles whose forms shifted constantly, drifted among them. The Rangdan's own vessels bristled with spikes, chains, and floating metal tentacles, like metal jellyfish in the void. Those ugly, repulsive shapes were unmistakably theirs.

Many of the fleet's ships were ancient, absent from every human database. They were Rangdan prizes. The xenos did not wage war on humanity alone. They attacked any world they could find. Even while hiding from humans in the dark reaches, they had continued raiding other alien species. After destroying a civilization and enslaving its people, they added its ships to their own fleet.

Alien warships gathered in such numbers that they seemed like grains of dust in an asteroid cloud. The Rangdan assembled every force they could, building an illusion of overwhelming strength to comfort their frightened minds. Scout ships went out continually. They had to discover what the humans were using, and how it could destroy a Rangdan fleet so quickly.

Outside the Chainscythe system, a vast human fleet waited. This was the third alien-held world Azrael had attacked. More than ninety percent of his fleet's personnel had yet to see a Rangdan. Only the Primaris Marines and senior commanders had encountered them. Each time, once the xenos' presence on a target world was confirmed, the fleet struck from beyond visual range.

Azrael looked over the intelligence chief's head at the displays of readings and diagnostics. The enemy fleet had been detected and analyzed. Red contacts crowded the hololithic image. “Planet-killer cannon fully charged. Requesting permission to fire,” the weapons officer reported.

The electronic panel before him cast a faint white light over his already pale face, making him look like death. Static hissed from speakers mounted on pillars around the console. No one spoke. Everyone held their breath. Only the crackle of current and the computation systems' beeps broke the silence.

Azrael did not answer at once. He kept looking toward the intelligence chief. At last, he spoke. “Target the Chainscythe system's star. Let's destroy it all.”

“Order received. Acquiring target.” A pause. “Target locked. Ten seconds to firing. Countdown commencing. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.”

As the numbers fell, sections of the Colossus warship darkened. Their systems shut down in preparation to receive the cannon's residual energy. “Fire.” The weapons officer pressed the firing control.

Every time he pressed that button, the act felt unreal. A star that had existed for billions of years, perhaps more than ten billion, began to die because his finger had moved. A human lifetime might not amount to the last digits of that star's age. Yet a human had destroyed it.

Every human had wondered, as a child, how terrifying the power to destroy the world must be.

People gave that power all kinds of names: apocalypse, renewal, the ending and remaking of worlds. It ought to belong to the mightiest god, a being whose supreme wisdom decided the fate of countless lives. Yet the weapons officer was an ordinary man. Nothing about him was remarkable. And he held the power to destroy a sun, just like a god from legend. The feeling was difficult to describe. Perhaps it was the shattering of an illusion.

Perhaps this is all a god is, he thought, watching the brilliant column of destruction illuminate the cold, dark universe.

Azrael gave it no such thought. He knew that humanity's ancestors had once possessed this power. Through the long ages of strife and darkness, they had lost those terrible weapons. Now humanity was simply taking them up again.