The pilgrim's head seemed to bow even lower, as if his spine was permanently bent in an attitude of
prayer. 'I would ask forgiveness, great one,' he said, in a rasping voice shredded by years of thunderous
sermons, 'but it is not mine to offer apologies in the Emperor's name. For it is to do His work that we
have come to this place.'
Castellan Leucrontas regarded the pilgrims emerging from the airlocks. Their ship, a converted
merchantman, was a sturdy and ancient vessel, essential qualities for a craft that had evidently made it to
the Phalanx's isolated location at short notice. Nevertheless, there had been great risk in taking them so
close to the Veiled Region, with its pirates and xenos, in an unarmed ship. The pilgrims had clearly been
willing to court death to make this journey, and still more to risk the chance that the Imperial Fists would
refuse them a berth and leave them to drift.
'Then you represent the Church of the Imperial Creed?' said Leucrontas. 'That august congregation
has no authority here. This ship is sovereign to the Imperial Fists Chapter.'
The lead pilgrim pulled back his hood. The face inside was barely recognisable as a face - not
because it was inhuman or mutilated, but because the familiarity of its features was almost entirely hidden
by the tattooed image of a pair of scales that covered it. The image was an electoo, edged in lines of light,
and the two pans of the scales flickered with intricately rendered flames.
'We come not to usurp your rule, good lord Castellan,' said the pilgrim. 'Rather, we are here to
observe. The standards, my brothers, if you please.'
Several other pilgrims jangled to the front of the crowd. Altogether there must have been three
hundred of them, all hooded and chained like penitents. Several of them unfurled banners and held them
aloft. They bore symbols of justice - the scales, the blinded eye, the image of a man holding a sword by
the blade in a trial by ordeal. Other pilgrims were bent almost double by the loads of books strapped to
their backs, each one a walking library. Still others had spools of parchment encased in units on their
chests, so they could pay out a constant strip of parchment on which to write. Some were writing down
the exchange between their leader and the Castellan, nimble fingers scribbling in an arcane shorthand with
scratching quills.
'Our purpose,' said the pilgrims' leader, 'is to follow the course of justice. The Emperor Himself
created the institutions that see justice called down upon His subjects and His enemies. We are the Blind
Retribution, and whenever the process of justice is enacted, we are there to observe. It has come to the
notice of the Blind that a Chapter of Astartes is to be tried here, for several charges of rebellion and
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heresy. And so we are here to watch over this process and record all the matters of justice therein. This
is the will of the Emperor, for His justice is the most perfect of all and it is to His perfection that we
aspire.'
The Castellan gave this some thought. 'It is true,' he said, 'that the Phalanx is to see these renegades
put to trial. Your presence here, however, must be at the sufferance of the Chapter Master. I permit you
entrance, but only he can permit you to stay, and should he withdraw my decision of welcome then you
will be ejected.'
'We understand,' said the leader of the Blind Retribution. 'And we will obey. Might we beg of your
crew some place to stay?'
'I shall have the crew find you lodgings,' replied the Castellan. 'You can expect no more than an
unused cargo bay. The Phalanx is large but it has no shortage of population.'
'We would ask nothing more,' said the leader. 'Ours is a way of poverty and denial. Indulgence dulls
the sharp edge of justice, and luxury dims the focus. Now we take our leave, lord Castellan. There are
prayers and devotions to be made before our souls are fit to look upon the business of the Emperor's
justice.'
Leucrontas watched as the pilgrims finished filing into the docking bay. They took loops of prayer
beads from their robes and spoke droning prayers of thanks and humility.
The pilgrims were a small matter. The crew officers, who maintained the day-to-day workings of the
Phalanx while the Imperial Fists attended the matters of war, could deal with them. Leucrontas had
many more duties he had to see to before he could give the Blind Retribution another thought. Soon the
Soul Drinkers would be in the dock, and many more powerful observers than the Blind Retribution
would be watching the results closely.
THE FIRST SIGHT Sarpedon had of this place was of the hands over his face, clamping the mask down.
Even then, barely conscious, the soldier's part of his mind demanded to know how he had been
taken. Nerve gas, pumped into his cell? A rapid, merciless assault? Some drug administered by a sly
needle or dart? He was angry. He wanted to know. His memory of the last few hours was a dark fog.
He thrashed. The hands clamping the mask to his face snapped away. They were not the gauntlets of
Astartes - Sarpedon was in the custody of Imperial Fists functionaries, unaugmented men and women
who served the Fists as spaceship crew and support staff. The Phalanx was full of them. Somehow it
was a greater insult that it did not take Space Marines to hold Sarpedon down.
Sarpedon struggled. He was held so fast he would have snapped his limbs before he loosened them.
Incoherent voices shouted, medical code words barked between the staff of the Phalanx's
Apothecarion. Cold rivers wound through his body as sedatives were pumped into his veins.
Sarpedon was being wheeled on his back through a corridor with a ceiling that looked like the
negative cast of a giant spinal column. The walls were webs of bone.
The sedatives took hold. Sarpedon couldn't even flex the muscles that had forced uselessly against
his bonds. His eyes still moved - he looked down at his body and saw metal clamps around each of his
limbs, holding them fast to the metal slab on which he lay. The Phalanx's crew must have had to make
the restraints specially to fit his six remaining legs.
Sarpedon was also aware of a constriction around the sides of his head. No doubt it was an inhibiting
device to dull his psychic powers. His cell had been fitted out to hold a psyker - the wards and
anti-psychic materials built into its construction had rendered him completely blunt, unable to even taste
the psychic resonance of his surroundings. The hood holding back his head made him similarly useless
psychically. Not that he would have needed his psychic prowess to kill every one of the crewmen
dragging him through the Apothecarion, if only he could get free.
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But they were just ordinary men and women, Sarpedon told himself. They believed as much as he
did that their work was the work of the Emperor. Perhaps they were right.
Sarpedon passed through into a hall where the gnarled walls were lined with ceiling-high nutrient
tanks, each with cultured organs suspended in viscous fluid. Gilded autosurgeons were mounted on the
ceiling.
The next face that loomed over him was that of an Astartes - close-cropped hair, hollow cheeks and
a sharp chin and nose, with a bionic like a miniature microscope mounted over one eye. An eyebrow
arched up.
'Behold the enemy,' said the Space Marine. It was an Imperial Fist by the symbol on his shoulder
pad, and an Apothecary by the white panels of his armour. 'What manner of creature has the galaxy
placed this time upon my slab? Many foul things have I seen, and some of them once human in form. But
this! Ah, this shall be a challenge and a privilege. The imager!'
An ornate piece of machinery, like an arch of inscribed panels, was slid over Sarpedon. Sarpedon
wanted to speak, if only to tell the Apothecary that he was no enemy, but a Space Marine as the
Apothecary himself was. But his tongue was as paralysed as the rest of him. He had only his senses.
Speckles of light played against Sarpedon's retinas as lasers measured every aspect of him. A screen
unfolded from one wall, in glowing green lines displaying Sarpedon's skeleton and the complex pattern of
a Space Marine's organs.
'The weapons carried by an Astartes begin with those augmentations within him,' said the
Apothecary. 'All are present. Evidence here of extensive wounding and healing internally, as typical of a
veteran Astartes. Most recent are extensive fractures to the skull and ribs. Note the abnormal shape of
the omophagea, typical of this Chapter's gene-seed.'
The crewmen, the orderlies of the Phalanx's Apothecarion, were scribbling down the Apothecary's
pronouncements with autoquills.
'And he is awake,' continued the Apothecary, noticing the movement of Sarpedon's eyes. 'We have
an audience! What think you, Lord Sarpedon, of the hospitality aboard the Phalanx?'
The imager moved down over Sarpedon's body. The orderlies had to manoeuvre it past Sarpedon's
restrained legs.
'The mutations,' said the Apothecary, 'are implicit throughout. The subject's musculo-skeletal strength
is at the top end of Astartes maximum. I doubt there is any man-mountain of a Space Wolf who can
match him. Material mutations begin with the thickened lumbar spine and the pelvis.' Again the
Apothecary addressed Sarpedon. 'And what a pelvis! All the scholars of Mars could not machine such a
hunk of bone! I have no doubt the strengthening properties of its shape shall make it a classic of its kind.
I shall have it preserved and gilded, I think, and keep it here among my most prized samples. Perhaps the
Mechanicus shipwrights can use it to develop some new form of docking clamp. Certainly I shall not
permit it to be incinerated with the rest of you.'
The imager moved lower. Now on the screen were the muscle-packed exoskeletal segments of
Sarpedon's legs.
'The subject's legs number six,' said the Apothecary. 'These are the most significant material
mutations. Originally they numbered eight; note the remnants of the bionic joint around the centre left and
the recent partially healed damage to the rear right socket. The structure of the legs is roughly arachnoid
but has no direct analogue. The uncleanliness of such deformities is profound. I have no interest in these.
They can burn after the execution.'
The imager was withdrawn. Now Sarpedon found points of pain all over his body as the orderlies
worked over him. They were looping wires and thin tubes around him, fixing them with needles in the
gaps around his black carapace and in the muscles of his abdomen. One was slid into a vein in his neck,
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another on the underside of one wrist.
'Begin,' said the Apothecary.
Sarpedon was bathed in pain. It was a pure, unalloyed pain. It was not like a blade in his skin, or
scalding-hot liquid, or any other pain he had suffered. It was completely pure.
Sarpedon's mind shut down. Nothing in his consciousness found purchase in the endless, white
landscape of pain. Time meant nothing. He no longer felt his restraints, or his anger at the arrogance of
the Apothecary in dissecting him like any other specimen. He no longer felt anything. He was made of
pain.
The sensation of tearing ligaments loomed through the pain. It was subsiding, being replaced with the
normal input from his senses. His legs had forced against the restraints. His neck muscles had almost torn
against the psychic inhibitor holding his head in place and his lungs burned against the breastplate of fused
ribs in his chest. He gasped, unable to control his body's reactions to the onslaught.
'Note the reaction to pain,' the Apothecary's voice continued. 'It is within normal tolerances. So we
see the core of an Astartes is present, but much embellished by corruption. I have no doubt that this
subject can be considered a Space Marine by most definitions and can be tried as one.'
One of Sarpedon's legs hurt more than the others. It hurt more because it had some freedom of
movement in the hip joint. The restraint holding it just above the talon was coming loose.
And he could move. Just a little, but he could do it. The sedatives were wearing off. The dose was
too low. He had greater body mass than a normal Astartes thanks to his mutated legs, and the less
obvious mutations inside him had changed his metabolism. He was getting movement back.
Sarpedon fought against it. The Apothecary was describing the results of some blood and tissue
sample tests to the orderlies. Sarpedon ignored them. The restraint was working loose. With the greater
range of movement afforded to his other limbs, he could gain more leverage against their restraints and
they, too, were giving way.
Sarpedon took in a breath. He forced his chest upwards and dug his talons into the slab, trying to
level himself off it.
The ping of snapping metal alerted the Apothecary, who broke off his talk mid-word.
Bolts sheared. Metal bands fractured. Sarpedon's lower body ripped itself free. He thrashed one arm
free in a matter of seconds, the orderlies starting back at the sight of their captive's lower limbs slashing
around him.
Sarpedon reached up to the head restraint and tore it off its moorings. He rolled off the slab and
sprawled on the floor. The drugs in his system were still powerful enough to rob him of his coordination
and he could not get all his legs moving him in the same direction at once. He yanked the remaining arm
free just as the Apothecary drew his plasma pistol.
'What are you?' slurred Sarpedon. He clawed at the inhibitor device still clamped around his temples.
'What can you claim to be that you judge me? I am not some xenos thing on a slide! I am Astartes!'
'You are a traitor,' said the Apothecary. He had his plasma pistol levelled at Sarpedon's head. 'The
dignity we give you in trying you before true and loyal Space Marines is more than you deserve.'
'But try me for what?' demanded Sarpedon. He lost his footing and crashed into one of the specimen
