Space Marines - Legends of the Space Marines by Warhammer

Author:Warhammer [Warhammer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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pushing him towards nothingness. No, this was the little-death of the healing trance,

the strange state between where the engines of his Astartes physiology were left to

work their chemical magicks. He had been here before. After the battle for Krypt.

After the narrow escape from Serek—

Serek. Tarikus suppressed a shudder. Memory of that incident returned to him

with harsh clarity. After Serek, he had been in a trance like this, repairing damage

wrought by a forced teleport transition. And it had been inside a medicae tank such as

this one that he had watched the Red Corsairs come to take him. It came back in hard

punches of sense-memory—bolt shells cracking the glassaic, his body sluicing out

with the liquid on to the deck, still broken, still unready. The renegades coming in to

attack him. Blood mixed with the yellowish amnio-fluid. Fighting and killing; but

ultimately, failing.

A shiver ran the length of him. Suddenly the warm liquid was as cold as the

mountainside.

Tarikus took a breath of the oxygenated medium and felt the chill bore deeper.

Out beyond the walls of the medicae tank shapes moved to and fro. They might have

been other Astartes, perhaps come to observe this curiosity, this warrior back from

the dead, this soul in limbo—or perhaps they were just servitors, going about their

tasks, making sure Tarikus did not perish. Not yet.

He did not have permission to die. Aquila had not granted it.

The Doom Eagle looked inside himself and dared to wonder what a real death

might feel like. He had been close to that abyss so many times, but never fallen to it;

and now, in this moment of great darkness he dared to wonder if death would be the

better end for him. If he had perished aboard the hospitaller ship, or perhaps in the

cells of the Dynikas prison, then all that happened now would not have come to pass.

Tarikus’ Chapter would continue on, untroubled by the aberration of his chance

survival. The pestilent questions would not have been asked. Constancy would not be

challenged.

He felt hollow inside. In his prison cell, whenever he could snatch a moment

away from the eyes of the mutant guards and the modificate freaks, he had prayed to

the Golden Throne that he might live to see home once more. And in all that time, he

had never once thought that he would not be trusted by his own kinsmen.

Conflict raged inside him. At once he hated Thryn and the others for daring to

doubt him, but at the same moment he understood why they did so. If matters had

been different, if it had been Zurus returning to Gathis and not Tarikus, then what

choices would he have made in the same place? What questions would Tarikus have

demanded answers for?

It came to him that the only way he would be able to prove himself would be to

give up the last breath in his body. In death, truth could not be hidden.

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