THE TALE OF ASTELAN

PART THREE

The room swam and spun in Astelan's vision, swirling into a vortex of grey above the slab. He had lost all concept of dme, his experiences reduced to alternating periods of pain and emptiness. In some way, he had come to dread the interludes of isolation more than the torture. When Boreas was there, twisting everything he had done, turning Astelan's own words into knives to stab him with, it made it easier for him to focus. Despite the ache of his wounds and the browbeating of the Interrogator-Chaplain, Astelan could concentrate on defending himself against the accusations. He realised that he was trying to get the Dark Angels to understand why he had done the things they were calling 'crimes'. That desire to strip them of their ignorance, to get them to see the greater vision behind his deeds, was a challenge he could hold on to, a tangible goal to strive for.

But when they left him, for what seemed like days on end, it was harder to continue the fight. Points that had seemed so clear when he had explained them to Boreas became swathed in doubt.

The Chaplain's questions were etched into Astelan's mind, nagging at him, weakening his resolve. What if he had lost his way? What if he had gone insane, and every­thing he had done had been nothing but the vile acts of a tortured mind?

Astelan fought against these thoughts, because to pay any attention to them was to accept that everything he had done had been meaningless. And if that was true, then the greatest moment of his life, the time when he had voiced his support for Luther, was also meaningless. And if that were meaningless, Boreas was right and he had committed a grave sin.

But he had not sinned, Astelan was adamant of that in the precious moments when he could gather his thoughts. His interrogators had not been there; they did not know what it had been like. Now was the opportu­nity for them to discover that uncharted part of their history, the event that so obviously marked their souls. Astelan could teach them what he knew, lead them back to the true path of the Emperor. He would cast aside their suspicions and their doctrines, and turn the interrogation to his benefit. There was much he had to say, and the Dark Angels would hear it.

And yet he had also to contest with the psyker, the war­lock Samiel. The memory of the man inside him, probing his thoughts and feelings, left Astelan feeling violated. This, most of all, was the most troubling thing to him. Along with the alien, the psychic mutant was the greatest threat to mankind. The Emperor had known that, he had told them of the dangers of possession and corruption. Had he not censured the Thousand Sons for their dabbling in magic? And now, ten thousand years of misrule had left the Imperium rife with witches. Entire organisations dedicated to their recruitment and train­ing. They were an affront to everything the Emperor had wanted to achieve. The Adeptus Astra Telepathica with their soul-binding ritual to leech away the Emperor's magnificence for themselves; the Scholastika Psykana for inducting psykers into the military. It pained Astelan to think of it, the sheer negligence of allowing humanity's inner enemy to thrive, to be nurtured at mankind's expense. Had they forgotten the perils, or did they choose simply to ignore them, risking the future of the Imperium and humanity as a whole?

And the pinnacle of folly, they had allowed psykers to become Space Marines! Librarians they called them, a comforting euphemism so that they did not have to think too deeply of the consequences. It was a mask, a smokescreen, so that those in power could pretend that there was purpose in allowing these abominations to exist. Astelan feared for the Imperium that had grown from the calamity of the Horus Heresy, and he feared for mankind's chances of survival in a galaxy determined to extinguish it.

But what could he do? As a Chapter commander he had been at the forefront of the battle to protect mankind's future. Now he was surrounded by ignorance and hate for what he represented.

But what did he truly represent? Again, Boreas's ques­tions teased at the edges of his thoughts, unravelling the arguments he had used to justify his actions. Was he truly any different from the primarchs, who had subverted the Emperor's cause to their own? Who was he, a warrior born, to judge the fate of mankind? It was his role to fol­low orders, to fight battles and command men, not to set the course of humanity's future. Was it really arrogance that had driven him to forsake Lion El'Jonson; did he really know the mind of the Emperor as well as he claimed?

'I see you have been ruminating on your life,' said Boreas. Astelan was panicked for a moment. He had not heard the Interrogator-Chaplain enter. How long had he been unaware of Boreas's presence, his attention locked inside his own head?

'I am trying to get that stinking warlock's voice out of my head, but he has poisoned me!' hissed Astelan, trying to wipe away the filth he felt on his face, but the chains were too tight and his hands waved mockingly in front of him. For a moment Astelan thought they were Samiel's hands, ready to blot out his mind again, to delve into the recesses of his memory, and he shuddered. Shaking his head, Astelan focussed on the cell and Boreas.

'You are doing well, Astelan,' the Chaplain told him. 'I see we are driving out the impurity and lies, and I hear your shouts as you cry out for forgiveness.'

'Never!' Astelan's resolve returned instantly, his mind suddenly clear again. He would never admit he had been wrong. It would be a condemnation of everything the Emperor taught, and would condone the travesty that now passed for the Imperium. 'I need no forgiveness. It is you who should beg for mercy, from the Emperor him­self, for perverting his dream, his glorious ambition.'

'I have not come to listen to your ravings, I am here for information,' Boreas snapped.

'Ask what you will, I will only tell you the truth,' Aste­lan replied. 'Whether you welcome it, well that is something I doubt in my heart.'

We shall see about that,' Boreas said, taking up his cus­tomary position, arms crossed, at the head of the slab. 'You claim you travelled to Tharsis on a ship, and there were other Fallen with you. Tell me how you came by this vessel and these companions.'

'First, I must tell you what befell me after the battles on Caliban,' Astelan told him. 'It was a time that began with great confusion and pain. For an eternity it felt as if I was shapeless, my form distorted and twisted inside out by seething power. I was at the centre of a storm, and part of the maelstrom itself. I had only an infinitely small aware­ness of myself, of who and what I was. And then I awoke, as if from a dream. It was as if Caliban, the fighting, the fire from the heavens, were all an imaginary memory at first'

'Where? Where did you find yourself?' Boreas asked.

'That was most vexing of all,' Astelan said with a frown. He still felt dizzy and sick from his torture at Boreas's hands and the mental probing of Samiel, and he closed his eyes to aid his concentration. 'I was on a rock-strewn slope, a barren, lifeless wasteland stretching out before me. Gone were the thick forests of Caliban, the sky was yellow overhead and a bulging star hung above the hori­zon. At first I thought that perhaps I had not awakened, that I was still dreaming. The impossibility of it baffled me, made me doubt my sanity. But as that sun sank out of view and the night sky filled with stars I did not recog­nise, I realised that it was real. Uncomprehending of how I arrived, I determined to discover what manner of place I now found myself in. It was to be a long time before I discovered the truth.'

'And the truth was?' asked Boreas.

'I was far, far from Caliban,' sighed Astelan. 'When the next morning rose, I decided to walk eastwards. There was no real purpose behind it, but part of me said that I should go towards the sun. I hoped I would find a settle­ment, or failing that at least some indication as to where I was. I marched the whole day, across the scree-strewn slopes of a great dormant volcano, and I found nothing.'

'How did you survive?'

'The planet was not as lifeless as I first thought. There were scattered copses of spindly trees and thorny bushes. Here, I discovered, if you dug deep enough you could find trickling streams passing through the rock, small pools under the surface. There were rodents, serpents and insects all feeding upon each other, and they were not difficult to catch. In this manner I sustained myself. I fear that if it had not been for this wondrous body the Emperor has given me, I would have perished. Had not my stomach, my muscles and my bones been so efficient, I would have starved or been cursed with disease from infected water. But we were created to survive, were we not? The Emperor moulded us so that we could eke life out of death and continue the fight.'

'But what of the ship, how did you come by it?' Boreas asked impatiently.

'I counted the days as I wandered, always heading east, always towards the morning sun,' Astelan continued pur­posefully, glad of the Chaplain's frustration. 'At night I would hunt, for that was when most of the creatures sal­lied forth from their burrows and lairs for food. For two hundred and forty-two days and nights, I existed this way before found any sign of intelligent habitation. I spent that time trying to make sense of what had happened, reliving the battles, trying to piece together the last moments of the fighting on Caliban. To this day I cannot say, I have not found the answers.'

'What happened after two hundred and forty-two days?' There was no anger in Boreas's voice, only a terse­ness born of irritation.

'I saw a light in the night sky,' Astelan said, smiling at the memory. 'At first I thought it a comet or meteor, but as I watched, it circled across the heavens to the north and then disappeared. No shooting star moves like it did and hope stirred within me again, as I realised that it was a ship or aircraft of some kind. At that point, I did not give too much thought to whether it was friend or foe, took it simply as a sign of where to go. So for twelve more days I headed north, and on the fourth day I saw the ship leaving again and pressed towards its destina­tion more directly.'

'And did you find where the ship had landed?'

'Like everything else on that forsaken world, humanity had chosen to live under the surface, to dig down into the rock for sanctuary,' explained Astelan. 'I saw armoured portals delved into the side of a great hill, atop which sat a great expanse lit with hundreds of lights to guide ships in. Having seen only sunlight and starlight for so long, that blaze of yellow and red was glorious in my eyes as it glowed on the horizon. I doubled my efforts, crossing the rocky plains at speed to reach the aurora of civilisation that lay ahead.'

'What then? What did you find there? Where was this place?' Boreas's questions were spat out like bolter fire.

'As I neared the end of my journey, uncertainty sud­denly gripped me,' Astelan said languidly, enjoying the dissatisfaction of Boreas. 'The Imperium was being torn apart by the war unleashed by Horus. The dominions of the Emperor were divided, and I had no way of telling which side the inhabitants of that underground city belonged to. I could see no signs of war, and I spent a day watching, seeking some sign of their allegiance, but there was none.'

'But the Horus Heresy was over. For a long time the Emperor had been victorious,' Boreas pointed out.

'I had no inkling of the time that had passed, no way of knowing the great ages I had missed, or how such a thing might happen,' Astelan replied, opening his eyes and gazing at Boreas. 'In the end, I dared enter, reckon­ing that the risk of death at the hands of traitors was outweighed by the certain death that would eventually overtake even me in the wasteland. I presented myself at the nearest gate, a warrior of the Dark Angels. I had never seen such surprise as was written on the man's face when I appeared. But he did not try to attack me, and I realised my fears were misplaced. Overwhelmed, the guards brought me inside and called for their superiors.'

Astelan grinned, his cracked lips starting to bleed again, remembering the relief he had felt at being wel­comed into the underground setdement. It had not been until that moment that he had realised how lost he had felt, how the tumultuous events of his recent life had so disorientated him.

'They called together their ruling council,' he contin­ued. 'There was little I could tell them, for I knew nothing of how I had got there. The priests called it a mir­acle, saying that the Emperor had delivered me to them. But for all of the questions they asked me, I had so many more. What news of the Heresy had they learned? Where was I, and how might I rejoin my brethren? And I learned much in that initial meeting. To my horror, I was told that over nine thousand years had swept past me. It was impossible to grasp, it was too enormous, too vast to understand. I was shocked, struck dumb as I tried to assimilate this information.'

'But you eventually came to terms with what hap­pened, I assume,' said Boreas.

'Never fully,' admitted Astelan. 'The scope of it is beyond imagining, beyond comprehension. I rested in the chambers they led me to, incapable of rational thought as I tried to unravel what had happened, but there were no answers. Unable to rationalise what I was experiencing, I instead resolved to discover as much as I could about what had happened in my extraordinary absence. I started with the obvious and explored this new place where I found myself. It was a mining colony, on a world called Scappe Delve. They had few accurate star charts, but I was able to estimate to my consternation that I was some twelve hundred light years from Caliban. Again, the isolation and fear struck me, so far from the world I had adopted as my home, but so strange had been the other revelations, it was easier to accept this horrifying fact.'

'And so you learned of what had come to pass since you rose up against the Lion and waged war on Caliban.' Boreas's voice was steadier now. He had evidently resolved to allow Astelan to tell his tale in whatever fash­ion he chose.

'Facts are hard to distinguish from hearsay and fabrica­tion in these times,' sighed Astelan. 'Nearly ten thousand years have obscured the events of the Heresy, and the his­tories of Scappe Delve were not extensive. But I had been there at the time the Emperor still walked among us, I could sieve the grains of truth from the legends. The chronicles told of how Horus had struck against Terra, and battle had raged inside the Imperial Palace itself. The Warmaster had unleashed the bloodthirsty World Eaters, and the Imperial Fists had held the wall against relentless assaults. But the end, the end was so confused as to be unintelligible. All that I could extract was the Emperor's victory, his personal triumph over Horus in single com­bat, and the great wounds he had suffered to secure his triumph. It was then that the meddling of the Ministorum became more evident. The records spoke of the Emperor ascending to godhood from a golden throne, his magnificence spreading across the galaxy like a bea­con.'

'Fanciful, to be sure, but inherently truthful,' Boreas confirmed. 'There are few who truly understand what transpired in those dark times, and even what I know, a member of the Inner Circle of the Dark Angels, is but a fraction of the whole truth.'

'It is unsurprising, when man has been taught to abhor knowledge, to venerate relics of the past over the living and the hopes of the future, and to confuse myth with reality.' It was a wonder to Astelan how much the Imperium had changed since the passing of the Emperor - a man dedicated to knowledge and understanding, of overcoming the superstition and ignorance of the Age of Strife. 'The Emperor embraced knowledge. It was this that allowed Him to create us, to know of the dire perils that awaited humanity and foresee the solution. You who have been born and raised in these unenlightened times, who became Space Marines and have fought wholly within the Imperium you know, cannot understand the way it looks to me. Your perspective is warped because you gaze at it from the outside. Even your histories have evolved over the millennia, reinterpreted, censored, rewritten so that they are worth little more than bedtime stories for children.'

'And so, with your wisdom from the ancient ages of man, you claim to know the way forward?' The scorn had returned to Boreas's voice and his face was twisted in a sneer. 'I have heard these delusions from you before, and they are no less arrogant now as when you implemented them in your tyranny over Tharsis.'

'This perspective has nothing to do with Tharsis, it goes far beyond that,' countered Astelan. 'It comes from before the Horus Heresy, back to when the change started, with the coming of the primarchs.'

'We shall deal with that later. First tell me more about your time on Scappe Delve.'

'At first it was impossible for my thoughts to encom­pass just how much the galaxy had changed, for it had remained the same in many ways,' Astelan said, strug­gling for the words to express how he felt. How could he explain what it was like to discover that the galaxy had aged ten millennia without his knowledge?

'Though no longer spearheaded by the Great Crusade of the Legions, mankind's expansion and reconquest had continued, and the Imperium now stretched beyond a million worlds.' Astelan paused, half expect­ing an interruption, but Boreas seemed content to let him continue without the usual sniping remarks. 'I had felt joy that the Emperor's vision was still alive, until I began to read more, and spoke to the priests, the tech-adepts and the councillors. I saw the great crumbling edifice that the Imperium had become, collapsing under its own size, lost amidst its own complexity. I saw the factions, the internecine conflicts, the ebb and flow of power from individuals to faceless, unaccountable organisations. After the passing of the Emperor, even the primarchs had failed to continue the very thing they had been originally created for. And when they died or disappeared, even less remained of that core ideal of the Emperor.'

'And so you have come to hate the Imperium you once built, jealous that the power now resides with others?' Boreas accused him.

'I do not hate the Imperium, I pity it,' Astelan explained, his pointed look telling Boreas that he pitied the Chaplain almost as much. 'The billions of adepts striving to make sense of it, their masters in their towers, to the High Lords of Terra who now claim to rule in the Emperor's name, they cannot control what they have created. Mankind no longer has lead­ers, it has weak men trying desperately to cling on to what they have. Oh, there have been a few enlightened individuals like Macharius, who have relit the torch and sought to push back the darkness, but the galaxy they lived in no longer tolerates heroes. It supports mediocrity, facelessness, suppression of man's right to endeavour to achieve glory.'

'And yet the greatest threat to the Imperium was Horus,' argued the Chaplain. 'He was imbued with the powers you speak of, who had the absolute authority of the Emperor, who was trusted to lead mankind forward into a new age. When you had just a small measure of that power, it corrupted you and you turned Tharsis into a charnel house. Admit that such power is not for a sin­gle man to wield!'

'It is the same woeful lack of courage that gripped Tharsis during the rebellion,' rasped Astelan. 'The fear of what might be strangles humanity, not daring to risk what they have in an effort to gain everything that it is their right to possess. Timidity and vacillation now rule the Imperium. You have become driven by a dread of the unknown, imprisoned by doubt, shackled by the desire for security and predictability. The vision has been clouded by a miasma of petty trials and tribulations.'

'And so you determined to alter this, to reforge the Imperium into what you saw as its original purpose,' snarled Boreas.