found an intact STC in the ruins of a pyramid city in a jungle basin. Intact. You know what it made? It was the Standard Template Constructor for a type of steel blade, an alloy of folded steel composite that was sharper and lighter and tougher than anything we’ve had before. Thirty whole Chapters of the great Astartes are now using blades of the new pattern. The scouts became heroes. I believe each was given a world of his own. It was regarded as the greatest technological advance of the century, the greatest discovery, the most perfect and valuable STC recovery in living memory.’
‘That made knives, Bram… knives, daggers, bayonets, swords. It made blades and it was the greatest discovery in memory. Compared to this… it’s less than nothing. Take one of those wonderful new blades and face me with the weapon this thing can make.’
‘I read the crystal before you did, Fereyd. I know what it can do. Iron Men; the old myth, one of the tales of the Great Old Wars.’
Fereyd grinned. ‘Then breathe in this moment, my friend. We’ve found the impossible here. A device to guarantee the ascendancy of man. What’s a stronger, lighter, sharper, better blade when you can overrun the homeworld of the man wielding it with a legion of deathless warriors? This is history, you know, alive in the air around us. This makes us the greatest of men. Don’t you feel it?’
Gaunt and Fereyd both turned slowly, surveying the silent ranks of metal beings waiting behind the grilles.
Gaunt hesitated. ‘I feel… only horror. To have fought and killed and sacrificed just to win a device that will do more of the same a thousandfold. This isn’t a prize, Fereyd. It is a curse.’
‘But you came looking for it? You knew what it was.’
‘I know my responsibilities, Fereyd. I dedicate my life to the service of the Imperium, and if a device like this exists then it’s my duty to secure it in the name of our beloved Emperor. And you gave me the job of finding it, after all.’
Fereyd set his helmet on the silver floor and began to unlace his gloves, shaking his head. ‘I love you like a brother, old friend, but sometimes you worry me. We share a discovery like this and you trot out some feeble moral line about lives? That’s called hypocrisy, you know. You’re a killer, slaved to the greatest killing engine in the known galaxy. That’s your work, your life, to end others. To destroy. And you do it with relish. Now we find something that will do it a billion times better than you, and you start to have qualms? What is it? Professional jealousy?’
Gaunt scratched his cheek, thoughtful. ‘You know me better. Don’t mock me. I’m surprised at your glee. I’ve known the Princeps of Imperial Titans who delight in their bloodshed, and who nevertheless regard the vast power at their disposal with caution. Give any man the power of a god, and you better hope he’s got the wisdom and morals of a god to match. There’s nothing feeble about my moral line. I value life. That is why I fight to protect it. I mourn every man I lose and every sacrifice I make. One life or a billion, they’re all lives.’
‘One life or a billion?’ Fereyd echoed. ‘It’s just a matter of proportion, of scale. Why slog in the mud with your men for months to win a world I can take with Iron Men… and not spill a drop of blood?’
‘Not a drop? Not ours, maybe. There is no greater heresy than the thinking machines of the Iron Age. Would you unleash such a heresy again? Would you trust these… things not to turn on us as they did before? It is the oldest of laws. Mankind must never again place his fate in the hands of his creations, no matter how clever. I trust flesh and blood, not iron.’
Gaunt found himself almost hypnotised by the row of dark eye-sockets behind the grille. These things were the future? He didn’t think so. The past, perhaps, a past better forgotten and denied.
How could any one wake them? How could anyone even think of making more and unleashing them against…
Against who? The enemy? Warmaster Macaroth and his retinue? This was how Dravere planned to usurp control of the Crusade? This was what it had all been about?
‘You’ve really taken your poor orphan Ghosts into your heart, haven’t you, Bram? The concern