Chapter 69: Iron Within, Iron Without

Chapter 69: Iron Within, Iron Without

Standard Terran Date: 010.M31

Gloriana-class Battleship, the Ironblood

Petros Kalashis stood naked, surrounded by other naked, powerfully-built young men. They were the neophytes who had survived the transformation and the hypno-indoctrination.

Like him, they had all been taken from the lower decks. They had been given a new, superhuman life, and in exchange, had been stripped of their past. They walked in silent, grim columns through the ship's corridors, their heavy footsteps the only sound.

The passageways were dim, the air thick with the smell of machine oil and old metal. The veterans claimed the ship's recyclers could scrub the air clean, but the Primarch had deemed such comforts "unimportant" and a "waste of resources."

Petros glanced at the others. He saw the same shadows in their eyes that he felt in his own heart: uncertainty for the future, and a deep, aching loss for the past. But there was no turning back. They arrived at the Drop Pod bay.

Groups of servitors, their bodies mutilated in service to the Legion, were arrayed, waiting. Beside them were racks of power armor.

The armor was old, scarred, and pitted from countless battles. Some of it was still dented, the holes from enemy fire crudely patched. It was armor stripped from the Legion's dead.

And now, it would be theirs.

Petros moved to a set of servitors and stood, his gaze fixed on the deck. He spread his arms and legs, waiting to be armored. His heart felt heavy, a cold stone in his chest. He had been a boy on Olympia, with a home and a mother. Now, he was a gene-forged warrior of the Iron Warriors.

The servitors began their work, their mechanical arms lifting the heavy, 'Iron' Pattern plates and locking them, one by one, into the neural interface ports embedded in his skin. The suit was heavy, but as the final connections were made, the weight vanished. It felt like a second skin.

He had craved power, to protect his family. Now he had the power, and his family was gone.

The knowledge from the hypno-indoctrination was cold and clear: his life was no longer his. It belonged to the Legion. It belonged to the Primarch, his gene-father, a man he had never met. He wondered, in a place deep inside himself, if it had been worth it.

As the final plates were sealed, he felt the last of his old self fade. His body was wrapped in steel. His heart was wrapped in steel. The Legion's cry was the only truth: "Iron Within, Iron Without."

He was a machine. A weapon. He remembered his mother's words, her love. 'Be strong as a rock. Be an honest child.' He was so very far from that boy now.

The armoring was complete. A servitor held out his helmet. He took it.

He looked up, and his armored body tensed.

The servitor was female, or had been. Her brown hair had been shaved, revealing the raw, scarred flesh of her lobotomy. Her arms had been amputated and replaced with grasping mechadendrites. Her teeth had been pulled, a black nutrient-tube fed permanently into her throat.

Petros took the helmet from Arissa's mechanical hand.

He saw that her legs, the legs that had once run so fast at the academy games on Olympia, were now bowed and deformed by the heavy, crude bionics that held her upright.

He took the helmet and sealed it onto his gorget. The world became a display of targeting-runes and tactical data.

Then, he reached out and grabbed Arissa's small, surgically-scarred skull. He remembered her head hadn't been this small. Girls, his mother had said, always grew up faster.

He squeezed.

The servitor's head, full of tubes and wires, crushed with a wet, hydraulic crunch. The machine collapsed, its limbs twitching, then went still.

The other servitors ignored it. The other neophytes looked, then turned away. No one blamed an Astartes for destroying a servitor, especially not moments before his first battle.

Petros looked at his new brothers. They were all like him. Stripped of their past. Forged for one purpose.

"Iron Within, Iron Without," he whispered, his new voice a synthesized, metallic rasp.

The remaining servitors, unbothered, handed him his combat knife and a Mark II-pattern bolter.

The Drop Pod doors hissed open. He and his new squad—four others—strapped themselves into the harnesses. They were being deployed to a desert world called Tallarn.

The pod launched. The sudden, violent acceleration slammed him into his crash-harness. They fell, a meteor of iron and hate.

BOOM!

The impact was bone-jarring. The hatch blew open, and Petros and his four squad-mates stepped out onto an endless, windswept desert.

Four other pods had landed, forming a perimeter. Twenty neophytes in total, all clad in battered, hand-me-down armor. They stood in the alien sand, awaiting their new commander.

A dust cloud appeared on the horizon. Armored vehicles. The neophytes nervously raised their bolters.

The vehicles slowed, and they saw the sigil of the Iron Warriors. A Predator tank, flanked by two Land Raiders, ground to a halt before them.

A figure emerged from the Predator's cupola. He stood on the tank's hull, his own black-and-iron armor a masterpiece compared to their shoddy plate. He removed his helmet.

"I am your Captain, Crassus," he said, his voice strong.

"Some in this Legion will call you the 'Swift Siege Cohort.' They will call you 'expendables.' I do not. You wear the armor of our fallen. You fight at our side. From this day, you are our brothers."

Petros looked up at his new captain.

"This war," Crassus continued, his gaze sweeping over them, "is to stop the False Emperor's grotesque plan for godhood. It is to save humanity from becoming a sacrifice to his ambition. We are their only hope. When we are victorious, humanity will be free."

"Now, brothers. Take your guns. Board the Land Raiders. We go to war."

Petros gripped his bolter, his gauntlet tight on the worn metal. He turned and walked to the Land Raider.

He was now, truly, steel within and steel without.