Did Horus deserve such a gift? What grievance against the Emperor could be so vast that such a war was needed to settle it? Alpharius knew that there were greater forces than him at play in this rebellion, but at that moment none of them held the power he did.
He laughed quietly at himself, embarrassed by his grandiose thoughts. The primarch had made it clear that the destiny of the Alpha Legion lay alongside Horus’s, for the good of the Legion and all of mankind. Alpharius knew his primarch would not make such a statement unless he knew for certain that it was true.
Dismissing his doubts, Alpharius plucked the capsule from the grip of the suspensors and turned, looking for the gene-coder as he had been instructed. He located it on one of the work benches, a large machine with several receptacles the same size as the gene-tube, hooked up to a bank of analysing engines.
He switched on the gene-coder and placed the template material into one of the apertures. Punching in the command sequence he had learned, he activated the coding mechanism. As the machine purred into life, he took the virus container from his belt and opened it up. Inside was a near-identical glassite phial. He made the mistake of looking at the contents. The gaseous mixture inside writhed with a life of its own, changing colour and contorting madly, sliding against the phial as if trying to escape. For some reason it reminded him of the descriptions of the warp he had heard from Navigators: ever-shifting and restless.
Swallowing his revulsion, he placed the virus into another receiving pod and closed the lid.
His fingers tapped away at the keypad, allowing the gene-template and viral solution to mix inside the coding machine. He stopped as he felt a tremor shaking Ravendelve: the defence turrets were opening fire. Alpharius had to move swiftly. The time he had taken would either be noticed by Sixx or one of the turret crews, or the attack put in motion by the primarch would soon be hurled back and the lockdown would be ended.
He finished the input sequence and waited a few seconds while machinery whirred in the depths of the gene-coder. An alert pinged the completion of the task and the phial casket opened with a hiss.
He retraced his steps, returning the gene-template to its stasis chamber and sealing the door. Using the cipher-breaker, Alpharius entered the data logs and deleted the entries reporting his interference. It was not as secure as a complete wipe, but he did not have time for such a precaution. With implantation reaching the level it had, it would take a deep auditing scan to pick up on the anomaly, during which the system would have to be shut down. Such an event was unlikely, given Corax’s determination to build up the strength of the Raptors as fast as possible.
With everything back where it should be, Alpharius exited the central chamber. Sixx and the tech-priest were engrossed in their labours, stooping over one of the implant recipients. Not drawing any attention to himself, Alpharius left the digi-key on a shelf and slipped out.
Once in the corridor he broke into a run, heading for Turret Three where he was supposed to be guiding the defence gunnery.
THE WHEEZE OF the autolung and staccato rattle of the monitor needles was oddly soothing. Navar Hef felt disassociated from his body, a state induced by a cocktail of preparation agents and hypnotic suggestion. He flitted between wakefulness and shallow sleep, barely aware of what was happening, the fleeting moments of lucidity serving to reassure him that Vincente Sixx and his attendants were never far away, constantly observing his progress.
There was pain, but his trance-like state allowed him to siphon the sensation to a part of his mind where it did not impact his thoughts. Navar’s body felt as if it was burning, within and without, yet he remained icy cold in his mind.
Organs were moving and growing, bones were thickening and lengthening, cells were duplicating and mutating. He dreamed he was a shadowmoth, hanging in its chrysalis from a gantry in one of the prison wings. Navar’s body was in flux, a semi-solid construct transforming from the physique of a human youth to the transhuman physiology of a legionary.
Time passed without meaning. Occasionally Navar felt a surge of energy or agony, flares of feeling from limbs or innards undergoing implantation. Such sensations were confined to his mind, his body fixed in a paralysis that prevented screams and laughter. The lights hanging from cables above dimmed to darkness or became blindingly bright, sensed through his closed eyelids. He wondered if this marked the passing of the day and night or simply reactions to the changes in his body.
More than anything, when he experienced any emotion, Navar felt joy, a constant ecstatic feeling of becoming his true self.
Locked in his thoughts, the Raptor-to-be formed a picture of himself as he was and as he would be. He could vaguely sense the huge increase in his mass, his chest and arms and legs becoming heavily muscled. At some point he realised there was a different rhythm to his heartbeat, the familiar pulsing in his throat accompanied by a secondary beat, more rapid but weaker. He breathed and tasted the air in a way he had never tasted it before. Sweat and antiseptic, ozone and brushed metal lingered on his enhanced tongue and in his improved olfactory sensors.
Even his brain was changing. As if from a distance, he observed new structures and pathways forming in the grey matter of his thoughts. He came to realise that there were no drugs in his system any longer. His fugue state was being maintained from within by an interaction of his newly grown catalapsean node and sus-an membrane.
It was then that he knew the process was complete. With an effort of will, Navar forced himself from his semi-sleep, gaining clarity of thought and sense. The ward surrounded him in sharp focus: the scuff of the attendants’ feet, the whine of Magos Orlandriaz’s servitors, the smell of blood and adrenaline, the flickering of the light fittings.
He sat up, suddenly aware that he was ravenously hungry. Despite being intravenously fed proteins and nutrients throughout the implantation, his body had devoured its store of fat to fuel his massive growth.
Navar chuckled as he realised his feet were at the end of the bed. When he had lain down just a few days ago, they had barely reached two-thirds the length of the sheet. He lifted his right hand and formed an immense fist, knuckles flexing underneath hardened skin. Bunching the muscles in his arm, he marvelled at their power and felt the urge to crush something in his grip.
‘You must move to the rehabilitation room,’ said an orderly, all but her eyes hidden under hood and behind face mask. Navar could see the flecks of grey in the blue of her irises, and every tiny blood vessel in the whites. He saw his reflection in her pupils, a naked giant lying on bloodstained sheets. Her breath carried wisps of caroumal, a sugar-rich supplement used by the Raven Guard and their serfs to fuel short bursts of energetic activity. The bags under her eyes and lines around her brow offered testament to her fatigue.
‘Please, follow me to the rehabilitation room,’ she said, taking Navar’s wrist. He could detect the minute inflections in her voice, the weariness that caused looseness in her larynx. It seemed to Navar that she almost slurred her words, whereas a normal man would have just heard the same familiar tones.
He swung his legs from the bunk, and stood up. There was another moment of delight as he towered over the attendant. He saw his shadow engulfing her and was filled with a sense of mastery. She was not impressed, having dealt with dozens of Raptors in recent days. Without further word, the attendant turned and walked towards a set of double doors with glass windows. Navar heard the pad of her slippered feet and swish of her medical robe as loud as heavy boots and piston-driven armour.