‘So they should be, lord.’
‘They spoke about them as if they were… as if they had personalities, as individuals. I took that as an indication of their near-perfection in the development of the machine-spirit.’
‘Indeed, my lord.’
‘We can build a world of greater perfection and higher performance than the human form, magos. We can exceed the natural limits of humanity.’
‘Sir.’
‘I’m saying, perhaps we should trust your wonderful machines to do the job for a time while the server removes the problem.’
Pelot nods.
‘That is our feeling, lord.’
‘Good. I will make our visitors aware that there is a scrapcode issue, and gently investigate if it’s something they have brought with them by mistake. They have been on the fringes of late. And your server will need their cooperation in his investigation.’
‘Very good, lord.’
‘Pelot?’
‘My lord?’
‘With regard to the natural limits of humanity, it’s worth noting that during our dinner, your colleagues did not really ingest any actual food.’
‘Yes, my lord. In fairness, I doubt you needed to either.’
Guilliman smiles.
‘Very good, magos.’
He turns to his deck officers.
‘Arrange and establish a live link, please. As quickly as possible,’ he instructs. ‘I want to talk to my brother.’
Telemechrus wakes, but it is not time for war.
He has been taught things, and one of them is to control his anger until it is needed. It is not needed now, so he controls it.
He analyses. He scans. He determines.
His determination is this: he is in his casket, and his casket is being moved for transit. Something, perhaps some clumsy or inexpert handling of his casket, has woken him.
It is not time for war. This disappoints him.
He controls his disappointment, just as he has been taught. He controls his anger. He realises he needs, additionally, to control his anxiety. Anxiety is akin to fear, and fear is an abomination previously unknown to him, and he has resolved absolutely not to let it in. Thus, his anxiety increases.
Telemechrus lived his life as a legionary of the XIII. Ten years’ service, from his genetic construction to his death in combat, and all that time he knew no fear. None whatsoever. Despite everything he faced, even death when it finally came, he was never afraid.
During the first conversation he had with them, after his death, the techpriests told him that things would be different from now on. His mortal remains, the remains of Brother Gabril Telemach, 92nd Company Ultramarines, were no longer viable. Too much of his organics had been vaporised for there to be any continuation of life as he could understand it. But he was, in respect of his courage and service, and because of his compatibility, going to be honoured. His mortal remains were going to form the organic core of a cyberorganic being.
He was to be made a Dreadnought.
As a man, as flesh and blood, Gabril had thought of the Dreadnoughts as ancient things. They were veterans, brothers taken at the brink of death and installed inside indomitable war machines. They were old. Some were a century old. Some had been alive in those machine-boxes for a hundred years!
Gabril Telemach was not old. Just a decade of service.
Now he was trapped in a box forever.
There were adjustments to be made, the techpriests said. Mental adjustments. He accepted, first of all, that every Dreadnought, even the most venerable, had to be new at some point. Dreadnoughts were a vital part of the Legion’s fighting power, and they were lost from time to time. So new ones needed to be constructed at intervals, when the combat chassis were available, and when war-loss produced suitable and compatible organic donors.
The techpriests told him that he would lack many things his flesh body had taken for granted. Sleep, to begin with. He would only sleep when they placed him into stasis hibernation. He would experience – or rather not experience – long periods of this, because they would ensure he slept most of the time. They would wake him if it was time for war and his participation was required.
The techpriests said that this was because of the pain. There would be pain, and it would be constant. His pitiful mortal residue was sheathed in a cyberorganic web, laced into electro-fibre systems, and shut in an armoured sarcophagus. There would be no opportunity to manage pain the way he had done as a man, no mechanism for pain control.
For the same reason, he would find himself prone to emotional variations he had not known as a man. He would probably be prone to rage, to anger. Despite the devastating power bequeathed to him as a Dreadnought, he would miss his mortal state. He would resent his death, regret the circumstances of it, fixate upon it, come to hate the cold-shell life he had been given in exchange.
To spare him this bitterness, and the pain, and the anger, he would be encouraged to sleep for great periods of time.
He would also, they told him, probably be prone to bouts of fear, especially early on. This was, they explained, because of his profound change of state. His consciousness had been shorn away from a linear, mortal scale, from any timeframe he could recognise or understand, from time itself, in fact, because of the prolonged hibernations. Fear, anathema to the Space Marine, was merely part of the mind’s adjustment to this extreme fate. It was natural. He would learn to control it, and to use it, just like his anger. Eventually, fear would evaporate, and be no more. He would be as fearless as he had been as a legionary.
It would take time. There would be gradual and careful adjustments of his hormones and biochemical mix. He would receive hypnotherapies and acclimation pattering. He would be mentored by others of his kind, the venerables, who had grown used to their strange fates.
He had said to the techpriests, ‘I was fearless as a battle-brother, even though I might fall. Now you have rendered me invincible, you say I am prey to fear? Why then call me a Dreadnought? I was a dread nought before. I dreaded nothing as a man!’
‘This is the anger we spoke of,’ they had replied. ‘You will adjust. Sleep will help. Begin hibernation protocols.’
‘Wait!’ he had called out. ‘Wait!’
Justarius is his mentor. Justarius is venerable. Justarius is also sullen and, despite his greater lifespan as a Dreadnought, seems not to have shed the bitterness or the anger. Justarius prefers to sleep. He is curmudgeonly when woken. He seems, at best, ambivalent to Telemechrus’s concerns.
‘It’s Telemach,’ says Telemechrus.
‘My name was Justinus Phaedro,’ grumbles Justarius in reply. ‘They rename us like machines. Or they forget. I forget which.’
Telemechrus is the newest Dreadnought in the ranks of the XIII. He is Contemptor-pattern. He has yet to see combat.
They wake him once, during routine resuscitation in the vaults at Macragge. His implant clock tells him that he has been dormant for two years. The techpriests inform him that an operation has been announced. He will be installed in his chassis and shipped to Calth for deployment, and then woken when it is time for war. The war will be with orks. Telemechrus has questions, but they return him to his hypnotherapeutic dreams.
‘Wait!’ he says.
Telemechrus wakes, but it is not time for war.
He has been taught things, and one is to control his anger until it is needed. It is not needed now, so he controls it.
He analyses. He scans. He determines.