Chapter 26: The Fortress-Monastery
Finally, all 112 aspirants were gathered. Under the watchful eye of Sergeant Vornab, they were marched to the Warband's still-under-construction Fortress-Monastery.
They were a wretched sight—filthy, starving, and covered in festering wounds. They limped silently into the main hall of the neophyte barracks.
One, however, stood out from the rest. A massive brute of a young man, built like a Grox-bull, carrying a huge, two-handed axe. He already had a thick, brown beard and a mat of hair on his chest. He looked closer to thirty than fifteen. He was laughing and joking with his companions as they walked.
"I just swung the axe," the brute, Randolph, was booming, "and split the maggot's skull clean in two! Trying to steal our raft. They were just asking to die."
His teammate rolled his eyes. "Enough, Randolph, you've been telling that same story since we hit the beach. My ears are bleeding."
Their talk was cut short by Vornab's harsh, synthesized voice.
"You will live here for a long time," the Sergeant announced. "You will rest, and you will heal. You will need your full strength to survive what comes next. Find a bunk. You may keep your weapons. But know this: if any of you kills another candidate from this moment on, you will be disqualified... and remade as a servitor."
He left them to settle in.
In half a month, the Apothecary would begin the screening. Those most genetically compatible would proceed to surgery. The next-best would be held in reserve. The truly unsuitable would become Warband thralls, serving their new masters for the rest of their mortal lives.
Outside, on the monastery's high ramparts, Petros and Phelon stood over a set of parchment blueprints, reviewing the fortress's layout.
The plan was divided into key sectors:
Meditation Chambers: As the Warband had no true faith, these were not for prayer, but for mental focus and psychological recalibration.
The Chamber of Penance: A place for disciplinary action. Flogging, sensory-deprivation, and confinement. A military order required discipline.
Private Quarters: For the Astartes and high-ranking mortals like Auxilia-Commanders or Astropaths.
Thrall-Habs: Common barracks for the mortal guards, laborers, and tech-crews.
Reception Hall: For receiving important visitors—Dark Mechanicum envoys, Rogue Traders, or representatives from other warbands.
Guest Quarters: For those same visitors.
The Forge: For the production and repair of wargear, governed by the Warpsmiths and Techmarines.
The Armory: A fortified, subterranean vault for weapons and munitions, located near the Forge.
The Apothecarion: A combination-ward, research lab, and bio-forge. This was where the Apothecaries would conduct the implantations and, most importantly, where the gene-seed would be stored and protected.
The Hangar Bay: For the Warband's aircraft.
The Great Hall: For full Warband assemblies and feasts.
The Refectory: The kitchens and mess halls for both Astartes and mortals.
The Strategium: For briefings, tactical planning, and smaller meetings.
The Hydroponicon: For the cultivation of foodstuffs and medicinal plants.
The Dungeons: For prisoners, including psyker-dampening cells.
The Sorcerer's Sanctum: Though they currently had no psykers, Petros had ordered a dedicated, isolated tower to be built, far from the main complex, to study and contain the energies of the Empyrean.
The Scriptorium: The Warband's library, holding tactical scrolls, xenos-treatises, combat-logs, and histories. This would be the primary classroom for the neophytes.
The Training Cages: Areas for hand-to-hand, blade, and ranged combat, as well as vehicle and flight simulators.
The Neophyte Barracks: Directly connected to the Training Cages. Here, aspirants lived in open dormitories, not private cells. They would eat, sleep, and bleed together until the day they earned their power armor.
The Teleportarium: Unstable, and to be used only in the most dire emergencies.
The Sepulchre: A tomb for the Warband's honored dead, where their names and deeds would be recorded. Even those whose bodies were never recovered would have a sarcophagus carved in their memory.
The Defense Grid: A network of lascannon-turrets, anti-aircraft batteries, and augur arrays, all built into the fortress walls.
Phelon had scouted the entire planet for this location. He had suggested the arctic pole or a fortified section of the main continent. But Petros had chosen this remote, massive island. He wanted to maintain a distance from the mortal population, to preserve the Warband's mystery and dread.
The Dark Mechanicum had built these foundational structures, and then, as their own projects demanded their attention, their work had slowed to a crawl. It was enough for now.
"Boss," Phelon said, tapping the blueprint. "You really are the man who built the Iron Cage with the Primarch, aren't you? You've got this all figured out. I can't find a single flaw in the design."
"I was just a squad sergeant, Phelon," Petros said, his eyes still on the plans. "I just followed orders and built what I was told. I had no hand in the design."
But, he admitted silently to himself, he enjoyed this. He felt a sense of creation, of purpose... a feeling that had been entirely absent during the bitter, joyless work on the Iron Cage.
Phelon laughed. "And all this training data... the tactical manuals... I don't remember you ever training neophytes back in the Legion. Where'd you learn all this?"
Petros looked up, his expression unreadable. "You want to know?"
"Yeah, I do!"
Petros reached to the mag-clamp on his back and retrieved a thick, data-slate. He tossed it to Phelon. The title, in formal High Gothic, was illuminated on the screen:
Codex Astartes.
Phelon's jaw dropped. The air was silent for a long moment. "...What in the void is this?"
Petros grunted. "It's still a Primarch's work," he said. "Ignore the dogma about Chapter organization, Chaplains, and worship. That's all useless. But as a purely tactical and logistical treatise... it has its merits."
Phelon just stared at the heretical-loyalist text in his hands, then decided to change the subject. "Right. Uh, boss? There are still teams out on the water. Dozens of them. They're not going to make it. Should we... go get them?"
Petros didn't even look up from the blueprint. "No. They save themselves, or they die."
"If we rescue them," he continued, his voice cold, "we teach the others that failure is acceptable. That there is a safety net. We would be encouraging the weak. Let them die. Their deaths will serve as a lesson, deterring those without the true will to even attempt the trial. They die now so that fewer will die later."