Void Stalker Read Online Free PDF

beautiful in his sterility, yet unlovely to look upon.
    ‘It was not mindless brutality,’ he said. ‘That was the lesson. The primarch knew that law and order – the twin foundations of civilisation – a re only maintained through fear of punishment. Man is not a peaceful animal. It is a creature of war and strife. To force the beasts into civilisation, one must remind them that excruciation awaits those who harm the herd. For a time, we believed the Emperor wanted this of us. He wanted us to be the Angels of Death. And for a time, we were.’
    She blinked for the first time in almost a minute. In their many long discussions and reflections, he’d never spoken of this in such detail. ‘Go on,’ she pushed.
    ‘Some say he betrayed us. Once our use was complete, he turned against us. Others claim that we’d merely taken our self-appointed role too far, and had to be put down like animals ourselves, for slipping our leashes.’ He saw a question in her eyes and waved it away. ‘None of that is important. What matters is how it began, and how it ended.’
    ‘How did it begin?’
    ‘The Legion had taken immense casualties in the Great Crusade, in service to the Emperor. Most of these were Terran. They came from Terra, from the Emperor’s wars across humanity’s birth planet. But all of our reinforcements came from our home world, Nostramo. Decades had passed since the primarch last walked upon the world’s surface, and his lessons of law had long since died. The population slid back into lawless anarchy, with no fear of punishment from a distant Imperium. Do you understand how we were poisoning ourselves? We were repopulating the Legion with rapists and murderers, with children who were the blackest sinners before they’d even tasted adulthood. The primarch’s lessons meant nothing to them, meant nothing to most of the Eighth Legion at the end. They were slayers, raised to become demigods, with the galaxy as their prize to plunder. In wrathful desperation, the primarch burned our home world. He destroyed it, breaking it apart from orbit with the firepower of the entire Legion fleet.’
    Talos breathed, low and slow. ‘It took hours, Octavia. All the while, we remained aboard our ships, listening to vox-calls from the surface, sending their screams and pleas up to us in the heavens. We never answered. Not even once. We stayed in space and watched our own cities burn. At the very end, we watched the planet heaving, breaking apart beneath the fleet’s rage. Only then did we turn away. Nostramo disintegrated into the void. I have never seen anything like it again. I know, in my heart, I never will.’
    A moment of foolishness almost made her reach a hand to touch his cheek. She knew better than to give in to that instinct. Still, the way he spoke, the look in his black eyes – he was a child, grown into a god’s body without a man’s comprehension of humanity. No wonder these creatures were so dangerous. Their stunted psyches worked on levels no human could quite comprehend: simplistic and passionate one moment, complex and inhuman the next.
    ‘It didn’t work,’ he continued. ‘The Legion was poisoned by then. You know that Xarl and I grew up together, murderers even as children. We joined the Legion late, when Nostramo’s venom was already rich in the Legion’s veins. And believe me when I say that where he and I grew up, among the street wars and the cheapness of human life, it was one of the more civilised regions of Nostramo’s inner cities. Much of the planet was in the throes of devolution, lost to urban wastelands and scavenger armies. As the strongest candidates, they were usually the ones chosen for implantation and ascension to the Eighth. They were the ones to become legionaries .’
    Talos finished with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘By then, it was too late. Primarch Curze was in the throes of degeneration himself. He hated himself, he hated his life, and he hated his Legion. All