WARHAMMER: THE HORUS HERESY
The Legacy of Doom
--------------------------------
The Legacy of Doom
--------------------------------
The day he had first painted the double helix upon his armor, he had been told quite pointedly, "You have the worst name an apothecary could ever imagine having."
Dume couldn't disagree. When spoken aloud, his name did sound terribly inappropriate for a man of his profession.
As such, the armored figure in white attracted Legion humor like steel filings to a magnet. Such things as "Don't fret, Doom's coming for you." "Doom's the finest caretaker a soldier could ask for. Never lost a man." "Can't lose, we've got Doom on our side."
The apothecary took such things in stride, and while he never contributed to the torrent himself neither did he discourage his fellows from the practice. Legion humor was an odd thing, and the Astartes needed to take such things wherever they could find them. And so, day after day and world after world, Apothecary Dume endured the affectionate barbs of his brethren while he wielded his chirurgeon's tools as skillfully as his brothers weilded their boltguns and chainswords.
As they fought through the oceanic realm of Europa, he sealed wounds that would otherwise release clouds of blood into the water and provoke frenzies from the genegeneered predators.
On the volcanic battlefields of Io, he treated them for the severe burns caused by the moon's superheated magma.
He replaced multi-lungs damaged by the poisonous methane clouds of Titan and rebuilt bone loss inflicted by the local Ring Empire's grav-weapons, weapons that proved dreadfully effective in the close-quarters combat of Iapetus' strongholds.
He had to be restrained as he screamed, watching helplessly as the stricken Visage of the Emperor drifted into the range of mutant-held guns of Triton and was obliterated. Five thousand Astartes - five thousand men! - perished in fire.
After that, Apothecary Dume's work was no longer a joking matter. There would be no conquering the galaxy if the Space Marines could not recover from such a disaster inflicted upon them in the very system of their birth.
Unfortunately, his work was made no easier by the emergent attitude of his brethren.
------------------------------------
Alpha Centauri II was a hellhole of a world. Dark, ashen, and hot. It reminded Dume of Io in some ways. But the xenos that had taken control of the Jovian moons during the age of Old Night were downright tame compared to the tide of green-skinned savages that had engulfed the Centauri systems.
The Legiones Astartes and their supporting regiments in the Imperial Army nonetheless pressed forward into the local region, seemingly heedless of casualties, and war erupted all throughout the trinary star system. Every manner of combat from artillery strikes that reached across the horizon right down the line to vicious face-to-face bladework was employed.
Amidst the roar of battle, the voice of the Second Centurion roared in Dume's ear "Require an apothecary! Man down!"
"Dume, on my way," the apothecary replied crisply. Ducking his head he sprinted through the landscape of twisted rock that aeons of heat and pressure had shaped into eerie columns and bent, unearthly shapes. A bullet glanced off one of the stone formations, breaking off a chunk. Dume lowered his head further, knowing that round had been meant for him.
The Centurion's beacon led him to a forward position in the lines, held by a mere handful of his Legion. Dume didn't have to ask who'd been hit, for lying prone against yet another of those warped stone columns was a young man in scout's carapace, his breastplate cracked open and blood spilling from his abdomen. Despite the grievous injury, he seemed in good spirits - as the apothecary moved to kneel beside him he spat a mouthful of blood into the dust and snarled "I don't need a chirurgeon! Just get me up!"
"Shut up," Dume rebuked him. The apothecary immediately went to work, the specialized bio-reader clamped over one eyepiece of his helm detailing the nature and extent of the young man's injuries. He'd taken a bolt round - or something very like a bolt round - to the stomach and Dume's first order of business was to reach an armored hand into the wound and extend a pair of delicate prongs from his narthecium, beginning to pluck pieces of jagged shrapnel from the scout's body where his eyepiece highlighted the metal against the meat.
The scout groaned and clamped his hand tightly to the blade he held in one hand. "You're going to tear me up even worse than the damned alien did," he growled.
"I said shut up," the apothecary replied brusquely. With the worst of the shrapnel removed he retracted his pincers and jabbed a needle into the open wound, flooding the scout's body with the fast-clotting Larraman cells to staunch his bleeding. The scout had been lucky - his ribs, still only partially fused had deflected the shot, protecting his precious hearts and lungs from anything more than minor damage. "Keep talking and you'll finish the job that round started."
The scout turned his head and spat once more. "A man that can still breathe can still fight," he replied.
Dume turned his attention briefly from the injury to look into his brother's face. He didn't know his name - the scout was one of the new men hastily inducted into the Legion post-Sol to begin filling in the gaps caused by the loss of the Visage. He had the tanned flesh and aristocratic features of a native Europan, his long tail of hair bleached a shocking white. "The gifts of the Legiones Astartes are supposed to extend your lifespan, you young idiot, not help you shorten it," he snapped.
The scout bared his teeth. "Do you insinuate that I ought to fear death?"
"That doesn't mean you're meant to fall on the first loaded boltgun you see!" Dume snarled without missing a beat. "Damned glory hounds," he growled as sprayed the wound with sterile proxi-flesh to speed its closing.
"If there is no glory to be found, then what is the point of fighting?" the scout replied, clenching his jaw against the pain as Dume's implantations began to bond with his own flesh.
"I'll leave you to work that out," the apothercary replied. "Sleep on it," he advised as he reached up and extended a needle that jabbed into the scout's carotid artery. It retracted a split-second later, and before the scout could protest this new treatment of his person, the polymethohexital injected into his bloodstream took effect. He slumped, eyes dropping shut. He even snored softly.
"Thanks for that," someone murmured over the Legion channel.
"Doom is merciful," somene else cracked.
"Cut that out," the Centurion interjected. "Focus. We have a job to do." Over the command channel his voice dropped and he said to the apothecary "my thanks, brother. I'll have words for him about his attitude when he wakes up."
"Do that. We don't have enough Astartes to encourage that kind of idiocy," the apothecary replied, his voice just verging on an acidic tone that would have been entirely inappropriate for addressing a superior officer. With that he rose into a half-crouch and sprinted from the forward position, already responding to another call about a shell landing in the midst of the Third Company's heavy support squad.
-------------------------------------------------------------
"I wondered if I might ask something of you, brother."
The voice snapped Dume out of his reverie. The apothecary had been reading over casualty reports in silence, the corners of his mouth turned downwards in a deep frown. The shipboard medicae had become his private domain over the past year - thanks to the nature of the Astartes' anatomy, few injuries required extended observation, and those that did often as not left the patient comatose. As a result Dume had become used to treating the place as a sort of sanctuary, where he might dwell upon his thoughts without interruption.
But now, he looked up to see the familiar face of the scout he'd treated only days ago. The young man's lips were pressedtogether in a thin line, and Dume suspected he half-anticipated the apothecary to throw him out without ceremony. Instead he lowered his dataslate, setting it down atop his desk with a soft clatter, and lifted his hand to beckon the young Astartes forward. "Ask, then," he said.
Instead of approaching the desk, the scout sidled to one side, his gaze drifting to the rows of empty slabs. He opened his mouth to speak and then paused, lifting a hand to scratch at his chin. "I was...almost inducted into the first round of the Legion's recruiting sweeps," he said after a long moment. "Their ranks were full, they said, or else they might have taken me. I was furious."
Dume nodded without replying.
"So I...sat. I remained home on Europa and listened to every broadcast, every news report I could, anything that followed the Emperor's Legiones and their progress in cleansing the outer planets. I wanted...so badly to be part of it. To fight alongside the heroes of the Astartes who were uniting humanity."
"As any true son of Europa would," Dume replied quietly, offering some manner of olive branch.
The young man peered at him as if suspecting mockery, but when he saw none he simply nodded. "And when my chance finally came, I was elated. I knew - I knew that one day my name would be praised alongside all those others whose names I had already memorized - Gheer, and Sejanus, Arik Taranis and, and so on. It felt almost like it had already happened, do you understand me? Like I was just waiting for the opportunity to show the rest of the world what I was."
The young man extended a hand as he spoke, fingers grasping to catch that ephemeral glory and Dume could hardly help but smile slightly as he nodded. "Young mens' dreams," he replied.
"Young mens' dreams," the scout echoed. He was silent for a moment. "I been in council with the Centurion. He was...displeased by the manner in which I spoke to you. He was right," the pale-haired man hastened to add. "My conduct was inexcusable. I was so...angry. Not at you, brother, but-"
"At the world," Dume said then. "Holding you down from the chance to rightfully earn the glory you deserved."
The scout nodded quietly. "But...and so I came to ask, because the thought came to me as I spoke to the Centurion." He paused once more, running his tongue over his lips. "Men die," he said as if it were a revelation. "Soldiers; warriors may perish at a moment's whim. Glory is hardly guaranteed. But...men like the Centurion, or the Praetor, or the Legion champions - they earn their glory. Through skill; through dedication. The men that march beside the Emperor need not fear the idea that one day they will fall. Their names already resonate amongst millions." He paused to take a breath and Dume watched him, an inkling of what was coming forming in his mind. "But the Astartes like me, those with young mens' dreams," he said with a ghostly smile, "one day we hope to become men like those. And I thought to ask...what glory is there for a Legion apothecary?" he questioned. "I know better now than to think you would ever fear death, but..."
"But there is not much war-glory awaiting a field chirurgeon of the Astartes," Dume finished.
"I apologize if I have offended you."
"You haven't," the apothecary said, waving away the idea. "It's a young man's question. Every young man that grows up playing at swords and pistols can understand the idea of a warrior's glory, and many harbor the desire to be the man that captures that glory. But for an apothecary it is more a question of...priority."
"Priority?" the scout echoed.
"Let me put it to you this way," Dume said. "What is the most powerful weapon we possess?"
The scout frowned. "Handheld, mounted or shipboard?" he queried after a few moments.
Dume couldn't help but laugh. "No, you're not thinking about it right."
"Oh. This is one of those questions where the answer is something like 'the mind' or 'the heart' isn't it?" the scout said, his expression deadpan.
"Better," Dume said with a nod. "Yes, it is. It's this," the apothecary said, lifting his hand to tap his chest. "All of it. Heart, head, arms, legs." He lifted one arm to clench his fist. "You have a battleship, bristling with guns port, starboard, topside, torpedo mounts, armories stocked full of boltguns, blades, dropships, tanks, all of this, and no crew. Well then, all that firepower is just going to sit there, unused, forever. Strength doesn't come from guns or knives or anything steel. It comes from flesh. Without humanity itself to start with, everything else?" Dume made a fluttering motion with his fingers to suggest a drifting breeze. "And it's so easily forgotton. Too easy to see the blade and not the arm that wields it, forgetting that without an arm to lift it, the blade itself is useless."
The scout scratched at his chin once more. "So...are you saying, the Legion is your weapon?"
Dume chuckled. "In a manner of speaking, yes. I maintain you the way you maintain your gear. My presence serves as a reminder to my brethren that death is not to be sought so easily; that beyond the individual there is a greater purpose to our brotherhood. I pull you back from the brink of death when our foes would claim you, so that you might go on to fight another day. What good is a hero, when he finds glory upon the battlefield and succumbs to his wounds the same day? When our purpose is to unite a galaxy, we cannot throw ourselves into the waiting arms of our enemies without thought or measure. We're good, but not that good."
"So, in a way," the young man said slowly, a smile pulling at his lips, "every glory of a hero in the Legiones Astartes may be attributed to the apothecaries that ensured he would live long enough to earn it."
"Now you've got it," Dume replied with a nod. "It's a different kind of glory. Perhaps not one shared by young men who play at swords and pistols, but one shared amongst the brethren of the Astartes, where it truly matters."
"Perhaps one day that will change," the scout said.
"Save a spot for my statue in the Investiary," Dume said with a laugh.
--------------------------------------------------
"Apothecary Dume was one of our finest," the Praetor said, his tone somber. "A man of great skill and dedication. In the darkest days of our Legion, when we feared we might not survive the demands imposed upon us by the Great Crusade, he that held us together with all the care of a chirurgeon nursing his patient through the most grievous injury. I cannot look upon our gathered ranks now and not wonder - which of us, standing here today, would still be here if not for him? Indeed, would there be any of us? And, from there, to turn out and look to the stars, I am given to wonder how much harder would our fight have been, these eighteen years past. Could an entire world, an entire system be fated to turn on the life of one man?"
He let that hang in the air for a long moment before he nodded to the pallbearers, who moved to gently take the Legion banner from Dume's coffin. "We will never know what our world might have looked like, without the intervention of men such as Apothecary Dume," he said then, as the men folded the cloth with careful reverence. "But we can rest secure in the knowledge that without his steady hands to heal the wounds of his brethren, or the wisdom with which he counseled us, it would not be so fine a world as the one we know now.
"The Imperial Truth," he went on as the men lifted the coffin from its pedestal and moved to place it in the loading breech, "teaches us that there is no such thing as life after death. In some ways, we know that this is not true. Though the body may perish, men such as Dume live on in the form of their unseen contributions to the world around them and the honor with which we remember them."
Neatly, the man turned on his heel to face the void-windows and bellowed "Men! Present arms!" There was a thunderous crash as every Astartes present locked his heels together and slammed a fist to their breastplates in the traditional Unification Wars salute. A moment later there was a muffled whooshing sound and they watched as the oblong shape of Dume's coffin soared away into the starlit expanse. "Lower arms!" the Praetor ordered then, and the Astartes dropped their hands to their sides. "Fall out," he said after a few more moments, once even his sharp eyes could no longer track the distant shape, and behind him he heard the sound of armored feet as the men filed out.
"Sir," a voice said nearby, and the Praetor turned to find one of his men standing at a polite distance.
"What is it, son?" he asked, waving him forward. The young Astartes stepped closer, holding out a dataslate.
"A request," he said as the Praetor took it.
The commander frowned as he scrolled through the text display. "Transfer request?" he asked, brow furrowing. "The apothecarion?" he said with a sharp look for the space marine.
"I wish to take Apothecary Dume's place," the man replied.
"But you're one of my most promising swordsmen," the officer said, putting up a token protest. The young man was silent and after a moment his commander nodded. "If it's what you want."
"I've thought about it a great deal, sir."
"Then I won't oppose it." He lowered the slate and switched it off, setting it into a waiting clip at his belt. "I'll put the order in tonight."
"Thank you, sir," the Astartes said with a salute.
As he turned to go, the Praetor called out to him - "you know there's no glory in that work, Fabius."
Fabius of the Emperor's Children merely shrugged. "I plan to make some, sir."
