"Father, I swear, Melusine poses no threat whatsoever! She is my child, no different from any ordinary Space Marine."
Fabius knelt upon the deck, with Melusine kneeling closely behind him. Fulgrim, Vespasian, and the others stood nearby, watching this apothecary—once one of the Chapter's greatest prides—with deeply conflicted emotions.
"If anyone must be punished, let it be me! This child has done nothing wrong. I created her, and I kept her out of my own selfish desires. I will bear the full brunt of the fault alone. I beg you, Father, spare her!"
Fabius lowered himself completely. Any father would shield his child at all costs, even in the direest moment. Bile would gladly suffer any fate rather than watch Melusine die.
"Father, Commander, Captain Patino—I beg of you! Anything... do anything to me, just do not harm my child! I will do whatever you ask—"
"My lord... if my death settles this, would that suffice?"
Melusine, who had been kneeling behind Fabius, suddenly spoke up. Her words caught Fabius mid-plea, leaving him frozen on the deck. Fulgrim and the surrounding officers turned their eyes toward the striking Space Marine.
By the aesthetic standards of the Emperor's Children, Melusine was undeniably flawless, and the fierce resolve in her eyes was unmistakable.
Had she not been born female, she would have seamlessly integrated into the Legion as one of their finest.
"What nonsense are you talking about?! Melusine, don't—"
Before Fabius could finish his sentence, Melusine drew the combat knife from her waist with lightning speed and slashed it violently across her own throat.
The strike was blindingly fast—too swift for anyone to intercept. Left unchecked, the blade would have severed her head cleanly. A wound so lethal that no medical art could reverse it, not even Bile's.
Yet, just as the edge sliced through her jugular, a massive armored hand clamped down on her motion. Blood welled along the blade, only to rapidly clot under the immediate response of her Astartes larraman cells.
"No!"
Fabius snapped out of his shock, scrambling forward to check Melusine's condition.
"You no longer have the luxury of choice," Fulgrim stated coldly. "The Emperor and the Warmaster have ordered both of you transported to Terra. Whether you remain in the Legion, or whether you live or die, depends on whether the Imperium is willing to accept you."
"Comply, and you still have a chance at life. Resist—or attempt to evade arrest—and I will personally deliver both your heads to Terra."
Fulgrim disarmed Melusine, retrieving the combat knife. The weapon was masterfully forged; even among the affluent Emperor's Children Chapter, its craftsmanship stood out as exceptional.
Fabius truly doted on this daughter. A blade of this quality could only have been hand-crafted by a master weaponsmith on Mars or Terra—obtaining it required far more than mere wealth; it demanded immense political clout and personal favors.
"Strip off their power armor and detain them. Post your brothers to keep watch twenty-four hours a day. Ensure neither of them attempts self-harm."
"And do not harbor any foolish ideas. Remember: on Terra, you still have a chance. Try anything foolish, and you know the Imperium's methods better than I do. Do not force the Dark Angels to intervene, and do not force the Warmaster to issue a direct execution order. If that happens, no one will be able to save you. Understand?"
Fulgrim genuinely wished to preserve their lives. He could only hope the two would not act recklessly out of desperation, which would seal their doom beyond salvation.
Fabius was a brilliant man. His judgment had only been clouded by sheer panic for Melusine's safety. With his composure restored, he offered no further resistance, allowing his battle-brothers to take him into custody.
He and Melusine were confined together, their limbs bound by heavy iron chains anchored inside the cell. Outside, ten Space Marines from the Emperor's Children maintained a round-the-clock vigil to prevent any suicide attempts.
"Father... will we die?"
Melusine's body trembled slightly. Given the choice, who would willingly choose death?
"I don't know," Fabius replied quietly. "However, I've heard the Warmaster doesn't particularly care about such matters. He has always been lenient with us. While I violated Imperial decrees, if we consider your existence in isolation, the severity of the offense remains open to interpretation."
"I have already purged the experimental data used to create you. As it stands, the procedure that brought you into being is a unique, unrepeatable instance. So long as both of us remain confined within the Sol System, we will merely lose our freedom. Furthermore, with our Primarch advocating on our behalf, our chances of survival remain reasonably high."
Fabius had reasoned through the core dynamics of their predicament. Despite the staggering implications of her existence, as long as the underlying technology did not leak, Melusine remained nothing more than a highly specialized apothecary.
Even if she were to pair with an Astartes and bear offspring in the future, it would never escalate into an uncontrollable disaster.
So long as they remained strictly monitored under the Imperium's watchful eye, the notion of Space Marines branching off into an independent species would remain entirely impossible.
Factoring in Fulgrim's immense prestige and Perturabo's general leniency toward the Astartes, their situation—while perilous—was not entirely hopeless. At worst, it meant a permanent loss of liberty.
"What if the Emperor cannot tolerate me?"
Melusine's sudden question plunged Fabius into absolute silence.
Indeed. Strip away all speculation, and the reality remained: no one understood the Emperor's true nature better than the veterans who had marched from Terra through the Great Crusade.
Though the Emperor seemed far more accommodating in recent times, the moment a situation involved xenos contamination or posed a structural threat to humanity, his cold ruthlessness and decisive fury were legendary.
Everyone understood the true weight of Melusine's existence. Unexamined, it might seem trivial; scrutinized, its implications were immense.
The Emperor abhorred such unpredictable variables above all else. Why had he created the Space Marines in the first place? Were they not intended merely as disposable tools to conquer the galaxy during the Great Crusade?
It was only through Perturabo's intervention that they had been preserved and gradually integrated into the administrative apparatus of the Imperium. To now present him with a scenario where the Astartes not only sought political influence, but held the capacity to split off into a self-propagating species?
If the Emperor tolerated that, he would no longer be the Emperor.
---
Meanwhile, inside the Grand Senate of the Administration, Guilliman and Malcador had put aside their official duties, silently watching a heated debate between the fiery Perturabo and the Emperor.
"I am telling you, both of them must be eliminated!" the Emperor declared sternly. "Not only must they be terminated, but every piece of experimental data must be purged, and the memories of everyone involved mind-wiped. This matter can never be allowed to spread!"
"They're just Space Marines—stop making a mountain out of a molehill!" Perturabo shot back. "It's a single female Astartes! You speak as if her mere existence will overthrow the entire Imperium. Are you senile? Did that big brute smash your brains out back then?"
Perturabo favored leniency. He wanted to handle the situation as a special exception under his personal protection, confident no one would dare question his authority.
The Emperor, however, viewed it from a cold, absolute perspective: he would never allow humanity to face such an existential threat. The Astartes were designed to be mass-produced products off an assembly line. If they carried the potential to break away as an independent species, then like the flawed Thunder Warriors before them, they would be swept into the dustbin of history.
"I don't care about your excuses!" the Emperor snapped. "I will not tolerate such a threat taking root within humanity! What happens if ambitious demagogues arise among the Astartes? Right now, we are here to suppress them. But what about the future? Can we babysit them forever?"
"Once a precedent like this is set, the consequences will be endless! It is far better to sever the root now and pretend this never happened, ensuring no future complications ever arise."
The Emperor knew no ruler could govern an empire for eternity. He would eventually step down, as would Perturabo, Guilliman, and Malcador. Even Corax and Curze would inevitably pass from the stage. But the Astartes were living weapons of war—their production would never truly cease.
Their current exalted status relied entirely on the fact that, in every meaningful sense, they remained dependent on baseline humanity. Melusine's existence threatened to spark dangerous ambitions in the minds of countless Astartes.
Had this occurred during an era of galactic warfare, few would have given it a second thought. But the Imperium was currently thriving: society was flourishing, and technology had just undergone a massive leap forward.
In such a climate, Melusine's arrival was an extremely sensitive catalyst. Handled poorly, it would sow irreversible seeds of discord and division within the Astartes.
"Give me a break!" Perturabo countered. "As long as we keep it contained, we can simply declare her the accidental product of a laboratory malfunction to the public!"
"Even the Custodes have females now—what's wrong with having a female Astartes? Didn't you proclaim the Custodes to be the pinnacle of humanity? Why throw such a massive tantrum over a single female Space Marine? You're just looking for trouble because you're cooped up in your laboratory all day, venting your frustration on the younger generation when your experiments fail!"
"Save your rhetoric! I am telling you, they must be destroyed!"
"And I am telling you outright—I am protecting them! Touch them, and you and I are going to have a serious problem!"
The two stood toe-to-toe, their overwhelming pressure locking the room in absolute tension, leaving both Guilliman and Malcador nursing massive headaches.
Malcador leaned toward the Emperor's stance. In his eyes, resolving potential threats early was always preferable to letting them fester into catastrophic disasters down the line.
Guilliman, on the other hand, shared Perturabo's perspective. The gravity of the situation depended entirely on whether their inner council could suppress the truth. If they could contain it, no harm would come of it.
Furthermore, Guilliman lacked the utter coldness of the Emperor and Malcador; he too wished to spare the two lives.
In truth, both Perturabo and Guilliman harbored their own unspoken motives.
The Astartes occupied a unique place in the galaxy. They were fiercely loyal to the Emperor and the Imperium, yet equally devoted to their respective Primarchs. They were built as weapons of war; even the Primarchs themselves had been engineered by the Emperor to serve that singular grand purpose.
Though their designated roles appeared aligned with civilian administrative posts for the Imperium's future development, what the Emperor had truly sought from them was leadership to prosecute the Great Crusade.
Almost every Primarch had come to realize this reality after Perturabo assumed power.
Back then, a single question haunted all of them: *What happens after the Great Crusade ends? What becomes of us?*
No one knew the answer, because Perturabo had effectively locked that future away, leading everyone to tacitly push the unsettling thought to the back of their minds.
Now, however, another monumental choice confronted the Primarchs.
If their gene-seed offspring could reproduce naturally, then in terms of genetic legacy, the Primarchs and the Astartes constituted a true, self-contained family.
They had been engineered from human stock, yet they represented an entirely distinct biological entity, separated from baseline humans by an invisible, permanent barrier.
This was a reality neither Perturabo nor Guilliman could deny: at the genetic level, they were no longer baseline humans.
The Astartes were augmented from human children, yet the reproductive isolation separating them from ordinary mortals proved they had become a distinct species.
Had Melusine never existed, Guilliman and Perturabo would not be locked in such profound conflict; everyone could simply claim to be fighting for the common cause of humanity.
That illusion was now shattered. The question was no longer simple: Would the Astartes rule over humanity? Would humanity and the Astartes coexist as equals? Or would the Astartes remain forever dependent on the Imperium?
These were vastly different paradigms.
Perturabo shuddered to imagine what wild ideas would ignite among his Legionnaires if the news of Melusine ever leaked. Astartes who had never given such matters a second thought would suddenly find wild ambitions sprouting in their minds like weeds after rain.
For radical officers like Forrix, Perturabo was virtually certain that if word spread that Astartes could propagate their own kind, certain Space Marines would inevitably urge their Primarch to take drastic steps.
Space Marines were neither devoid of ambition nor lacking in desire; they simply lacked the biological capacity to pursue those ends, which kept such thoughts dormant.
The incident surrounding Melusine seemed small, but its implications were monumental.
They either had to take absolute, merciless action, or provide an explanation capable of satisfying all sides.
It was not a matter that could be swept under the rug by calling Melusine a mere "lab accident." Once a scientific breakthrough succeeded, it could be replicated endlessly. Even without immediate natural fertility, someone would eventually find a way to engineer it.
While the current generation of Space Marines remained unconditionally loyal, no one could guarantee the distant future.
In Perturabo's memory, figures like Huron Blackheart or Abaddon the Despoiler in the original timeline possessed ambitions so grand that not even their own Primarchs could have restrained them.
Perturabo was certain that under the Imperium's current structure, ambitious Space Marines were an inevitability—it was merely a question of time. In fact, such ambitions might erupt far more violently now than in the grim future of the 40th Millennium.
After all, the present-day Astartes Chapters were not hopelessly dependent on baseline human infrastructure; they possessed the population, technical expertise, and industrial capacity to conquer planets and independently manufacture their own weapons, armor, and warships.
That was the core issue: Perturabo had disrupted the established order, granting the Astartes—who were meant to be entirely dependent on baseline humanity and the Adeptus Mechanicus—the leverage to stand fully independent.
A minor incident that should have been managed quietly had been magnified infinitely by the delicate, sensitive era they now inhabited.