"Were you really once one of the Iron Warriors?"
"How did a chatterbox like you not die under the Legion's harsh iron laws?"
"If I couldn't see your soul directly, I'd have thought you were Alpharius."
The one voicing his dissatisfaction was not clone Perturabo, but Magnus.
When Perturabo heard Magnus mention the Iron Warriors' harsh iron laws, he noticed the word "harsh" and cast him a meaningful look from beneath his helmet.
"No," Locke said conversationally. "The Legion had already rebelled by the time I became an Astartes. If Dante hadn't raided a transport ship, I'd be a traitor too. So naturally, I was never tormented by those iron laws."
After a two-second pause, Locke grumbled a few more times.
"Decimation. Fail a mission, and one out of every ten people dies."
"Brilliant. What kind of genius came up with a rule like that?"
"Did Perturabo produce too much gene-seed, or was my Legion really made of steel inside and out, tough enough to endure that much punishment?"
"Any other Legion would've been decimated out of existence long ago. How could they have lasted ten thousand years and still leave us this lot to deal with?"
Like a one-man show, Locke went on talking to himself for several sentences.
The clone Primarchs remained silent, like well-behaved spectators in a Macragge theater.
He must have been an unbelievably talkative person before undergoing the augmentation surgery.
Horus thought.
Astartes were not emotionless, nor were they all taciturn blocks of stone.
Dante, the Chapter Master of the Blood Angels, had once mistaken someone for his father while barely conscious and cried out like a child, "Look! Father! I've become an angel!"
Yet becoming an Astartes did suppress one's emotions to a certain degree, making them somewhat more reserved.
Locke had once been