Planetkill, page 14
Vaeyvor’s vox-tendrils caressed each other and hissed as he made his calculation. The risk of Rottle’s discovery, like the miracle of his survival, was indeed permissible.
‘You have my permission, Magos Biologis Hieronym Rottle, to continue your experimentation upon the Life-Eater,’ Vaeyvor intoned solemnly.
‘Thank you, my lord.’ Rottle hissed.
‘You have my assurance that your work will be conducted in secret, beyond Mechanicus oversight. I believe that the Omnissiah is your guide, and the Emperor your saviour. None need know of this.’
Rottle’s mandible-tines fluttered, as if anticipating the consequences of the statement. Vaeyvor extended his own mechadendrite limbs from below his cloak, each chrome tentacle tapering towards a particular instrument: an electrosaw, a data-fork, an informatic barb, a razor-glaive. The tentacles curled upwards, stroking each other silently in their ascent. They corkscrewed over the adept’s head, turning upon themselves in a tightening web of metal – and then, with neither warning nor visible effort, they sliced down, cutting the adept into wet slices of meat and steel.
Now no one else knew about Magos Biologis Hieronym Rottle.
No one at all.
From the viewing gallery of The Emperor’s Despair, Carnage hung in space like a polished pearl. The thick, ammonia-rich atmosphere reflected the local sun’s light and it winked in the void, its brightness eclipsing the surrounding starfield for thousands of kilometres. The Segmentum Obscurus had rarely looked so dark.
The planet’s vast mines, each of which was driven into the tectonic jigsaw of its cracked surface like a spike, tapped the planet’s super-heavy core. Each was populated by a billion souls: miners, their families, enginseers, tech-priests, and Administratum officials. Not a single hive-mine had been operational for months.
For Carnage had been struck by plague and civil war. The suffering had been terrible and the bonds of civil society had collapsed. War followed and the survivors of the plague destroyed each other in a campaign of internecine conflict that pitched continent against continent. But the inhabitants of Carnage would not destroy each other before destroying what remained of their mining wealth and the very mines that gave their world meaning. The Administratum petitioned the Departmento Munitorum, which sent emissaries to the Holy Ordos of Terra. The Ordo Hereticus assumed command of the situation and approved the ultimate sanction: Exterminatus. It was why The Emperor’s Despair hung silently in high orbit. Carnage would be sterilized.
Within days of Ordo Hereticus involvement, astropathic communications with the Adeptus Mechanicus and several Adeptus Astartes Chapters secured a solution. The Emperor’s Despair now sat loaded with a test strain of a new Life-Eater virus. The Doom Warriors Chapter was chosen to administer the Emperor’s mercy to the lost planet of Carnage.
With a noble history stretching back thousands of years, the Doom Warriors had long specialised in campaigns of cleansing, which appealed to their saturnine turn of character – the result of a defect in the Catalepsean Node, some said. Not only was it said that Doom Warriors did not sleep, but they required no hope, nor cause, to fight in the name of the Emperor. They were a morose, moody Chapter, bound together by a mutual misanthropy for those members of the Imperium who failed to see the galaxy’s hopelessness. The nearest a Doom Warrior came to happiness was revelling in this hopelessness by immersing himself in its bloodshed and destruction. They made as formidable warriors as existed in the galaxy.
There were few Space Marines amongst the Doom Warriors as dour as Captain Grimmer Slayne. Carnage’s opalescent brilliance sparkled against his half a dozen service studs as it wandered its lonely orbit thousands of kilometres away. Little else on Slayne’s face caught the light. Heavy brows sat over hooded eyes. Hollow cheeks framed thin lips upon a cut-glass jaw. Dozens of scars had long ago knitted together into a patchwork-story of wounds and injury. His skin was little more than beaten leather. Light fell from his features like spilled water. He contemplated the scene before him with resigned sympathy. He knew death and embraced its necessity; every Doom Warrior did.
His vox crackled into life.
‘Captain Slayne.’ The static hissed and fizzled. ‘Come to the launch arcade.’
‘Aye,’ he responded, in the blunt accent of their homeworld. ‘Coming.’
‘Squad Qannix has returned. Their evaluation is to proceed. Launch imminent.’
The cleansing of worlds was a bleak necessity in the Imperium of Man, and something which Slayne had undertaken before. Mardun X, Gephistux, Truub II and III, the Stuum Cluster. Each reminded him that the Emperor’s Mercy could bring life to all, or take it, whole worlds, and sometimes systems, at a time.
His route took him quickly towards the launch arcade of The Emperor’s Despair. In his parched-yellow power armour, almost the colour of desiccated bone, he strode swiftly through the ship, passing maintenance crews and ancillary servitors.
At the entrance parlour, Slayne was met by Squad Qannix. Sergeant Qannix made the sign of the aquila against his chest plate, slapping the ceramite with his gauntleted hands. Slayne returned the gesture, just as forcefully, and the other four squad members repeated it. Despite the cruel menace of the squad’s Mark VII helmets, Slayne sensed the brotherhood between them and, as the unhelmeted officer, nodded appreciatively. They stepped inside and vast launch galleries panned out before them. Along each gallery sat a great metal tube, fitted with buffering insulation, powerful coolant flues, and organic dissipaters. At intervals, there were banks of servitors, wired into each great barrel to monitor breach integrity, targeting solutions and kinetic trajectories. These were the firing cylinders for viral torpedoes.
‘Report, Sergeant Qannix,’ said Slayne.
‘The population is dead or dying, captain.’ Qannix’s vox played directly into Slayne’s implanted ear-piece. ‘The survivors are killing the diseased before they’re dead, or else each other, as well as destroying the mining infrastructure of the planet. Three hive-mines have already collapsed into the planet’s core and more will do so within days. Hive-Mine Mogma’crun will fall within hours because every bastion spire has failed. The situation is critical, captain.’
‘Then let us commence, sergeant.’ Slayne motioned to signal the launch. Hours of prayer had preceded this moment. Stale incense hung thickly in the air.
Though the Doom Warriors cared little for the precise nature of the viral payload they would launch, or its specific consequences, there were those that did. To Slayne’s surprise, the parlour doors hissed open.
Stepping across the threshold first of all was Nakon Tagor, the ship’s weaponsmaster. Handsome in his navy uniform, with tassled and trimmed epaulettes and brocaded panels, his high cap sat severely upon his sleek head. He was dwarfed by the giant Astartes before him and his grim demeanour fell away before their own sullen expressions. Slayne had seen his type before and was, if anything, unimpressed by his appearance. It was his presence that surprised him.
‘Weaponsmaster, why the interruption? Only Astartes attend the launch arcade at this time. Launch protocols forbid anyone else.’ Slayne eyed the weaponsmaster calmly, conveying only the expectation of his will obeyed. ‘Return to your station. Leave us.’
‘My lord–’ Tagor began, but stopped as a bulky servitor followed him in, pushing him out of the way. It looked liked a lightweight dreadnought, if there was such a thing, with refined angles and sloped, graceful plating. Its gentle shuffle mimicked that of an old man but spoke of sophisticated internal suspension. It was no dreadnought. It swivelled on rotational hips and faced the Doom Warrior captain. Its shoulder guards retracted, revealing a cliff-like, ceramite trapezius with a sunken collar. From this crept a group of mechadendrites, each tapering towards a sensor of some kind. Neither a servitor, then, nor a human.
The collar split and sunk into the chest-plate, revealing a panel of vox-tines. They clamoured together as the machine spoke.
‘Captain Grimmer Slayne, I assure you that our presence is warranted.’ The voice was a gravelled, purling stream of binary, fashioned into words. ‘The captain of The Emperor’s Despair has in fact requested our attendance. I am Archmagos Biologis Hieronym Rottle of the Adeptus Mechanicus, successor to his most blessed Archmagos Biologis Nefarion Vaeyvor, may he calculate exponentially the glories of the Omnissiah.’
Slayne bristled at the Mechanicus tin can. The being must have been but a fraction organic – and it was only after he inspected its ceramite exterior that he noticed the wafer-thin glass casings. They presented the proof of its humanity. Slices of flesh were presented like seals of authority. The flesh was putrescent, rotting, as if it had died long ago and simply existed upon the machine to vouch for its humanity. ‘What are you doing here?’ Slayne asked coldly.
‘My friend,’ warbled the binary harmony of Rottle’s vox, ‘I come in peace, as indeed do we all.’ He gestured towards Carnage, through the nearest viewing bay, and shuffled into the launch arcade. A number of heavily-augmented Mechanicus adepts, tech-priests and servitors followed behind him, along with several skittering spider-scribes and a thrumming servo-skull. ‘Do you know what you are launching at Carnage?’
‘The Life-Eater,’ answered Slayne.
Rottle’s response was a digital cacophony. Slayne thought it was laughter. Another mechadendrite snaked its way from the sunken collar and, curving in upon itself with a curious sense of display, winked out a holographic image of a phosphorescent liquid. Though the image occasionally shook and shimmered, the liquid was beautiful, a viscously glittering fluid that caressed the insides of its tank gently, even compassionately. It looked alive, and kind, and good.
‘The Emperor’s Tears, Captain Slayne,’ Rottle continued. ‘An evolved Life-Eater that attacks not meat and bone, but the spark of life itself. The old Life-Eater devoured protein, multiplying exponentially as it did so, turning all organic matter into pyroplosive sludge that burned away the very elements capable of sustaining life. The Emperor’s Tears takes away life itself. A far more efficient means of killing, I think you’ll agree.’ There was a moment of rapturous fidgeting from Rottle’s retinue.
‘The Emperor’s Tears is a fine name, archmagos,’ answered Slayne. ‘It conveys the great compassion of our God-Emperor.’ He paused, eager to conclude the conversation. ‘The Emperor protects,’ he said simply, crossing his gauntleted hands and striking his chest-plate with the sign of the aquila.
‘And He destroys,’ continued Rottle, with a flutter of short, prehensile tentacles that flowered around his collar like a grandiose ruff. ‘Shall we?’
Slayne wondered if the ship’s captain would object to Squad Qannix putting a few hundred bolter rounds into this Rottle-machine, his retinue, and weaponsmaster Tagor. If only they weren’t standing in such a sensitive area of the ship, such impertinence would have been punished.
But the time had come. A prayer siren sounded, soon followed by the heavy chimes of consecrated launch bells.
All around them, and along the length of the launch arcade, servitors awoke from their offline slumber to begin nursing the control slates of the great firing cylinders. Squad Qannix stood still, watching impassively, while Rottle’s retinue could barely contain their curiosity. Archmagos Biologis Hieronym Rottle was especially animated. Sensory proboscis, antennae and aerials unfurled from his open collar to savour the moment.
Slayne’s enhanced sense of smell soon detected more incense in the air. Purity rituals were being observed in the distant arming chamber. The air extraction system initialised and oxygen was suddenly pulled from the room, and replaced, at great speed. Unprepared for the turbulence, Rottle’s servo-skull was dashed against a bulkhead and destroyed. Rottle was too busy following the launch protocols to flinch. Slayne simply didn’t care.
Several of the servitors slowed their calculations, aware that targeting solutions were now confirmed and the torpedoes in place. With the Emperor’s Tears ready for launch, it was with grim satisfaction that Slayne considered the notion of the Emperor weeping. A weaker man might indeed cry, he thought, wryly pondering the scope for munitions error. A new weapon was always interesting until it jammed, overheated, or was copied by those Throne-damned orks. A thunderous shudder broke his contemplation.
Deep in the bowels of the ship, a rumbling fury swiftly built towards a throbbing, ear-cracking crescendo – and then vanished. With a silent blossoming of light, a salvo of viral torpedoes began their swift descent towards Carnage. They winked in the light of the distant sun, brilliant before the blackness beyond.
The torpedoes struck the upper atmosphere like splashes of quicksilver. Through the viewing bays of the launch arcade, their disintegration was beautiful, their payloads sparkling and glinting in the sun’s light. Though dwarfed by the sheer scale of the planet, and soon lost in its thick atmosphere, the Emperor’s Tears had an immediate effect. As the lower atmosphere was punctured, great, dark clouds of dead matter billowed into space. It was the dying bacteria that lived in the planet’s ammonia-rich atmosphere. As life increased in complexity and frequency towards the planet’s surface, such dark clouds became stains racing across the planet, like oil upon water, contaminating every iota of life with death, robbing all existence of being. Clouds of dead and decaying matter mushroomed into space, propelled by the violence of their own destruction. The hive-mines became still within moments.
Carnage became a place of peace.
Orbital scans indicated that death had descended upon the planet. Servitors croaked and drooled as they calculated the awesome power of the Emperor’s compassion. Slayne raised an eyebrow. What the old Life-Eater virus could accomplish in hours was happening in moments. The universe had just become a little darker.
Within minutes, Carnage was dead. And then it happened.
Carnage came back to life.
Servitors reeled off impossible data-readings. Reams of script and punched parchment spooled onto the deck in untidy heaps. Lights blinked and klaxons roared throughout the launch arcade. Elsewhere on The Emperor’s Despair, the ship’s great logic engines struggled to compute the surge in planetary life-sign. The ship’s very machine-spirit cried out in confusion, causing whole galleries of hard-wired tech-adepts to die instantly. Most of the ship’s astropaths, prepared for the planet’s psychic death, died in the aftershock of its rebirth.
Slayne was unsure what he was watching, but he didn’t like the roiling atmosphere. It swirled across the planet at such speed that much of it escaped the planet’s gravity sink and dissipated into space. Bruised swathes of remaining cloud hung over the planet’s dark continents. Storm systems reared up in great thunderheads like vast scabs. Slayne had never seen a planet look so wrong outside of the Eye of Terror.
‘By the Golden Throne,’ he muttered, touching his breastplate softly.
Rottle laughed, his binary inflection suddenly thick and organic. A cry of triumph. It was even audible over the sound of the oxygen exchangers.
Despite the proximity of the ship’s outer hull, Slayne was the first to raise his bolter. Squad Qannix followed a moment later, reading their captain’s reaction. They opened fire as one. A hail of bolter shells pummelled the ceramite of Rottle’s chassis, but he continued to wail with laughter – inhumanly guttural and congested. The bolter shells cracked his ceramite and plasticrete shell, but it was clear to Slayne that Rottle’s over-augmented carapace was the least of their worries.
Slivers of Rottle’s original tissue swelled and distended, cracking their flexi-glass seals and sending shards of strengthened glass scattering across the deck. As Rottle’s chassis staggered under the hail of fire and began to disintegrate into flakes and then fragments, his original flesh bloated and blew into great hunks of fatty meat. Where bolter shells blew chunks of the rancid tissue away, more unfolding fleshy matter fell into place, creating a great bulbous, quivering mass.
Rottle’s vox-tines had been shot to pieces but his triumphal cry still reverberated around the launch arcade. Now it was a throaty, rich roar, as fleshy and deep as any bass-vox song-servitor. The sound carried its own stench. Slayne’s implants strained to stop him gagging. Most of Rottle’s retinue were either vomiting up their own wiring, killed in the crossfire, or ripped apart by ricocheting mass-reactive rounds.
The broken chassis suddenly cracked wide open, spilling out new organs, sheaths of muscle and fat, as well as the internal workings of Rottle’s mechanical form.
‘Fire at the flesh, Doom Warriors!’ cried Slayne, closing in on the mass of blubber and meat. It was already gathering itself together.
‘Doom ye! Doom ye! Doom ye!’ cried his battle-brothers, advancing step-by-step to the Chapter’s war-drum chant. Bolter fire intensified. Explosions of sound, reverberating shockwaves, and magnesium flashes shook the air as well as the very structure of the ship.
Despite chunks of flesh being blown apart from the mass of meat surrounding what remained of Hieronym Rottle, a recognisably humanoid form had coalesced and congealed into shape. There stood a grinning figure of pestilential depravity. It was a bloated, swollen creature whose cancerous entrails fell from its own torn stomach. It was truly obese, rolls of rotting blubber wrapped around a vast frame of suppurating tissue and rancid meat. The concentrated bolter fire was slowly eroding its vile mass, blowing it apart, gobbet by gobbet of flesh.
It just stood there, grinning, rejoicing in its own undoing.
‘Doom ye! Doom ye! Doom ye!’ cried the Doom Warriors, advancing to point-blank range. Muzzle fire blackened and crisped some of the creature’s extremities. The smell of charred meat hung heavy in the air. When the creature finally collapsed, it was a flaccid bag of torn and broken skin. Lumps of tissue, muscle and organ lay everywhere. Steam, stench and cordite hung thick in the air.
