Carcharadons: Void Exile, page 31
The mountain’s summit might have been a man, once. It was a wedge of meat and metal, the deformed features at its top splitting as Sharr fought the last few yards up to it, beating aside and stamping on little mechanical imps that threw themselves at him with saws and knives and shears.
Its maw moaned, the skin Sharr trod upon shivering as a split running down its head widened. Gelatinous matter began bubbling up as the cranium parted like some vile, stinking flower.
Sharr’s servos locked and his actuators grated, but still he forced himself on, body aching with the strain, silent but for Reaper’s roar.
Then, even that began to gutter. The chainaxe started to lose power, the glistening teeth of the ancient weapon decelerating.
Its mutating brain throbbing, the thing that had once been Gideous Voldire laughed.
The phantoms of Te Kahurangi and Khauri called up the depths.
As with any apprentice, Khauri had started on the same path the Pale Nomad had once walked, but long ago he had begun to stray along his own route. That did not mean he had forgotten what he had been taught. The time spent swimming the deeps of the vast, inky aqua-tanks on board the Nicor, or kneeling in the freezing waters beneath the stoic gaze of the Wandering Ancestors, had been revelatory. In the silence he had found truth, and in the deepest fathoms he had come to know himself, body and mind, as he had never done before.
The shadows in the deeps were not the ones that haunted him. They were the ones that gave him his identity. And so when Te Kahurangi mentally called on Khauri to summon that power they shared, he was able to do so without hesitation.
The psychic essence that had once been Voldire was a rotting blight in the empyrean, a monstrosity that should not be. Sharr’s attack on it was akin to a man attempting to fight a mountain, but he had the creature’s attention. Still united, Te Kahurangi and Khauri drove across the final fractions of space and time and into the miasma that was Voldire’s psychic consciousness.
They summoned the power of the depths. It was a psychic memory, but a potent one. The oceans of the planet the Carcharodons venerated as their home world had once been vast and deep, and their ghost was conjured by the twinned psykers and unleashed into the mind of the mutant.
They located the core of Voldire’s physical being – his swelling brain and the spinal link it had formed with the corrupt cogitator he had fused with. They took the fathomless pressure of the deepest ocean depths and they applied it around the abomination.
In the material plane, the merest sliver of realisation pierced Voldire’s insanity. He felt unbearable agony as the psychic force battled with his mutating physical essence.
Beneath, Te Kahurangi’s and Khauri’s own physical forms were on the brink of being unmade. Blood ran from their noses and lips, and witchfire burned around them, the flames riven with the tortured faces of the damned. Sparks burst from Khauri’s psychic hood, the device short-circuiting. Hairline splits had started to run up his staff, while the green shard tipping Te Kahurangi’s was beginning to crack, blazing almost white with power.
Something had to give. And Voldire, for all the corrupt genius of his mind, could not withstand the cold, crushing wrath of the phantom ocean that forever formed part of the Carcharodon Astra’s ancestral memory.
Sharr was almost directly beneath the mutant brain when it ruptured. A vast geyser of reeking grey matter fountained over him as, with a wet crunch, what remained of Voldire the Datagnost’s cranium split open. The brain burst upwards, tearing the fused spinal cables free with it, ripping away both Voldire’s core and that of the corrupt cogitator beneath.
Voldire’s physical form was unmade, and as it began to unravel, Sharr threw himself back down the slope.
Reaper reawakened in his fist, and he used it to cleave through everything in his path. The gambit had succeeded, and while he felt the icy pull of the Blindness’ other side – the desire to simply remain, and perish amidst the carnage – he suppressed it. He would not forget his duty, not so soon after being reminded of it.
Nearly halfway down, he fell. Part of the flesh slope simply collapsed, and he plunged through offal and bones made of the rock that had once clad the ziggurat. Some disgusting, semi-sentient organ cushioned his fall, squirming under him.
A shape loomed in the cavity above him, the unmistakeable outline of an Adeptus Astartes. Sharr realised it was Red Tane. The Company Champion hadn’t withdrawn with the rest of the Shiver.
Sharr accepted a proffered gauntlet, and was hauled up. He simply nodded at Red Tane, and the two carried on down, fighting through the insanity.
The Librarians and Talon met them at the bottom of the collapsing slope. The psykers looked beyond exhausted, but both were still standing.
‘The whole chamber is coming down,’ Te Kahurangi shouted to them both over the din. ‘The rest of the company is almost out! We must go!’
No further advice was needed. Together, the five Carcharodons made for the doorway.
CHAPTER XXX
The former throne room of Diamantus began to collapse as the Sire of Belaphrone took its vengeance. The prow of the proud old ship was driven, slowly and inexorably, by its blazing primary engine, down through crumbling asteroid and the splintered rock of the mountaintop until, at last, it ploughed its way with thundering finality through the remnants of the Pinnacle’s ceiling.
‘Keep moving,’ Sharr barked, driving the Librarians, Red Tane and Talon on ahead, urging them not to fall to the temptation of standing and slaughtering the daemons and mutants that still assailed them.
Third Company had almost made it out onto the plateau when the Sire of Belaphrone’s engine finally overloaded. It blew apart what remained of Grim Destiny and tore the heart out of the Pinnacle, fire surging down through the ship and into the corrupt throne room. In the space of a few seconds, it seared the flesh from the bones of every warp-spawned terror in the chamber, turning both Voldire’s deranged experiments and newly formed Neverborn to ash.
The warp portals saved Third Company. The Sire of Belaphrone’s fury surged briefly through them and into the Forge of Souls, venting itself before the rifts collapsed, spending the worst of the old ship’s wrath before it could surge up the tunnel to the Pinnacle’s entrance.
What remained of the chamber collapsed under the weight of the mountain’s broken peak. Part of the landslide cut off the main entrance, but by then Sharr and his small band had made it out in the wake of the rest of Third Company.
Black Scythe, Rangu’s Hammer and Sixth Squad had kept the plateau clear, and now the battered remnants of the rest of the company strengthened the perimeter as bedrock and soil continued to crumble down the slopes at their backs. Archenemy forces still infested the lower parts of Mount Antikythera, and carefully conserved fusillades kept them at bay as they bewailed the annihilation of the thing they had worshipped.
The staccato cracks of aimed bolter fire provided a backdrop as, finally, Sharr let Reaper’s motor die.
After the madness of the throne room, the plateau was almost achingly silent. Sharr embraced it, used it to find a degree of solace amidst the hollow ache as his body climbed down from the violent heights he had pushed it to.
He looked to the others who had made it out with him. Khauri was leaning against his staff, his face ashen, grip visibly shaking. Dark matter had clogged his nose and run down over his lips. His eyes were haunted by shadows. Next to him, the glow from Te Kahurangi’s staff was now a barely perceptible glimmer. The venerable psyker’s expression was stony, as though he was seeking to master a great pain without letting it show.
Talon looked from the rubble at their backs, still settling, to the Carcharodons holding the plateau’s edge, his grip on his club flexing, clearly eager to be where there was more fighting to be had but unwilling to roam within a Shiver that was not his own. Red Tane was unreadable behind his slime-drenched helm, his stance the easy poise of a swordsman who was at rest, but ready to launch into deadly motion in a heartbeat.
It was Khauri who broke the silence.
‘Is it done?’ he asked, looking at the Pale Nomad.
The heavy thrum and tread of Tactical Dreadnought Armour interrupted the small gathering before Te Kahurangi could reply. Kino approached, flanked by one of his Red Brethren. Both still had their power fists ignited.
‘You broke from the company, Champion,’ Kino said, looking to Red Tane, voice an angry exhalation over the vox. ‘My orders were to withdraw.’
‘I chose to stand with the Reaper Prime,’ Red Tane responded.
‘I am your Reaper Prime–’ Kino began to say, but the crack of Te Kahurangi’s staff against the ground stilled him.
‘Perhaps you should not be any longer, Sigmus-three-four-Kino,’ the Chief Librarian said, his expression growing ever more steely as he glared at the Company Master.
Kino’s servos snarled as he turned fully to face Te Kahurangi.
‘It is not your place to say that, Pale Nomad,’ he hissed.
‘No, it is yours,’ Te Kahurangi said. ‘Your rank to relinquish. And when you do, you become a brother of the First Company once more. Able to speak with the voice of the Reaper Lord of the Void. Able to pronounce banishment, or end it.’
‘What is the meaning of this?’ Kino demanded, helm swinging to one side and then the other as he looked between the assembled Carcharodons. Sharr felt like he was being target-locked when the cold lenses turned to him.
‘Bail Sharr is disgraced,’ Kino went on, not even deigning to address him directly. ‘He pleaded with me to be exiled. I did him a service by banishing him, so he did not have to live in shame among his Shiver.’
‘Yet live in shame I did,’ Sharr spoke up. ‘What you say is true, Kino. I demanded I be cast out. I used the standards of our Chapter, the doctrines that have held us loyal and true during our voyage through the Outer Dark, as a means to escape my own failure. But our Chapter’s exile was not undertaken without any hope of forgiveness, and neither was mine. I have atoned.’
‘You were the reason I was forced to take command of this company,’ Kino said. ‘Your weakness is the root of all this. You are not fit to decide whether you have atoned or not.’
‘But you are,’ Te Kahurangi said. ‘And if you do not, the master whom we both serve will. I shall be reporting to Lord Tyberos in full when I return to the Nomad Predation Fleet. I will tell him of your failure to engage Grim Destiny on the system’s edge, your decision to remain absent from your company once it was deployed planetside, your operational misstep in believing you could engage in high orbit, and how you were then cut off during the invasion’s height. And as an adviser of the Chapter Master, I will also stress that the Third Company has grown suboptimal under your tenure. I will recommend that your command does not receive full ratification, that you be returned to the First Company, that Bail Sharr’s exile be deemed complete, and that he should rejoin his Shiver as Company Master, if they will have him. Alternatively, you may remove yourself now, while you still have the power to do so, and show good judgement in reinstating the last Company Master.’
Sharr expected Kino to rage at the Pale Nomad – in his experience, Red Brethren were nothing if not stubborn. But instead Kino was silent for a long time before speaking, his tone frigid.
‘I suppose I should thank you, for convincing me to relinquish command of this misbegotten force. I never wished to lead this company, and I should never have permitted Sharr’s exile in the first place. I will have a report of my own to deliver to the Red Wake, Librarian. If you believe he will so easily dismiss the opinion of the First, you are not as wise as some claim you to be.’
Kino continued before Te Kahurangi could respond.
‘I have rarely encountered a Shiver so dysfunctional as this one. This company, especially its command structure, does no credit to the Chapter. I recuse myself from it. To have to lead it on a permanent basis would be a miserable fate. I shall rest knowing that I have fulfilled my duty.’
‘And what of Sharr?’ Te Kahurangi asked.
Kino continued to look at the Pale Nomad as he spoke.
‘Bail Sharr is perfectly suited to lead the company I have just described.’
‘You will end Talon’s exile as well,’ Sharr said abruptly, drawing the gaze of the other five. ‘In the years I have fought alongside him, I have never witnessed him fail the Chapter’s doctrines. Whatever his crime, he has served his sentence.’
‘Blind One–’ Talon began to say, his tone edged with dissatisfaction, but Sharr turned to him.
‘I understand that whatever Shiver you were once a part of is far from here, but you will find a new one in the Third Company. I am certain either Seventh or Eighth Squads will be proud to add you to their number. Cast off your shame, as I have, and speak your true name.’
‘I do not remember it,’ Talon said eventually, looking at Sharr with a bleak expression. ‘I do not remember my name, or a time before the mind-wipes and the exile operations. Not truly, only in fragments. I do not even recall my crime.’
‘Then truly, it is served,’ Sharr said, looking at Kino. ‘Release him.’
‘All will be included in my report,’ Kino said. ‘Your exile is over.’
Voldire squirmed through the darkness.
Of that fact, and little else, he was aware. His glorious form, on the cusp of true enlightenment, had been cruelly destroyed. Only his swollen brain matter had survived after being torn free.
The Infernal Architect had shielded him. An intellect like his could not be lost. He was too precious, his death too grievous a blow to the galaxy to be allowed. And so he had been preserved, lobes partially mutating into jelly-like forelimbs, making it possible to drag his squirming brain-thing into a crevasse.
Down Voldire wormed himself, into the split underbelly of the Pinnacle, into the fractures formed throughout the mountain when Grim Destiny had first hammered into it.
Voldire lived. He could regrow. He could return. There was hope yet for mankind.
Barely conscious and robbed of almost every sense bar the touch of his gelatinous newborn limbs, Voldire was unaware of It. Unaware as It stalked him, scented him, through the fissures and depths where It had concealed itself after the hulk’s brutal planetfall.
It smelt his sickness. It registered both his potential as a threat and his apparent vulnerability.
The Deathleaper did not understand its imperatives. Like many of the deadliest beings in the galaxy, it could not even truly conceive of its own self. Ultimately, it found expression and meaning only in the fulfilment of its function.
Voldire’s existence, rendered so pitiable, so corrupt, ended when the Deathleaper fulfilled the part of its function that required it to avoid any risk of detection, even by something so seemingly insignificant. It speared the datagnost’s remains against the bedrock of Diamantus with its upper talons, before ripping apart the last of him with its claws.
In the final days of the Diamantus purge, Ze-One-Prime was requested to attend the Reaper Prime. Kordi took them to the place Sharr had chosen as his planetside headquarters, the Forge Temple of the Two Archmagi, overlooking the Diamantine Triumph. The cavernous space bore the scarring legacy of the ongoing purification operations, but its furnaces were silent and its production lines still, excised of the Cult of the Arkifane’s evil.
Kordi had left Second Squad by the monument outside, commanded by Neku, whose leg had been healed sufficiently by the application of grafts and field augmetics to continue to take part in operations. Kordi led Ze-One-Prime into the temple and along the main smelter floor, to where Bail Sharr awaited them. He was flanked by his command squad – Nuritona, Ihaia, Red Tane and Tama – with the company’s faded old standard behind him and statues of the two great archmagi founders of Diamantus towering above.
Sharr was now garbed as befitted the Company Master of the Third, the war plate and relics brought down from the White Maw with the air assets. His head was framed beneath the jagged teeth of the Halo of Maws, while the Razor-Cloak and its vicious, glittering hide was draped over one pauldron. One gauntlet rested upon Reaper’s head, while the other clutched his crested helm to his side. To Kordi he looked every inch one of the Nomad Predation Fleet’s commanders, a warlord of the Outer Dark. And despite the doubts the strike leader had experienced when he had first been told of Bail Sharr’s return, there was no doubt in his mind that he was back where he belonged, and back where his old Shiver needed him.
Wordlessly, Kordi presented Ze-One-Prime. If the magos dominus was awed by Sharr, they did not show it, though with the help of their cane they offered a deep bow.
‘I was told you wished for an audience, Company Master,’ they said.
‘Indeed,’ Sharr responded. ‘I wished to offer my thanks on behalf of the wider company for your assistance throughout the crisis on your world, and to inform you that my brethren and I will shortly be departing.’
Ze-One-Prime showed no surprise at the news, and Kordi suspected they had anticipated it. They had already discussed how Adeptus Mechanicus reinforcements were bound for Diamantus. The Carcharodon Astra would not wish to be present when they arrived. Their orders had been to defend the forge world from Grim Destiny, and that threat was no more.
‘On behalf of Diamantus, and the Omnissiah, I thank you and your Chapter,’ Ze-One-Prime said. ‘Though our suffering has been great and our losses nigh incomputable, you have preserved us from even greater blasphemies. Upon your departure, I will base my forces at the Twinfort and continue purification operations until my kindred’s fleets arrive.’
‘There is one other matter that I wish to inform you of,’ Sharr said. ‘It concerns the populace of Diamantus, namely the labour force.’
