Carcharadons: Void Exile, page 32
‘I anticipate you will recommend their termination, for fear that some are tainted,’ Ze-One-Prime said. ‘I believe that would be a mistake. I have extensively monitored all contact with the workers, and have encountered almost no cases of corrupted manifestations. They are currently lawless, it is true, but only due to the devastation wreaked upon them. The infection spread itself among the priesthood and my own kindred in the maniples, among those most blessed by the machine. Not among the commoners.’
‘Your assumption is incorrect, magos dominus,’ Sharr said. ‘About the common workers of this world, we are in agreement. My Brother-Librarians have found little trace of the Ruinous Powers among them. It is for exactly that reason that I intend to take a tithe of them.’
‘A tithe?’ Ze-One-Prime asked, the word hanging leaden in the air.
‘My Chapter has a number of ancient treaties with the rest of the Imperium,’ Sharr said. ‘Thanks to the Edicts of Exile, we are permitted to take supplies, including human fodder, from worlds we defend. They may not be members of the Adeptus Terra, or indeed the Adeptus Mechanicus, but of the common citizenry, there is no limitation. It has been this way for millennia. I have requested your presence partly to confirm my belief that the workers of Diamantus, while falling under the protection of the Omnissiah, are not technically members of the Martian Cult.’
‘That is the case,’ Ze-One-Prime said, their human-sounding voice now guarded. ‘You wish to simply… take them?’
‘Not all of them, of course,’ Sharr said. ‘Only a small number, at least as far as the surviving population is concerned. Mass-conveyance transports are already inbound from the south. I would be gratified if your skitarii would assist in processing operations.’
‘You wish for me to aid you in seizing the workers of Diamantus?’ Ze-One-Prime said.
‘Yes.’
Kordi watched that expressionless mask closely. After a brief silence, they spoke again.
‘This is irregular. Nevertheless, it is true that we owe you a great debt.’
‘It is not a payment of debt. We had a duty to defend this world, and we did. Now I have a duty to tithe it, so I shall.’
‘Your logic is commendable, Carcharodon Astra. As, I believe, is mine – we will assist you in the fulfilment of your duties, even though it will mean a further reduction of our workforce. In truth, I do not expect a return to productivity for many decades.’
‘It is regrettable that more of Diamantus could not be saved,’ Sharr said. ‘Such is the price of war.’
Kordi sensed no relief in the Reaper Prime, though he was certain it was there, deep below the surface. Conducting a Red Tithe on a forge world, even a ravaged one like Diamantus, was a risk. Had Ze-One-Prime refused permission, there was little the company could have done. And when word inevitably got out, it could cause dissatisfaction among other factions of the Cult Mechanicus.
It was a calculated risk. The Nomad Predation Fleet was always hungry, always consuming. None had kept it fed as regularly as Bail Sharr, and if he returned to the main fleet with even a partial tithe, it would further strengthen his defence against the accusations Kino was planning to level. It was strategically astute.
Sharr dismissed the magos dominus and Kordi, but the strike leader lingered.
‘You wish to speak?’ Sharr asked.
Kordi thought about his former doubts, about the darkness Sharr’s fall had brought over the whole company, the uncertainty of his return as an Exile, and now his re-transfiguration into the role of Reaper Prime. It was as though he had never left. Kordi could not deny the relief he felt at that, but was such an emotion worthy or unbecoming of a true Carcharodon Astra? Was it his duty to trust his Company Master without reservation, or to demand assurances that the Shiver would never again be subjected to the misrule Sharr’s failure had brought about?
He knew he would be unable to adequately express such thoughts. Instead, Kordi shook his head and turned away, already speaking into his vox, calling for Neku to prepare Second Squad.
It was time to claim the Red Tithe.
+ + Initialising astropathic relay auto-séance transcript chain 372F/71G. Part 4 of 4. Record downloading + + +
+ + Cleansing transcript file + + +
+ + Transcript file cleansed. Sender verified as Interrogator Anton Fell, agent of Inquisitor >REDACTED< of the Ordo Hereticus + + +
+ + Opening Transcript + + +
There is something hunting us. It killed Garwell and both the combat servitors in two separate incidents during the night.
No one has been able to identify it, beyond the fact that it is unnaturally swift and silent. I fear we are beset by some Archenemy monstrosity, perhaps a damnable remnant from the struggle for this world.
It struck after dark, not long after we arrived at the plateau in front of what I assume is the primary entrance to the mountaintop. A great battle has already been fought in this place. The ground is choked with the rotting, dust-shrouded dead. The entranceway looks to have been sealed by rubble. I had ordered us to encamp among the dead until dawn came, which would enable us to better assess it.
Whatever terror attacked us is undoubtedly still out there, observing us. Next time we will be ready for it.
I should add that there have been strange phantom messages over the vox-net, before and after the two attacks. My signals officer claims it might be the Lightbringer attempting to contact us, but the whispers I hear do not sound like Torrian or her crew.
Some of the party want to head back down the mountain, but I have refused. None will dare countermand me, not while I bear your authority.
Dawn is now breaking. I pray to the God-Emperor that we are able to hunt down and banish this creature before darkness returns. Alfaiq has reported seeing–
+ + Transcript file ends + + +
+ + Thought for the Day: Only in death does duty end + + +
+ + Logging request for deletion of auto-séance transcript chain 372F/71G. Gene code required + + +
+ + Gene code approved. Authority of Inquisitor >REDACTED< recognised + + +
+ + Deletion sequence initialising in 3… 2… 1… + + +
+ + Transcript chain deleted + + +
+ + Thought for the Day: A moment of laxity spawns a lifetime of heresy + + +
EPILOGUE
The downdraught of the Arvus lighter’s engines kicked up dirt and dust from the plateau, forcing Interrogator Ranwell to raise a hand to shield his face. Next to him, the explicator, Ogilvie, was unable to protect himself, weighed down as he was with both hands clutching the plastek sack containing the broken power armour.
They had recovered it from among the eviscerated remains of Interrogator Anton Fell and his sub-retinue. Ranwell had tried to warn their mistress that Fell wasn’t ready for an assignment like this. The fact that he had been proven correct brought him no pleasure – for all his inexperience, Fell had been a fellow interrogator, and just about as close a thing as there could be to a friend among the junior ranks of the Inquisition.
That something terrible had happened to him had become clear when the small fleet commandeered by their mistress had broken in-system. The astropath had received an automatic etheric inload, a screed of data that had been sent from the surface of Diamantus several months before and had only just found a sanctioned mind to latch on to. She had converted it into a transcript chain which proved to be a string of messages from Fell, logged by the ship that had transported him to the forge world, the Lightbringer.
Augur scans had shown that the Lightbringer itself was still in orbit, albeit now reduced to a gutted, burning wreck by the newly arrived Adeptus Mechanicus war fleet. The servants of the Machine God had initially refused to communicate with Ranwell’s mistress, then had claimed that the Lightbringer had fallen to corruption. They stated the planet of Diamantus was quarantined. Such claims meant little to the Inquisition.
The Mechanicus, for all their fiercely guarded independence, were not about to open fire on the combined power of the Imperial Navy and the Holy Ordos. As the senior interrogator, Ranwell had been dispatched to the surface, under the guns of both sets of warships and through the debris that still choked the atmosphere. He had located Fell’s last known position, on a plateau near the splintered peak of a mountain named Antikythera.
As they had hoped, the artefacts Fell had recovered were still amongst the remains – fragments of damaged Adeptus Astartes battle plate. Anton Fell might have died horribly, but he had not died in vain.
Ranwell had been able to transmit news of the success. Now, his mistress had arrived.
‘Open the sack,’ Ranwell snapped at Ogilvie, who hastily untied the plastek bag and began to spread its scarred, grey ceramite contents for inspection.
The lighter’s hatch ramp had disengaged and was lowering amidst a gust of steam, the shuttle framed against the ruddy, dust-choked sunset breaking over the pinnacle behind it. Through the steam and the lengthening shadows, two bulky, armoured figures advanced, Vox Legi shotguns sweeping the plateau for threats as they spread out on either side of the ramp. They were arbitrators of the Adeptus Arbites, clad in black carapace armour and sallet half-helms, their expressions grim. Behind them came their mistress, and Ranwell’s.
She was armoured similarly to her two bodyguards, in carapace armour of a matching pattern, though its colour was midnight blue rather than black. There was a plasma pistol on her hip, and an Inquisitorial rosette pinned to her gorget, gleaming gold in the dying light. Her head was bare, her long white hair piled up, her face showing the alternating smoothness around the jaw and cheekbones and the lines around the eyes that hinted at a regimen of rejuvenat treatments. It was strange to see her combat-garbed, but it suited her – it had been some time since she had taken an active part in operations.
That told Ranwell just how important this was.
The interrogator and the explicator knelt side by side in the dust, the broken Adeptus Astartes battle plate before them. Ranwell spoke over the dying whine of the shuttle’s engines.
‘Welcome to Diamantus, Inquisitor Rannik.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robbie MacNiven is a Highlands-born History graduate from the University of Edinburgh. He has written the Warhammer Age of Sigmar novel Scourge of Fate and the Gotrek Gurnisson novella The Bone Desert, as well as the Warhammer 40,000 novels Oaths of Damnation, Blood of Iax, The Last Hunt, Carcharodons: Red Tithe, Carcharodons: Outer Dark and Legacy of Russ. His short stories include ‘Redblade’, ‘A Song for the Lost’ and ‘Blood and Iron’. His hobbies include re-enacting, football and obsessing over Warhammer 40,000.
An extract from Oaths of Damnation.
Damnation came howling out of the ether, reaching for the Hexbreakers with talons formed from hatred and hunger.
Daggan Zaidu sent the first back to where it had come from with the knife in his left fist, the straight-bladed combat dagger scything up and through the monstrosity’s distended neck as it lunged with a maw filled with fangs. Stinking black ichor drenched his armour, sizzling as it evaporated off the sigil-etched surfaces.
The monstrosity came apart, already replaced by another. Claws raked at his left shoulder but failed to register as the knife in his right hand carved off the offending limb before delivering the banishing blow.
They were fast, these ones, and numerous. The abbey was almost overrun, its heart ripped out by a pulsing abomination, a rent in the very essence of reality. Above the altar, the air was buckling as more and more warp matter forced its way into the materium, feasting on the warmth of existence. Translucent flesh hardened and became scabbed with scales and blotchy hides, horns sprouted and curled, talons went from soft and brittle to firm and wicked. Amorphous beings, denied for aeons, finally found form and threw themselves at the mortals before them, desperate to consume.
The Exorcists had come to deny them that. Though it seemed like reality itself was unravelling around them, the focus of the Hexbreakers never wavered.
Zaidu cut down another skittering horror and made a split-second assessment. The formation was going to be outflanked and overrun if they didn’t reduce their frontage.
‘Pattern cheit,’ he ordered his Reivers.
His Reivers. Simultaneously true and untrue. They were Hexbreakers, and thus under his command, but since his promotion to almoner-lieutenant just before the campaign on Demeter, he was no longer their squad leader. That honour fell to Belloch, who now snapped at Makru and Nabua to show alacrity as the exposed line cinched into a defensive circle.
It was knife-work, this – no bolters. Zaidu noticed that the abbey’s vaulted roof had started to come apart, the stones shaking loose from one another. Rather than caving in, though, they remained suspended in mid-air, forming a fractured arch of drifting stone, defying the natural laws of the galaxy.
Existence itself was about to collapse. Whether they were going to be overrun or not, they had to go on the offensive. They had to reach the rift and seal it, before it widened any further.
‘Accelerate tempo,’ Zaidu barked to his Reivers – his Reivers – trying to drive their efforts with their blades to the next level ahead of an offence order. He couldn’t fail now. It was unthinkable.
‘Pattern lamed,’ he barked. ‘On me!’
The Exorcists formed into a spearhead with Zaidu at the tip, the almoner-lieutenant dealing destruction with his twin knives. He was the Sin Slayer, a hunting hound of the Chapter. He would not be denied.
The altar, caught beneath the widening warp rift, had started to fracture, foul tentacles bursting and writhing from the splitting stone, as though some nightmarish beast had been sealed within it and was now free. The rising tide of flesh and fury railed at them, trying to rip them apart, trying to break their formation and drag them down one by one, yet the long blades of the Reivers kept the daemonspawn at bay, gleaming silver in the hellish, kaleidoscopic light that was beginning to suffuse the abbey.
A few steps more. The altar split apart fully, shattered stone forming jagged teeth as it became a gaping maw frilled with squirming appendages. Zaidu drove himself on, preparing to leap it and bury his blades into the mass of flesh spilling from the rift above it.
He faltered. The madness he had been in the midst of blinked from existence, not with the mind-aching horror of a daemonic infestation, but with the instantaneousness of a slide change in a pict projector. He was no longer in the abbey, no longer fighting alongside his brethren.
This was not what had been agreed. Was Vey giving him some new test? He attempted to raise his knives but found he could not. He couldn’t even turn his head.
He tried to speak but found it impossible. He fought to reach out to Vey, but the scene before him dragged at his attention, breaking his focus.
Two figures were locked in combat, fighting in the middle of a void that Zaidu’s mind seemed unable to process or comprehend. One was undoubtedly Adeptus Astartes, though a golden luminescence was shining from him, hiding his features and his heraldry.
The other was a Neverborn, a blood daemon. Zaidu knew it. A rare flaring of emotions torn from him long ago – hatred, rage, revulsion – suffused his thoughts, before realisation dawned and the cold control he was more accustomed to returned.
He knew what he was about to witness. It had played out in front of him before, many times.
He found he could move again. The golden warrior was gone – now Zaidu stood in his place. The daemon remained, shrieking a name with raw fury, garbed now in a face that Zaidu knew yet could not fully recognise.
‘Demetrius,’ the daemon wailed.
With a roar, Zaidu drove the blade in his hands into the beast.
Reality finally collapsed around him.
Discordance ripped through Torrin Vey’s thoughts, and for a moment his psychic essence floundered like a man who could not swim being cast into a frigid, raging ocean.
He hissed a catechism of focus, fingers gripping the sides of his throne until his knuckles were white and the brass skulls that decorated the rests were threatening to buckle.
It took barely a moment, but it felt like an age. He managed to regain himself, loosening his grip and easing out a slow breath that clouded in the freezing air of the psykhanium.
Something was wrong, very wrong, and he was not yet sure what.
The drill had been proceeding as planned. Almoner-Lieutenant Zaidu, seemingly dissatisfied with his current training facilities, had requested that Vey lead him and his Reiver squad in a psychic bout. Vey had agreed, conjuring a simulation of a particularly vicious daemonic infestation for the Sin Slayer and his fellow hunters to fight their way through. Such illusions were not simple, but the amplification of the psykhanium combined with the willingness of the participating minds had ensured the experience was not more than Vey could endure.
That was until he had felt Zaidu straying. The illusion had been broken by something, something that did not belong. And then, moments later, the discordance. Vey had not had a chance to piece it together, but it had caused him to experience something he was highly unfamiliar with – a loss of control. For a second, damnation had yawned, and he had been certain he was about to lose his grip and plunge into its embrace.
Not today. He had reasserted himself in time. But he needed answers.
The psykhanium chamber crowned one of the towers of the Basilica Malifex, second only in height and gothic grandeur to the astropathic relay pinnacle. Its interior lay beneath a dome of shielded, psi-reactive crystal, centred on a vision throne that sat at the top of a control column wreathed in cables and wiring. Arrayed around the column’s base were ten upright sarcophagi of brass and Banish corestone, linked back to it by more thick spools of power lines. Six of the ten slabs were currently occupied by Zaidu and his Reivers, while Vey sat upon the throne overlooking them, linked to them via the thickets of cabling plugged from the throne’s high back into the base of his cortex.
