"Understood, adept. May we begin?"
"Certainly The specimen is of an oversized male humanoid cranium, partially fleshed, severed at the axis vertebra..."
Thaddeus watched as the orderlies took scalpels and forceps from the implement trays by the side of the slab and began to pare away the rotten flesh from the skull. The adept recited the initial find-ings, confirming that the head was from a s.p.a.ce Marine and a veteran at that, judging by the single silver long service stud in the forehead. The bones of the face and cranium were scored with old scars from blades and bullets, and a bullet wound that had blown a chunk from the forehead had evi-dently been caused after death. The adept had the orderlies reveal tell-tale implanted organs: land-man"s ear - the inner and middle ear enhancement that gave a Marine sharper hearing and perfect bal-ance. The occulobe - the organ that sat behind the eyes and gave the Marine a heightened sense of sight. The remains of the gene-seed in the throat -the sacred organ that controlled all the Marine"s other enhancements and bolstered his metabo-lism.
"The state of the specimen suggests accelerated decomposition followed by a suspension of natural decay, similar to other specimens recovered from worlds within the disputed systems around Stratix."
An orderly turned the head onto its side and began to remove the jaw. He struggled to break the strengthened bone around the joint.
With a snap the jaw gave way, and like a fountain, a thin jet of glittering liquid arced onto the front of the orderly"s smock.
The orderly began to scream as the liquid burned through the smock and into his chest. The other orderlypushed him to the floor and began to tear off the burning clothes as an eye-watering acid smell filled the air and grey smoke coiled upwards. The adept grabbed an emergency medikit from one of the infirmary"s wall cabinets and began to work on the orderly washing down the hissing wounds with an alkali solution before it ate into his lungs.
"Inquisitor, you must leave." said the adept sharply as she pulled a field dressing from the kit. "We have possible contamination."
"There is no contamination." said the Pilgrim, its grating voice cutting through the orderly"s gasping for air.
"The acid is a weak solution designed only to blind; your man will survive. It is produced by the Betcher"s gland."
"That"s impossible." said Thaddeus, watching the trail of greenish liquid spluttering on the granite surface.
"The Soul Drinkers are a successor Chapter of the Imperial Fists Legion. The Fists" gene-seed never allowed Betcher"s gland to develop, it was only a vestigial organ."
"Exactly." said the Pilgrim, reaching towards the dissected head with a bandaged hand. It plucked the sc.r.a.p of knotted flesh, the gene-seed, from the throat. "Corrupt." he said, holding up the gene-seed. It was mottled and discoloured. "The Soul Drinkers carry the stain of mutation upon them. The gravest mutation of all, for their very gene-seed is degenerating and the organs implanted in them are themselves being changed."
"Mutation." repeated Thaddeus.
The survivors from House lena.s.sis had reported a monstrous creature leading the Soul Drinkers, with legs like a giant spider and vast psychic powers. He had been sceptical about such talk, but now he could not dismiss the image so easily. The Soul Drinkers were mutants, and with their gene-seed affected they would slide downhill fast.
That made them desperate. And desperation bred atrocity. Whatever their plans, the Soul Drinkers were heading faster and faster towards a state where they were mutated beyond all semblance of human-ity.
Thaddeus had always known that his patience would have its limits. But now time had suddenly begun to press on him more strongly. Everyone was running out of time.
And Thaddeus had next to nothing to go on. But he would have to make it do.
He left the infirmary at a jog, heading towards his chambers through the cold, draughty stone corri-dors of the fortress. He heard the Pilgrim following him but had lost the strange creature by the time he reached his room. He flung open the chest again and pulled out another piece of evidence. It was something he had thought useless when Sister Aescarion had presented it to him - a thin bra.s.s plaque with the names of hundreds of adepts tooled into it, the adepts who had worked at the Hive Quintus outpost for the last few decades. There were hundreds of names in tiny, precise type, from the overseers of the menials and servitor engi-neers to the series of adepts senioris who had commanded the outpost.
The Pilgrim arrived at the door. "Inquisitor? You have found something?"
Thaddeus looked round. He wished very much that he could have conducted this investigation with-out the Pilgrim, but he had to tolerate the creature for the insights it had into the renegade Chapter.
"Perhaps," he replied. "The Soul Drinkers were at the outpost for a reason. They left at least one of their own behind. Why? Why go to a planet con-sumed by plague, and journey into the heart of its worst city to fight a battle? Why break into a Mechanicus outpost that produced nothing of any real interest or importance? The rock samples were worth nothing. They had no specialised equipment or weapons. What did they have, Pilgrim?"
The Pilgrim tilted its head slightly, and Thaddeus had an unpleasant feeling that it might be smiling somewhere under there. "They had people, inquisi-tor. A hundred Mechanicus adepts. Adepts who had not always worked at that one outpost."
Thaddeus sat back onto his bed, still holding the plaque. "One of them knew something. And it was enough for the Soul Drinkers to go down there and capture them. If they took a prisoner and got them off the planet they could have everything they need to know."
Thaddeus stopped. The Imperium was so immensely vast, and the Adeptus Mechanicus such an insanely complicated organisation - from the Fabricator General on Mars to the lowliest menials and servitors labouring on forge worlds and in workshops across the known galaxy. How could he ever hope to track a single adept, even with the resources of an inquisitor? One tiny, meaningless worker who was no Chaos cultist or rogue seces-sionist, but a n.o.body in a galaxy of n.o.bodies?
"No." he said out loud to himself. "I"m not letting this lead slip." He flicked on the vox-bead on his col-lar.
"Colonel Vinn? a.s.semble your best infiltrators and scouts, ready for review at the s.p.a.ceport in half an hour.
See what you can do about commandeer-ing us a shuttle for loading into the Crescent, it doesn"t need muchrange but it will need stealth and a.s.sault capabilities. The best crew, too. Pull strings if you have to. Out."
Thaddeus had not been in the warzone sector for long, but had done basic research into the sector"s power structures. He knew that the information he needed might just be available if he was fast, skilled and lucky.
It had been some time since he had last used a weapon in execution of his duty as an inquisitor, and he was mildly surprised to find that he was looking forward to doing so again.
SIX.
It was quiet to the galactic west, a wasteland tract of s.p.a.ce where few but hardy prospectors and driven missionaries bothered to go. The thick band of stars that marked out the galactic disk was empty for light years ahead, and pilot second cla.s.s Maesus KinShao knew that without staging posts or s.p.a.ce-ports there was little chance of an a.s.sault coming from that direction. But it was his duty to be here -he was a servant of the Emperor coc.o.o.ned in the c.o.c.kpit of his Scapula-cla.s.s deep s.p.a.ce fighter, a member of a squadron with orders to defend the western frontier of the warzone.
The Scapula had a six-man crew - KinShao, a nav-igator, three weapons officers and an engineer. There were seventy such craft spread out across this section of the frontier, each armed with sophisti-cated intruder detection sensors and a bellyful of ordnance.
KinShao called up the HUD screen to show an overview of his squadron"s positions. Twenty fighters, each the size of a small cargo ship, hung in s.p.a.ce with their sensor fields overlapping so nothing could get through. If any craft tried to escape from the warzone, or to break into it, the craft would be spotted and challenged. If it was remotely suspicious, it would be destroyed with a hail of guided munitions. The Scapulas were some of the most complex and valuable a.s.sault craft the sector naval command could muster, and KinShao loved the feeling of the ma.s.sive metal structure all around with him. For now, though, everything was quiet, and the blazing war a few light hours to the galactic east seemed much further away.
"Squadron, sound in." came the crackly voice of the squadron commander over the comms. The commander was young and aristocratic, but he seemed solid enough. KinShao hadn"t flown under him in anger yet.
"KinShao, red seven. What"s the problem?"
"Blue five is reading anomalies. Anything else on anyone"s scopes?"
KinShao relayed the communication to his navi-gator, Sha.s.s.
"Nothing here." she replied. "All dead."
"Keep alert, squadron." said the commander, and signed off.
"You don"t want to lose your nerve out here." said Korgen from in the missile control pit amidships. "Blue five had better not be getting the jitters. I"ve seen it happen, and when you can"t think straight in deep s.p.a.ce they blow you up just to be safe."
"Stow it, Korgen." said KinShao. Korgen had been a weapons man on deep s.p.a.cers for decades, and had seen firefights at Patroclus Gate and St. Jowens"s Dock that KinShao (though he wouldn"t admit it) never tired hearing about. But he was also full of portentous stories of how crews went mad in deep s.p.a.ce, light years from any support craft and with only their fellow crews for company.
"Wait, wait." crackled another voice on the all-craft channel. This is red five. I"ve got something too."
Red five"s navigator was the squadron"s best. He wouldn"t have his captain jumping at ghosts.
"It"s a small signature." continued red five"s pilot. "Probably just junk. But it"s emitting something, could be a rogue satellite or-"
A thin film of static, then silence.
"Red five?" came the commander"s stern voice, as if admonishing red five for disappearing. "Come in red five."
KinShao kicked the ship"s systems into combat alert almost as a reflex. "Korgen, stand by to get me targets.
Lovred, I want intercept speed on my mark." Somewhere in the stern Lovred, the ship"s engineer, would be readying the Scapula"s engines to burst into intercept speed.
"Red five is off the map." said Sha.s.s from the navi-gator"s helm beneath the c.o.c.kpit, with almost improper calm.
Visual!" cried a voice on the squadron channel, "I"ve got vis-"
"Blue ten"s gone." said Sha.s.s.
"Targets, Korgen, get me targets! Waist gunners, are you charged?"
"Check." said a voice in one ear from the Scapula"s starboard pulse laser battery. "Check two." said another in the other ear, from the port guns.
"I"ve got nothing." said Sha.s.s. "Just the remains of red five."
There was a terrible pause. Pilots gabbled on all channels and the commander"s voice tried to cut through it all and organise a proper sensor sweep as Scapulas disappeared one by one."Wait." said Sha.s.s. "Red five, it"s moving."
"Fire! Full spread!" yelled KinShao, and the fighter juddered around him like a bucking horse. Korgen sent half the fighter"s missile payload in a glittering stream towards something that looked like red five"s remains on the scanners. But it was moving towards KinShao"s red seven faster than intercept speed.
Then he saw it. Lancing from the velvet black of s.p.a.ce: a dart of silver that trailed a spray of stars. It rippled like mercury, shifted shape and widened, and a score of pure white laser bolts spat from the front edge of its glistening wings.
Red seven lurched and KinShao knew right away it was a hull breach. The artificial gravity kicked out of kilter and KinShao felt himself pressed against one side of his restraints.
"Count off! Damage report!"
"Nav, OK." said Sha.s.s.
"Engineering, OK."
"Ordnance, OK."
"Gunnery? Gunnery sound off!" KinShao realised he was shouting. The silver streak flashed past, leav-ing a searing afterimage against the blackness of s.p.a.ce.
The shot took us amidships." said Korgen. "Waist guns gone."
"I"ve got a target. It"s faster than us. It"s turning back to finish us." said Sha.s.s.
"Korgen, give me everything. Short fuse, I want us screened."
Korgen emptied most of the remaining torpedoes into s.p.a.ce, their fuses cut so they detonated in a spread in front of the Scapula. A screen of electro-magnetic radiation and debris was thrown up between red seven and the intruder, enough to screen the fighter from any attacker of Imperial-equivalent technology.
But the attacking fighter could see them. It darted up to red seven and stopped impossibly suddenly, hanging in s.p.a.ce right in front of KinShao"s c.o.c.kpit.
It was a shard of liquid metal with sharp edges that rapidly flowed into one another, reconfiguring the whole fighter. It was probably smaller than the Scapula but its highly reflective liquid surface shone so brightly it seemed to fill KinShao"s sight com-pletely A dark slit towards the ship"s knife-like prow looked in onto the bridge but KinShao couldn"t make out anything inside. He was almost com-pletely dazzled by the light, and the graceful effect of its delta wings folding in on themselves to become multiple fins rippling along the fighter"s hull.
KinShao kicked the Scapula"s retros on, but the engines were still geared to intercept speed. Too late he realised his mistake and the Scapula lurched for-ward before its retros could take effect. The screen of debris pummelled red seven"s hull and billowed an brief orange flame across the viewscreen.
A storm of light ripped through the Scapula. Kin-Shao could see the pure white lances as they seared past the c.o.c.kpit. He could feel them tear through the hull as if it wasn"t there. A booming sound was followed by a sharp silence, that told him the ship"s midsection had explosively decompressed. Korgen was dead, probably the engineer, too.
Smoke and the chemical stink of burning plastics filled the c.o.c.kpit, and heat billowed up from beneath.
Sha.s.s was probably dead, too, incinerated down there.
The engines collapsed with a crump that washed through the Scapula"s superstructure and the fighter lurched backwards as the retros gained a purchase. KinShao could see the enemy fighter wheeling, its body flattening like a manta ray"s as it swam through the void, bolts of light spitting from it in an incandescent spray.
Every warning light on the instrument panel lit up. KinShao knew he was going to die, but the screaming sirens and roaring heat around him seemed to blot out any panic. He jammed his thumb onto the manual fire control and the twin gatlings spattered gunfire from beneath the Scapula"s nose. They wouldn"t hit and they didn"t have the range, but KinShao had to go down fight-ing.
Warning lights winked in desperation. One of them was for the saviour pod behind the c.o.c.kpit that KinShao was supposed to use if the Scapula was lost. The heat around his feet was unbearable, and flames licked from the instrument panels. The viewscreen started to blacken.
The silver wings rippled again as the fighter wheeled around and twin dark eyes opened up in its leading edge. Bolts of silver lightning burst from the apertures and punched through the c.o.c.kpit of red seven, spitting the Scapula on a lance of light.
The controls around Sarpedon"s hands squirmed as he sent fire ripping from the fighter"s primary weapons, and punched ragged holes through the wounded craft in front of him.
The cold liquid metal seeped into his gauntlets and connected him with the ship. He only had to think and the fighter"s weapons would fill the void with bolts of laser and plasma. The craft in front -a deep-s.p.a.ce fighter, part of a cordon around one of the warzone"s quieter frontiers - came apart in a blossom ofshimmering debris. Sarpedon"s fighter flew right through the clouds of wreckage; the fighter"s liquid surface absorbing the thousands of impacts.
Beside Sarpedon two serfs still held the flight con-trols. But Sarpedon had taken over the weapons helm himself - none of the serfs understood weaponry and destruction like a Marine who had been a warrior for more than seventy years.
Karraidin"s ship had gone in first and taken out three of the fighters. Sarpedon"s had just destroyed two more. The deep s.p.a.ce fighters seemed unwieldy compared to the Soul Drinkers" alien fighter fleet, even though the Scapula-cla.s.s were actually highly sophisticated by Imperial standards. It was a sign of how much the Imperium had stagnated - the devel-opment of their technology had slowed to a crawl. Soon it would be at a standstill and its enemies would race past it, conquering and burning.
Sarpedon called up the fleet display. The ten Soul Drinkers" fighters had got through unscathed and had left the cordon well behind them. Sergeant Luko"s ship, with the infirmary and Chaplain Iktinos on board, was safe in the middle of the formation since it carried the prisoner Sarkia Aristeia. The fighter at the rear was captained by Tyrendian, one of the Chapter"s few remaining Librarians, apart from Sarpedon. His ship flew through fields of spin-ning debris and never took a shot.
Sarpedon always felt a faint pang of remorse when he was forced to take the lives of Imperial cit-izens. He had even felt it when Phrantis Jena.s.sis died. The tragedy of the Imperium wasn"t that it provided a breeding ground for the galaxy"s evils -it was that the untold billions of people locked in its authority fought as if it was their only salvation. The people were the Imperium, and if they could only understand the error of that tyranny they could dissolve it overnight and make it into some-thing that could truly eradicate the darkness of Chaos. But they could not. People were too blind to look beyond what surrounded them. Sarpedon himself, and every single Soul Drinker, had once been the most fervent defenders of the Imperium, believing its existence to be part of the Emperor"s great plan to shepherd humanity towards some-thing better.
But in truth the Emperor hated corruption, sin, and Chaos, and all those things were made possible by the Imperium. That was why the Emperor had given the Soul Drinkers a chance of redemption. They answered to no one but him, and Sarpedon knew that he wanted nothing more from them than to fight Chaos wherever they found it. Perhaps the Emperor was dead and was now no more than an idea - but that idea was still worth fighting for. And fighting was all the Soul Drinkers could do.
But the Soul Drinkers had to survive. And that was the purpose of this mission - survival. It seemed a petty thing alongside the war against Chaos, but it had to be done before the Emperor"s commands could be fulfilled.
The alien fleet slipped through the void, leaving behind a squadron of vaporised fighters. Silently they slid into the Stratix warzone, into that place of death on a mission of survival.
Lord Inquisitor Kolgo was an old man. It was all but impossible to rise to any position of authority within the Inquisition without having weathered decades of persecuting the Emperor"s foes. Kolgo"s rise within the Ordo Hereticus had taken a rela-tively short time - about eighty years.
Lord Inquisitor Kolgo was like a giant of a man, wearing the impossibly ornate ceremonial power armour that rivalled the Terminator armour of the s.p.a.ce Marines in size. Gilded angels danced across the barrel-like chest plate of ceramite. A power fist adorned each ma.s.sive arm, with litanies of faith on the knuckles to symbolise how faith itself destroyed the Emperor"s enemies, not simple raw strength. Sculpted friezes on each shoulder depicted infidels crushed beneath the boots of cru-sading knights. Red purity seals studded the armoured limbs, trailing ribbons of parchment inscribed with prayers.
Lord Kolgo"s face, with nut-brown wrinkled skin and tiny inquisitive eyes, seemed utterly out of place on such a gilded monster. But the armour was the ceremonial garb of the lord inquisitor of the Stratix sector, and Kolgo could hardly hold audience without it.
At that moment he was giving an audience to one Inquisitor Thaddeus, in relative terms not long out of his interrogator training. It was some-thing of a stretch for the man to have asked for an audience at all, since he was not directly involved with the warzone effort to which Kolgo had dedi-cated his waking hours. The circular audience chamber with its deep scarlet carpet and oppres-sively huge chandeliers was designed to remind everyone of Kolgo"s authority, but to his credit Thaddeus didn"t seem to be cowed by Kolgo"s presence.
"Inquisitor Thaddeus." began Kolgo. You under-stand that, given our current situation, I cannot allocate any real resources to you. It is fortunate that there is enough room in this fortress for you and your staff.""I understand." replied Thaddeus. "But my mission does intersect with yours. The Soul Drinkers may well be in league with Chaos, and a renegade Chapter in the employ of the enemy would be a major factor in Teturact"s favour. The Soul Drinkers"
presence within the Stratix warzone is surely a mat-ter of some concern."
"Perhaps you are right. But you must understand my priorities. Teturact has killed billions already, and if we do not maintain our focus on destroying him the sector may be lost for good."
The favour I have to ask you, lord inquisitor, is not a great one." Thaddeus was following the correct form for an audience with a lord, but he was not obsequious. Kolgo was quietly impressed. "My staff and I are very close indeed to cornering the Soul Drinkers. What I need now is information. The Adeptus Mechanicus will have records of all their staff members that were on the outpost on Eumenix when the Soul Drinkers attacked..."
Kolgo held up a hand, the ma.s.sive power fist whirring with servos. "What you ask I cannot deliver."
"But my lord, the Mechanicus must bow to your authority. It is not much that I ask. I regret only that my own authority does not stretch as far as to force the hand of the archmagi. If I could learn what I needed by myself I would have gladly done so, but your word carries far more weight than mine so I must ask that you do this for our mutual good."