Anarch - Dan Abnett

by Warhammer 40K

  The skitarii officer thumped a pulse from his stave. The bubble of hyper-dense gravity bent light and air as it crossed the room. It hit ­Theiss while he still scrabbled at his own flesh, and pulped his head like an invisible jackhammer.

  Ludd wheeled from Sindre’s body. His bolt pistol boomed and the explosive shell struck a skitarius at very short range. The warrior’s torso blew out. Ludd fired again, and knocked the Cult Mech officer sideways in a bloom of flame. On the far side of the lab, Konjic, Mkget and Dickerson unloaded on auto, side by side, hosing skitarii and the area around the hatch with a storm of las. Another skitarius fell, shorting out at every joint. The remaining two – a warrior-caste and the officer Ludd had damaged – kept advancing, firing, las-fire clipping and puncturing their armour. Caught in the middle, Kolding ducked his head and continued working on Sindre as las shrieked past him in one direction and galvanic bursts burned past in the other.

  Pasha rose and spat blood. She started blazing at the skitarii with her sidearm. Elam, snarling in frustration, punched the frenzied adept logis in the gut and then the neck. As the adept staggered backwards, Elam swung up his lasrifle and shot him twice. Elam’s right cheek was raked with claw marks. A graviton pulse shivered the air right in front of him, and then punched a dent the size of a medicine ball in the lab’s metal wall. Elam threw himself flat. He fast-crawled, reached the nearest workbench, and got to his knees, using it as cover. He started to hose at the skitarii too.

  The multiple flailing cyberlimbs serving the bench grabbed him, like a spider seizing its prey. Elam yelped. The limbs had his wrist, forearm and shoulder, and the digital claws were drawing blood. Mechadendrites slashed and whipped, trying to loop his neck. An additional servo-arm reached in, servos purring, extending a gleaming titanium scalpel towards his face.

  Elam tore free, leaving most of his sleeve and part of his cape behind him. He landed clumsily on the polished floor. The manipulator limbs began to mercilessly dissect the scraps of fabric they had captured.

  A galvanic shot-burst went through Dickerson and exited in a giant mist of blood and disintegrated meat. The spray drenched Mkget and blinded him for a moment.

  Ludd heard Setz shriek. The manipulator arms on all the work benches were thrashing and clawing wildly. Drill-limbs and flashing surgical blades were ripping into Sindre’s helpless form. They skinned and butchered him in a matter of seconds, dividing him into bizarre, geometric pieces.

  Setz had still been trying to compress Sindre’s wound. The limbs had seized him too.

  Kolding tried to grab him. The hyper-mobile limbs slammed Setz face down into Sindre’s steaming remains. Mechadendrite cables lashed around him, and constricted him, binding him to the bench. The cutting beams, shuttling side-to-side along rapid and precise lines, did the rest, slicing Setz from crown to shoulders into dozens of wafer thin cross-sections.

  Kolding backed away, utterly dazed by the horror of it. Ludd body-slammed him, bringing him down out of the crossfire.

  Elam and Konjic concentrated fire on the remaining skitarii warrior. The barrage of las-bolts ripped off its arm and destroyed its face. It fell, fluid jetting from the impact cracks crazing its bodyplate.

  The last skitarius, the officer with the engraved skull, came to a halt. Cerebral fluid and hydrodynamic synthetics gushed from a large hole in the middle of its forehead. It died standing up, augmetic limbs locked.

  Pasha lowered her sidearm. The air in the lab was thick with discharge smoke, and almost every surface was splashed and dripping with blood. A broken monitor was sparking and burning.

  ‘Throne alive,’ whispered Mkget.

  ‘Alert!’ Pasha yelled. ‘Alert, all sections–’

  She realised that her ear-bead had been yanked out when the adept assaulted her. She fumbled for it, found the trailing wire, and stuffed it back in her ear.

  Before she could speak, she heard the frantic traffic from the Ghost units inside EM 14.

  ‘–attacking! They’re fething attacking! I say again, the Mechanicus have turned on us! The Mechanicus have turned on us!’

  Outside the lab, rapid gunfire was rolling through the hallways and arcades.

  Twelve: Qimurah

  The man who was going to kill him at dawn came to save his life in the middle of the night.

  Keys scraped at the locks of the old cell door. It took three keys to release the thick slab of battered metal. Usually, the unlocking routine was methodical and precise, but this sounded hasty and rushed.

  Mabbon waited patiently. He could do little else. The iron manacles on his wrists attached him to the floor by a heavy chain. He could stand and walk in a small circle in the tight confines of the filthy cell, or he could sit on the rockcrete block that served as a stool. They always ordered him to sit when they were coming in, and he preferred it that way.

  The heavy door opened, groaning on its metal hinges. Zamak looked in at him. Zamak was one of the six guards who watched Mabbon around the clock. He was Urdeshi, a thick-set man from the 17th Heavy Storm Troop cadre that provided all six members of the guard team.

  Zamak looked flustered, his face red, sweat on his forehead. His puzzle-pattern jacket was open as if he hadn’t had time to button it properly. He wasn’t wearing his body armour.

  He stepped into the cell, producing the set of keys that fit the manacles. No body search first. No thorough pat-down. None of the usual, painstaking protocols.

  ‘I don’t usually see you at this hour,’ said Mabbon.

  ‘I’ve got to move you,’ said Zamak. He was trying to find the correct key. His hands were shaking.

  ‘Is it dawn already?’ Mabbon asked.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Zamak. He breathed hard. ‘They’re through the yard already. They’re killing everybody.’

  Mabbon had been aware of the gunfire for the past ten minutes. Las-fire, sporadic, its whip-crack sound muffled by the cellblock’s thick stone walls.

  ‘Who?’ asked Mabbon.

  ‘Your kind!’ Zamak spat. ‘Your filth!’

  Mabbon nodded, understanding. It had been inevitable. He had been waiting for it.

  ‘Sons?’ he asked. ‘Sons of Sek?’

  ‘I don’t know what they are!’

  Mabbon shrugged, as much as the chains would allow.

  ‘A kill team, I should think,’ he said placidly. ‘Mortuak Nkah. An “extinction force”. I imagine that’s what they’d send.’

  Zamak fumbled and released the heavy cuff around Mabbon’s right wrist.

  ‘I’ve got to move you,’ he said. ‘Get you clear. Get you to a safe location.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Mabbon.

  Zamak stared at him. ‘They’re coming to kill you,’ he said.

  Mabbon nodded. ‘I know they are,’ he replied. ‘Zamak, you’re scheduled to shoot me at dawn.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Zamak said, struggling to fit the key to the other cuff. Garic, the S-troop squad leader, had explained the timetable to Mabbon two days earlier. At dawn, the six man team guarding him would take him from the cell, escort him down to the yard, put him against the wall, and shoot him. Mabbon didn’t know which of them would actually end his life. It might be any of them. All six would fire their lasrifles at once. He would, he had been told, be offered a blindfold.

  ‘Well, I don’t understand,’ Mabbon said. ‘You want me dead. They want me dead. Stand aside and let them have me.’

  ‘I can’t do that!’ Zamak exclaimed. He looked horrified at the suggestion. ‘I’ve got to get you clear–’

  ‘Why?’ asked Mabbon. He was genuinely bemused. ‘The packsons are killing people to get to me. Killing anyone in their way, or so it sounds. If you try to protect me, you will become a target.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Zamak, the logic isn’t hard. Let them have me. Save yourself.’

  ‘I can’t do that. I’ve got
to move you. That’s orders.’

  ‘If you get me clear, are you still going to execute me at sunrise?’ asked Mabbon.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then what–’ Mabbon began.

  ‘Shut up!’ Zamak snapped. He couldn’t get the key to fit the left cuff.

  ‘I’m serious,’ said Mabbon. ‘You’re risking your life over a… what? A bureaucratic issue? By dawn, I’ll be dead. Does it matter who does it?’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that!’ Zamak said.

  ‘Well, I think it should. There’s a strong chance you’ll die protecting me. If you don’t, you’ll only shoot me yourself. Go. Get out of here. By dawn, I’ll be dead. You don’t have to be dead too.’

  ‘Shut the hell up!’

  ‘I really don’t understand the Imperium sometimes,’ Mabbon said. ‘It’s so constrained by administrative nonsense and paradoxical–’

  Zamak had become so flustered he dropped the keys. They landed on the floor between Mabbon’s feet.

  ‘Shit!’ said Zamak. He bent down to pick them up. Outside, close by, a lasgun ripped out three shots. They heard a man cry out in pain. The cry cut short.

  Zamak turned in fear. He drew his sidearm and stepped back to the cell door warily. He peered out.

  ‘Shit,’ he said again. He stepped out of the cell and disappeared from view.

  Mabbon looked at the open door. He waited. He looked down at the keys on the floor at his feet. He cleared his throat and sat up straight, his hands resting in his lap.

  He stared at the doorway.

  He heard a man shouting nearby, then a burst of pistol fire. An auto sidearm, emptying its clip. The double-crack of two las-shots, then a third. Silence.

  Zamak reappeared. He leant against the frame of the cell door. His breathing was laboured, and he was struggling to change the clip on his autopistol. He was making a mess of the task because his hands were both slippery with blood. There was a hole in his torso just below the rib line, and his jacket and undershirt were soaked, dark and heavy.

  He’d just slammed the fresh clip home when a las-bolt struck him in the centre of his body mass. The impact bounced him off the door frame, and he half-fell, half-slid to the ground outside the cell with his body turned to the right and his legs splayed.

  His killer appeared, framed in the doorway. He looked down at Zamak, then fired another shot into him for good measure.

  The killer turned, and stared at Mabbon through the open door.

  ‘Pheguth,’ he said.

  ‘Qimurah,’ Mabbon said. ‘I’m honoured. I did not expect him to send one of your kind.’

  ‘More than one,’ said the Qimurah. ‘The vengeance of He whose voice drowns out all others will not be denied this time.’

  Mabbon nodded.

  ‘I am not trying to deny it,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’

  The Qimurah stepped into the cell. He was fully worked and revealed, towering and skeletally taut. His neon eyes shone. The Anarch did make such beautiful things.

  The Qimurah wore dirty, Guard-issue fatigues that didn’t fit well. The old combat boots had bulged and split a little where they failed to contain his elongated, clawed feet. He carried a worn, humble lasrifle. His tangled rows of yellowed teeth, like little tusks, shaped into what was probably a smile.

  ‘Shadhek,’ said Mabbon.

  ‘You recognise me.’

  ‘It’s been a long time. Fefnag Pass. Scouring the archenemy into the sea.’

  ‘You are the archenemy now,’ said Shadhek.

  ‘No, not to anyone,’ said Mabbon. ‘And yet, to everyone. My end is sought by everyone under the stars.’

  ‘Do you want me to pity you?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘I will not understand you, Mabbon,’ said Shadhek. ‘Not in a thousand thousand years. You were etogaur. A great warrior. No soul more loyal, no commander more shrewd. It was an honour to serve at your side. There were the makings of a magister in you. All who knew you said so.’

  ‘That’s consolation, I suppose,’ said Mabbon.

  ‘And then,’ Shadhek murmured. He shrugged. ‘Pheguth. Lowest of all. Lower than filth. A traitor. A betrayer of all trust. You turned.’

  ‘I have turned more than once in my life. Neither path ever took.’

  ‘Why, Mabbon?’

  ‘Because no one ever offered me an answer, Shadhek,’ Mabbon replied.

  ‘An answer? What answer?’

  ‘To the most simple of all questions. Why.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why all of this? Why any of it? Why do we kill with such consuming intent? Why does this galaxy burn? Imperium and Archonate, eternally locked in rage. No one ever asking why. Who is right? Who is wrong? What secret domain of truth lies between those two extremes?’

  Shadhek sneered.

  ‘You have lost your mind,’ he said.

  Mabbon smiled.

  ‘I think I am the only sane soul alive,’ said Mabbon, ‘but that amounts to the same thing.’

  ‘Well,’ said Shadhek, ‘now you won’t even be that.’

  He raised the lasgun until the muzzle was just a hand’s length from Mabbon’s face. Mabbon did not cower. He did not try to shy away from it. He sat in place, back straight, staring into the notched barrel.

  ‘Vahooth voi sehn,’ Shadhek said.

  The sound of the shot boomed in the close confines of the cell.

  Mabbon’s head snapped sideways. The las-bolt had scorched his right cheek and torn through the fleshy lump of his right ear before stroking the back wall of the cell. Blood poured down the side of his head.

  He blinked.

  Shadhek had been wrenched backwards at the last second, enough to swing his aim aside. The tip of a silver warknife protruded from the middle of his chest, neon blood oozing out around it. A man was clinging to him from behind, one arm locked around his throat, bending him back, the other driving the warblade into his back.

  ‘Feth me, what are you?’ snarled Varl.

  The Qimurah still had his weapon. It fired twice as Varl wrench him backwards. One las-bolt missed Mabbon’s shoulder by a centimetre. The other hit the stone block he was sitting on. Mabbon didn’t flinch. He didn’t even move.

  ‘Ah,’ he murmured wearily.

  Cursing and raging, Varl hauled the Qimurah backwards, trying to turn him away from Mabbon before he fired again.

  ‘Fething feth-bag shit-stain won’t fething die!’ Varl yelled through gritted teeth.

  Shadhek snarled and shoved himself back, mashing Varl between himself and the door frame. Varl barked as all the air was crushed out of him. Shadhek tried to shake him off and turn. Gasping, Varl managed to jerk his straight silver out of the Qimurah’s back before he lost his grip on it completely. As the reworked turned, Varl raked the blade in a frantic slash that opened a diagonal slit across Shadhek’s chest and cut through the strap of his lasgun.

  Varl kicked, planting the entire sole of his left boot in the Qimurah’s belly. Shadhek lurched backwards and slammed into the cell wall. The impact forced neon blood from his chest wound. His rifle tumbled out of his grip and clattered across the floor.

  Jaws wide, he lunged at Varl.

  ‘Feth–’ said Varl a second before he was driven into the corner of the cell. He’d been reaching for the lasrifle looped over his shoulder, but Shadhek didn’t give him time to act.

  Shadhek’s paws locked around Varl’s throat, squeezing to snap his neck. Thrashing, Varl rammed his warknife into Shadhek’s sternum and shoved with both hands until the blade was buried to the hilt.

  An agonised, mangled sound came out of Varl’s mouth as the Qimurah throttled him.

  Mabbon looked down at the keys again. He looked at the cuff on his left wrist.

  He looked at Varl, as the Ghost se
rgeant reached the final moments of his life.

  With one last burst of near inhuman effort, Varl shoved. Shadhek staggered back, his hands still locked around Varl’s throat. Varl’s hands, soaked with neon blood, were clenched around the grip of the warknife buried in Shadhek’s solar plexus.

  Mabbon stood up. He looped the heavy floor chain of his remaining cuff around Shadhek’s neck, took up the slack, and wrenched the Qimurah away from the Ghost.

  Shadhek stumbled, the loop of chain biting into his neck. Mabbon kicked the back of his knees and brought him down, then stood on his chest and pulled the chain as tight as he could.

  ‘Gun,’ he said.

  Varl was coughing and retching. He snatched his dangling rifle and aimed it down at the Qimurah.

  ‘Hurry,’ said Mabbon patiently. ‘I can’t hold him for long.’

  Varl roared, and put three rounds into the Qimurah’s grimacing face. Incandescent blood sprayed out across the flagstones and spattered them both. Half of the Qimurah’s face was a smoking ruin of neon gore.

  Mabbon kept the chain tight.

  ‘More,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve fething–’ Varl gasped.

  ‘More,’ said Mabbon.

  Varl fired again. Four shots, five, six. When he stopped, very little of the reworked’s head remained. Broken tusk fangs stuck at angles in the shapeless, bloody mess.

  Mabbon let the chain go slack, and took his foot off the body.

  ‘They’re hard to kill,’ he said.

  ‘No shit.’

  ‘Qimurah. Their tolerances are beyond human.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ said Varl. He coughed, then turned and threw up on the floor. He stood bent over for a second, heaving and gasping.

  ‘You had a rifle, sergeant,’ said Mabbon. ‘Why didn’t you use that? Why did you lead with the blade?’

  Varl spat on the floor. He straightened up.

  ‘You were right in the line of fire,’ he replied, his voice hoarse. ‘I might have hit you too.’

  ‘That seems to bother a surprising number of men today,’ said Mabbon.