Inferno Volume 2 - Guy Haley

by Warhammer 40K

  More of the tattered creatures rushed in, some dropped by las and galvanic rifle fire from the Inquisitorial acolytes and Vemek’s skitarii.

  On the far side of the central dais, Brother Celaeno’s flamer roared its promethium fury into another mob. The Death Spectre carefully cultivated his inferno to avoid the valuable technological relics in the chamber, whilst incinerating and blocking off as many of the charging rabble as possible.

  A burst of strange, dark energy screeched through the chamber, disintegrating another madman. Achairas saw the inquisitor, his alien carbine raised, with a few of his acolytes, pressed back to the data loom as another group of mutilated lunatics darted towards them.

  They didn’t get far, as Achairas rushed them, having reloaded in the seconds since his last kill. His pistol roared, blowing a few more apart as Brother Charason added his own bolter fire, mulching the rest of the approaching mob.

  Wheeling around, Achairas saw three more enemies leaping down from a low gantry towards Vemek and his gun-servitors, who had yet to even react. He dispatched them all with a single bolt pistol shell each.

  And then there was quiet, the only noise the faint humming of the machines, and the rasp of a few wounded skitarii.

  ‘Clear!’ he shouted, his pistol still levelled.

  ‘Clear!’ his battle-brothers returned, from their positions.

  He lowered his weapons. The skirmish had scarcely taken a minute.

  ‘Station crew,’ Astolyev muttered. ‘Driven mad…’

  ‘Did this station not have weapons?’ Brother Sevrim inquired.

  ‘Plenty. It was fully stocked in case of emergency.’

  ‘Then why were they using these crude… modifications?’

  Achairas stared down at the mangled remains. All of them had replaced their fingertips with scythe-like blades. Some were nearly as long as their forearms. All had draped themselves in gobbets of flesh and skin.

  ‘Wrong…’ Vemek muttered, poking at a corpse. ‘Infected. Madness in their holy machinery.’

  ‘The virus?’ Astolyev guessed.

  ‘Perhaps. We cannot know without further analysis.’

  ‘If it is a virus, perhaps further analysis should be avoided until proper quarantine procedures are followed.’ Astolyev glanced at Vemek. ‘It would be… unfortunate… if I were to have to euthanise you.’

  ‘Those madmen…’ Brother Nym started. ‘They were saying something. Over and over.’

  Nobody answered. Whatever their meaning, Achairas felt uneasy about repeating the words. ‘A name,’ he replied, quietly. ‘Llandu Gor…’ He didn’t know how he knew it was a name, but he was certain it was. ‘Let us move on,’ he offered. ‘We should find out where these wretches came from. There might be more of them. We haven’t seen nearly enough corpses to account for the entire station’s crew.’

  Astolyev agreed. ‘Indeed. Vemek, stay here with your skitarii. Extract what information you can from the data loom and keep in vox contact. Sergeant Achairas, if you would lead the way. I assume your… abilities… can pick up the trail easily enough.’

  Vemek nodded in deference, drawing a servo-skull from the depths of his robe and activating it. The lens of its right eye flared green, and tiny whirring gyro-systems hummed momentarily, projecting a rippling anti-gravity pulse to levitate it. Its vox-unit crackled to life under its upper jaw.

  ‘I will follow remotely.’ Vemek’s voice emanated from his own vocal implants, and from the servo-skull’s vox-grille.

  The inquisitor nodded his assent, and motioned for his acolytes to move out. The Death Spectres led, once more.

  Achairas could indeed detect the trail. Removing his helmet, he inhaled. The air was thin, but breathable. He found the severed arm of one of the tattered madmen and tasted its putrid flesh, biting deep, his omophagea learning and allowing him to sense the spoor in the air. Astolyev’s acolytes looked upon the pseudo-cannibalistic process with unease, but their discomfort did not concern Achairas.

  Choosing the access point that most of the station crew had come through, they arrived at another stairwell, descending to find yet more corpses. Helmetless, Achairas was untroubled by the darkness, his pupils widening until the whites of his eyes were no longer visible. He led, sword drawn, to the base of the stair, near ground access, where his auspex detected a lone contact one hundred feet away down a network of labyrinthine passages in the base of the station.

  ‘This is aeroponics,’ Astolyev announced, as Nym coaxed open the bulkhead door with a heavy valve handwheel. They entered into a sizeable chamber that reeked of rotten vegetation and flesh alike.

  Inside were stacks of algae vats and hovels of scavenged scrap metal and organic material. It looked like a refugees’ shanty, and a poor one at that. Another pile of bodies was arranged at the back of the chamber, around some manner of twisted effigy. It was a skeletal thing made of twisted plasteel, bolted and wired together in the shape of a hunched, scarecrow-like figure with immensely long talons. The entire thing was draped in tattered, rotting flesh.

  ‘Seems your crew adopted some unwholesome idolatry,’ Nym muttered to the inquisitor.

  The inquisitor did not respond. His organic hand flexed.

  Nym kicked the effigy, sending it clattering to the ground in a heap.

  ‘Celaeno.’ Achairas didn’t need to give the order.

  His taciturn, ever-silent battle-brother levelled his flamer and bathed the debris in a wash of promethium.

  As it burned, Achairas turned back to his auspex, and followed the blip into the nearby service tunnels. In the confined space, he moved forward with only Sevrim and Celaeno, followed by the inquisitor and two of his flamer-equipped acolytes. Vemek’s servo-skull remained behind, scanning the wreckage of the strange effigy.

  The cylindrical passage was claustrophobic, its floor grating oozing with black oil. As they advanced, the auspex blip made several quick movements, traversing a few passages and then going still.

  ‘Whatever it is, it’s trying to hide,’ Achairas observed.

  He squeezed through several smaller ducts, his armour scraping against the walls, until the contact was dead ahead, hidden in a small service shaft. He aimed his bolt pistol at the half-open door.

  ‘Come out and surrender. You have one chance.’ His voice was cold and quiet.

  ‘Are you one of them?’ A woman’s voice returned, terrified and exhausted.

  The inquisitor shouldered past the Death Spectre, his weapon already lowered and a luminator active in his hand.

  ‘No,’ he rasped. ‘Ketyanna.’

  At the name, a young woman with long, dark, matted hair and pale features slid out from behind the door, falling to her knees. She was malnourished and covered in abrasions and bruises, her black robe naught but tattered rags. The inquisitor knelt, dropping to her level as she broke down in frantic sobs, clawing at him. ‘Ketyanna. How are you still alive?’

  ‘Who is this?’ Achairas inquired.

  ‘My xenolinguistics savant. Eccentric, but one of my best.’ He turned back to the woman. ‘Are any others alive?’

  ‘No…’ she sobbed. ‘The flayed… things… They killed them. They… ate them. They’ve been hunting me for… for I don’t know how long.’

  ‘What happened to the station? Why did everyone go mad?’ Achairas cut in.

  The woman started back, only now noticing the Death Spectre.

  ‘They came from below…’ she hissed, looking around in terror, as if expecting them to appear again. ‘From the tomb. Metal things with clicking claws and horrible empty eyes. Machines. But mad. Mad machines…’

  ‘Machines?’ The inquisitor cocked his head. ‘From the… tomb?’

  ‘That’s what it is. It’s a tomb. They came from the tomb. They killed everyone… Everyone in the excavation site. They clawed their way in here and they slaughtered. T
hey killed and killed and killed. Some of us lived… But…’ She trailed off, staring out behind Achairas, down the way they’d come.

  ‘But…?’ Achairas glanced behind him, even though he heard no one. The acolytes glanced around suspiciously.

  ‘But they went mad. The ones with the augmentations… the Mechanicus people… It got into them. It made them try to become like the things from the tomb.’

  ‘What…?’ The inquisitor looked confused.

  ‘Machines that slaughtered people and took their flesh. They wore it… They wore… us. The survivors started doing it too…’

  Achairas understood. The survivors had started to imitate their killers, these ‘mad machines’.

  The inquisitor stood. ‘I see. And this all occurred when the… tomb… was breached?’

  She nodded, then bowed her head. ‘The Adeptus Mechanicus men, the ones you sent to aid us with the supply ship, they shattered the pylons. They thought the pylons were protecting it…’

  Achairas assumed she meant the broken structures that had powered whatever energy fence the inquisitor had mentioned. ‘Protecting it?’

  She shook her head violently, shuddering. ‘The tech-priests said it was a stasis web, to protect the tomb. To keep us out. But it wasn’t just keeping us out. No, no… It was keeping the things inside… in. The pylons were protecting everything else… And when the Mechanicus men broke the pylons… the tomb started waking up. The power source… and the things inside… The men breached the tomb then. They opened the door for the machines to come through…’

  ‘These Adeptus Mechanicus men, you said they came with the supply ship?’ Astolyev asked, his voice tense.

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘They came with your orders to destroy the pylons and breach the tomb.’

  Astolyev’s human hand flexed, squeezing the luminator with white knuckles. ‘I never sent additional men.’

  Ketyanna blinked, batting away some strands of greasy black hair, her wide eyes confused. ‘They were Dalvarakh Consortium…’

  ‘Throne of Terra…’ Astolyev cursed.

  ‘This answers why the breach was made prematurely,’ Achairas noted, remembering Astolyev’s connection to the Explorator Consortium.

  ‘So I’ve been infiltrated,’ Astolyev growled, his tone somewhere between spiteful and impressed. ‘It would seem my benefactors had an ulterior agenda. What a surprise… I knew the Dalvarakh Consortium had an interest in illicit xenos artefacts, but defying a direct order from the Inquisition. That… is heresy.’

  ‘It could be a fringe element within the Consortium,’ Achairas offered. ‘Perhaps they are traitors, or a group of more radical intent than your own.’ The Space Marine duly noted the xenos carbine the inquisitor carried, but said nothing.

  ‘I believe I will need to have a word with Vemek. He’s one of the few who had access to my clearance codes. And he was Dalvarakh…’ Astolyev said, helping the battered woman to her feet. ‘Very well, Ketyanna, the remaining survivors, at least the ones here, are dead – I will have several men escort you to our drop-ship.’

  ‘D-dead?’ she stuttered. ‘Is it safe?’

  ‘Hardly,’ the inquisitor muttered. ‘But let’s get you out of here. You will give me a detailed account of everything that has transpired in my absence once I return. Until then, you will rest. And recover.’

  Guiding the traumatised woman through the tunnels proved difficult, since she refused to enter the aeroponics chamber because of the altar. Even with Astolyev’s assurances that it was destroyed, she would not so much as move towards it, so it fell to Achairas to carry her along. Her sobs stopped when she saw the shattered, burnt husk of the effigy and the force of grey-armoured Inquisitorial acolytes. Astolyev turned to two of them. ‘Nerek, Ariane, take Ketyanna back to the gunship. We will debrief her properly once we’ve investigated this… tomb.’

  Then the inquisitor wheeled towards Vemek’s drifting servo-skull.

  ‘Magos Vemek! If you would kindly explain how Dalvarakh Consortium agents infiltrated my station, I might refrain from having you executed on charges of sedition and heresy.’

  The skull drifted away, seemingly involuntarily. ‘Inquisitor, my ties with the Dalvarakh Consortium were severed many years ago. After our altercation on Disnomia Four, I believe they branded me a heretic. It was only by your wisdom that I was acquitted.’

  ‘Indeed, now tell me I haven’t been played for a fool!’

  ‘You have not. My loyalty is to you, inquisitor. Not to the Dalvarakh Consortium. It is possible they have acquired information about your station through other means. Perhaps the personnel you purchased from them were not properly mnemonically censured. Perhaps one of them was warded against it deliberately, and continued feeding information to them following their arrival here.’

  The inquisitor did not reply initially, his metal mask concealing whatever thoughts undoubtedly raged through his mind.

  Vemek’s logic appeared sound to Achairas. What was less clear was why the inquisitor had utilised the aid of alleged hereteks, wielding xenos weaponry and delving into a mystery best left buried. He shook his head, and forced his suspicion away. He knew the Inquisition had to tread a line far closer to damnation than the Adeptus Astartes did.

  ‘So…’ the servo-skull chirped, ‘you are not going to have me executed?’

  ‘No,’ the inquisitor snarled. ‘For now. Keep to your task. This ruin remains our priority. I will sort out the matter of treason later.’

  From there, the team navigated their way out of the lower tunnels into ground access. They descended a long stairwell marked with trails of dried and flaking gore, but found no further bodies. Achairas strode beside the inquisitor with the servo-skull trailing behind, keeping its distance from Astolyev.

  ‘You authorised the construction of this station, yes?’

  ‘Indeed. Eight years ago, after the discovery of the ruin by an Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator vessel.’

  ‘I take it this Explorator vessel belonged to the Dalvarakh Consortium?’

  ‘Yes. But it was lost with all hands. Its astropathic choir managed to send out a distress cry, but as most of the choir were presumably already dead, the cry was weak. My agents operate in this region to monitor the movements of the Cythor Fiends. They were the only ones to receive the message. My spies within the Consortium are certain that they never learned of this ruin’s location.’

  ‘Out of curiosity,’ Achairas inquired, ‘what destroyed this Dalvarakh vessel?’

  ‘Cythor Fiends, naturally. One of their so called Pinion-class stealth frigates. The wreck is still in-system, orbiting the brown dwarf several astronomical units out. My personal investigation of the wreck uncovered the location of this ruin. I copied the data from the Explorator vessel and destroyed its archive. The Dalvarakh do not know of this. It is possible that what Vemek suggests is true, that my mnemonic censure went faulty on one of the purchased adepts. Or… that one of them was deliberately altered to resist it, and report my findings to the Explorator Consortium.’

  ‘Or this could be Vemek’s doing,’ Achairas offered quietly.

  ‘Unlikely. Vemek’s crimes against the Dalvarakh Consortium created a rift between them that will never heal. He could be involved with fringe elements, however – individuals within the Consortium who have pursued the research of xenos technology farther than the others.’

  ‘What was Vemek accused of, exactly?’

  ‘Modifying his personal Explorator vessel with holo-fields captured from an eldar wreck.’

  Achairas was silent. He shook his head.

  ‘I know, you’re probably wondering why I conscripted him into my service. This isn’t the core Imperium, where purity and heresy are easily drawn lines of white and black. Out here in the Halo, we are on the edge of damnation. We must tread the grey in between and utilise every bit of knowledge we can to g
ain an edge. Xenos, natural and unnatural, plague us from beyond the Halo, and space itself seems to want to destroy us. The xenos out here are able to survive. They are able to tread the impossible reaches of the Ghoul Stars themselves. I will learn how they do it. And then I will implement that technology into a grand crusade fleet, and deliver the fiery sword of the Emperor’s judgement into the heart of all the vile aliens populating these unnatural stars. You, of all people, must understand…’

  Achairas blinked. It was an ambitious plan, borderline megalomaniacal. And it didn’t sit well with him. One often didn’t realise that the grey line between purity and damnation had been crossed, until it was far too late.

  ‘I am a radical, Sergeant Achairas,’ the inquisitor continued, as the group reached the ground access airlock gate. ‘I do what I must for the good of the Imperium. If I am damned for it, then that is the price I will pay.’ He flexed his mechanical arm. ‘I have already given my flesh for the Imperium, the only thing I have left to give is… my soul.’

  ‘It is not my place to question your conviction, nor your methods,’ Achairas said at long last, his inner conflict evident enough in the tension in his words. ‘My purpose is to destroy the threats to the Imperium, whatever they might be.’ He let the words, the threat, hang in the thin air as he re-donned his helm and gestured for Nym and Sevrim to wheel open the airlock.

  When the door was coaxed open, they saw the gouges in the outer hull of the station; it looked as if raking talons had torn open the thick sheet-metal.

  Several of the Inquisitorial acolytes brought forth lascutters and widened the gap, allowing the team to descend, two by two, over a steep access gantry that traversed the lower slope of the crater. After a few minutes, they emerged out from under the shadow of the station, and found themselves beneath the cold, lightless sky of Thirsis 41-Alpha.

  They followed an excavated chasm-turned-road, winding between the jagged rocky outcroppings amidst the muted red glow of the stillborn sun. Vemek’s servo-skull crackled, rejoining the head of the column. ‘I have detected seismic activity emanating up from the ruin.’