The Outcast Dead

by Graham McNeill

  Uttam swayed aside from a hellgun shot and rammed his spear through the chest plate of a soldier armoured in crimson battle plate. Blood sprayed the golden visor of his helm as he was cloven from hip to collarbone. A rifle barked to the side, deflected by Uttam’s shoulder guard. He spun low, his spear sweeping in a low arc that sliced through the knees of four of his attackers. A searing blast of plasma blinded him momentarily as it flashed past his helmet and he dropped into a defensive crouch, sweeping his spear around him in a spinning blur of silver and adamantium.

  Shots ricocheted from the blade, but none penetrated his defences. His sight returned a moment later, and Uttam pulled his spear in tight to his body. Diving forward he rolled to his feet and another shot punched a warrior armoured in mirror-black armour from his feet. The pulped remains slammed into the wall of the nearest cellblock.

  Threat protocols picked out the dangers.

  Uralian Stormlord with a hellgun. Minimal threat.

  Two Vitruvian Commissars, one with an ion breaker the other with a grenade launcher. Moderate threat.

  Three Crimson Dragoons: webber, plasma carbine and a mass crusher. Immediate threat.

  They were firing and moving, working better as attackers than they ever had as gaolers, but even six highly trained mortals with advanced weaponry were no match for a warrior of the Legio Custodes. Uttam swung his spear around and killed the dragoon armed with the mass crusher, taking his head off with a neat cut that cauterised the wound even as it decapitated. The plasma carbine fired again. Uttam deflected the shot with a horizontal slash, sending the superhot bolt into the chest of the Commissar with the grenade launcher. He fell with a strangled scream that changed to a shrill howl as the air in his lungs ignited.

  A hellgun shot impacted on the side of his helmet, and Uttam spun to face the shooter, but the two surviving dragoons obscured his aim. They fired at the same time, but Uttam was already among them. His blade sliced the first soldier’s arm from his body, and the return stroke of the haft shattered every rib in his chest.

  A warm mist of sticky mucus-like liquid enveloped Uttam, and he felt the rapidly solidifying web gel hardening around his armour. Anyone not blessed with the preternaturally swift reflexes of the genhanced would have been trapped completely by the web’s ultra-rapid setting, but Uttam pulled clear before the worst of the gel had done its work. His spear arm was gummed with sticky strands of the stuff, but his left was still free and lethal.

  A pistoning jab caved in the front half of the web gunner’s face and a following elbow broke the neck of the plasma gunner even as he brought his recharged weapon to bear once more. That just left the grey-clad Stormlord, and Uttam jogged in the direction the man had run, shaking the last strands of dissolving web gel from his arm.

  ‘You have to die now,’ said Uttam, rounding the corner of the cellblock.

  Shock and horror pulled him up short as he saw the Uralian Stormlord standing before an opened cell with Sumant Giri Phalguni Tirtha’s bloodstained signifier ring pressed to the locking panel. A towering figure of rage and scar tissue stood by the opened door, pumping muscles bunched and writhing beneath his tattooed skin.

  ‘I am going to kill you,’ said Tagore of the World Eaters. ‘Rip your spine out through your chest.’

  FROM A CROSS-legged position, Atharva watched the dance of his puppets with a satisfied smile. A tug of thought brought the Uralian Stormlord running towards his cell while Tagore and Custodian Uttam faced off against one another. Time was critical. He couldn’t let the World Eater kill the Custodian or this escape would be over before it began.

  His other thrall was already rousing Kai Zulane, though it was proving difficult to maintain his control over Scharff. The man had some training in resisting mental intrusion, basic training compared to that endured by adepts of the Thousand Sons, but he had natural talents that ensured his will was a slippery thing. His attempts to break Atharva’s control were amusingly naïve, but he had help from his compatriot, and she was a sly little fox.

  Beads of sweat trickled down Atharva’s face like tears. Though it was an uncomplicated matter to exert control over mortals, maintaining it through psychically warded permacrete and without being able to see his thralls took great effort.

  A shape appeared at the door to his cell, a man in a grey tabard marked with lightning bolts and a crude representation of a diving raptor. The soldier’s face was pale and he wept even as his hand shuddered with the effort of trying to resist Atharva’s control.

  ‘Don’t try to fight it, Tejas,’ said Atharva. ‘You don’t have the strength.’

  Tejas Doznya had served with the Uralian Stormlords for six years, and had been passed over for promotion three times. Too reckless, his superiors said, which, in a regiment renowned for leaping from perfectly good aircraft with nothing but a flimsy grav-chute to prevent gravity working its inevitable end result on their fragile bodies, was saying something. This secondment to the Legio Custodes was intended to temper his reckless streak with the discipline of the Emperor’s praetorians, but his resentment at being sidelined had only festered until it was practically begging to be used as leverage to open his mind to control.

  With a cry of impotence, Tejas placed the Custodian’s signifier ring against the lock plate and the door slid into the walls of the cell. Cut from the hand of a dead man, the ring’s skeleton key properties spoke to the arrogance of the Legio Custodes that they had never considered the possibility of one of their precious rings falling into enemy hands.

  Atharva stood in a fluid, uncoiling motion, like a rearing snake poised to strike down its victim. He stepped from the cell, gasping in remembered pleasure as he felt the power of the Great Ocean swell around him. The psi-damping collar around his neck cracked and broke apart as though twisted by invisible hands. Its remains clattered to the ground and Atharva laughed as he felt the currents and tides of the Great Ocean rush to fill his body.

  ‘Tejas, the ring if you please,’ said Atharva, extending his hand.

  The horrified Tejas dropped the ring onto the plateau of Atharva’s palm, and he lifted it to his lips, as if to kiss it. His tongue flicked out to clean it of blood, and the rich gene-rich flavour of the Custodian’s essence flooded his senses, an ambrosia of genetic mastery.

  ‘Oh, this is a wonder indeed, Tejas,’ said Atharva. ‘What secrets might be unlocked by its study? What wonders and miracles might a master like Hathor Maat work with such a palette of genius?’

  Tejas didn’t answer and Atharva handed the pristine ring back to him. He placed one oversized hand upon his thrall’s shoulder, placing the images of five warriors in the forefront of his mind. Five. All that would be useful from twelve. What a waste.

  ‘Tejas, I want you to release these men, and these men only,’ said Atharva.

  The man nodded, his mind bursting with the need to do Atharva’s bidding and the horror of what he was doing. Though every fibre of the man’s willpower was trying to fight off his control, he was a leaf in the face of a hurricane. Atharva watched him run towards the other cells, and let his mind float into the mid-level heights of the Enumerations that would better enhance his skills in bio-manipulation. Sense organs at the back of his throat struggled to assess the content of the Custodian’s blood, though they could not hope to unravel something so exquisitely constructed. Yet what understanding they could glean might be enough.

  Though Atharva’s skills as a Pavoni were not the equal of Hathor Maat, he had mastered enough of the vain Fellowship’s arts to achieve what would be required to leave this place of confinement.

  So long as Tagore didn’t kill Uttam Luna Hesh Udar too soon.

  FISTS AND ELBOWS, knees and feet. They fought in a blur of thundering punches, bone-breaking kicks and titanic impacts. Two warriors, crafted to be the pinnacles of fighting men, flew at each other with rage and neuro-cortical implants and the finest genetic manipulation on either side of loyalty.

  Tagore fought with teeth bared, eyes bulging
madness. He fought without heed or thought of restraint, with no care for injury or death. Uttam Luna Hesh Udar fought with precision, grace and exacting killing blows straight from the combat forges of the Legio Custodes.

  Two warriors of extremes, two warriors primed to deal death in completely different ways.

  Uttam was armoured, Tagore was bare-skinned and bleeding.

  The Custodian’s guardian spear lay broken between them, its haft snapped like matchwood in Tagore’s grip. Its blade fizzed and spat in the moisture drizzling from the cavern’s roof. Tagore spun around Uttam, kicking his heel into the back of the Custodian’s knee. Uttam went down with a grunt, catching the follow-up knee to the face in his blocking gauntlets. Uttam twisted his grip, spinning Tagore from his feet. He followed up, foot thundering down to crush the World Eater’s head.

  Tagore rolled, came up, and punched the side of Uttam’s thigh. Plates cracked and the paralyzing nerve-impact dropped him to one knee. A right cross tore his helmet off and an uppercut threw him onto his back. Tagore scissored himself to his feet and hurled himself at the fallen Custodian. Uttam met his flying leap with a downward-bludgeoning fist that drove Tagore into the ground like a downed Stormbird. Tagore rolled aside from the inevitable head-crushing elbow and sprang to his feet in time to meet the Custodian’s charge.

  They grappled like street brawlers. Rabbit-punching kidneys, legs locking and unlocking as each warrior sought a hold that would drop their opponent. The iron plates bolted to Tagore’s head spat fat red sparks as it pumped chem-stims and rage boosters into his bloodstream and electrical impulses to the anger centres of his brain. His fury had been building to critical mass ever since his incarceration, and this was just the fight to unleash it.

  The first advantage went to Uttam. Every blow Tagore struck was against artificer-forged plate, hand shaped in the armouries beneath the Anatolian peaks, where Uttam hammered unprotected flesh. Pure concussive force cracked the bone shield in Tagore’s chest, and he grunted as a piledriver of an uppercut drove up into his gut. The briefest flinch, but an opening nonetheless.

  Uttam twisted and slammed his elbow into Tagore’s jaw. Blood and teeth flew from the World Eater’s jaw. Uttam closed for the killing blow, but pain was just another stimulus to a killer like Tagore. The World Eater spat a tooth, and caught Uttam’s fist in one raw meat palm. He caught the other fist mid-punch and smashed his forehead into Uttam’s face. The Custodian’s nose broke, and both cheekbones shattered. Blood blinded him for an instant before he shook his eyes clear of it, but an instant was all Tagore needed.

  His blooded fist hammered into Uttam’s chest, driven by rage and betrayal.

  Ceramite shattered, adamantium buckled and bone broke.

  Tagore bellowed in atavistic triumph as his power, momentum and strength drove his fist deep into the Custodian’s chest. Meat and blood parted before his digging hand until his fingers closed on iron-hard bone.

  The Custodian’s eyes were wide with agony, his body still fighting for life even as Tagore ripped it out of him. Tagore spat blood in his face, grinning a manic skull’s grin.

  ‘Still think I make empty threats, Custodian?’ he snarled.

  Uttam tried to respond, but only managed a horrid sucking noise from his gored chest cavity. Tagore felt bone buckle, crushed beneath his implacable grip. Strong and tough, but not as strong or tough as a sergeant of the World Eaters.

  A figure appeared at his back, tall and reeking of cold metal and ice.

  ‘Damn you, Tagore, I need him alive,’ said a voice that could only belong to Atharva of the Thousand Sons. ‘He can still survive this, Tagore. Don’t kill him.’

  ‘Only Angron and his captains can tell me what to do,’ hissed Tagore. ‘One of Magnus’s bastards does not.’

  With an awful cracking sound that seemed to go on and on, Tagore twisted his grip and wrenched his arm from Uttam’s chest. Crimson past the elbow, nubs of broken bone protruded from either side of his fist. Glistening mucus-like blood and spinal fluid dripped from the ruptured bone, and in the last seconds of life left to Uttam, he realised he was looking at a portion of his own spine.

  ‘Rip your spine out through your chest!’ yelled Tagore, hurling the wreckage of Uttam’s bone to the ground. ‘And what I say I will kill, I kill.’

  The Custodian toppled onto his side, his body still trying to fight the inevitibility of his death. But even the formidable endurance wrought into so magnificent a body could not survive such a grievous wound, and Uttam Luna Hesh Udar’s life ended in a shimmering pool of his own blood at the feet of a warrior to whom each opponent bested was a badge of honour.

  ‘By the Eye, Tagore,’ snapped Atharva, dropping to one knee beside the slain Custodian. ‘Do you realise what you’ve done?’

  ‘Killed a powerful foe, one worthy of remembrance,’ said the World Eater.

  Atharva waved away Tagore’s words.

  ‘Irrelevant,’ he said, looking up at the cavern’s ceiling and walls as nearly a hundred blister-turrets unmasked in readiness to cleanse this floating island of life. Both warriors knew they could not survive such weight of fire.

  ‘The Crimson Path before the Iron Fetter!’ bellowed Tagore, lifting his arms to meet death head on.

  Atharva laughed in the face of such a wantonly self-destructive code of honour, knowing there was only one way they were going to live through the next few seconds.

  ‘My apologies for this desecration, Uttam Luna Hesh Udar, but my need is greater than yours,’ said Atharva, tearing the dead Custodian’s head from his shoulders.

  THIRTEEN

  The Crusader Host

  Freedom

  If You Want To Live

  WITH THE POWER of the Great Ocean at his disposal, there was little beyond the reach of an Adept Exemptus of the Thousand Sons, but even Phosis T’kar would have been hard pressed to create a kine shield capable of withstanding so many guns. Atharva could protect himself with such a shield, but the rest of the Crusader Host would surely be killed, and – for the moment – he needed them alive.

  Freed from the limiting confines of his cell, Atharva’s power flowed back into his body. He wanted to savour this moment, to revel in the return of his full gamut of abilities and the clarity of thought that was his to command, but time was now his enemy and the Eye had work for him.

  Custodian Uttam’s blood flowed from the ruined stump of his neck, spilling over Atharva’s hand and streaming down his arm. The cracked tip of a crushed vertebra jutted from the wound and the grey matter within would beyond use in a few moments.

  But a few moments was less time than he had.

  The guns on the cavern walls opened fire and a cascade of lasers and solid rounds drowned the din of alarms. Thousands of shells bombarded the floating island in a blitzing storm of fire. Atharva dived inside the cell that had recently housed Tagore, but the World Eater sergeant flattened himself against its outer walls, too stupid or too proud to take refuge within its confines.

  ‘Can you stop this?’ bellowed Tagore, his voice almost lost in the crescendo of gunfire. Acrid propellant smoke and billowing clouds of pulverised permacrete filled the air as the solid rounds smacked into the cells and chewed them apart like necrotic viral strains attacking healthy cells.

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ shouted Atharva in response, pushing his consciousness into the Custodian’s head, directing the living power of the warp into the myriad dying blood vessels in an effort to keep brain death at bay.

  A breath sighed from the head as the mouth fell open in a silent scream. Atharva felt the crackle of neural activity in the fitfully sparking synapses, and meshed his mind with the dying brain. He goaded it back to life with immaterial energy, letting the power of the Great Ocean reanimate cells that had been on the brink of disintegration. Atharva felt Uttam’s horror pricking the edge of his perception, and briefly wondered what manner of awareness the dead Custodian might yet be experiencing.

  As more of Uttam’s brain return
ed to life, the stronger the maddened horror became, but Atharva kept it at bay for now. With his mental architecture attuned to the rhythms of the Pavoni in the sixth Enumeration, Atharva let his body’s newfound familiarity with Legio Custodes blood restructure itself, altering his biometrics to more closely match those of his erstwhile gaoler. Though Atharva’s body did not change outwardly, his inner flesh took on the guise of Uttam Luna Hesh Udar at the cellular level. A crude deception, conceived in haste, that would not fool any gene-sampler for long, but perhaps long enough.

  Much of what the Custodian knew was Atharva’s to know: the layout of Khangba Marwu, its security protocols, its roster of forces and, most importantly, its entrances and exits. Though in the current situation, the disabling codes for the cavern guns was top of Atharva’s list of information to pluck from the dead man’s skull.

  Taking a deep breath, Atharva cowled himself in the crudest of kine shields and stepped from the cell. A storm of shells battered him, enough to saw through an entire company of Imperial Army troopers in an instant, but the shield held firm for now. It seemed as though every gun on the cavern walls was aimed right at him, and Atharva knew he would not have much time to make this work.

  ‘All guns disengage and power down,’ he shouted, his voice so perfect an imitation of Uttam Luna Hesh Udar that no vox-sampler ever made would dispute the authenticity of the speaker. ‘Authorisation Omega Omicron Nine Three Primus.’

  The deafening barrage of fire ceased in an instant as every gun retracted into an armoured housing and shut down. Smoke and dust drifted on the wind currents created by the sudden heat and passage of tens of thousands of expended rounds. The howling alarms seemed almost quiet by comparison.

  Atharva dropped his kine shield and let out a relieved breath as shapes emerged from the choking dust clouds. Five of them, all bulked by unimaginably complex science to a size far beyond human, yet moving with a gait that was clearly authored from the template of homo sapiens. The twins were the first to emerge from the dust, Subha and Asubha, the butcher and the assassin. World Eaters and killers, neither bore the nightmarish augmetics of Tagore, but like their brother sergeant, their bodies were pitched in a posture of taut aggression.