The Outcast Dead

by Graham McNeill

  Evander Gregoras was no longer blind.

  The cryptaesthesian did not answer, his eyes screwed tightly shut and his face contorted with the effort of holding some terrible fear at bay. His entire body was tense, and the tendons stood out as hard edges against the soft skin of neck. His hands shook on the cover of the book, a black leather-bound Oneirocritica.

  ‘Evander, what’s happening here?’ he asked.

  ‘I saw it all,’ said Gregoras, dropping the quill and placing both hands on the cover of the book. ‘It needed me to see and it gave me back my eyes! Throne, it gave me back my eyes so I could see it.’

  ‘See what, Evander?’ said the Choirmaster. ‘You’re not making any sense.’

  ‘It’s hopeless, Nemo,’ said Gregoras, shaking his head as though trying to loose some hideous memory. ‘You can’t stop it, none of us can. Not you, not me, no one!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Nemo.

  The Choirmaster took another step forward, crouching in front of Gregoras. A hint of spectral illumination, like starlight reflected on the surface of a river danced beneath his tightly closed eyelids.

  ‘It’s all for nothing, Nemo,’ said Gregoras, his chest heaving with sobs. ‘Everything we did, it’s all for nothing. It all stagnates. Nothing really lives, and it’s a slow death that lingers for thousands of years. Everything we strove for, everything we were promised… all a lie.’

  The knuckles of his fingers were white with the effort of holding the cover of the Oneirocritica closed, but he removed one hand long enough to reach inside his robes to remove a small calibre snub-nosed pistol.

  The Choirmaster stood erect and moved away from Gregoras as the Black Sentinels raised their rifles and took aim.

  ‘Put the gun down!’ barked the sergeant. ‘Put the gun down or we will shoot you dead.’

  Gregoras laughed, and the pain and soul-sick loss in that sound broke the Choirmaster’s heart. What could be so terrible that it could make a man give voice to such a plaintive sound?

  ‘Evander,’ said the Choirmaster. ‘Whatever has happened here, we can deal with it. We can handle anything. Remember our time on the Black Ships? That boy from Forty-Three Nine? He killed almost everyone on that vessel, but we contained him. We contained him, and we can stop this, whatever it is.’

  ‘Stop it?’ said Gregoras. ‘Don’t you understand? It’s already happened.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘The end of everything good,’ said Gregoras, putting the pistol in his mouth.

  ‘No!’ shouted Nemo, but nothing could stop the cryptaesthesian from pulling the trigger.

  His head bucked and a thin wisp of smoke emerged from his mouth as his jaw fell open. A line of blood ran from his nose and fell to the cover of the Oneirocritica. In death, Gregoras’s eyes opened, and the Choirmaster saw they were the colour of amber set in rose gold.

  The book slid down the dead man’s knees and fell to the ground. The Choirmaster took a deep breath as he felt whatever malign presence had occupied the space between worlds begin to dissipate. He stared at the body of his once-friend, trying to imagine what might have driven so rational a man to suicide.

  His blindsight was drawn to the fallen book. The droplet of blood on its cover shone with the last vital energies of the dead man, and the Choirmaster felt an immense sadness as the shimmering life-light faded to nothing.

  ‘What did you see, Evander?’ he said, knowing there was only one way to find out for sure and wondering if he had the strength to look.

  Nemo Zhi-Meng picked up the last Oneirocritica of Evander Gregoras and began to read.

  KAI FOLLOWED THE Outcast Dead as they entered the Temple of Woe, feeling the weight of grief and guilt that pervaded the air like invisible smoke. Like the outside façade, the interior of the building was also embellished with funereal statuary depicting mourning in all its varied forms: wailing mourners, deathbed vigils, raucous wakes and dignified farewells. Torches hanging from iron sconces filled the temple with a warm glow, and a circular rim of what had once been the cog-toothed wheel of some enormous Mechanicum war-engine now served as a hanging bed for hundreds of tallow candles.

  Groups of mourners gathered in sombre groups on wooden benches, the lucky ones whose turn had come to bring their dead inside. People looked up as they entered, some staring in amazement, others too wrapped in their grief to pay them more than a cursory glance. A man and a woman wept beside a body that lay at the foot of a polished black statue of a faceless, kneeling angel. A faint black haze clung to the sweeps and curves of the angel’s wings, and though it had no features carved into its head, Kai sensed something behind that unfinished surface, like a face half-glimpsed in the shadows.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, knowing Atharva was staring at him and would understand his meaning.

  ‘I suspect it is not one thing, but many,’ said Atharva. ‘The Great Ocean is a reflection of this world, and as the alchemists of old knew: as above, so below. You cannot vent so much grief in one place without attracting the attention of something from beyond the veil.’

  ‘Whatever it is it feels dangerous,’ said Kai. ‘And… hungry.’

  ‘An apt term,’ nodded Atharva. ‘And you are right to believe it is dangerous.’

  Fear touched Kai, and he said, ‘Throne, should we warn these people to get out!’

  Atharva laughed and shook his head. ‘There is no need, Kai. Its power is not so great that it can escape the prison of stone in which it currently resides.’

  ‘You like my statues?’ said the custodian of the Temple of Woe, closing the doors and coming to join them.

  ‘They are magnificent,’ said Kai. ‘Where did you get them?’

  ‘I did not get them anywhere, I carved them myself,’ said the man, holding out his hand. ‘I am Palladis Novandio and you are welcome here. All of you.’

  Kai shook the proffered hand, trying to hide his discomfort as he felt the sharp stab of the man’s grief and guilt.

  ‘It is a mausoleum,’ said Tagore. ‘Why do you gather so much death in one place?’

  ‘They are images of aversion,’ said Palladis.

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Subha.

  ‘By gathering so many images of death and grief in one place, you rob them of their sorrow,’ said Kai with sudden insight.

  ‘Exactly so,’ said Palladis. ‘And by honouring death, we keep it at bay.’

  ‘We bring warriors who have walked the Crimson Path,’ said Tagore. ‘Their mortal remains are not for the scavenger or the vulture to dishonour. We were told you had an incinerator here.’

  ‘We do indeed,’ said Palladis, pointing to a square arch at the rear of the structure. Kai felt the finality that existed beyond that door, a barrier that couldn’t quite keep the smell of burnt flesh from permeating the air of the temple.

  ‘We have need of it,’ said Atharva.

  ‘It is at your disposal,’ said Palladis, with a respectful bow.

  Kai watched as the Outcast Dead lifted their fallen brothers between them like enormous pallbearers, the World Eaters bearing Gythua, Atharva and Severian hoisting Argentus Kiron to their shoulders.

  ‘The fallen warrior should be honoured in death by his blood-comrades,’ said Tagore, ‘but these heroes are far from their Legion brothers, and they will never see their homeworlds again.’

  ‘This is their homeworld,’ said Atharva.

  ‘And we are their comrades now,’ added Subha.

  ‘We will honour them,’ said Asubha. ‘As brothers of battle, we owe fealty to no brotherhood but our own.’

  Kai was surprised to hear such words from these warriors. In the brief time he had spent with them, he had not thought them close, but these words spoke of a bond that ran deeper than he would ever know, a bond that could only ever be forged in the bloody cauldron of battle and death.

  ‘Come,’ said Palladis Novandio. ‘I’ll show you.’

  Tagore placed a hand on Palladis’s chest
and shook his head. ‘No, you won’t,’ he said, his teeth bared and a barely restrained hostility razoring the edges of his words. ‘The death of a Space Marine is a private affair.’

  ‘I apologise,’ said Palladis, recognising the threat. ‘I meant no disrespect.’

  The Space Marines moved down the central aisle of the temple, and all sounds of mourning faded as those who bore witness to the solemn parade bowed their heads in silent and unspoken respect. Atharva’s power flared like a half-glimpsed flicker of lightning, as the door to the incinerator opened on rust and ash-gummed hinges.

  Kai watched them pass from sight, and let out the breath he’d been holding.

  It took a moment for him to realise the significance of the moment, but when he realised that he was alone and free, all he felt was a strange sense of emptiness. He no longer knew whether he was a fellow fugitive or a prisoner of the Outcast Dead, but he suspected that hinged upon what he carried within his head.

  Kai turned towards the door through which he and the Space Marines had entered the temple. Slivers of torchlight eased through its imperfectly-fitted frame, and that soft glow was the promise of everything he had been denied: the freedom from responsibility, the choice to live or die and, finally, a chance to be no one’s slave.

  The last realisation was hardest to admit, for Kai had always believed he was master of his own destiny. Here, alone and hunted in a temple dedicated to the dead, he realised how naïve he had been. The worth of the individual was the greatest lie the Imperium had made its people swallow. From soldiers in the army to the scribes of the palace to the workers toiling in the factories, every human life was in service to the Emperor. Whether they realised it or not, the human race had been yoked to the singular goal of the galaxy’s conquest.

  For the first time in his life, Kai saw the Imperium for what it was, a machine that could operate on such a vast scale only because its fuel of human life was in never-ending supply. He had been part of that machine, but he was a tiny cog that had slipped its gear and was tumbling without purpose through its delicate workings. Kai knew enough of such mechanisms to know that such a random piece could not be allowed to remain within the body of the machine. Either that piece was returned to its designated place, or it was cast out and discarded.

  ‘Death surrounds you, my friend,’ said Palladis. ‘You were right to come here.’

  Kai nodded and said, ‘Death surrounds me wherever I go.’

  ‘There is truth in that,’ agreed Palladis. ‘Do you mean to stay with the Angels of Death?’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling that you’re not using that as a nickname?’ asked Kai.

  ‘The Legiones Astartes are the physical embodiment of death,’ said Palladis. ‘You have seen them kill, so you must know that.’

  Kai thought back to the bloodshed of their escape from the Custodes gaol, and suppressed a shiver at the ferocious carnage.

  ‘I suppose it’s apt,’ he agreed. ‘The Angels of Death. It has a ring to it.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ pointed out Palladis.

  Kai thought for a moment, torn between his desire to shape his own future and the insistent voice that urged him to remain with the Outcast Dead.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Kai, surprising himself. ‘I feel that I want to leave them, but I’m not sure I should. Which is stupid, because I think they mean to take me to… to a place I don’t think I’m meant to go.’

  ‘Where do you think are you meant to go?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Kai with a wan smile. ‘That’s the problem, you see.’

  ‘Then how do you know you are not already there?’ said Palladis, before giving his arm a gentle squeeze and making his way towards the man and woman who wept over the body of an old man at the foot of the faceless statue.

  Before Kai could ponder the man’s last words, the door to the temple opened and a girl with a familiar aura entered. Though his psychic senses told him as much, he knew she had long blond hair beneath her hood and a blue bandanna wrapped around her forehead. He smiled, finally understanding that there were no accidents, no coincidences and no pieces of the universal puzzle that were not just links in a causal chain that stretched back to very beginning of all things.

  ‘Perhaps I am where I’m meant to be,’ he said softly, as the girl saw him and her eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘Kai?’ said the girl. ‘Throne, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Hello, Roxanne,’ said Kai.

  NAGASENA WATCHES THE approaching vehicles with irritation and a sense of events moving faster than anyone gathered here can control. Six armoured vehicles, boxy and reeking of engine oil and hot metal. They have been forced to wait for these tanks by an order from the City of Sight. No explanation was forthcoming, and for nearly ninety minutes they have allowed their quarry to put ever greater distance between them.

  ‘We should not have waited,’ Kartono says to him, but he does not reply. The answer is self-evident. No, they should not have waited, but his every instinct is railing against this hunt. He tells himself that he is foolish to put faith in omens, that he should have continued without Golovko and Saturnalia.

  He knows where his prey has gone, and he could be there already but for his hunt companions. Yet he did not set off on his own. He waited. Speed and the relentlessness of pursuit are his greatest weapons, and he has sacrificed them both.

  Why?

  Because this hunt does not serve the truth, it is intended to bury it.

  Saturnalia stands at a crossroads to the east, eager to be on the hunt, but unwilling to disobey an order that comes countersigned with the authority of his own masters. Golovko sits with his men, displaying patience Nagasena had not suspected he possessed. He is a man to whom orders are absolute, a man who would kill a hundred innocents if so ordered. Such men are dangerous, for they can enact any horror in the unshakable belief that it serves a higher purpose.

  The lead vehicle grinds to a halt in a squall of rubble and screeching metal. It is painted black and red, with the markings of a fortress gate upon which are crossed a black bladed spear and a lasgun. Golovko and Saturnalia join him as the side hatch opens and a junior lieutenant in a black breastplate and helmet emerges, looking as though he wishes he were anywhere but here.

  The lieutenant marches over to Golovko and hands him a sealed, one-time message slate.

  A code wand slides from Golovko’s gauntlet and the slate flickers into life. Softly glowing text appears on its smooth surface, and the man’s face breaks into a grin of feral anticipation.

  Nagasena has seen that look before, and he does not like it.

  ‘What does the message say?’ he asks, though he fears he knows the answer.

  Golovko hands the message slate to Saturnalia, who scans its contents with a nod that confirms what Nagasena is already suspecting. He turns away as Saturnalia offers him the slate.

  ‘We are no longer hunters,’ says Nagasena. ‘Are we?’

  ‘No,’ says Saturnalia. ‘We are a kill team.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Catharsis

  I Might Kill You

  The Thunder Lord

  ROXANNE THREW HERSELF into Kai’s arms with the passion of a long lost lover, wrapping him so tightly that he thought he might break. He returned her embrace, relishing the closeness of another human body and the sight of someone familiar. He and Roxanne had worked together on the Argo for many years, though the strict code of conduct enforced upon all Ultramarines vessels had prevented them from becoming truly close.

  ‘You’re going to break my ribs,’ said Kai, though he didn’t want her to let go.

  ‘They’ll heal,’ said Roxanne, pressing even tighter. ‘I never thought I’d see you again.’

  ‘Nor I you,’ he said, as she finally released him and took a step back, though she kept a grip on his shoulders.

  ‘You look terrible,’ said Roxanne. ‘What happened to your eyes? After they separated us on the Lemuryan plate, they wo
uldn’t tell me where you were.’

  ‘Castana’s armsmen picked me up and took me to the medicae facilities on Kyprios then left me in the care of an idiot,’ said Kai with a sneer. ‘But when the Patriarch realised they might be held liable for the loss of the Argo, they threw me back to the City of Sight.’

  ‘Bastards,’ said Roxanne. ‘They took me back to our estates in Galicia and tried to hide me away like I didn’t even exist.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was an embarrassment to them,’ said Roxanne with a dismissive shrug. ‘A Navigator who can’t even guide a ship home in the same system as the Astronomican isn’t much of a Navigator.’

  ‘That’s insane,’ he said. ‘You can’t guide a ship when it’s in the middle of a warp storm.’

  ‘I told them that,’ she said with an exaggerated gesture, ‘but it doesn’t look good when a ship is lost. The Navigator’s always the first one people want to blame.’

  ‘Or the astropath,’ whispered Kai.

  He felt her scrutiny, and returned it. The last time Kai had seen Roxanne, she had been a physical and emotional wreck, as haunted by the unending screams of their dead crew as he had been, but her aura showed little sign of that trauma.

  Roxanne guided him from the aisle to find a seat in the pews, taking his arm as though he were blind or infirm.

  ‘I can see you know,’ he said. ‘Probably better than you.’

  ‘Typical,’ said Roxanne. ‘It takes losing your eyes to make you see things clearly.’

  He smiled as Roxanne took hold of Kai’s skeletally thin hands. He felt the warmth of her friendship, but instead of recoiling, he let it wash over him like a cleansing balm. Ever since he had been evacuated from the wreck of the Argo, Kai had been treated like a leper or an invalid, and to be viewed as an equal was just about the most wonderful thing anyone had done for him.

  ‘So what are you doing here?’ asked Kai, hoping to steer the conversation away from the Argo. ‘This doesn’t seem like your kind of place.’

  ‘I suppose not, but it turns out it’s just my kind of place.’