by Rob Sanders
‘If my heresy was only that simple,’ Klute mumbled between his benedictions.
Declared Excommunicate Traitoris and hunted mercilessly by Cyarro and his Grey Knights Purgation Squads, the Relictors disbanded as a Chapter and immersed themselves in personal quests to retrieve Chaos artefacts and take their battle to the Enemy – deep within the Eye. Torqhuil had worked largely alone, but his interests repetitively clashed with Klute as both of them scoured the primitive Peninsula worlds of the once damned Quoyah Empire for remnants. Klute was looking for Glyph sticks on the moon of Thromba, where the ancient Rapatang tribe people had succumbed to a bloodhunger, when he encountered the Techmarine first in the flesh. They fought amongst the giant stone hands of Throm – the tainted writings of the Rapatang already in the inquisitor’s possession.
If it hadn’t been for Phalanghast and his sacrobound monstrosity, the Techmarine would have rendered Klute limb from limb (as he had done Zedd, Keplar IV and Bhasker Singh). Phalanghast’s daemonhost Hessian could be persuasive, however, and the resulting impasse allowed time for tempers to cool, words to be exchanged and a truce to be forged. Over time, that truce had become a valued partnership between inquisitor and Relictors Space Marine. Like Torqhuil, Klute believed his intentions to be pure, but the road to damnation is paved with such fancies and they had both sullied their souls in congress with the daemon and the renegade. Torres maintained the Malescaythe’s Geller field at full power, whether they were in the warp or simply traversing the damned space of the Eye and this had long kept the taint of Chaos at bay. This was one of the reasons Klute had engaged Torres and her rogue trader in the first place. Both were veterans of forays into the Eye of Terror and few onboard – thank the Throne – had succumbed to the unclean influence of dreadspace. Despite Klute’s baptismal baths, blessings, purity injections and the myriad of wardings carved into the rust red of Torqhuil’s sacred Mark-VIII Errant armour, it was hard to believe that the corruptive environment of unreality hadn’t in some way breached their careful defences. The mere insanity of their voluntary presence in the Eye of Terror might already have been evidence of this.
Klute’s jaundiced eyes took in the amethyst glow of rift space and the site of their last planetfall, the crone world of Iblisyph. Like a swirling ball of bloodied vomit, the planet hung there, an affront to itself. Gone was the verdant paradise of the original eldar home world. In its place sat a spherical hell of glass shard gales and murky storms within storms, dragging half of the planet’s surface up into the atmosphere. Here, Hessian and Captain Torres’s Savlar Chem-Dog soldiers kept flocks of pygmy furies at bay as they swooped and squealed as one, blacking out the light of a dismal sun and dive bombing Klute’s party as they extricated their prize, the Lost Fornical of Urien-Myrdyss.
Somehow, Torqhuil and his small army of archeoxenologists had managed to excavate the colossal artefact intact and haul it to Torres’s Malescaythe. Klute felt bad about inflicting the horrors of Iblisyph upon the Mechanicus archeoxenologists. Torres and her rogue trader crew were well paid for their services and between them, Torqhuil and Epiphani Mallerstang had led them there. What the rest of Klute’s retinue called hell, the daemonhost Hessian called home – so the inquisitor wasted little of his sympathy on the abomination. The archeoxenologists, on the other hand, had been hijacked by the Malescaythe en route to the swarmworld of Vespula on Klute’s orders and so had taken no part in their heresy until Torres’s ragged Chem-Dogs had turned their weapons on them. That and the promise that the skiffs would return and lift them out of the nightmare that was the eldar crone world – only after they had helped Saul Torqhuil to excavate the Lost Fornical.
Freshly unearthed, the mighty warp gate sat on the deck, its osseous archways still rooted to the massive block of wraithbone dais upon which it was set. In the relative safety of the rogue trader hangar and feeling more than a little committed after risking their lives and souls for the haul, the Mechanicus were more enthusiastic about their new duties and had fallen to scrutinising the ancient piece of alien technology with Torqhuil.
Around them a small cordon of Savlar Chem-Dog penitents loitered, cradling filthy lascarbines and dripping with stolen equipment, mismatched armour and scavenged archeotrinkets. Their faces were obscured by dust goggles and the nitro-chem inhalers that lent the criminal scum the narcotic courage that would have ordinarily abandoned them when battling the fearful denizens of the Eye. When Klute had learned that the Malescaythe was outfitted with a contingent of Savlar Chem-Dogs he was dismayed, but as the inquisitor’s search took him deeper into the Eye, he came to appreciate the mercenary, kleptomaniacal nature of the regiment and the way in which it complemented his objectives. They never questioned his sometimes ludicrous orders or the motives that forced them to fight in the hellish environs of daemon worlds, their narcotic fantasies and the nightmares of rift-space indistinguishable. If the penitents had a mind to escape their brutal existence, they never demonstrated it – besides, there was nowhere to escape to in the Eye. The vessel’s Geller field provided the only safety for light-years around. As long as the deviants were allowed to scavenge and steal from the dark places the Malescaythe took them and take refuge in the mind-numbing haze of their chem-inhalers, they seemed content to take orders and provide security for the rogue trader and its guests. The inquisitor had only had to intervene once, when an ill-advised find had corrupted the light fingers of an unfortunate trooper and Klute had had to execute the Guardsman. Largely, the Savlar’s had an almost feral instinct for salvage, however – long learned in the toxic environment of their prison home world – and stayed away from anything obviously tainted or possessed.
Captain Torres had insisted on manning the warp gate with a heavily armed, round-the-clock vigil, arguing that they had little or no idea of what the thing was capable. Klute did, of course, but informing the good captain of that would only have exacerbated her fears and, in any case, he didn’t think that a guard post was such a bad idea. Wiring six barrels of promethium to the artefact was erring on overkill, Klute reasoned – not enough to breach the hull of the ship, but enough to blast the Lost Fornical to pieces if the circumstances demanded it. The inquisitor had made his feelings known, but ultimately the Malescaythe was Reinette Torres’s vessel and she felt responsible for the safety of every soul on board – undoubtedly a throwback to her naval days.
It was not the only reminder of a past life in the service. As she approached, flanked by an ensign carrying a tray of flambéed amasec, Klute came to realise that apart from the regulation-breaking length of lustrous black hair and the curvaceous breasts and buttocks almost falling out of her attire, the rest of her garb was entirely her old dress uniform.
‘Inquisitor,’ the captain greeted him.
Klute took a glass out of courtesy and in recognition of her festive efforts – although as a rule he wasn’t much of a drinker. As a rule, he wasn’t given much in the way of excesses of any kind, which seemed strange given his circumstances.
‘To the Forty Hierarchs,’ Klute pledged with the glass, ‘and how I wish they were with us now in this benighted place.’
The captain similarly raised her drink and then raised it again upon the approach of Brother Torqhuil. The hulking Space Marine had to suffice with a respectful bow of the head. Torqhuil never indulged in common liquor, but Torres always had an extra glass dressed for him. The Techmarine towered over them both, the great servo-arms of his cybernetic torso-harness extended almost protectively about the small gathering, hydraulic claws and bionic toolage at ease.
Klute acknowledged the Adeptus Astartes before snuffing out the flame and supping his drink. It was more pleasant than he had first expected, with a collection of tangy, festive berries floating in the amasec.
‘So, inquisitor. You have your prize. What now?’ Captain Torres asked.
Klute chuckled into his drink. ‘What, that xenological abomination? The Lost Fornical is merely a means to an end. What I seek, this hellish gateway may del
iver – but I leave that up to Brother Torqhuil and his Mechanicus kin.’
‘We have spoken on this, inquisitor,’ the Relictor cautioned, ‘I don’t want to indulge false hope. Locating and extricating the Fornical was blind fortune enough. This is an alien artefact, a piece of technology older than man himself; we could spend a lifetime in study and experimentation and still get nowhere close to unlocking its secrets.’
‘That and the fact that it has been buried at the heart of a daemonic world for innumerable centuries,’ Torres added. ‘Why the hell I let the thing on board, I still don’t know.’
‘Because,’ the inquisitor informed her, ‘to you this is just another of our warped relics, part of a dusty collection – something to take up space in your hold or… sell for profit.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ she smiled.
As a Relictors Space Marine, Torqhuil researched and sought out the weapons of Chaos, adding to the huge collection of Chaos weapons, artefacts and tomes that were stored in the Geller and stasis reliquaries leading off the archeodeck. With these, the Relictor Space Marine carried out his Chapter’s controversial crusade against the Ruinous Powers. Klute’s reasons were known only to himself and the warp-seer Epiphani Mallerstang, but Torres had only ever braved the terrors of the Eye to rebuild the fortunes of her mother’s dilapidated estates on Zyracuse. Carrying excommunicates and heresiarchs like Torqhuil and Klute was testament to her desperation and calling; sadly the inquisitor had indulged the poor captain’s fantasy that his rosette of office – all but limitless in its power to exonerate in almost all other circumstances – would protect her and her family’s interests. Something else to weigh heavily on Klute’s burdened soul.
Torres stared blankly out into the deep darkness of the void. The Malescaythe had banked, putting the sickening spectacle of Iblisyph behind it. It was the swirls and eddies of the Geller field that the captain was watching and the ghostly outlines of beasts and behemoths, sidling along the vessel and pressing their warp-ghastly forms up against the ship.
Klute had seen her warn her crew against such spiritual licentiousness, but occasionally, when something particularly vile took an interest in the vessel, it was difficult not to look back. Torres was no fool. She had her ship enveloped in the protection of its powerful Geller field at all times – whether the rogue trader was immersed in warp travel or simply trawling the dreadspace of the Eye, the reality shield ensured that the crew of the rogue trader enjoyed an immediate environment that was normal and natural in the most unnatural of places. The Eye of Terror was so confused about what it was that the real and the unreal often floated past each other in the terrible place and the daemonic entities that haunted the immaterium swam past the vessel like soul-hungry sharks, waiting for the opportunity to strike.
‘But Raimus, really,’ the captain said. ‘You know I’d follow you to hell and back – and I have – which gives me, I feel, the right to comment.’
Klute smiled. A simple, knowing smile. Torres only dispensed with the formalities of his formal title when attempting to trick more details of his secretive mission from him. On some level – and this was not common territory for the inquisitor – he felt that she must be jealous of Epiphani, and the confidences he had with the young witch. Epiphani wouldn’t have been his first choice of confidante, but it was difficult to hide anything from a prognostic.
And then it came. ‘Think on the false prophets you have followed. Think on the dark, fruitless places they have led you. Phalanghast. Dancwart the Elder. Cardinal Killias. And now this girl.’
There it was.
‘Epiphani found the Fornical, did she not? Was it not exactly where she predicted?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘And has she not plotted a course through the maelstroms, impossibilities and perverse expanses of the Eye safely and surely, where no ship’s Navigator could?’ Klute put to the good captain.
‘One who can see what will come to pass, before its time, through whom the currents of the warp flow so freely; how can we trust such a freak? She has no neural inhibitors and hasn’t even been soul-bound.’
‘It would dull her skill,’ the inquisitor countered with plain, dangerous logic.
‘Don’t worry.’ Epiphani Mallerstang’s sweet inflections bounced around the hangar. ‘The inquisitor will dispose of me when he has no further use for my talents. That’s what the Inquisition does.’
She had not heard a thing; she was too far away, but making good speed across the deck, despite the disability of her blindness. She’d known about the conversation, however, long before Torres had chosen to initiate it. Klute tried not to pry too deeply into the workings of her strange ability. He separated himself as much as he could from the temptations of the polluted and their gifts. To take only what he needed. To give only what he could afford. To that extent they were both correct. Epiphani had not been soul-bound and without doubt was a constant danger. The inquisitor would also not think twice about putting a bolt-round in the girl if she so much as sneezed against his interests and he made a point of surrounding himself with others who felt the same way. Torres’s feelings, and therefore those of her crew, were obvious and he could always count on Torqhuil to act in accordance with his training and genetically engineered purpose.
The young warp-seer walked up behind them and took a small ornate snuff box from the neckline of her corset and opened it with a well practised snap of the thumb. Inside was a crystalline powder that shone with the lustre of crushed emeralds. Taking a pinch, the warp-seer snorted a generous dose, before rubbing her nose and fluttering her cloudy eyes. Klute knew this to be Spook – a dangerous and highly illegal psychoactive drug, known to enhance an addict’s ability to channel the energies of the warp to enhance their psychic capabilities – and Epiphani was an addict.
For a moment she seemed to stare straight through the gathering, out into the dreadlight beyond. Klute couldn’t begin to imagine what she was ‘seeing’ there. A vast sea? A stellar sky? Unnatural energies in constant flux and turmoil. A formless etherscape of indescribable forms; colour, emotion, currents, flows and floods; storm fronts of soulspace, crashing amongst nebulous cloud formations of immaterial somethingness. Perhaps nothing at all. Or perhaps it was these impossible arrangements that she saw and described in sing-song mumbles, ‘In a ruined palace – of dust and bones – sits a fool on a burnished throne; from his finger hangs a spider, framed in a window of empty night, that twinkles with a thousand stars and echoes with a distant laughter…’
Tuning into such insights had been Epiphani’s gift and this had become greatly useful to Klute in his search. She’d guided the Malescaythe through the dangers of the Eye and led him to the Lost Fornical of Urien-Myrdyss – which she’d insisted was essential to the inquisitor’s quest – and even revealed the treachery of Klute’s mystic, Phalanghast – her own father – in advance of his betrayal. And so Klute’s reluctant reliance on the warp-seer Epiphani Mallerstang became complete.
‘Captain,’ she greeted Torres as she returned to them. She had thrown together a baroque corset, finished with the brazen bones of some alien creature with which Klute was not familiar, and a Harakoni celestial gown. It shouldn’t have worked yet somehow did. Epiphani always had an outfit ready for every occasion. Her wardrobe was reputably almost as large as Saul Torqhuil’s collection of artefacts and forbidden relics.
She reached for Torqhuil’s glass of flaming amasec, her other hand resting on the grotesque servo-skull that had glided in ahead of her, leading the way. The warp-seer’s pet name for the familiar was ‘Father’, which made Klute feel uncomfortable enough. This degree of unease was enhanced further by the knowledge that the skull had indeed belonged to his old guide and her actual father, Phalanghast. Epiphani never spoke of her mother, but while he had lived, Phalanghast told Klute that she was the result of his brief union with Lady Casserndra Laestrygoni, a powerful member of the Great Laestrygoni Navigator Family and Heir Apparent Paternova. Such disho
nour could not be tolerated if the Laestrygoni’s fortunes were to remain intact and Phalanghast was paid handsomely to leave the segmentum with the infant, mere moments following her birth.
Epiphani fixed them all with her eyes – both the milky, useless orbs of her youthful face and the cold, blue bionic lenses burning out of the hang-dog visage of Father. The servo-skull was not only a guide for the blind warp-seer, it was her actual eyes. A mind-link between Epiphani and the drone helped to counter the witch’s disability, that and her prognostic skill.
‘Epiphani,’ Klute said. ‘What did you see? Was it the God-Emperor? Is it his throne? What does that mean?’
‘Yes,’ she smiled. Then a frown. ‘No’. Then the addict’s smile again. ‘Something bad is going to happen.’
‘This is the Eye of Terror,’ Torqhuil announced sagely. ‘That is a given.’
Floating out from behind the excesses of the Harakoni gown came Hessian. Pulling back the hood of his simple robes, the daemonhost revealed his smug, angelic face and horn buds. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, then Hessian’s were dead, black, oily orbs – like those of some cold-blooded, deep sea predator.
Torres reacted immediately. ‘How dare you, child! You have no permission to bring that creature on deck,’ the captain seethed at the Spook-soothed Epiphani.
It was true. Blasphemous as it was, Klute kept the daemonhost imprisoned within the confines of the newly fortified ship’s chapel, surrounded by the most powerful of Torqhuil’s recovered holy relics. Epiphani had grown up with the daemon around, however, and as a result seemed less ill at ease than the rest of the rogue trader’s company in its presence. Some part of her might have even felt some pity for the monster. Phalanghast had always taken precautions – many of which he had taught Klute – but the inquisitor was taking no chances. The Relictors Space Marine’s instruments of faith bled the creature of its supremacy and energy – the Imperishable Cloves of Saint Cerene, that decorated the bulkhead, taking their particular, blessed toll on the warp-sired thing. Hessian mostly took to sleeping the days away – those when Klute did not need his dark services, at least – draped sacrilegiously across the chapel altar.