by Rob Sanders
‘The thirteenth book of the Ulthanash Rhapsode – an eldar epic poem detailing the tragedies of lesser races, tracked its movements from Belial VII to Pfennig’s World to Ablutraphur.’
‘A hive-world is a big place,’ Brother Torqhuil said, ‘and the Black Sovereign is but one coin. How do you know it will be at the Spire?’
Czevak considered the Relictor’s question before smiling the answer back at the Space Marine, ‘Because Mammoshad makes kings – and kings live in palaces. The Ablutra Hive houses the largest, most obscenely opulent palace on the planet’s surface.’
As the balloon crossed the rancid wetlands in the shimmering heat of the burgeoning day, the haze that had masked the hive city began to fade. The Ablutra Hive was no longer a bloated and ominous shape looming on the tropical horizon. As the balloon closed on the megapolis the nightmare detail of the place ached into focus. The hive city was on fire and bleeding trails of acrid smoke into the sickly sky like smudged charcoal under an artist’s thumb. Pocket fires raged unchallenged from deep within the city, weaving through the hab and factory levels, fed by sink shafts and at the mercy of the perverse air currents moving across the uneven architecture of the vertical sprawl.
As the methane burner roared, the swale gypsy airship made its daunting climb up the urban accretion that was the conical majesty of the hive. From the twisted nest of pipes and drains oozing centuries of effluent toxicity into the floodplain of filth, the balloon passed over the industrial foundation of the towering hive. Below them was the throne of chimneys and vents in which the hive sat. They belched a noxious miasma across the urban lowlands and the surrounding stilt-berg shanties. Flak mills and sweatshops grew out of the industrial nightmarescape – the manufactory thorax of the city – now silent and abandoned. Above, the smashed and blazing condominia, hab-slums and the precarious domiciles scaffolded to the sides of various structures seemed to have suffered some of the worst damage.
As the balloon climbed, the silent stillness of these quarters gave way to the roars and screams of human beings in corporal and spiritual torment. Like the poisonous fumes rising out of the rusted smokestacks below, the starving city multitudes had risen up through the hive in growing numbers and desperation. They had stormed the upper plazas, gates and boulevards, with their estate housing and villas. Underhive scum had feasted upon the menial hordes; the cannibal proletariat had conquered the urban highlands of their betters. Here howling mobs of flesh-fuelled degenerates seeped out of the architecture, hunting each other like crazed packs of wild animals, splattered in each other’s gore and the shame of necessity. As the balloon tantalisingly trailed the stinking carcass of its gargantuan catch over the roofs and towers, Czevak and his retinue fell to dread silence. They eavesdropped on the gut-hungry bellows of savage swarms clashing with and feeding upon one another, their minds struggling to soak up the magnitude of death and destruction.
They found the Gothic splendour of the Spire to be similarly afflicted. This was where the barbarism reached its zenith with the tapering architecture bottle-necking the cannibalistic throng as it tore its frenzied way ever higher. Some semblance of order remained in the Spire as evidenced in the flashes of firepower holding back the raging hordes in the lower levels of the Planetary Governor’s palace. Czevak pointed out a shuttle platform attached to the tallest of the palace’s manse towers and the balloon captain, lowering his magnocular goggles, directed the balloon in above the landing pad.
A small tractor with a bulbous engine column waited on the platform attached to a tracked flatbed. The rear of the trailer was dominated by a hydraulic claw used for loading and unloading shuttled cargo and palace supplies. As gypsies scampered through the rigging and manned the chains and windlass, the be-goggled captain brought his monstrous catch in expertly over the flatbed. Unlocking the grapnel, the beast fell the short distance to the trailer with a heavy slap, a sickening shudder rolling through the gargantuan swamp-feeder’s rank flesh.
When Czevak had initially put his plan to get inside the palace to the retinue, the group had been deeply unimpressed. Klute had suggested using his rosette and the authority of his Beneficent Majesty’s Inquisition to breach the fortifications. Czevak had to remind his friend that the hive was in the thrall of the Chaos Powers and that the authority of the Holy Ordos in all likelihood meant little there. If anything it would probably result in their summary execution and devouring. The High Inquisitor insisted that their search for the Black Sovereign of Sierra Sangraal was best conducted covertly – at least in the first instance – and if they didn’t want to be met with a hail of las-bolts, with some stealth. Czevak’s solution to this problem was inelegantly repugnant.
As the plasteel balloon frame housing the ballista and its jumbo harpoon hovered above the flatbed, Czevak and his team disembarked, the retinue swiftly making their way down the broken-backed behemoth’s slimy length. At the monster’s great umbrella mouth, Torqhuil used the pneumatic power in his servo-arms to part the colossal, lifeless lips and allow the group to pick their way tentatively inside.
The stench inside the beast was like a physical force that they had to push through. This would have been bad enough in the swamp-coated cavernous mouth but Czevak insisted on pushing deeper into the beast, just in case the creature was inspected and had the Techmarine cut through the gill-rakers and baleen plates at the back of the monster’s foetid throat with his plasma torch appendage. Their progress through the beast was mercifully impeded beyond this point by the ruptured stomach of the thing. Disgorged entrails and intestinal innards had exploded their way through the lining and into the gullet cavity, preventing further progress.
With the bale light behind Hessian’s eyes and the suit lamps on Torqhuil’s power armour ghoulishly lighting the inside of the creature, the retinue had little to do but suppress their gag reflex and wait. When the small but powerful tractor roared to life, the judder of the power plant quaked through the carcass, signalling the initiation of Czevak’s plan.
‘God-Emperor, the stink!’ the warp-seer hissed.
‘Epiphani?’ the High Inquisitor asked.
With Father hovering inconspicuously by the platform blast doors, the blind warp-seer had a view of the tractor and the beast on the trailer from the outside, although it was difficult for her to concentrate on the servo-skull’s mind link with the assault on her other senses by the monster’s unctuous, stinking innards.
‘The blast doors are open,’ the warp-seer described down a wrinkled nose. ‘The gypsies are being paid by the palace proctors. The proctors look weak and thin.’
‘What about security?’ Torqhuil put to her.
‘Six or seven Guardsmen.’
‘How can you just stand there and breathe this muck,’ Epiphani said, half-retching.
‘PDF?’ Klute pushed.
‘How should I know? Yes. No. Too well equipped’, Epiphani decided, snorting. ‘They look like shock troops.’
‘Cadians?’
The warp-seer suddenly grimaced as one of the armoured figures turned. Its face flesh was rotten white and gelatinous, like it had been slowly putrefying at the bottom of the ocean.
‘Their faces…’ the warp-seer shuddered.
‘Markings?’
‘Three skulls in an inverse pyramid,’ Epiphani told them.
Czevak nodded. ‘They’re the Unbound.’
The five of them stumbled, putting palms and gauntlets into the gloop of the cavernous mouthflesh as their surroundings jolted into movement.
‘The proctors are bringing the carcass in on the flatbed,’ Epiphani said. The warp-seer hocked and spat. ‘I can taste it,’ she said in revulsion.
‘What are the Unbound doing here?’ Klute asked nervously.
‘They were originally the Cadian 969th. They were deployed to Cetus Tertia during the Gothic War. Their colonel, Abner Varicuss, was favourite at the time for Lord Castellan but he and his men were struck down by some horrific water-borne plague that corrupted the regim
ent, preventing their return to Cadia and crushing Varicuss’s political ambitions. To this day Varicuss goes by the title of the False Castellan, and his Unbound, as the regiment came to be called, threw in their lot with followers of the Great Lord of Decay. Ablutraphur is one of the worlds that still supply them. It makes sense that they garrison it.’
‘This might have been useful information before we arrived on the planet,’ Klute complained.
‘Don’t worry about the Unbound. Mammoshad will be giving them problems enough,’ Czevak tried to assure him.
‘Blast doors closing,’ Epiphani said, as Father drifted into the palace, sticking to the shadows of the vaulted ceilings. Through the servo-skull’s bionic orbs she watched the doors closing and the be-goggled gypsy captain walk away with his fee.
‘I need to get out of here,’ the warp-seer said with sudden determination, moving for the mouth of the creature. Klute intercepted her, slipping his arms around her from behind.
‘What you need is a distraction,’ Klute told her, slipping his fingers into her brassiere with no little squeamishness of his own and extracting her snuff box. He placed it in the blind girl’s fingertips. In a fluid motion, Epiphani took a pinch of crystal Spook and snorted the viridian powder up one nostril, then the next. With his arms still around her Klute asked, ‘Better?’
The warp-seer’s face had completely slackened, assuming a dreamy softness.
‘Better,’ she mumbled. As she stumbled away, Klute found Torqhuil and Czevak looking at him.
‘When you lose one of your senses, the others compensate,’ Klute told them with a doctor’s authority. ‘However bad it is for us in here, it’ll be ten times worse for her.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Czevak said. ‘But now the girl’s blazed. How can we use her when she’s out of her mind on Spook?’
‘It’s my experience,’ Klute advised him, ‘that regrettably, that is when she is at her most useful.’
As the trailer rocked to a halt, the warp-seer staggered backward, falling into the ruptured back wall of soft entrails and lengths of jumbo intestine. Sitting there in a throne of guts and slime, Klute fully expected Epiphani to scream and lurched for her. The warp-seer didn’t, however, and moments later Klute found the girl quaking with suppressed hilarity, occasionally catching a wheezing breath between chest-contracting bouts of stifled laughter. Hessian joined in, depraved, indulgent chuckles passing his lips.
As Epiphani brought up her arms, Klute found her finely manicured hands clutching lengths of gut and entrail. The glee on her face fell and the hilarity shaking her body died as swiftly as it had started. As she stared sleepily through the funk of the cavity she passed the grotesque coils of the dead creature’s intestine through her hands. She would squeeze the muscular tract before snatching its length from one hand to another frenetically, before tugging for more slack and sampling another section with her fingertips. Her head nodded as though she were counting something.
Hessian sniffed at the immaterial energies coursing through the warp-seer’s veins.
‘Epiphani?’ Klute put gently to her.
‘Bye… laugh… seen… inflecting… true,’ the warp-seer said, each word in swift succession as through her fingers were reading it in the entrails. ‘Bye… laugh… seen… inflecting… true… bye… laugh… seen… inflecting… true… bye… laugh… seen… inflecting… true…’
‘Enough, Epiphani,’ Klute said, snatching the slimy length of intestine from her grasp. The warp-seer looked right through the inquisitor before becoming presently aware of her surroundings. Her face contorted with disgust and Klute pulled her out of the bed of entrails. She seemed upset and after brushing off the worst of the stringy ooze and picking gut fragments from her plastek poncho, she held herself like a frightened child.
‘It’s a message,’ Czevak said grimly.
‘She’s a prognostic, not some possessee or telepath,’ Klute disagreed.
‘I’ve seen feral world shamans examine the entrails of small animals,’ Torqhuil volunteered, ‘to divine deific approval for a tribal course of action.’
‘It’s a message – just not one we were meant to get – yet,’ Czevak insisted, ‘or possibly we were, the Ruinous Powers are perverse in such dealings.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Klute told his friend.
‘And neither did what she said,’ said Czevak who began to fade away himself into thought. As he became suddenly aware of the eyes on him he said, ‘I told you she was a poor prognostic. She has the gift – but she’s like a wide-angle antenna picking up any and all signals. This explains her seeming ability to achieve empyreal congress across the different disciplines of divination – many she probably isn’t even trained to interpret: haruspexia, pyromancy, cartomancy.’
‘Now I haven’t the faintest idea what you are saying,’ Klute said.
‘That’s it,’ Czevak smiled at him. ‘Garbled transmission. This is the warp we are talking about here. She’s receiving but not understanding – like, I don’t know, prognostic paraphasia.’
‘Paraphasia,’ Klute said with relief. Finally, a word he understood.
‘Paraphasia?’ Torqhuil asked.
‘It’s a medical condition – associated with head trauma,’ Klute informed him. ‘Patients can speak but the content of their language is incorrect – they substitute words for others in terms of association or sound.’
‘Or both,’ Czevak said, already at work on the meaningless stream of words Epiphani had shot at them. ‘Bye, laugh, seen, inflecting, true,’ the High Inquisitor said to himself. He repeated it several times before smiling in triumph. ‘It’s phonetic. Bye... laugh... seen... inflecting... true – I… have… been… expecting… you.’
A chill passed through the group.
A moment later the trembling carcass became still and the five of them heard the tractor’s engine die.
‘What’s happening?’ Klute asked the warp-seer in a hushed whisper.
Epiphani seemed to be waiting; her face tensed a little before relaxing once more.
‘They’re gone,’ she finally said.
‘I… have… been… expecting… you,’ Czevak repeated. ‘We’ve got to move fast. This is a daemonic entity of Tzeentch we’re dealing with, expect anything.’
Torqhuil was swift to barge his way through the baleen plates of the filter feeder and use his servo-arms to prize open the jaws of the behemoth from the inside. The others stumbled out of the beast, sucking in fresh air and flicking slime from their armour and clothing. Father descended from the ceiling to become the unsteady warp-seer’s guide once more.
The party found themselves in a tiled scullery leading into the vast, empty palace kitchens. The kitchens had traditionally needed to be large to supply the equally large halls and ornate dining rooms of the Spire. There the Governor would hold court with influential families and individuals from the city and surrounding hives as well as entertain powerful off-world dignitaries and representatives with their own considerable entourages.
The expanse of worktops, sinks and pots were splattered with old blood and splinters of cracked bone. Epiphani washed her hands, while Klute picked up a femur for closer examination, revealing teeth mark indentations and the marrow sucked clean.
‘Doesn’t look good, does it?’ the inquisitor said to no one in particular. He took out his shotgun pistol and clutched it down by his side. There was a sudden hiss before the great ovens of the kitchen fired. The palace proctors had gone to fetch their remaining kitchen staff – those that hadn’t cooked and prepared each other. They would return any moment.
‘Let’s just find the Black Sovereign and get the hell out of here,’ Czevak said to steady nerves.
‘And how do we do that?’
‘Simple,’ Czevak returned. ‘Find the richest, most powerful person in the building. The coin will be with them.’
As the group moved through the cavernous corridors and vaulted chambers of the Spire palace, the distan
t echo of suppression fire bounced around them. Not even Spire nobility were safe from the hunger of the cannibal hordes and the flesh-desperate millions had reached the palace defences. Howls and shrieks rose up through the elaborate palace balconies and windows. The air sang with the constant percussion of fists on faltering barricades and the chatter of autoguns ripping explosively into droves of emaciated madmen.
At a security bulkhead, set in the ornate finery of a gallery archway, Czevak gestured for Torqhuil and Father to approach.
‘Find the vault, it will probably be attached to the royal apartments,’ Czevak told them. ‘Hurry.’
The Techmarine worked fast, using the delicate array of instruments adorning two of his flexible mechadendrite limbs to breach the palace security. Interfacing the servo-skull with spiriflex lines and plug wires from the bulkhead, Torqhuil directed Father to extract the information they needed. The familiar’s vellum scroll unspooled, which the Space Marine read rather than tore away, leaving the servo-skull trailing parchment.
‘Above the royal apartments and personal chambers,’ the Relictor nodded before adding, ‘this way.’
Hessian and the inquisitors followed the Space Marine, leaving Epiphani to disconnect Father from the wall and pursue at a more measured pace. Through a set of state rooms, Epiphani arrived in a dusty cloister, set aside for private devotions with velvet curtains covering chapel-booths.
Hands suddenly leapt out from one curtain and dragged the servo-skull and the warp-seer inside by the plas of her poncho. Czevak was behind, already with a finger to his lips. The velvet parted slightly in the slipstream of armoured troops stomping up the cloister in heavy boots. Their armour was a faded Cadian green and the circles of the regimental digits adorning their shoulder flak pads were daubed with white paint. Instead of the 969th the plates now bore three skulls in an inverse pyramid, the badge of the False Castellan’s Unbound and a tribute to the Great Lord of Decay’s own runic emblem. As the traitor regiment soldiers thundered past, Czevak and Epiphani were witness to their elephantine limbs and bloated bodies, lending the corrupted Guardsmen solidity and sturdy resilience. Their dead, pale skin barely held together the gelatinous flesh of their faces and a sickly paste formed a membrane that covered their diseased forms, in turn creating a sticky trap for the bugs and flies attempting to feed on their passing putrescence.