Atlas Infernal

by Rob Sanders

  As Czevak began to exchange one reality for another, his eyes met Ahzek Ahriman’s. With his claws still clutching the Black Staff in the desperation of a defensive pose, Ahriman – Thousand Sons sorcerer and demigod – broke the impassive mask of his divine features and roared his dark, wretched defiance as the most precious of all his acquisitions was snatched away before his unbelieving eyes.

  Exit

  ACT IV, CANTO I

  Command deck, Rogue trader Malescaythe, The Eye of Terror

  As before

  Death did not come to Bronislaw Czevak.

  The clamour of reality returned and lifting his head from the cold metal of the deck, the inquisitor found the bridge of the rogue trader Malescaythe in full, glorious panic once again. With the ship freed from the temporal freeze, time had once more found its rhythm. The Harlequinade were gone – which was how Czevak preferred them. As the fear that had crippled his heart faded, the inquisitor felt suddenly elated. Rolling onto his back he folded his arms behind his head and beamed up at the bridge’s lancet screens.

  Beyond the huge command deck windows was a vision both beautiful and insane. The Malescaythe had dropped out of the warp into a highly disturbed and agitated reality. They were a tiny, vulnerable vessel plying a sub-light speed path across a zone of colossal devastation. Even the emptiness of the void seemed affected, with streaks of vacant blackness and the heliotropic nebulosity of dreadspace rolling and crashing into one another like a stormy seascape. The starlit heavens beyond faded and blazed – blurred then magnified in drifting and distant bubbles of fragmented reality. Whole systems of planets had been torn apart by gravity squalls and vortex rifts.

  The area was strewn with debris. Colossal chunks of rock rolled with the perverse currents, major strikes pulverising both bodies while more sedate collisions bumped planetary shards off into the paths of other astral wreckage. Sprinkled across the field of interstellar flotsam and jetsam were smashed ships – both human and alien. There were bodies, countless corpses in streams, twirling and pooling in eddies and dragged in the wake of rocky bodies – equally dead but insistent in their gravitational pull. The lancet screens flashed lazy whiteness as bifurcating arcs of warp energy cut across the devastation like lightning. As each jagged discharge faded, it left behind a path of colossal crystals – magnificent, intricate and bizarre. The raw, solidification of the Eye’s psychic energies. Dominating the scene, however, was a single star – a nearby giant that had miraculously survived the warp-spumed desolation and continued to rage its deep blueness into the chaos of the void.

  Captain Torres was at the pulpit rail, reeling off orders and demanding information. Her eyes caught Czevak, smiling to himself on the floor, and she scowled. She had bigger problems than the lunatic inquisitor.

  ‘Status report,’ Torres barked. ‘Steerage feels off.’

  ‘We lost both the port stabiliser fin and ether vanes in the jump,’ her lieutenant reported from the transept nest of runescreens, trader serfs and servitors. ‘Helm compensating. The comms…’

  ‘Forget the comms. What about the enginarium?’

  ‘Port sublight engine column confirmed as destroyed. The enginseer reports that the jump caused critical damage to the warp drive and they’re trying to locate the source of a massive power bleed. Until they cap the leak, no shields and no weapons, captain. ’

  ‘What have I done?’ Torres said, hands on hips, shaking her head slowly.

  ‘What you had to do,’ Czevak told her. He was up on his feet and still smiling like a smug buffoon. Leaning against the pulpit rail he was thumbing through the frame pages of the Atlas Infernal. Torres swallowed in the presence of the artefact, waves of physical and spiritual revulsion passing through her as she stood ibefore of the flesh pages. On the other side of the command deck, Rasputus moaned in his cage. Satisfied, Czevak snapped the gilded covers of the ancient tome shut. ‘Klute was right and I was wrong,’ he insisted, loud enough for Klute to hear at the rear of the command deck, where the inquisitor was now waiting for the elevator and staring at the grim wonder beyond the bridge’s lancet windows.

  Czevak started taking steps towards him. ‘The jump was a necessary evil. You gave us options.’

  Torres didn’t seem to hear him, still lost in the catastrophic damage that her actions had wrought on her ship – her family’s ship – the last hope of the waning Torres-Bouchier Mercantile Sovereignty on Zyracuse.

  ‘Geller field?’ she said, her Navy training irresistible, despite her great anguish. Survival first; self-pity could wait.

  ‘Holding,’ the deck officer replied, then cautiously, ‘for now, captain.’

  ‘Warp exit flux signatures?’

  ‘Difficult to tell…’

  ‘Well, try, lieutenant.’

  ‘Captain, the entire area is in flux. If a fleet dropped out of the warp beside us right now I wouldn’t be able to tell you.’

  ‘It’s highly unlikely that we were tracked and followed. We had no idea where we were going – how could they possibly know?’ Czevak announced as he crossed the pulpit. The inquisitor thought it wise not to bring up the subject of the Harlequins – who clearly had found them.

  What had been imperceptible to everyone else had been several desperate minutes on the bridge for Czevak. It didn’t really matter whether it had been the Malescaythe’s damaged warp drive or the perverse and unpredictable immateriology of the Eye that was responsible for their interstellar mis-step, or both. The rogue trader had certainly travelled more than the five light years that Torres had ordered. They could have dropped out of the warp anywhere. Anywhere in the Eye of Terror, that was, because staring out into the void beyond it became obvious to everyone on the command deck that the Malescaythe was still very much in hell.

  ‘He has a point,’ Captain Torres said. ‘Lieutenant, get a fix on our position.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Czevak intervened as he joined Klute by the elevator door. ‘We’re very much off the map here. Far from even the perilous stepping stone routes Epiphani relies upon to traverse the dreadspace of the Eye.’

  ‘You know where we are?’

  Czevak stared out through the command deck’s lancet windows, his brow knitting and rising hypnotically.

  ‘Sort of. Been here once before. Briefly. Wouldn’t recommend it.’

  ‘Does it have a name?’ Torres pressed him.

  ‘Not one that your mem-banks would recognise,’ Czevak informed the bridge. ‘It’s called the Scorpento Maestrale. The Eye of Terror is a strange place, a very, very strange place. But some bits are stranger than others. In the Eye, the warp and realspace co-exist. Time has less meaning here; matter and energy are indistinct and raw, emotive power rules. In some places in the Eye normal planets and systems exist, upon which unreality intrudes. In the Scorpento Maestrale the opposite applies – reality is but a drop in an immaterial ocean of madness and right now we are that drop.’

  ‘So what do you suggest?’

  ‘Full stop and hold on station,’ Czevak insisted.

  ‘Here? What station would we hold? This place is tearing itself apart,’ the rogue trader captain said with incredulity.

  ‘This place is safer than you realise. I don’t think anyone is going to find or follow us here,’ Czevak assured her. ‘Pick something big and slow moving,’ the High Inquisitor said. ‘But not that,’ Czevak ordered, pointing out the raging, blue star. ‘Whatever you do, do not approach that star.’

  ‘Why not?’ Torres demanded, she was not in the mood for riddles. ‘The debris field is clear over there.’

  ‘Trust me, do not approach that star,’ was all Czevak had for the captain.

  Instead he pointed out a smashed planetoid that looked like it had had one whole third of its mass ripped out at one of the poles. Magma dribbled out its exposed core like a grievous wound, leaving a zero-g trail of molten globules in its wake. ‘Something like that. Something that can afford the ship some protection and upon which it can hold station.�
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  ‘What are we supposed to do then?’

  Czevak grasped for something both sensible and reassuring. ‘Repairs?’

  ‘We need to dry dock for that,’ Torres said, unimpressed.

  ‘Just wait for me, I’ll be back.’

  The captain was full of alarmed questions. ‘Where the hell are you going?’

  The elevator doors opened and both inquisitors stepped inside.

  ‘Somewhere considerably less safe than here,’ Czevak called from within.

  The doors closed leaving the two men alone. As the elevator descended, the rumble of the Malescaythe’s manoeuvres and minor impacts rattled the car in its runners. The inquisitors were silent.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Czevak suddenly blurted, as though some kind of pressure had built up inside him. ‘I truly am. There, I said it.’ When Klute didn’t reply he added, ‘Apologies – becoming a bit of a habit. But then I guess I have a lot to apologise for.’

  ‘You have nothing to apologise for, my lord,’ Klute said, his eyes still on the black, matte of the doors.

  ‘Raimus, I have everything to apologise for,’ Czevak corrected him. ‘I got you into this mess. I have spent a lifetime compromising your career and endangering your life. And I will probably go on doing that but don’t think that I don’t know your worth.’

  ‘My lord I…’

  ‘Can we cut the formalities? This is no time to play martyr. Raimus, I’m sorry. What I said before – that was the pain talking, not the circumstances that brought me to it. Ahriman is the galaxy’s arch-deceiver. He fooled us then as he’s fooled us now. But this, and Cadia. I bring it all on myself, on all of us – I know that. I must be an infuriating companion, but my travels over the years, across the Eye, along the webway, have been… empty. Full of hollow purpose. Something else we share. You spent years searching the Eye for me. Never giving up. I must be a pretty disappointing reward for your efforts. I never thanked you for them, either.’

  The elevator doors opened and the sting of saniseptic rolled into the car from the sick bay.

  ‘You still haven’t,’ Klute said as he stepped out and across the infirmary.

  The suggestion of a smile curled on Czevak’s lips.

  ‘Thank you, Raimus. For everything.’

  But the inquisitor kept walking up between the transparent, plas partitioned walls of his sick bay. His boots trampled mounds of bloody bandages and dressings outside the compartment in which Doctor Strakhov and six orderlies were attempting to stem the bleeding from an armourless Saul Torqhuil’s terrible wounds. On the opposite side of the section, Epiphani Mallerstang lay unconscious on a gurney, her face seeming softer and younger than her usual sass and disdain would allow. Father hovered above her, monitoring her vital signs, obediently waiting for the warp-seer to wake. Klute stopped outside the next compartment and ordered a medical servitor to tighten the restraints on Hessian’s bed. Like Epiphani, the daemonhost’s body was still unconscious, but despite the straps on its wrists and ankles, it was floating a handspan above the sheets, giving some hope that the daemon was still present in some dark corner of the boy’s soul.

  Looking about the sick bay, Czevak nodded.

  ‘Their blood is on my hands, Raimus,’ Czevak announced, prompting the inquisitor to look up from a data-slate he’d just been handed. ‘I know your worth,’ Czevak told the inquisitor, ‘and now I know theirs. I won’t squander it again.’

  The two men looked at one another. Another rumble shuddered its way through the ship. ‘Like I said,’ Czevak admitted, ‘it’s been a lonely path these years. Despite the fact that you are all intensely annoying and a danger both to yourselves and to me, I have enjoyed your company. I’ve enjoyed sharing the risk… the burden. I’d like to go on sharing that burden.’

  Klute nodded. To himself and to his master.

  ‘I have a plan I’d like to discuss with you,’ Czevak called across the open space. Klute smiled, remembering their conversation about Nemesis Tessera.

  Czevak slipped his hand down into the inside pocket of his Harlequin coat and extracted the gleaming, golden covers of the Atlas Infernal.

  ‘We’re going to Melmoth’s World?’ the inquisitor guessed.

  ‘I’m going to Melmoth’s World,’ Czevak corrected him. ‘You’re going to stay here with the ship and your – our – people.’ The High Inquisitor bit at his bottom lip in consideration before tossing the heavy tome across the sick bay, where Klute caught it with some surprise. ‘Father, with me,’ Czevak ordered, prompting the servo-skull to drift out of the nearby plas compartment and into the elevator by his side.

  Klute looked down at the beautiful text, running his fingers across the filigree and armour plating. The spine-pump sighed rhythmically in his hands. He knew what it must have taken for Czevak to give up the Atlas Infernal, to trust Klute with its guardianship.

  ‘But…’ the inquisitor motioned, holding out the artefact in front of him.

  Czevak tapped his temple with two fingers. ‘Route is all up here, my friend. If I’m not back in six hours, take the Malescaythe to safety and destroy the Lost Fornical of Urien-Myrdyss. Remember, with eldar architecture and technology…’

  ‘…the function is in the flourishes,’ Klute completed. ‘What about this?’ the inquisitor asked, holding up the Atlas Infernal.

  Czevak thumbed the elevator door stud.

  ‘Destroy it too, if you can.’

  Klute looked down at the tome with an imperceptible shake of the head. Then to Czevak, ‘This is no time to play martyr.’

  ‘Oops,’ Czevak said and the doors closed upon him.

  Alarum

  ACT IV, CANTO II

  Greater Goylesburg, Melmoth’s World, The Eye of Terror

  Enter CZEVAK with FATHER

  The reek of corruption hit Czevak immediately. His exit point was an alleyway, at street level, in the midst of an urban nightmare. The webway portal had long been covered with other, native architecture that itself was clearly considered ancient, an archway of bitumen brick, formed by the walls of the tight alley, the slate-cobble street and a first storey walkway. Everything had the stygian lustre of coal and was similarly soot-smeared to the touch. The walls of the alleyway constituted filthy, cracked windows and tiny dilapidated balconies facing into one another, speaking of the dreadfully cramped conditions of a densely populated slum. Czevak’s appearance and the portal’s lightshow, however, attracted little in the way of attention. Groans of slow suffering emanated from several open windows and a cluster of ragged vagrants sat in rubbish-strewn gutters that ran off a murky treacle. The vitreous run-off glimmered an oily spectrum of colours that made Czevak want to touch it even less.

  As Czevak reached the top of the alley with Father hovering at his shoulder, the huddle of vagrants moved. A blanket of blotch flies dispersed from where they were feeding and laying their eggs. One of the vagrants was sick over the others. They were sleeping amongst rotting waste and were surrounded by empty glass bottles that lay nestled between the cobbles where they had been abandoned. The retcher did not notice Czevak. Not only was he too busy vomiting up a reeking mixture of bad food and mouth-scalding gin, his neck and face were covered with cancerous growths, hanging like flaccid, dry bags of pustular flesh that obscured his vision. The vagrants all seemed similarly afflicted and Czevak moved on swiftly.

  The alley opened out onto a larger but equally squalid thoroughfare. Stinking lamps, fuelled by some evil gas, lit the streets despite the fact that the planet was currently experiencing what might have been called a day. Rain fell in a constant drizzle of pitch droplets from a nicotine sky, the sluggish, oppressive clouds of which touched the tops of the precarious, black-brick tenement slums. Everything seemed to lean against each other like towers of cards or stacks of dominoes. The buildings ran storeys and storeys high, walkways and gas lines traversing the street below. Sheets of vile rainwater spilled from roofs and clogged guttering and blotch flies were everywhere, seeming to swim through
the moisture of the clammy air rather than flying between the droplets.

  The flies were feeding on the shift change. Ghostly horns were blaring in the distance and workers in course, ragged coats and slack caps were pouring languidly from crowded doorways. Their labouring garb displayed tatty badges sewn into the filth of the material, each bearing a symbol Czevak recognised. Three arrows pointing outwards from the badge centre, nestled between the fat circumference of three bloated circles. The symbol of Father Nurgle – the Great Lord of Decay. The denizens of the burg seemed half-asleep and just as horrifically afflicted as their homeless counterparts, each sporting some kind of growth or wretched skin condition that ate into the face and scalp.

  Czevak followed diseased hordes of men, women and children that marched downhill along the cobbled streets and lines of bitumen-brick buildings. As one shift descended, another climbed and began filling the gin mills and street churches that punctuated the unstable cliff face of slum housing. While one part of the unfortunate population drank their woes away another went home to rot and whimper in private. The remainder crowded around priests with tall top hats and false promises. Throngs of the desperate gathered around these charlatans, who were both quacks and celebrants, offering cures to the afflicted in the form of faith healing and bottled tonics. The medicine looked no different to the chromatic, inky swill that was sleeking down the drains and gutters. Across the burg the palpable influence of Father Nurgle could be felt, in the lethargy of industrial slavery, in the pox-ridden, diseased denizens of the creaking metropolis and in their languid hope – their desire to live and continue serving their beloved, daemon-lord despite the misery of such degenerate lives.