Atlas Infernal

by Rob Sanders

  Above them all the phantom moon of Auboron sat, shining its sallow, craven light down on Melmoth’s World. Czevak knew of Auboron as an oddity, even in the Eye of Terror. Swallowed whole by some ravenous warp rift or favoured by some hellish quirk, the tiny world of Auboron and its ill-fated people had been thrown backward in time. While the moon could clearly be seen and had a presence in Melmoth’s skies, it could not be physically walked or landed upon because what Czevak saw was Auboron, stuck fifty years in its own past.

  With the swarms of sickly labourers, Czevak descended into the lower burg that sat under a perpetual cloud of smog and shadow. Factories began to replace the upper slums and brick, soot-caked chimneys reached up into the grubby heavens. The miasma on the ground was thick and noxious. Its stink was suggestive of the warp’s malignity. The shuffling crowds around the inquisitor became swirling silhouettes lost in the street’s soup of obscurity.

  Czevak blinked and stumbled back as something large and uncompromising passed before him. He swiftly realised that he had been standing on rusty rails that crossed the thoroughfare and that the shadowy forms around him had ground to a trance-like halt. A caravan of wheeled bogies ran along the lines, the wagons hauled by an ugly steam tug that was all filthy pistons and hot chimneys. One of the burg’s filthy denizens found her way under the wheels of the factory tram and was dragged sickeningly beneath it. The accident drew no attention from the crowd, suggesting to Czevak that it was a common occurrence and that it might not have been an accident at all but completely intentional. The engine pulled cargo trucks full of a black, mineral fuel, the coals of which tumbled from the wagons and bounced off the cobbled street. Picking up one of the rocks, Czevak inspected it. Although it seemed to have the dark, bitumous sheen of everything else in the burg, the High Inquisitor recognised the warp-lustre of something evil and affected. This was no ordinary fuel and if it was burned in the industrial mills, kilns and furnaces of the backwater industriascape, then its corruptive influence was everywhere: clinging to the cobbles and buildings, falling in the black rain and part of the toxic brume that everyone was breathing.

  Diverting off down crumbling steps, crushed archways and alleyways, Czevak followed the rusty track in the direction from which the mysterious mineral and the steam wagons were trundling. Taking care to memorise his route, Czevak traced the track through the underburg and down into the subterranean tram-tunnels that not only transported the mineral cargo but also sheltered freakshow communities of the most deformed denizens – the dispossessed masses of those no longer of use to the burg or themselves.

  The track came back out into the noxious open in a colossal black pit, a vast open-cast mine upon the edges of which the burg teetered. The mine was one of many ragged gashes in the industriascape. The one in which Czevak stood was an obscene, terraced expanse littered with mining equipment like chimney-festooned dragline excavators, steam-drills and bucket engines ripping mineral deposits out of the bowels of the planet. Through an abandoned survey-scope, Czevak took in the detail of the dark crater. Parts of the pit were flooded with cloudy lakes of rainwater upon which swarms of blotch flies bred in living twisters that danced across the murky surface. Thousands of afflicted workers were stomping down zig-zag paths cut into the cast-side in dazed throngs. Deep horns still reverberated across the burg announcing the shift change and labourers snatched up freshly abandoned pneumatic shovels, steam-hammers and drill-picks at the pit face.

  The grid cross-hairs of Czevak’s survey-scope suddenly fell upon a structure that seemed out of place. Everything that the inquisitor had observed of Melmoth’s World so far had confirmed a backwater, industrial level of technology. Men were hacking minerals out of the ground and the most advanced examples of innovation Czevak had seen were coal furnaces and steam-powered engines. The twisted bulk outline of a Dark Mechanicus realspace Geller lance, surrounded by pentagrammic vivisection frames stood out immediately and occupied a quiet area of pit. A bright, azure hue emanated from the frame’s centre point and armoured shapes stood sentinel around the structure.

  Pulling his eye away from the lens, Czevak called Father to him. The servo-skull obediently drifted over. Taking the drone with both hands Czevak triggered a stud-catch at the back of Father’s cranium. Epiphani used the empty storage space beyond for spare items she thought she might need out in the field: an addict’s back-up box-thimble of Spook, eyeshadow, lipstick and other assorted powders and rouges for her face, a small tube-canteen of water and an ornate, pocket

  autopistol. Dumping the hoard in the grit, Czevak extracted the stasis casket from the inside of his Harlequin coat. Detaching its handle from the matte black shield casing and securing the dark lantern-style sliding door, the inquisitor slid the bell jar up into the servo-skull’s cranial compartment and thumbed the stud-catch.

  Going briefly back to the survey-scope, Czevak jumped as he found himself staring directly into the grillepiece, headdress and searing eyes of a Rubric Marine. He turned to find two more coming up behind, bolters trained on the garish figure of the inquisitor.

  ‘Not good,’ Czevak admitted bleakly. Then with a flourish of his Harlequin coat, ‘This way is it? Come on then. Follow me.’

  Ignoring the inquisitor’s tomfoolery, the hulking Rubric Marines prompted him down the slope with their weapons. Drifting behind at a distance, the servo-skull followed tentatively. Stumbling and skidding down the rock and grit of the dusty coalface, Czevak walked towards the pentagrammic vivisection frames, where a circle of sentinel Thousand Sons Rubric Marines were waiting for him. Two came forward, grabbed Czevak by the shoulders and forced him down to his knees.

  Looking up, Czevak watched a further squad of Rubric Marines stomp down the nearby scree. Upon their shoulders the undead Adeptus Astartes carried a golden, pyramid-style palanquin, upon which sat an armoured, androgynous giant. He wore the gleaming, ornate armour of the Thousand Sons Traitor Legion and as he got up out of his warped throne and walked off the palanquin, his boots telekinetically carried him to the ground as if walking down invisible steps. The monster pressed his palms and dark-rune painted claws together and feasted his eyes on Czevak’s fresh face and athletic, younger body.

  ‘You are looking well, inquisitor,’ Xarchos observed, his own features rapidly changing, every turn and angle producing a different face. He finally settled on an unsettling reflection of the High Inquisitor’s own. ‘Far better than when I last saw you. I see the eldar have been treating you well.’

  ‘Their hospitality was better than yours, warp scum,’ Czevak told the sorcerer.

  ‘Or perhaps you have succumbed to the regenerative powers of one of the cursed artefacts that you have been reading so much about in the Black Library,’ the sorcerer said.

  ‘Damn you, Xarchos,’ Czevak shot back with a smile.

  ‘Erudite, inquisitor. But hardly surprising. A truly learned man would not have been – for the longest time – my puppet, his strings tangled in my web of intrigue.’

  ‘Save it, spawn-fondler,’ Czevak called. ‘I’ve cut my puppet’s strings and seen myself for the pawn I’ve become.’

  ‘I very much doubt that.’

  ‘The Corpus Vivexorsectio and the locations of the Daecropsicum artefacts you have used to end lives all over the Eye,’ Czevak told him. ‘You even had me destroy the last of them and release Mammoshad from that damned coin, so that you might raise him here.’

  ‘Excellent, inquisitor but I think that it is a little late in the day to be second guessing me now.’

  ‘This set-up,’ Czevak nodded at the vivisection frames, ‘is but a distraction. Just like leaving a copy of the Corpus Vivexorsectio in the crate on Arach-Cyn, you knew where it would lead me. Likewise, this rig – you don’t have an energy source large enough to power the Geller lance. You won’t cut up your prize like the Dark Mechanicus. You intend to unleash Mammoshad on the galaxy – its freedom in exchange for an eternity’s destructive service to the Thousand Sons – a gift, to your cowar
dly master.’

  The crater echoed with the slow clapping of Korban Xarchos.

  ‘So now I suppose that you should do what you came here to do. Destroy Mammoshad and stop me.’

  Nodding a signal to the two flanking Rubric Marines, Xarchos prompted the Space Marines to drag Czevak across the dust of the cast-mine bottom. As the Rubric Marines hauled him towards the Geller lance, Czevak came to realise at least one of his mistakes. The warped machine was not a Geller lance at all, although it was definitely a kind of Dark Mechanicus construct. Something incorporating exotic xenos technologies, a Gauss arc drill. Supra-magnetic weaponry of alien design, designed to strip away even the thickest armour, layer by molecular layer. Constructed here to break the planetary waters of an infernal birth.

  The Rubric Marines dragged Czevak closer to the contraption and the inquisitor found his boots no longer skidding on the bitumous grit but sliding on a polished marble surface. As he was effortlessly lugged by the Rubric Marines across the speckled, cyan tint of the smooth ground, the azure hue grew, until he found himself held precariously on the ragged edge. It was as though a colossal egg had been growing – in size and material presence – under Melmoth’s blighted surface. Czevak now stood on the surface shell of that gargantuan egg. Xarchos’s dark drill had uncovered it and punctured through in readiness for a daemonic birth. The rift had been opening for a long time. Mammoshad had been growing in Melmoth’s rocky womb, fed by the psychic screams of a hundred catastrophes, orchestrated by the maniacal genius of Korban Xarchos and his homicidal manipulation of the Daecropsicum artefacts, of which Mammoshad had ironically been part.

  Through the broken shell Czevak stared into the unreality inside. Inside the egg below his feet – an egg the foolish Nurglites of Melmoth’s World had been uncovering with their picks and drills – the Tzeentchian daemon Mammoshad was being reborn, in its glorious original incarnation. A gargantuan phoenix-like monstrosity, aflame with azure radiance and enveloped in fiery wings of change. Reptilian of limb, it streamed warp blaze from the nostrils of its cruel, massive, snaggle-toothed beak. As he looked down through the blaze of the world inside the egg, warp streams of psychic energy threaded through the sustenance of soulspace like a bloodied yolk. They held in place a stunted obscenity, already immense in dimension, with curled limbs and spine and bloated head. With its beak buried in amongst its unfeathered wings, a huge, black orb of a daemon eye stared up at the inquisitor with unbound hatred.

  ‘Mammoshad is ready,’ Xarchos hissed from above the excavation. ‘It just desires one more life. Feel honoured, Bronislaw Czevak, it asked for yours specifically. So, do what you came to do – destroy the daemon or be destroyed yourself.’

  Czevak swallowed. This was not going according to plan.

  ‘Where’s that sorcerous bastard master of yours?’ Czevak asked, staring into the depths of the warp void below. ‘I would have thought he would want to see this story through to the end.’

  Xarchos smiled. ‘He’s watching.’

  Like a pebble dropped into a still pool, Korban Xarchos’ face sploshed and rippled. As the wrinkles radiated outward the face became still once more, but instead of Czevak’s features, the traitor’s face was now that of Ahzek Ahriman. The sorcerer beamed cerulean majesty and turned his demigod’s eyes on Czevak.

  ‘Inquisitor,’ Ahriman greeting Czevak with cold civility. ‘Still the maggot wriggling through the rotten flesh of galactic corruption, I see.’

  ‘Until maggots devour yours, deviant,’ Czevak replied.

  ‘It seems of late, inquisitor, that you have become distracted,’ Ahriman said, his stoic features glowing bright. ‘Entangled in a fruitless campaign to deny me my treasures, while coveting the greatest for yourself. A rare artefact from the Black Library of Chaos. An ancient tome that you reportedly never let out of your sight. An atlas that details the labyrinthine pathways of the xenos webway, leading to countless warp gates and portals about the galaxy and showing the location of the eldar’s hidden repository of dark lore. The Atlas Infernal.’

  Before Czevak had time to reply, the sorcerer waved two casual fingers at him. The inquisitor’s Harlequin coat was suddenly aflame. The enchanted blaze flashed through the garment, incinerating the item about Czevak’s body until all that was left was ash on the breeze and the junk that the inquisitor kept in his pockets. Peering at the items piled either side of the inquisitor from his now non-existent pockets, Ahriman’s eyes glowed and narrowed.

  ‘Could I be so bold as to save me some time and you unbearable agony – again – by asking, inquisitor, where is the Atlas Infernal?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you…’ Czevak began.

  ‘I really have no interest in occupying the narrow confines of your mind again, inquisitor…’ Ahriman’s voice was everywhere, bouncing around the open-cast crater and through Czevak’s mind. The Rubric Marines tightened their deathless grip on the inquisitor’s arms, holding him in place as their sorcerer lord gazed into him. ‘But if you press me.’ The speed and savage force with which the sorcerer attempted to ravage his soul surprised even Czevak. The invasive mind probe blasted past Czevak’s feeble attempts to resist, stripping away his most recent memories. Like pages in a book the recovered images were torn out one by one, screwed up and thrown aside by the fell sorcerer. Czevak with Xarchos. His capture by the Rubric Marines. Peering at the vivisection frames through the survey-scope. The servo-skull.

  The servo-skull.

  Czevak came back to his senses. The pollutive presence of the Thousand Sons sorcerer vanished from his mind. Ahriman’s blazing eyes took in the crater, looking for the servo-skull he’d seen Czevak tamper with in his memories. The Space Marine’s perfect vision spotting the dull, blue bionics of the drone peeping through the crane arm of a silent, dragline excavator. Reaching out with a clawed hand, the mighty sorcerer drew the servo-skull to him. Father’s anti-gravity drive whirred at full repulsive power but it did not stop the drone’s cranium smashing against metal struts as it was pulled through the crane arm and across the open space to Ahriman’s waiting palm. Father’s eyes flashed cold blue alarm and his vellum spool dribbled panic-scrawled parchment. Ahriman held the tiny servo-skull.

  Czevak thrashed against the Rubric Marines in violent protest but was held just as steadfastly in their supernatural grip. Ahriman beamed down on the struggling inquisitor with his divine, impassive features, the all-knowing, all-seeing calm of a god. Ahriman triggered the stud and unclasped the drone’s storage section. The bell jar stasis casket fell out into his waiting hand. As the sorcerer’s brow knotted in confusion he let the servo-skull go, allowing Father to shoot off across the pit, vellum trailing after it.

  ‘No!’ Czevak bawled at the sorcerer. Ahriman’s uncertainty spilled over into anger.

  ‘Is this it? What is this?’ the sorcerer demanded. Czevak writhed. The demigod burned into him with his blazing, blue eyes. Sweeping the object with two fingers the sorcerer telekinetically stripped away the matte black shielding of the stasis casket, revealing the bell jar beneath. Revealing the embryo within. Revealing the Omega-Minus Pariah in all its negative psionic glory.

  Czevak ceased his mock resistance and relaxed into satisfaction. His pretence had been enough to pique the sorcerer’s insatiable curiosity. He wanted to eat up his enemy’s suffering, to savour the sorcerer’s surprise.

  ‘Enjoy, you warp-spawned bastard,’ Czevak spat.

  The soul-scalding agony of the thing was so much that Ahriman could not unclasp his spasming claw. Pure, inexorable nullification blazed through the psyker’s being, visiting upon the sorcerer agonies ten-thousandfold what the beast had practised on Czevak. Even in the presence of such devastation, the psyker was not without resources. The raging torment of Ahriman’s twisted face contorted further as it began to change. Like the pebble-splash in reverse, savage wrinkles rippled inwards and before Czevak had chance to fully enjoy the agony of his sworn enemy it was replaced by that of its original owner – Korban Xarchos.


  The shock and feral suffering finding its way immediately onto the androgynous face was impossible to describe. The Omega-Minus embryo bathed the psyker in immaterial deadness. Korban Xarchos held on for as long as he could, the sorcerer’s ears, eyes and nose streaming gore. The sorcerer’s chin came up and he roared his anguish and pain at the heavens. Czevak watched the monster quake in his trembling power armour, before a thick fountain of blood and brains erupted from his mouth, as though he’d been shot through the back of the head. As the bodily fluids rained back down on the beast the Thousand Sons sorcerer collapsed in a heap of lifeless ceramite. The bell jar fell from Xarchos’ dead claw and rolled down the scree slope.

  Beside Czevak the Rubric Marines became similarly lifeless and stiff. Without sorcerers to guide them the mindless Space Marines became immediately dormant. Slipping his arms out of their statuesque grip, Czevak dived for the embryo, skidding through the grit and soot in his shirt. Through his chest the inquisitor felt the ground rumble. Perhaps Korban Xarchos had provided the daemon’s last sacrifice or perhaps the daemon Mammoshad had felt the shock wave of the null entity’s agonising influence and had sensed its own vulnerability. Raging against its captivity the daemon tore the rift open about it, wanting to be born. Czevak’s fingers reached the bell jar, which was wretched even for him to touch. Czevak was no psyker but the thing was such raw negativity that even the inquisitor’s latent psionic potential was roasted in its presence. His stomach churned violently and his thoughts ached. Resisting the urge to be sick or even curl up and die, the inquisitor did the unthinkable and smashed the bell jar against the rocky floor of the pit. The receptacle cracked and a section shattered. Amniotic-stasis fluid gushed onto the floor. Unable to even look at the thing, Czevak blindly thrust the remainder of the jar and the unbound Omega-Minus Pariah embryo down through the opening and into the egg.