Predator, Prey

by Rob Sanders

  ‘Kubik wishes to learn the heretical secrets of this barbaric technology?’ Vangorich said, before once again allowing his mind to dwell on the politics. ‘Perhaps the Inquisition’s interest in Kubik is less collaborative than the Fabricator General conceives.’

  ‘My lord,’ Yendl continued, ‘with respect, you are not thinking broadly enough. We believe that the Fabricator General’s interests lie not in what is best for the Imperium – but what is best for the Mechanicus. Kubik does not wish to learn the secrets of the xenos tech in order to destroy it or defend against it. He wishes to utilise it. Replicate it. Embrace its potential.’

  ‘You’re saying that…’

  ‘I’m saying, my lord, that in the event of a threat to the inner core, to the Sol subsector – from the invader or anything else – he means to remove Mars from the path of annihilation.’

  ‘Move the planet?’ Vangorich said, his mind struggling with the enormity of the proposal.

  ‘Save Mars,’ Yendl said, ‘and leave the Imperium to the ravages of the enemy.’

  ‘Does he have these secrets?’

  ‘Unknown, my lord. But if and when he does, beyond the defensive capabilities of such secrets, such techno-heretical wonders would make the Martian forge-world an intolerable weapon.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Vangorich said finally. He turned with the intelligence log under one arm and ventured soberly back up the colossal ramp.

  ‘My lord,’ Yendl called after him, after a moment of reconsideration. A little way up, the Grand Master of Assassins turned. ‘Understand, sir, this is speculation. We have no direct evidence of the construction of such a heretical abomination.’

  Vangorich cast his eyes bleakly across the sleeper cadre.

  ‘Red Haven: Priority Primus,’ the Grand Master said to them. ‘Find some.’

  TEN

  Ardamantua

  Ardamantua was a gravity-churned mess, a mass grave that had suffered tectonic upheaval. An aftermath of fresh earth and rotting bodies. It was fascinating.

  Artisan Trajectorae Argus Van Auken was standing in a craterous hollow swarming with Mechanicus menials and seisomats taking readings and feeding the data back to the survey brig Subservius, which held position in low orbit above the expedition. Magi astrophysicus bombarded the ruined structure of the Ardamantuan crust with magnasonic arrays and powerful pulse-scanners, the dishes and receivers of which were directed down into the ground.

  As soon as the distress calls from the surface had faded and the colossal xenos attack moon disappeared – which had happened as swiftly as the abomination had arrived – the Subservius had returned. Argus Van Auken had come back at the head of a small army of data-ravenous priests and adepts, all intent on understanding the mechanics of the catastrophe. They busied themselves with experimentation and observation, all the while trampling xenos corpses – both common Chromes and Veridi giganticus – and the shredded remains of Mechanicus support staff, and the shattered yellow plate of fallen Imperial Fists, into the disturbed earth.

  Only knowledge mattered. The xenos cadavers were fearfully imposing, even in death. The honourable Adeptus Astartes – torn to pieces in the enemy deluge – deserved better. Argus Van Auken was incapable of such distractions, however. His work benefited from a lack of such sentimentality. Some might describe it as a disability. Others, a superhuman ability. It had been Van Auken’s cold logic that had held the Subservius on station, pursuing its observation protocols when lesser adepts like Magos Biologis Eldon Urquidex had urged the artisan to return and interfere with unfolding events. Perhaps it had been Urquidex’s devotion to the science of the living that had burdened the priest with such weakness. Urquidex had watched the data-streams of doom return from the planet’s surface. He saw an Adeptus Astartes Chapter on the brink of annihilation. He saw the physical perfection of the human form and a rich genetic history of conquest and supremacy on the cusp of extinction. He gave in to his baser, organic impulses and requested of Van Auken a last-minute retrieval.

  The request was denied – and as the expedition’s second-ranking priest, Urquidex received a citation for modus-unbecoming from the first. Van Auken reminded his colleague of the Third Law of Universal Variance: the Bystander Paradox. Urquidex had replied that they called it a paradox for a reason.

  The alien Beast had unleashed its savage supremacy on Ardamantua and all those upon its surface. None had survived. Only the data – pure and true – remained. It was Van Auken’s responsibility to see that the information found its way back to Mars where it might aid the Fabricator General in his service of the Machine God’s will.

  Striding through auspexmechanics and oscillamats that were monitoring the structural damage to the planetary depths, Van Auken ascended the hollow’s slopes to find that Urquidex’s survey crews had planted electrostatic rods in the mulched earth. About the artisan-primus, fields of static electricity had raised the dead. Hulking greenskin corpses were drifting a few feet above the ground on the crackling field, making examination of the bolt-ravaged specimens easier for the magos biologis and his genetor tech-adepts. The Beast’s work on Ardamantua had been so absolute in its ferocity that there were no other remains to examine. The Space Marines and accompanying Adeptus Mechanicus personnel of the Ardamantuan purge had been hacked and blasted to pieces. The monsters had been possessed of a bottomless ferocity that seemed to infect the creatures even down to their diminutive slave and vermin forms.

  Knocking the monstrous bodies into a telekinetic tumble, Van Auken’s spindly form passed through the levitated carnage. But for the electromagnetic dampeners built into his torso, the artisan also would have floated effortlessly across the tormented earth. Skitarii from the Epsil-XVIII Collatorax stood sentinel among the sea of bodies, with their galvanic rifles cradled in bionic limbs. They had been assigned as expedition security and for use as execution squads, putting down monstrosities that had not quite bled their formidable life away on the battlefield. Alpha Primus Orozko saw the approaching artisan-primus and marched to meet him.

  ‘With me, magister, if you please,’ Van Auken requested. The officer said nothing. Orozko wasn’t much of a communicator, favouring binary for orders and transmissions. He simply fell in line behind the ranking priest.

  ‘Magos,’ Van Auken said as he entered a foil laboratory- pavilion. Neither Eldon Urquidex nor his surgeons and samplers looked up from the gargantuan carcass of the ork they were dissecting on the static field. Slabs of flesh and labelled alien organs floated about them. ‘Magos,’ the artisan-primus repeated. ‘My teams have all but completed their documentation of the damage inflicted by the alien weapon.’

  ‘And…?’ the barrel-bodied Urquidex said, not taking his telescopic eyes off the brain of the beast he was carving up with a digit-mounted las-scalpel.

  ‘The enemy’s mastery of gravity manipulation and teleportational vectors is considerable,’ Van Auken said, his understatement devoid of wit or passion. The priest paused; his colleague had a habit of soliciting information when he should be delivering it. ‘The gravitational aftershocks began to subside after the weapon removed itself from the system. Its disruptive influence endures, however, fading incrementally. It will be some time before gravito-planetary equilibrium is fully restored to this world.’

  ‘Fascinating…’

  ‘It is like nothing the Machine God’s servants have documented before. It is a weapon the mere presence of which is a force of ultimate destruction. A blade that cuts without being drawn from its sheath; a bolt that blasts without leaving the barrel. If we are to achieve similar masteries, we must understand how the alien accomplishes such wonders. Scrutiny of the workings of their technology alone only reveals that it should not work at all. This is an unacceptable conclusion for our data packet.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Urquidex agreed.

  ‘The Fabricator General demands better of us,’ the artisan said.

&nbs
p; ‘Always,’ the magos replied absently.

  ‘Magos,’ Van Auken insisted, ‘I must have your hypotheses.’

  Urquidex looked up from the alien brain, his telescopic eyes retracting and refocusing.

  ‘Why rush such important research?’ the magos said with a withering gaze.

  ‘There is a time for everything,’ Van Auken said, ‘and for everything a time.’

  ‘Has this time been allocated for wastage?’ Urquidex asked. ‘Since it seems to be achieving little else.’

  ‘The Subservius has been ordered on,’ Van Auken insisted. ‘We are to rendezvous with several signum-stations before moving corewards to establish observations above Macromunda.’

  ‘To watch another unwarned world offered up before the alien for slaughter?’ Urquidex said.

  ‘You must learn to govern your sentimentality,’ Van Auken instructed. ‘Macromunda is no less a sacrifice than those genelings you experiment on in your laboratorium. These worlds would die anyway. We watch them die so that Mars might live. Now, enough of this. What observations can you add to the data packet? What is the secret of the xenos technology?’

  Urquidex gave his superior the narrowing lenses of his telescopic eyes. Retracting the digit-scalpel into the toolage of his bionic hand, the magos produced a pencil beam from his cranial arrangement, the red dot of which hovered across the artisan trajectorae’s narrow forehead. Urquidex turned back to the xenos brain he had been working on.

  ‘This structure here,’ Urquidex said, indicating a bulbous feature at the brainstem that appeared like a bloom of fungus erupting from the base of a tree, ‘governs the problem-solving faculties of the species – at least that is my theory.’

  ‘Like you, I am a priest of Mars,’ Van Auken reassured him. ‘This is a xenos abomination – there are no certainties, only theories to be tested. Proceed, magos.’

  ‘In many alien space-faring species, as well as our own,’ Urquidex told him, ‘such structures – dealing with inspiration, experimentation and technological development – occur in the frontal lobes.’ Urquidex passed the dot across a comparatively redundant part of the creature’s brain. ‘Or the xenos equivalent thereof. In a race who have taken that crucial and technologically demanding step into a larger universe, you would expect this to be an area of recent evolutionary development.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Not so in Veridi giganticus,’ the magos biologis said. ‘It occurs in one of the most primitive parts of the organ.’

  ‘But what does that mean?’ Van Auken asked.

  ‘It means that their technological mastery, being what it is, proceeds not from evolutionary, intellectual development as it has in humans and many other races. It has been a feature of their race from very early in their existence.’

  ‘An accelerated development?’ Van Auken hoped so. Acceleration could be modelled. Acceleration could be predicted.

  ‘No,’ Urquidex told him. ‘Something primordial. A capability innate within their species. Their mastery of technology – including the gravitational and vector capabilities that you would wish to reproduce – is a natural ability. Not a product of some form of developed, higher order conception.’

  ‘These conclusions will not please the Fabricator General,’ Van Auken said.

  ‘It is only a theory,’ Urquidex said. ‘Other priests at other conquest-sites may reach other conclusions.’

  ‘Have you learned anything else?’ Van Auken asked.

  Urquidex turned and snapped on a hololithic projector that enveloped the monstrous brain in a fluxing field representation.

  ‘What is that?’ the artisan asked.

  ‘Honestly?’ the magos said, ‘I don’t know. I happened upon the frequency by accident. This is the barest manifestation of it, I can tell you that. It has been fading since biological cessation.’

  ‘If you had to make an informed guess, magos?’

  ‘Some kind of field or emanation,’ Urquidex said. ‘It seems to be coming from deep within the brain structure – again, an evolutionarily ancient feature.’

  ‘Could it be psionic in nature?’ Van Auken asked cautiously.

  ‘Unknown,’ Urquidex said with equal reservation, ‘not my area of specialisation. However, watch this.’

  Urquidex directed a pair of servitors into the foil tent. Between them they carried an alien weapon: some kind of barbaric chopping implement sporting a chain of revolving teeth like a chainsword. A brute motor was built into its ungainly shaft, the handle of which was scored with primitive glyphs and graffiti. The magos directed the drones to slip the savage weapon into the beast’s death-stiffened grip, and lay the great shaft of the weapon and its murderous headpiece across the greenskin’s open and organ-excavated chest.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Van Auken asked, as Urquidex directed a servomat to attach power couplings to the weapon’s monstrous motor. ‘Magos?’

  ‘Clear…’ Urquidex said, before instructing the servomat to supply power to the weapon from its own core.

  The serrated chain of the chopper roared to life, the clunky machinery of its motor squealing and crunching, the gore of the Emperor’s Angels spraying Van Auken from the monstrous weapon’s thrashing teeth. The artisan stepped back and wiped the speckles of old blood from his face.

  ‘Turn it off,’ he commanded.

  ‘As you wish,’ Urquidex said, selecting an autopsy cleaver with a monomolecular edge from a rack of similarly macabre tools. Swinging the cleaver down with force, the magos chopped at the hulking wrist of the greenskin. It took a number of strikes, with the cleaver-blade biting through flesh and bone. With a final strike the claw-hand was separated from the meat of the arm – and the weapon chugged, bucked and died. Van Auken stepped back towards the creature with fresh interest.

  ‘It still has power?’

  ‘The problem isn’t power,’ Urquidex assured the artisan-primus. ‘The weapon has suffered a malfunction, which isn’t surprising given the poor quality of its construction and maintenance. I fear that this field – swiftly depleting and dissipating after death – in some way aids the crude workings of such creations.’

  ‘But what of technologies not in direct contact with the xenos?’

  ‘Unknown. The weapon was a simple demonstration with a cadaver-specimen,’ Urquidex said. ‘I have not observed the field’s properties in a living organism. I don’t know for sure that the field is responsible.’

  ‘If it was, could the field be replicated?’

  ‘Unknown. Not my specialisation.’

  Artisan Van Auken took a moment to process this new data.

  ‘These are important findings,’ Van Auken said. ‘They must reach Mars without delay.’

  Urquidex watched the artisan process more than just the findings. Van Auken, who scorned the display of emotions in his colleagues, had difficulty keeping pride in his expedition’s work from his gaunt face. Greed followed as an afterthought. Greed for power, recognition and influence. It was his name and designation as artisan-primus that would accompany the data packet to Mars. He who would be recalled to serve in the sacred ranks of the Fabricator General’s diagnostiad.

  ‘There is something else,’ Urquidex said, shaking Van Auken from his machinations.

  ‘Proceed,’ the artisan trajectorae encouraged, eager for more revelations.

  ‘I have gene-typed the creature and a sample of its kind,’ the Magos Biologis said, ‘and cross-referenced our findings with the data-vaults aboard the Subservius.’

  ‘And what did you discover?’ Van Auken urged.

  ‘They all have the same origin, genetically speaking,’ Urquidex said. ‘With some more work, we should be able to narrow it down to a particular area of the galaxy. Perhaps even a single world.’

  A burst of binary cant from Alpha Primus Orozko interrupted the pair of priests. An alpha of the
Epsil-XVIII Collatorax had reported to the primus. Urquidex and Van Auken turned, and Orozko prompted the subordinate to report.

  ‘Artisan-primus,’ the tribunus said. ‘The augurmats have discovered life signs and designation signatures in quadrant four. They’re weak but verified and coming from beneath the ground.’

  ‘Survivors?’ Eldon Urquidex dared to hope.

  ‘Witnesses,’ Van Auken corrected him, ‘to the end of a world. Take us to them.’

  The alpha led his commander and the two priests through the floating carnage about the magos’ field of electrostatic rods. Beyond the static, the sampling crews and the skitarii standing sentinel, the alpha took them to a small excavation. A cordon of gathered Collatorax, augurmats and a servitor dig-team parted to admit the artisan-primus, and a medicae servitor looked up from its work at the tech-priests’ arrival.

  A pair of stretcher-bearing servitors carried the remains of an ashen priest from the excavation site. He was clad in the robes of the Mechanicus, besmirched with Ardamantuan earth, but had suffered the horrific injuries of battle. His legs were missing, hacked away by some brute weapon of war. Lengths of intestine and the tech-priest’s inner workings spilled from the mess of his abdomen-stump.

  ‘Halt,’ the magos said, bringing the servitors to a stop. ‘Status?’

  ‘Compromised,’ the medicae servitor told him in monotone. ‘Critical. Demonstrated no life signs or data-feeds. Invasive interventions stabilised core and cogitae. Organic systems either dead or dying. Survival unlikely.’

  What blood and oil remained in the priest’s body was leaking out onto the stretcher. His augmented biology was still partially functioning, although he was technically not alive and in machine system shock. His hands reached out for things that were not there and nonsense fell from his lips like a stream of dribble.

  ‘You know this priest?’ Van Auken asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Urquidex informed him. ‘The Omnissiah favoured him with my specialism: his name is Laurentis, Phaeton Laurentis. He was assigned to the original expedition.’