Manflayer - Josh Reynolds

by Warhammer 40K

  He took a hit on the shoulder and replied in kind, pulverising the wrack’s collar bone and shattering his baton in the process. As the third wrack leapt for him, he whirled and caught its baton in mid-blow. He yanked the weapon from his attacker’s grip and smashed the wrack’s head into the deck.

  Hexachires applauded politely. Panting, Oleander glared at the two haemonculi. He took a step towards them, and Hexachires twitched a finger chidingly. ‘You will regret it if you do, Oleander. You’ve had your fun.’

  Oleander considered the baton in his hand. There was a chance he could make it. A slim one, but still a chance.

  He paused. Something pale and thin moved behind the two drukhari. He glimpsed a smile that was like a razor on flesh. Eyes like gemstones.

  Not yet… not yet…

  He dropped the baton.

  Hexachires frowned. ‘That’s it?’ he said, in a disappointed tone. ‘Maybe we have truly broken you after all. How sad.’

  Oleander looked away.

  Chapter Seven

  Preparations

  One moment, there was nothing.

  Then the firmament split, disgorging a shard of hell into reality. The transition of a vessel from the warp into realspace was not a sight for the faint of heart. Even less so when the vessel in question was the Vesalius.

  The ancient Gladius-class frigate erupted from the empyrean with a triumphal shriek of forward engines. Sleek and deadly, it was scraped clean of any insignia or identifying mark save the strange, dark stains that were left by its passage through the immaterium. Amethyst lightning danced across the crenellated battlements that lined the scarred hull. The silvery radiance of its Geller field crackled as it barrelled across the stars, seeking its prey with single-minded intensity.

  Fabius stood atop the observation deck overlooking the bridge. He could feel the ship’s rumble of contentment, like the growl of some great felinoid. It had been too long since the Vesalius had been allowed to prowl the star-lanes and it seemed to be enjoying the improvements he’d made. He turned to the ship’s strategium overseer.

  ‘Wolver, report.’

  ‘The Vesalius is pleased,’ Wolver said in a crackling monotone. The strategium overseer no longer resembled the man or woman they had been. Instead, Wolver was an automaton of hard metal and glass. An alembic shaped like a person. A living brain pulsed within the clear dome of their skull, and human eyes peered out through an androgynous brass death-mask. The entirety of their nervous system was visible, stretching down through the glass body, like a cutaway in a medical treatise. Fabius considered it some of his finest work to date.

  ‘I should hope so, given the last round of modifications,’ Fabius said. He took a deep breath, relishing the strangely sterile air of the observation deck. One of the side effects of the wraithbone infesting the frigate was a decided lack of impurities in the air and water systems. He stroked a fluted rail of psychoplastic, feeling its warmth.

  It had grown within the shell of the Vesalius, replacing the ship’s corroded innards with new structures – ones he had yet to fully understand. The vessel was changing, becoming something new. Something alien. Fabius approved.

  ‘Will I have to let you go, I wonder?’ he murmured. ‘Or will you simply not be there one day when I call for you?’ He felt a pulse go through the rail, and knew the ship had heard him. It was always listening, of course. Even when he preferred otherwise.

  ‘The Vesalius loves you, Benefactor,’ Wolver said in their curious voice.

  Fabius turned. ‘That is reassuring, Wolver. And much appreciated. We are on schedule, I trust?’ It had taken longer than he liked to organise the expedition. Given the vagaries of warp travel, even for a vessel such as the Vesalius, he’d half-feared that they would arrive too late.

  ‘The Vesalius is.’

  ‘Good. It would not do to be late.’ He turned back to the rail and clasped his hands behind his back. Down below, overseers bellowed commands as the crew bent to their tasks. Most of the latter were servitors, press-ganged into service from other vessels, or forged in Fabius’ gene-works. They were at one with their cogitator-cradles and many had become infested with the glistening strands of wraithbone that crawled across the deck.

  Some of these were now little more than scraps of meat clinging to vaguely humanoid lumps of psychoplastic. But as long as their function was maintained, Fabius saw no sign for concern. Indeed, he looked forward to observing the command deck’s slow transformation into what he could only suspect was going to resemble a brain. Already the walls were beginning to buckle and reform, and many of the hatches had welded themselves shut or simply been swallowed up by the substance of the ship.

  What would it become in a hundred years? A thousand? A new form of life, perhaps. The thought pleased him to no end. From the ashes of the old, the new would ever arise.

  ‘Music, please,’ he said. ‘Something cheerful, I think.’

  Moments later, a jaunty tune slipped from the vox-casters mounted throughout the deck, and marched across the air. Fabius closed his eyes, and let the music take him elsewhere.

  The tune was old. Fabius prided himself on his collection of pre-Unification music – a passion of his, even from childhood. The collection had accompanied him, in one form or another, from the mountains of Europa, through the killing fields of Jove-Sat II to the murderous frenzy of the Heresy. He had lost elements of it here and there, and replaced them with other pieces – such as the handful of ancient aeldari operettas he’d purchased from a desperate merchant in Commorragh – but the bones of the collection remained the same. Like him, it persisted.

  He recalled his first glimpse of Commorragh – a moment of blinding awe, followed by the crushing tedium of its reality. The Dark City was dying – not all at once, or even in any obvious fashion, but its death was certain nonetheless. Its inhabitants were feeding off themselves, like starving animals trapped in a hole.

  There was much wisdom to be found in Commorragh. The concentrated learning of an empire that had spanned the galaxy. But it was greedily hoarded by a cabal of broken monsters, who wasted their eternities vying against one another in pointless schemes. Immorta­lity was wasted on such creatures.

  Not that he wished to be immortal himself. A bit more time, perhaps – but true immortality? No. To exist forever was a burden, not a blessing. To be forced to see all that one had built inevitably crumble to ruin? Better oblivion than that.

  Proximity alarms sounded, and Fabius looked up at the main observation screen hanging over the bridge. Amid cascades of data, he saw that they had arrived at the outer reaches of their destination. Past an encircling ring of celestial debris sat the grey orb of Peleus-Tertius. A minor world, one of six in the Peleus System, and the only one capable of supporting life on an ongoing basis. The others had been extensively terraformed into agri worlds, overseen by indentured populaces or agricultural servitors. Only Peleus-Tertius had anything resembling civilisation.

  A minor world in a minor system. Perfect for his needs, in other words. For Homo novus, isolation was safety. The New Men required time – generations – to breed and build up their strength. And he required time to observe them and, when necessary, make certain changes to the successive generations. In that regard, the Peleus System was a perfect petri dish. It had suffered no untoward breakdowns in the social order, and the descendants of the New Men he’d seeded there were performing well within the margins of error.

  It was a shame that it would have to be sacrificed on the altar of necessity. But there were precious few alternatives, and all of them costlier by far. Better one world, one system, than all of them. Better a few than the many.

  His hands tightened on Torment, and he felt the daemon-shard respond to his anger. The chirurgeon injected a mild calmative. As the chemicals did their work, he reflected on recent events. He ran back through the available data, trusting in his eidetic me
mory to ensure he missed nothing. He was certain he knew the culprit. Hexachires had made certain of that. The haemonculus had as good as signed his name to his work.

  Fabius smiled thinly, recalling the last time he’d been face to face with the creature. The look of dawning realisation in Hexachires’ eyes as he’d understood at last how he’d underestimated his most attentive student.

  It hadn’t been as difficult as Fabius had feared at the time. Hexachires had the arrogance of the truly immortal. His assumptions had been unshakeable and his cunning hobbled by his need to preen and strut. Had it not been for the latter, he would have made an almost tolerable companion. They’d had much in common, for all that they were not the same species. Fabius sighed.

  ‘It was not meant to be,’ he murmured. He thumped Torment against the deck. ‘No sense ruminating on the past.’ He made his way to the strategium-dais that rose from the centre of the deck and stepped onto it. ‘Wolver – activate strategium-link, please.’

  ‘Activating,’ Wolver replied.

  A moment later, a shroud of hololithic data fell across Fabius. His armour’s systems linked with the data-flow, filtering it for ease of processing. He dispensed with agricultural statistics, census reports and industrial metrics, and focused instead on the astrometric data he’d compiled on his last visit.

  ‘Show me a list of the recorded hyperspatial pathways within easy jump of Peleus-Tertius.’

  A list of nearby webway nodes appeared on the hololithic display.

  ‘Eliminate all compromised nodes.’

  The list shrank by half.

  ‘Eliminate all sealed nodes.’

  The list was cut by another third.

  ‘Highlight major hubs and conduits larger than twenty metres in diameter.’

  A rough map of the webway, with several arteries illuminated, shimmered into view. A moment’s calculation told him which ones posed the greatest risk. He activated his vox-link.

  It was time to prepare.

  The embarkation bay was filled with a great clamouring as the mutant overseers herded beastkin aboard waiting gunships. The creatures were the best the tribes of Belial IV had to offer. Warriors had vied with each other in single combat for the privilege of going to war alongside Pater Mutatis. Some carried primitive carbines or salvaged autoguns, while others made do with cruder implements – hacking blades and makeshift shields, decorated with gaudy tribal sigils.

  Savona watched them from the deck above. Behind her, nearly a hundred warriors of the 12th Millennial were busy making their final checks. Boltguns were disassembled, oiled and reassembled. Armour was patched and painted. Oaths of indulgence were scratched onto scraps of parchment, to be hung prominently. Proud and fierce as they were, the beastkin were little more than chaff to be stampeded into the enemy. The renegade Space Marines were the true iron core of the army assembled in the bay. They would deliver the death blow to the enemy. They would take the glory. In return, the beastkin got the privilege of dying for their betters. What more could any ­sensible creature want?

  Bellephus joined her. ‘They’re loading the last of them now.’ Despite the barbarity of his appearance, his voice was smooth and silken. A politician’s voice – or a lover’s.

  ‘Good. I want to be ready as soon as we get the word.’ She looked at him. ‘What about the war-hound and the turncoat?’

  ‘Arrian and Skalagrim are making their own preparations.’ Bellephus paused. ‘Are you certain you do not wish me to accompany you? Varex can–’

  ‘Varex can’t find his own waste shunt with both hands. Someone needs to keep him in check. That’s you.’ She paused and patted his arm. ‘It won’t be so bad. You’ve always enjoyed the webway.’

  ‘I find it soothing.’

  Gunshots sounded below. Savona turned. On the boarding ramps of the gunships, chieftains brayed challenges at one another as their followers snarled and squealed in mounting excitement. Order was restored within moments, and the queues continued.

  ‘When was the last time we fought the drukhari?’ she asked idly.

  ‘Breaker’s Junction.’

  ‘That’s right. They snapped up our prey right from under our noses. I remember how infuriated the Radiant was. I thought he was going to kill all of us.’ Savona smiled, remembering the look on Kasperos’ face when he realised that the world he’d come to plunder had already been stripped bare. He’d thrown a tantrum that had lasted for the better part of three days. Of all the Joybound, only Oleander had been able to talk him down.

  Her smile faded as she thought of the renegade Apothecary. She’d never liked Oleander, but she was indebted to him, after a fashion.

  If Oleander hadn’t brought Fabius Bile to Kasperos, the 12th would never have launched an attack on Lugganath, and all that followed might never have occurred. She tapped a claw against the spirit stones hanging from her neck, relishing the weak pulses of warmth from the souls trapped within.

  ‘And here we are returning the favour,’ Bellephus said. ‘More than three centuries later and with a different commander.’

  ‘Better late than never,’ Savona said.

  ‘He’s dying, you know.’

  ‘He’s always dying.’

  ‘I mean his current body is wearing out. He’s hiding it, but he’s pushed it to the edge of its tolerances. I can smell the rot starting.’

  Savona looked at him. ‘I’ve never seen you without your helmet. How can you smell anything that isn’t the stink of your own sweat?’

  Bellephus tapped one of the fleshy growths on his helmet. ‘I am blessed with many sensory organs.’ He indicated another one. ‘This one can smell memories.’

  ‘How useful.’

  ‘Very. My poems are much improved by what they show me.’

  Savona hid a grimace. Though he had served as her equerry for centuries, it was only recently that Bellephus had allowed her the dubious privilege of reading his work. And shyly, at that – like a love-starved youth, fresh off his mother’s teat. She thought such behaviour unbecoming of a brutal killer, but she’d never said as much to his face.

  ‘What do you think of our chances?’ she asked.

  ‘Hard to say. Bound to be bad for us, whatever the outcome. It always is.’

  Savona ignored the bait. Bellephus had been advising her to take the 12th and depart the Clonelord’s orbit for years. Ever since Fabius’ return from Commorragh. The 12th had been shattered and reformed more times than she could count under Fabius’ nominal leadership – but always came out the stronger.

  But there was still a bit of forging to be done. A few impurities left to hammer out of the steel. Then it would be perfect. And then she would take her place as commander openly, without the pretence of Fabius’ favour to protect her. Or so she told herself.

  The truth was, she wasn’t sure if that day would ever truly come.

  She watched as battle-gangs of stimm-enhanced mutants in restraint collars and bite-masks were driven towards the gunships by specially bred overseers perched on anti-grav discs. The snap-crackle of shock glaives and the hiss of electro-lashes added to the din. The smell of burnt flesh and hair mingled with the odour of excrement, machine oil and blood.

  Savona closed her eyes and let the ripe scents wash over her. Once, in another life, she would undoubtedly have found such scents disgusting. Now they seemed to her sweet as the smell of newly bloomed flowers. She stretched and leaned over the rail, watching the confusion below. ‘This is my favourite part of a raid, you know. So many possibilities, so much potential…’

  ‘It’s not a raid, remember?’ Bellephus murmured.

  ‘Raid, ambush, what’s the difference?’

  ‘Any number of tactical and strategic factors,’ he said, as he stroked the newest lines of verse carved into his vambrace, tracing each word in sequence. ‘They’re getting restless. Impatient. They want to
fight.’

  ‘They smell war on the wind,’ Savona said.

  ‘Is that from one of my poems?’ Bellephus asked, after a moment.

  Savona didn’t look at him. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Would you like to hear my newest one?’ he asked, and the eagerness in his voice made her cringe. Bellephus’ poems were by turns vile and saccharine, obscene and bucolic.

  ‘Not right now.’

  Bellephus nodded amiably. ‘Later then.’

  Savona glanced at him. ‘You seem remarkably calm, Bellephus.’

  ‘Why would I not be? Battle is our purpose.’

  ‘Yours maybe.’

  Bellephus studied her. ‘Yours too. The moment you put on Gondol’s battleplate, you pledged yourself to the pleasures of war. The sooner you admit it, the sooner the others will accept you.’

  ‘How many centuries has it been, Bellephus?’ she asked softly. ‘How many centuries since I took what was mine? And still, some of them refuse to see me.’

  ‘Not so many as that,’ Bellephus chuckled. ‘After the decimations, I mean.’

  Savona frowned. ‘Is that what you’re calling them now? I had no hand in any of that.’

  ‘No. And that is the only reason Varex and the other traditionalists have not attempted to slit your throat.’ He caught one of the fragments of sharpened ceramite that hung from his armour and began to scratch at the verse on his vambrace.

  Savona watched him. ‘If they want to lead, then they can challenge me.’

  ‘They won’t, because that will legitimise you. Fighting you openly means you are their equal – as good as any soldier of the Legion. You know this.’

  ‘They’re cowards.’

  ‘Yes. They are frightened. Not by you, but by what you represent. You are a sign that the Legion they knew and the Millennial they served in are dead. Truly dead.’ He looked at her. ‘We spent thousands of years holding to that ideal, however frayed it grew, however gross our appetites became. And now it is dust and we are left with an uncertain future. And we do not deal well with uncertainty.’