Variel’s amusement ended at his eyes. “Because of Fryga, Talos. Because I still owe you.”
“Thank you for the offer. I will consider it.”
Variel keyed a command into his narthecium gauntlet. “See that you do. If my estimate is correct, refusing means you will be dead by the end of the solar year.”
Talos’ reply was broken off by Deltrian drifting back to them in a purr of smooth augmetics and a whisper of robes.
“I have collated the required data,” he declared in tinny pride.
Variel saluted, fist over his breastplate. “I will take the data to my master. Lord Garreon is overseeing the resupply of your vessel.”
Talos caught himself thumbing his temple. With an irritated growl, he replaced his helm, clicking it into place and bathing his senses in the warm thrum of his armour’s autosenses.
“I will escort you back to the Covenant, tech-adept. I must report to the Exalted myself.”
“Think on what I have said, brother,” Variel said.
Talos nodded, but didn’t answer.
Maruc caught up with Septimus, finding it harder to move through the crowded thoroughfare. He also couldn’t quite keep revulsion from showing on his face; some of the creatures passing were brazen with their mutations. He almost collided with a spindly black-skinned woman, who cursed at him through a slack, rippling face like melting tallow. He muttered something loosely apologetic, and hurried on. The spicy stink of sweat mixed with the copper of spilled blood no matter where he turned his head. People—and “people”—were shouting, growling, shoving and laughing in every direction.
Septimus reached out a hand to grip another walker’s shoulder, halting the young woman in her stride. She turned, clutching an empty plastek bucket to her paunchy stomach.
“Jigrash kul kukh?” the serf asked her.
She shook her head.
“ Low Gothic?” Septimus tried.
She shook her head again, her eyes wide at the expensive bionics just visible beneath the fall of his hair. She reached to touch them, to brush his hair aside, but he gently slapped her hand away.
“Operor vos agnosco?” he asked.
She narrowed her eyes and nodded, a quick bob of her head.
Wonderful, Septimus thought. Some backwater variant of High Gothic, a language he barely knew anyway.
Carefully, he led the woman, who looked to be wearing a plundered vestment of various discarded Imperial uniforms, to the edge of the wide hallway. It took him several minutes to explain what he needed. At the end of his halting explanation, she nodded again.
“Mihi inzizta,” she said, and gestured for him to follow.
“Finally,” Septimus said under his breath. Maruc followed again. As he peered at the woman’s bucket, he realised it wasn’t quite empty. Three fruits, like little brown apples, bumped about in the bottom.
“You wanted a fruit seller?” he asked Septimus, his expression showing what he was thinking—that the other serf was insane.
“Among other things, yes.” He kept his voice low in the crowd.
“Will you tell me why?”
Septimus cast a disparaging glance over his shoulder. “Are you blind? She’s pregnant.”
Maruc’s mouth widened. “No. You can’t be serious.”
“How do you think the Legion makes new warriors?” hissed Septimus. “Children. Untainted children.”
“Please tell me you’re not going to—”
“I will leave you here, Maruc.” Septimus’ tone froze. “I swear to you, if you make this any harder than it has to be, I will leave you here.”
The three of them moved down an adjacent corridor, the woman leading them, still clutching her bucket. Less crowded here, but still too many witnesses. Septimus bided his time.
“What did you tell her?” Maruc asked at last.
“That I wished to purchase more fruit. She is taking us to another trader.” His voice thawed as he glanced at the older man again. “We are not the only ones doing this. Across the station, serfs loyal to the Claws are playing the very same game. It’s… It is just something that must be done.”
“Have you done this before?”
“No. And I plan to do it right, so it doesn’t have to happen again soon.”
Maruc said nothing. They walked for another few minutes, before passing a smaller, darker side tunnel.
Septimus’ eyes, human and the augmetic alike, washed slowly over the corridor entrance. Unless he was grossly off-course in this hideous labyrinth, this passage would lead back to the ship faster than returning down this particular thoroughfare.
“Be ready,” he whispered to Maruc, and tapped the woman on the shoulder again, the silver ring on his knuckle brushing the side of her neck. She stopped and turned.
“Quis?” She seemed confused. The crowd still sailed past, and she held her bucket protectively over her stomach.
Septimus kept his silence, watching for the droop in her eyelids. As soon as her eyes began to roll back, he caught her in a smooth motion, keeping her standing. To all observers—those few who paid any heed at all while going about their own dealings—it seemed he suddenly embraced her.
“Help me,” he ordered Maruc. “We need to get her back to the ship before she comes to her senses.”
Maruc caught the bucket as it slipped from her slack fingers. They left it at the side of the corridor, as they carried her between them, the woman’s arms around their shoulders. Her boots moved mechanically, her eyes rolling drunk in their sockets, as she accompanied her kidnappers to a new life in the slave holds of the Covenant of Blood.
Octavia clutched her jacket close as she left the communal ablution chamber. Several of the mortal crew waited in the corridor, kept out by her armed attendants, waiting their turn for the recharged cleansing racks. For obvious reasons, she had to bathe alone. Even though the crew knew the reasons, it seemed it only added to their dislike of her.
Most averted their eyes when Octavia came into the corridor. Several made superstitious motions to ward off evil, which she found bizarre, given where these people lived. Quietly, she asked two of her attendants to recover Telemach’s body from the chamber and dispose of it however they wished.
Nostraman mutterings followed her as she walked away. In a solitary life, she’d never felt as lonely. At least on the Maiden of the Stars the crew hadn’t hated her. Feared her, certainly, for fear in a Navigator’s presence was a legacy of her bloodline as undeniable as the subspecies’ third eye. But here, it was different. They loathed her. Even the ship despised her.
Hound loped along at her heels. For a while, they walked in silence. She didn’t care where she was going.
“You smell very female now,” Hound said unhelpfully. She didn’t ask what it meant. It probably meant nothing at all—just another of his blindingly obvious perceptions.
“I don’t think I want to live like this anymore,” she said over his head, staring at the walls as she walked.
“No choice, mistress. No other way to live.”
Throne, her eye ached. Beneath the bandana, an abrasive itch was steadily growing angrier. It took supreme effort not to claw at the skin around the closed eye, soothing the rawness with her fingernails.
Octavia walked on, taking lefts and rights at random. She was prepared to concede that she dwelled in self-pity, but she felt it was an indulgence she’d earned lately.
In the distance, she heard a faint shriek—it sounded female, though it cut off too quickly to be certain. Hammers, or something like them, crashed in dull industrial rhythm somewhere nearby, muted by the dense metal walls.
Her eye gave another dizzying throb. The pain was making her nauseous now.
“Hound?” She stopped walking.
“Yes, mistress.”
“Close your ey… Never mind.”
“Yes, mistress.” He paused in his hitched stride, looking around as Octavia removed her bandana. The skin of her forehead was sticky with sweat, the flesh almost
burning to the touch. Blowing upwards did nothing but flutter a few wet locks of hair and make her feel foolish. It certainly didn’t cool her down.
Sweat dripped onto her nose. She wiped it, catching sight of a dark smear on her fingers.
“Throne of the God-Emperor,” she swore, looking down at her hands. Hound shuddered at the curse.
“Mistress?”
“My eye,” she said, wiping her hands on her jacket. “My eye is bleeding.” The hammering clanged louder as her words hovered in the air between them.
Touching her forehead made her wince, but she daubed the bandana over the sore flesh. Her eye wasn’t bleeding, exactly. It was crying. The blood drops were its tears.
“Where are we?” she asked, her voice shaking as her breath misted before her face.
Hound sniffed. “The apothecarion.”
“Why is it so cold?”
The hunched slave pulled his weathered shotgun from beneath his rags. “I do not know, mistress. I, also, am cold.”
She retied the bandana while Hound aimed into the endless array of shadows.
Ahead of them both, the massive bulkhead leading into the apothecarion ground open on heavy gears. The hammering rang stronger, truer, coming from inside.
“Hound?” her voice was a whisper now.
“Yes, mistress?”
“Keep your voice down…”
“Sorry, mistress,” he whispered. His blunt-nosed shotgun tracked across the open door and the view beyond. Bare, silent surgical tables stood in the darkness.
“If you see the void-born in there, I want you to shoot her.”
“The void-born is dead, mistress.” He looked over his shoulder, mutilated face bunched in concern.
Octavia felt the blood running down her nose now, tickling her lips on its journey to drip from her chin. The bandana was no barrier, little more than a poor bandage. Soaked already, it did nothing to oppose the slow dripping.
She drew her own pistol as she neared the open door.
“Mistress.”
She glanced at Hound.
“I will go in first,” he stated. Without waiting for an answer, he moved inside, his hunch keeping him low, shotgun raised level with his unseeing eyes.
She followed him in, sighting down her pistol.
The room was empty. Every surgery table was bare. The abandoned machinery made neither noise nor motion. Octavia blinked her human eyes to ward off the blood’s stinging touch. It didn’t help much.
Metal crashed against metal, almost deafeningly loud in the freezing chamber. She spun to face the far wall, aiming at ten sealed vault doors, each one the height and width of a human. One of them juddered in time to the hammering from behind. Whatever was within wanted to come out.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she stammered.
Hound was less inclined to flee. “Can it harm us, mistress?”
“It’s just an echo,” she checked her pistol’s ammunition counter. “Just an echo. Like the girl. Just an echo. Echoes can’t hurt anyone.”
Hound didn’t have the chance to agree. The vault door burst outwards on squealing hinges. Something pale moved in the darkness inside.
“…not with Malcharion’s bolter…” Its sepulchral voice, toneless yet sharp, cut the cold air. “…wish to join First Claw…”
Octavia backed away, eyes wide, murmuring for Hound to follow.
Another figure blocked the doorway. It stood tall, silhouetted against the gloom, red eye lenses tracking her movements with silent regard.
“Talos!” she breathed the name, relief flooding through her.
“No, Navigator.” The Night Lord stepped into the chamber, drawing his weapons. “Not Talos.”
He returned, just as Variel had known he would. The Flayer acknowledged him with a nod, and deactivated the hololithic text he’d been studying.
Talos had not come alone. Cyrion, Xarl and Mercutian stood behind him, armoured, helmed and silent but for the chorus of growling armour.
“When I sleep,” the prophet seemed almost ashamed, “I dream. My muscles react, but I do not wake. If I break the straps binding me to the table, my brothers will hold me down while you perform the surgery.”
“One is missing,” Variel noted.
“Uzas often chooses not to heed our summons,” Cyrion replied, “unless war threatens.”
“Very well.” The Corsair Apothecary moved over to the lone table in his private chamber. “Let us begin.”
XIV
LOYALTIES
His brothers’ voices are dim, forgettable things, belonging to a world of sour smells, aching thoughts and sore muscles. Focussing on their words threatens to pull him from the dream, drawing him back to a freezing chamber where his body thrashes on a table, enslaved to its flawed biology.
The prophet releases his ties to that world, seeking sanctuary elsewhere.
His brothers are gone when he…
…opened his eyes. Another shell crashed down nearby, shaking the grey battlements beneath his boots.
“Talos,” came the captain’s voice. “We move.”
“Harvesting,” he said through gritted teeth. His hands worked with mechanical familiarity, breaking, slicing, sawing, extracting. Something screamed overhead on failing engines. He risked a glance to see an Iron Warriors gunship whine above in a lethal spin, its thrusters aflame. The gene-seed cylinder snicked home into his gauntlet the very same moment the grey Thunderhawk ploughed into one of the hundred spires nearby. The battlements gave another horrendous shudder.
“Talos,” the captain’s vox-voice crackled with urgency. “Where are you?”
“It is finished.” He rose to his feet, retrieving his bolter and breaking into a run, leaving the body of a Legion brother sprawled on the stone.
“I’ll go back for him,” one of his squad said over the channel.
“Be swift.” The captain was in grim humour, for obvious reasons.
The Apothecary’s vision blurred as his helm struggled to filter out the sensory assault of another cannon barrage. Tower-top weapon batteries hurled their payloads into the sky, massive mouths thundering. Another wide spread of rampart stretched out ahead: where his brothers were making short work of the gun crews. The humans, ripped limb from limb, were hurled over the side of the battlements to fall hundreds of metres in grotesque imitation of hail.
A weight hit him from behind, powerful enough to send him crashing onto his hands and knees. For a moment, his retinal display flickered with meaningless static. Talos blinked once, thudding his forehead on the ground. Clarity returned immediately. He turned on the ground, bolter firing the moment it came level.
“Fists,” he voxed. “Behind us.”
They ran, all formation broken, bolters clutched in golden hands. Despite their distance, another bolt shell cracked off his pauldron, sending shrapnel skittering across the battlements.
His attempted rise earned him a bolt shell to the chest, detonating against his chestplate and shattering the Legion symbol there. With a breathless grunt, he crashed back down.
“Stay down,” one of his brothers ordered. The name-rune flashed on his visor—his sergeant’s name.
A dark gauntlet slammed into his armoured collar, gripping the ceramite. “Keep firing,” the sergeant ordered. “Cover us, or we’re both dead.”
Talos reloaded, crunching the magazine home, and opened up again. His brother crouched behind him, firing with a pistol while dragging the Apothecary back.
The sergeant released him as they both took cover behind a section of loose rubble.
“Thank you, brother,” Talos said.
Sergeant Vandred reloaded his own pistol. “It’s nothing.”
“Hold him still.”
There. His brothers’ voices again, clearer than before.
“I am.” Xarl. Irritated. The same grating disquiet that has always coloured his voice, present even in youth.
The prophet feels his knuckles clacking against the table,
a percussion born of twitching fingers. Sensation is returning, and with it, the pain. Breath rushes into his lungs, wickedly cold.
“Damn it.” Variel’s voice. A brother by oath, not by blood. “Is he aware, or fully somnolent? The readings state both.”
The prophet—no longer the Apothecary upon the battlements of Terra—mumbles saliva-drenched words.
“It’s a vision.” Cyrion. That was Cyrion. “It happens. Just deal with it.”
“It is affecting his slumber, and generating anomalous readings. Blood of the Pantheon, his catalepsean node may never function again after this—his body is trying to reject the implant.”
“His what?”
“I am not jesting. His physiology is in rebellion, rejecting any implantations linked to his brain. This must happen with every vision—his wounds are magnifying it. Whatever these dreams are, they are not a natural byproduct of the gene-seed.”
“You mean he’s tainted? Warp-touched?”
“No. This is not mutation, but a matter of genetic development. In many initiates, the gene-seed doesn’t take. You have all seen it, surely.”
“But his held. It did take.”
“It did, with tenacity, not grace. Look. Look at the bloodwork, and the signifiers here, and here. Look what his implants are doing to his human organs. His own gene-seed hates him. The chemicals and compounds that they released in adolescence to make him one of us still do not sit quietly in his blood. They try to change him even now, to develop him further. Like us, there is nothing he can develop into beyond the genhanced state. Yet his body still tries. The result is this… visionary state. Talos’ body is too aggressive in processing your primarch’s blood. His genetics are in constant flux.”
The prophet wonders, then, if this is what cursed his father. His gene-sire—his true father—the primarch, Lord Curze. Did the Emperor’s machinations in genetic construction never settle within his father’s bones? Did Curze’s powers rise from a reaction to the Emperor’s own blood in a lesser frame?
He tries to smile, but spit flies from his lips.
[Night Lords 02] - Blood Reaver Page 18