[Night Lords 02] - Blood Reaver

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  “Get out of my way or I will kill you all.” There. It couldn’t be stated in plainer terms, could it? He levelled his staff for emphasis. The curved xenos skull leered down at them.

  They still didn’t move.

  “Let him enter,” came the Navigator’s voice over the wall-vox. Her words were punctuated by the door juddering open on ancient mechanisms dearly in need of oiling.

  Ruven entered, shoving the slowest ones aside.

  “Hello, Navigator,” he said. His amiability was so false it almost hurt the teeth to give it voice. “I require the use of your chamber.”

  Octavia was retying her dark hair into its usual ponytailed captivity. She didn’t meet his eyes.

  “It’s all yours.”

  Something growled in the corner of the room. Ruven turned to it, realising it was not a pile of discarded clothing, after all. A shotgun’s barrel and a mutilated face peered out of the ragged heap.

  “Please take your mutant with you,” Ruven chuckled.

  “I will.”

  Octavia left without another word. Hound followed obediently, his eyeless face turned to Ruven the whole time.

  Once they were gone, the Night Lord circled her throne, taking note of the blanket covering the psychically-sensitive metal frame. Curious now, he lowered himself to press his cheek against the metal armrest. Cold, painfully cold for a human, but hardly fatal. He rose again, his disgust deepening.

  This female was a lazy, weak-minded creature, and they would be better served without her. To slay her outright would only anger the prophet, but she could be replaced by other means. Ruven had never suffered in guiding vessels through the warp. Sorcery could achieve through strength of will that which a Navigator achieved by a twist of genetic fortune. He had no need to see into the warp, when he could simply carve a path through it.

  The throne was too small for him, designed as it was for lesser beings. No matter. The walls were the reason he’d come. Nowhere else on the ship boasted such dense partitions to its surrounding chambers. A warship was not a quiet vessel, but a Navigator’s chambers were as close to true silence as a soul could find.

  Ruven sat on the floor, brushing aside more of the Navigator’s mess. Scrunched parchment pages with unfinished log entries rolled across the decking.

  He closed his eyes at last, and spoke murmured words from a nameless tongue. After only a few syllables, he tasted blood in his mouth. After several sentences, his hearts began to hurt. Witch-lightning coiled around his twitching fingers, maggoty crackles of the corposant stuff squirming over the ceramite.

  The quicksilver pain running through his blood brought a smile to his serene features. Too many months had passed since he’d been free to work his wonders.

  The ship’s machine-spirit sensed his intrusion, reacting with a serpent’s suspicion, coiling back into itself. Ruven ignored the artificial soul. He didn’t need its compliance or its capitulation. He could drag this vessel through the Sea of Souls no matter what resided in the Covenant’s beating heart. Doubt’s clinging fingers trailed over his skull, but he cast them aside with the same contempt he’d shown the Navigator. To doubt was to die. Mastery of the unseen world required focus above all else.

  The ship gave a shudder. Instantly he was himself again, seeing nothing more than what his eyes showed before him.

  And he was breathless, his respiration choppy, his hearts hammering. Perhaps he was weaker than he’d believed, after so long in chains. It was an unpleasant confession, even if only to himself.

  Ruven gathered his concentration to make a second attempt, and stared at a burning chamber through another warrior’s eyes.

  The Marine Errant writhed in his grip, held off the ground by the massive clutching claw. Ceramite creaked, then cracked, split by lightning bolt fractures under the talon’s pressure. With a grainy laugh, Huron hurled the warrior aside, paying no attention as the Errant slid down the stone wall. A bloody smear marked the dead soldier’s trail. The inscription on his pauldron, etched in ornate High Gothic, read: Taras.

  He had to admire them, though. Their predictability left them vulnerable, yet it also showed their dogged tenacity. With half of his Terminator assault marching to the gene-vaults, and half besieging the Chapter’s reclusiam, the depleted Vilamus garrison cut itself into two even smaller, weaker forces. The reclusiam represented the Chapter’s heart and soul; in the main chapel, where the Errants’ loremasters had held court for centuries, the Chapter’s relics were held in the trust of stasis fields. In the gene-vaults, a millennium’s reserves of gene-seed was stored in cryogenically sealed vaults.

  One target represented the Chapter’s past, the other its future.

  Conflicted sergeants led their squads to die at whichever shrine they chose to defend, while the fortress-monastery trembled with more Red Corsairs making planetfall every moment. In the wastelands outside the monastery, the Tyrant’s warriors assailed the walls with an army of artillery, cracking breaches in the ancient stone for more Corsairs to spill inside.

  Although the halls of Vilamus ran red, the fighting was most savage around the Corsair elite. Terminator kill-teams bulwarked themselves within their objective chambers and refused to give ground. Shrapnel grenades burst at their feet, going completely ignored. Any living being in the enemy’s colours that crossed the flagstones ended its existence as a meaty stain on sacred floor, pulled apart by firepower capable of cracking tanks apart.

  Huron swatted a kneeling serf aside with the flat of his axe, powdering the boy’s ribs, sending him skidding away to die in a corner. The amusingly clockwork beat of his rebuilt hearts was a pleasant percussion to the chatter of mass-reactive shellfire.

  Vilamus’ reclusiam had been an austere, orderly sanctuary, with its relics presented on marble plinths. He paused to examine a time-yellowed scroll suspended in an anti-gravitic aura. It listed the names of the First Company warriors who’d died in the Badab War, so many centuries ago.

  Huron’s teeth reflected the burning banners on the walls. With a care that bordered on reverence, he turned his palm to the preserved manuscript and discharged a gout of liquid flame. The papyrus dissolved, its edges drifting away on the smoky air.

  Centuries’ worth of gene-seed would soon be his. Let the Night Lords flee if they chose. They’d performed their mundane task with enough distinction that the Exalted could be forgiven for its past transgressions.

  Someone screamed. Huron turned, axe in hand.

  The heraldic armour of a Marine Errant was already aflame, and he raised a stolen relic above his head as he charged. Huron caught the hammer’s haft with ludicrous ease, intercepting its killing fall.

  “Stealing your own heroes’ relics,” he sneered into the burning warrior’s faceplate. “You shame your Chapter.” Gears in Huron’s knees droned as he levelled a kick into the warrior’s stomach, sending him sprawling into a clanging heap on the sooty flagstones. “Your brotherhood is about to die, and you profane it?”

  The Errant tried to rise. Defiant to the last, reaching for Huron’s shin-guard with a dagger in his hands. The Tyrant caught a momentary glance of the warrior’s breastplate, and the name Morthaud inscribed there upon the carved Imperial eagle.

  “Enough.” Huron clutched the thunder hammer in his power claw, the way a man would hold a thin stick. Without activating either weapon, he pounded the maul into the back of the Errant’s helm, relying on his own strength to do the deed. The sound of a tolling bell rang throughout the chamber.

  Huron chuckled as he tossed the priceless weapon aside.

  And Ruven opened his eyes.

  Variel let the guards salute him.

  “Flayer,” said the first.

  “Welcome, lord,” added the second. He, too, had black eyes. “We had received no word of your arrival.”

  Variel answered as he always answered mortals greeting him: with the barest nod in their direction. Without further ado, he walked on to the strategium, entering through onto the rear concourse.


  The Apothecary took a moment to process the scene. Over fifty human officers working at their various stations, much the same as any of Lord Huron’s warships. The captain of the Venomous Birthright, who went by almost twenty irritatingly ostentatious titles, the shortest of which was “Warleader Caleb the Chosen”, was nowhere to be seen. His absence didn’t trouble Variel at all. Quite the opposite, in fact—Caleb would surely be leading his company in the assault on Vilamus, as the Corsairs’ battle companies joined up with the Tyrant’s advance force.

  He strode down the angled steps, descending to the main bridge. Mortals saluted as he went, to which he replied with the same customary nod as before. He took care to meet every face that looked his way, seeking pairs of black eyes among the human herd.

  At least a third of the command crew possessed them. This was going to work. Variel approached the throne itself.

  With the Venomous Birthr—the Echo of Damnation—hailing from an era when the Legions commanded all of the Imperium’s might, the throne was sized for a Legionary. The human commander remained standing by its side, straightening as Variel drew near. His eyes were blue.

  “Lord Flayer, it is an honour to have you aboard. Our vox is still crippled; we had no idea it was you on the shuttle…”

  “I do not care. Where is your captain?”

  “Warleader Caleb, Scourge of the—”

  Variel raised a hand. “I desire a new cloak. If you delay answering me each time to list the many titles your master has earned, I will make that garment out of your skin. That is a warning. Please heed it.”

  The officer swallowed. “Captain Caleb is overseeing the launch, my lord.”

  “And what of his company?”

  The officer broke attention to scratch at the cropped, greying hair by his temple. “The Marauders are in the process of full deployment, my lord.”

  “Why have they not deployed already?”

  “I do not know, lord.”

  Oh, but he did, and Variel saw the lie in his eyes. Caleb was a meticulous bastard, demanding no shortage of pomp and ceremony before every engagement. The Apothecary could easily imagine the battle company kneeling in reverence to the True Pantheon while their drop-ships were prepared and made ready around them, heedless of how their presence slowed the process.

  When unleashed, the Marauders were one of Huron’s most fearsome companies. It was why they’d been granted the Echo of Damnation as plunder—they’d been the ones to conquer it.

  Their presence was going to be a problem.

  Variel nodded. “I understand, commander. I am here from the flagship because my message was too precious to entrust to a menial or the whims of flawed vox. Our situation is grave, commander. Show me the launch bays.”

  “Grave, lord?”

  “Show me the launch bays.”

  The commander ordered a naval rating to bring a quad-split image of the four launch bays up onto the occulus. Two stood empty; two were still in extensive use. Variel saw docked Thunderhawks, cradled Land Raiders, and whole squads of Red Corsair warriors ready for embarkation.

  “This will not do at all,” he murmured. Too many of his brothers remained on board. Far, far too many. Marauder Company wasn’t even close to being fully deployed. It could take an hour or more. The Night Lords were preparing for a fight, but this would leave them grievously outnumbered.

  “Lord?”

  Variel turned to the man. Slowly.

  “You know who I am,” Variel asked, “do you not?”

  “I… yes, my lord.”

  “Listen well, commander. I am more than ‘the Flayer’, more than the Corpsemaster’s inheritor, and more than an honoured member of Lord Huron’s inner circle. When I speak to you now, it is as a ranking member of the Chapter, here under the Tyrant’s authority, empowered to exercise his will.”

  The officer was getting nervous now. He nodded curtly.

  “Then obey this order without question.” Variel fixed the man’s gaze with his own. “Seal both port launch bays at once, establishing bioweapon protocols for containment.”

  The commander’s confusion was apparent. It was apparent for just under three seconds, and ended when his face ceased to exist in a clap of detonative thunder.

  Variel lowered his pistol, and looked at the closest living mortal officer. She looked right back at him. She had eyes for nothing else.

  “You know who I am, do you not?”

  The woman saluted, controlling herself admirably. “Yes, lord.”

  “Then obey this order without question: seal both port launch bays at once, establishing bioweapon protocols for containment.”

  She moved to obey, shouldering one of the console officers aside. Her fingers began to hit keys, tip-tapping an override code across the small monitor.

  “Lord, it requests a code for emergency command clearance.”

  Variel dictated a long screed of a hundred and one alphanumeric characters from memory, ending with the words Identity: Variel, Apothecary Secondus, Astral Claw Chapter.

  The officer paused at another obstacle. “It requests a further unicode, lord.”

  “Fryga.”

  She entered the five letters, and sirens began to wail across the ship.

  As he ran, his boots beat the worthless wasteland soil, unhindered by the thick dust at his ankles. The hovering gunship hurled a sandstorm against his armour, its engines giving an ululating whine as they kept it off the ground. The gritty wind abraded his war plate’s paintwork, leaving sliver-scratch slices of gunmetal grey showing through the blue.

  First Claw had emerged from a blast-fissure blown in the fortress-monastery’s outer wall, to be confronted with a battalion of Corsair battle tanks and cargo lifters massing on the desert. Landers and gunships still ferried warriors down from orbit, while drop-pods hammered down in staccato thunderclaps, sending arid dust spraying up from their impact craters.

  “Are they planning to stay here?” Cyrion voxed.

  “They’ll strip the fortress bare. With this many of them, it will not take long.” Talos turned away from the dust storm being dredged up by the landing gunship. Grit still clattered against his armour, but at least his eye lenses were clear now. “Some of these transporters are already lifting siege tanks back into orbit.”

  With the sigh of contented machinery settling, the gunship’s landing claws crunched into the wasteland’s skin.

  Mercutian and Xarl were already running aboard.

  “Lord,” Septimus’ voice crackled from the cockpit. “You’re the last squad. The Exalted reports that all is ready for your return.”

  Talos looked back at Vilamus. The fortress’ towers reached too high to ascertain where they ended and the clouds began. By contrast, its lowest levels were practically aflame, thick smoke bleeding from the shell-cracks in the great walls.

  A victory, but not their victory. This was a game played by another band of traitors, and it had tasted hollow from beginning to end.

  Uzas remained with him.

  “Are you ashamed?” he voxed.

  Talos turned. “What?”

  Uzas gestured with his axe, aiming it at the fortress. “Are you ashamed to be running from another fight, brother? You shouldn’t be. This is meaningless. Our fight is about to begin.”

  “Uzas?” Talos asked. “Brother?”

  “Hnnh?”

  “You spoke with such clarity. It was… it was good to hear.”

  Uzas nodded. “Come. Prey waits in the heavens. Blood, skulls and souls.”

  “And our ship.”

  “Hnnh. And our ship.”

  Octavia went to the one place she knew there’d be no one to talk to, while Hound waited outside.

  She needed sleep. Just a few hours, maybe, before Talos returned and asked her to take part in the most dangerous and insane night of her life.

  She’d never been in Septimus’ room before. Given how he teased her for her mess, it wasn’t as tidy as she’d expected. Mechanical innar
ds and oiled cloths were spread over half the floor, as if he’d been summoned away in the middle of dissecting some unknown machine. A wide workbench stood against one wall, a low bunk against another. Several pairs of boots—one with its lost laces replaced by adhesive tape—were scattered in a tumble under the desk.

  It smelled of him in the room, though—the rich, oaky incense of cleaning oils; the scent of a man’s clean sweat while he worked; the spicy, almost antique smell of well-worn, well-loved leather.

  Octavia turned one of his parchments over, into the light of the workbench lamp.

  Her own face looked back at her.

  Her own features, rendered in charcoal, sketched onto the paper. She wore her bandana, her face tilted slightly to the side, gazing off the page at something unseen. Above the corner of her lips was the little mole her maids had always insisted on calling a beauty mark.

  She turned another sheet, revealing an unfinished vignette of her throne, with her blankets and a cushion heaped against one side. The third parchment was a self-portrait, rougher than the other sketches, with his augmetic left eye and temple undrawn. The fourth and fifth were both Octavia again; this time wearing a scowl in both images, her eyes narrowed and her lips between pursing and pouting. She wondered if she really looked like that when she was annoyed—it was a withering look, straight from the wealthy, spoiled halls of aristocratic Terra.

  The next sheet showed a hand-drawn schematic of a Legionary’s gauntlet, and the next, a list of words in numbered order, all written in Nostraman. She could read enough to guess it pertained to the gauntlet diagram.

  She turned the rest one by one, seeing herself several more times. By the end, she was blushing, no longer tired at all when Hound thumped on the door.

  “Mistress, mistress… Wake up. The ship moves. It’s time soon.”

  Captain Caleb Valadan looked up as the sirens began to wail. Hazard lights flashed yellow in their wall-mountings. The doors—the accursed doors—slammed closed with brutal finality, trapping over fifty of his men and their war machines in the hangar.

  Corsairs rose from their knees, their oath-swearing rituals ending with an abruptness born of confusion.