Soul Drinker

by Ben Counter

  There was a shriek of tearing armour and the cracking of bones. A great burst of light erupted all around as energy dis­charged from Sarpedon's body. There was a bolt of pain through his legs and then something he had never felt before - growing, splitting, changing.

  Suddenly they were back in the wreckage of the study-cells. Gorgoleon lay where he had been hurled against the cell wall, unable to disguise his horror. There were thick lashes of blood up the walls and scraps of purple ceramite scattered all around.

  Eight segmented arachnoid legs jutted from Sarpedon's waist, chitinous, jointed, and each tipped with a wicked talon.

  The pain was gone. The Hell was gone; he didn't need it any more. Here was the blessing of the Architect of Fate - a new form, swift and deadly, a symbol of how he had thrown aside all that had imprisoned him. Sarpedon reared up on his hind legs, fully four metres high, and crashed down onto Gorgoleon. The two front talons speared the Chapter Master through the chest and lifted him high into the air. Sarpedon hooked his fingers into the shoulder joints of Gorgoleon's torso armour, stared up into the glazing eyes, and pulled.

  The power. The majesty. Sarpedon had never felt this strong before.

  Gorgoleon's body tore in two above him, raining blood and coiled organs. Sarpedon cast the flailing remains down onto the floor of the cell, breath heaving, ears ringing.

  The din in his ears died down. There was silence, broken only by the steady drip of the blood spattered across the ceil­ing and running off Sarpedon's shoulder pads.

  He looked around and saw the Soul Drinkers were crowded in a circle around the bloodstained wreckage that remained of the cells. Gradually Sarpedon's hearing returned and above the dripping of the blood and the coiling of the smoke, a thousand voices grew louder and louder, filling Sarpedon's soul.

  They were chanting.

  They were chanting his name.

  Chapter Eight

  THE WARP WAS a dark and terrible place, a realm where fears and emotions were made real, where the nightmares of men found form, and evil things lived. There were malevolent forces that called themselves gods, and mindlessly violent predators. There were no safe paths through the warp, and only the guiding light of the Astronomican beacon and the skills of the Navigator caste could bring a ship home.

  The risks of travelling the shifting ways of the empyrean were offset by the vast distances that could be travelled in a matter of hours, so that ships which sailed the warp for a few days could make several years' worth of distance in real space. But inevitably, when ships departed the safety of reality and ploughed the waves of the warp, some did not return.

  Worse, some returned changed.

  Ghost ships. Prodigals. Craft which had been gone some­times thousands of years, suddenly spat back out into real space. The terrible forces of the warp could twist their struc­tures or weld lost ships together, and sometimes - the worst times - they brought something back with them. Their origi­nal names forgotten, these ships were known as space hulks.

  Sarpedon couldn't tell how old this particular space hulk was, but it must have been older than any he had heard of. It was not the first he had seen, for the Soul Drinkers were suited to storming hulks and destroying them before their inhabitants could pose a threat. But it was the most ancient, and by magnitudes the biggest.

  His half-arachnid form let him clamber along the walls and ceiling, so any foe he found would suffer a moment's disori­entation in which Sarpedon could strike. This particular part of the hulk was Imperial, as witnessed by the aquila and devo­tional texts on the bulkheads. It had been an Imperial Guard hospital ship, with wards running its whole length and a huge quarantine and decontamination sector in the stern. It was also in a sensor-shadow, a part of the hulk which had been veiled from the fleet's intensive life-sign scans. Which meant it had to be searched the old-fashioned way.

  Sarpedon rounded a corner and looked down from the ceiling at the ward. It was perhaps a kilometre and a half long. Centuries ago the rows of beds and equipment stations had been lit by unforgiving strip lights, but now the lights were dim and the beds were mouldering. Shadows gathered too dense for even Sarpedon's eyes to pierce.

  He dropped down onto the floor and flipped the closest couple of beds with a talon. The layers of grime had built up over the centuries - which was good, for it meant nothing had been here to disturb them.

  'Sarpedon to control, waypoint nine reached.'

  'Acknowledged, Lord Sarpedon,' came Givrillian's voice over the vox. Sarpedon had been happy to appoint Givrillian as the mission's tactical co-ordinator, where his level head would be put to best use. Givrillian was back on the Glory with the HQ, while Sarpedon led the search on the hulk.

  Sarpedon recalled the four extra eyes that had opened in Givrillian's facial scar since the victory on the Glory. If they had bothered him, he hadn't shown it.

  A couple of bulkheads down one of Luko's squad emerged, bolter at eye-level, sweeping the area for anything that moved. Three more of the fire-team followed. Luko himself would be at the far end of the ward with the rest of the squad.

  'Anything, Luko?' said Sarpedon.

  'Nothing.' came the voxed reply.

  The squad moved into the ward in scattered formation, gradually moving down its length. There were trolleys of medical equipment standing here and there, and cabinets set into the walls containing jars of unguents and chemicals. A couple of auto-surgeons were stooped over screened-off beds, their many blades tarnished, power feeds corroded to noth­ing.

  'Luko?'

  'Lord?'

  'Why did they leave the equipment?'

  Millions of creds' worth of medical gear, abandoned. More than that, if something untowards had happened in the warp then the crew would have tried to evacuate, probably into the quarantine decks or saviour pods. They would have at least taken some of the medicine and surgery gear with them, to treat the worst of the patients. It made no sense.

  Unless whatever happened had been so sudden they had no warning before they died. In which case every bed should contain a human skeleton.

  Sarpedon ran up the wall and onto the ceiling, splaying his chitinous legs to put his face close to the surface.

  No scratches. No stains. He moved further, looking for any signs that something had been alive in here. Could attackers have used the air vents? Unlikely, given the number of sterile filters in the ventilation systems. What, then? And if some­thing had taken the bodies, where had they gone?

  Where were they now?

  'Givrillian? I need data on the air filtration for this place.'

  'Yes, commander. We don't know how old that ship is but we will see what the mem-banks can say'

  Sarpedon flicked to the squad frequency. 'Luko, stay alert. I think we've got something here.'

  'Still no contacts, commander.'

  The patients and crew, the Sisters of the Orders Hospitaller and the Guard Medical Corps - they were only human, and they could be manipulated like all humans. They could be herded like cattle into a slaughterhouse, and then...

  'We've got something, sir.' said Givrillian. 'Hospital ships derived from that class had separate filtration systems for the wards, the command decks, the quarantine zones and the operating rooms. To prevent cross-infection.'

  That was it. And it meant the attackers could still be here.

  Sarpedon ran along the ceiling, the hooked talons of his legs moving him faster than even a Space Marine could run. At the end of the ward was the operating suite, where a pair of auto-surgeons would have performed delicate procedures on the most badly wounded or, more likely, the most impor­tant patients. It was separated from the ward by a heavy pair of airlock doors. The edges of the doors were clean. But there was no other way.

  'Luko! I want a fire-team with me, now! The rest, stay where you are, fire support pattern.'

  'Yes, lord!'

  The lead fire-team stomped up behind Sarpedon. Three Marines: Mallik, Sken and Zaen, with Zaen toting Squad Luko's flamer.<
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  Sarpedon jabbed the talons of his two front legs into the gap between the doors. He forced them open, and realized they did not resist nearly so much as they should have done.

  The airlock beyond was clear. The doors into the operating suite were set with glass panels but they were opaque with filth. Sarpedon drew his bolter and gestured for Vrae to take up position at his shoulder.

  Sarpedon dropped a shoulder and barged through the doors, feeling them buckle under his strength.

  The floor was crusted with excrement and the walls streaked with it. Against the walls were piled bones, some crumbled and grey with age, others gleaming white. Eye sock­ets stared blindly from the mounds of putrescence, fingers and teeth were scattered like maggots of bone. The auto-surgeon arms were black with gore and filth where something had perched on them while it fed.

  Warning runes were blinking at the back of Sarpedon's eye. The stench here was so strong and infectious it could have killed a normal man, but Sarpedon's armour and implants were blocking it out. For this he was grateful.

  The attackers had cut off the air supply to the ward, or per­haps polluted it beyond use. The crew had moved the patients into the operating suite where the separate air sup­ply should have kept them alive a little longer. Except that, packed into the operating room, they had been a sitting tar­get, unable to run or fight back, when the predators came.

  Herded into a slaughterhouse.

  But not all the bones were that old. Some were of bodies that had decayed thousands of years before, but others were new. Had the inhabitants of this hulk been preying on back­water space lanes? There were tales of how treasure-hunters would board hulks in the search for cargo or archaeotech - but there were very few tales of them getting out again. Or perhaps the attackers had found some way of attracting ships, or even hunting them down?

  Sarpedon took a step further into the room, talon crunch­ing through an aged ribcage. He looked up at the ceiling, trying to see some way they had come in. The vents had been undisturbed, and they had not used the main airlock doors.

  He realised it just before the first one attacked. It ripped through the disposal hatch set into the far wall, scattering sparks and debris. Sarpedon caught the flash of pulpy grey-beige flesh beneath a glossy black exoskeleton, a pair of tiny black eyes, a mouth like a mantrap. Claws lashed out and knocked off Sarpedon's aim as he put two bolter-rounds into the wall behind it.

  Genestealer. A four-armed, parasitical predator - if it took you down you could look forward to an implanted pupa and a messy death. That was if its claws didn't tear you apart first.

  Bolters chattered but the thing was fast - it picked up Brother Mallik by the face of his helmet and smashed him through the auto-surgeon, scattering tarnished blades. Sarpe­don swept up along the ceiling and stabbed down with his staff from above, spearing the stealer through the back. He reached down and grabbed it by the throat, hauled it up, flicked his wrist and felt the gristle in its neck snap.

  A genestealer, in close combat. Sarpedon had always known he was formidable in battle, but had he ever been that strong?

  'Flamer!' he yelled, dropping the foul alien corpse. Zaen was already at the opening and poured a gout of flame down the waste chute. Something let out a gurgling scream and thick brown smoke billowed up.

  The stealers had come up from the disposal deck, where medical waste and the bodies of those who died on the oper­ating table were sent. That was how they had got in - it made sense, really. Waste was ejected into space and the hatch would be an obvious entry point for a predator like a gen­estealer. Maybe they had been there for months before taking over the ship, breeding down there amongst the automated incinerators and corpse-dumps. The hospital ship might well have jumped into the warp as it was assaulted, hoping to remove the aliens from real space. It was brave, and would have worked had the ship not become part of the immense space hulk.

  'Sarpedon to control. Contact, xenos confirmed. Genestealers. Send fire-teams to disposal deck, form a cordon and prep kill-teams.' He glanced down at Mallik, who was strug­gling to pull his rained helmet free. Blood was seeping from an eyepiece. 'One man down, request medical support.'

  'Acknowledged.'

  'And send Tellos in.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  THERE HAD BEEN a civil war. There was no other way of saying it. Chapter traditions had it that Sarpedon was judged to be in the right in the eyes of Dorn and the Emperor, by virtue of his victory over Gorgoleon. Most of the Space Marines who had watched Sarpedon tear the Chapter Master apart had sworn allegiance to Sarpedon on the spot - they said there had been a golden light shining around Sarpedon as he stood spattered in Gorgoleon's blood, and that the choirs of Terra were heard singing. Sarpedon became Chapter Master of the Soul Drinkers by the acclamation of the battle-brothers.

  But there were those who had not believed. They had seen their leader slain by a half-monster, half-human psyker, and they had renounced Sarpedon as a corrupt and evil daemon-thing. They had loaded their guns and set up barricades, and fought their last fight against their brothers.

  They had fought well, Sarpedon had to admit. The strange thing was, the veterans and specialists had sided with Sarpe­don, while most of the novices had rebelled against him. It took weeks to reduce the most dug-in hardpoints, and to hunt down the guerrilla units striking from the labyrinthine depths of the Glory. The Sanctifiers Son had been lost entirely when rebels gained control of it and tried to flee - it had been shattered by combined broadside fire as it manoeuvred to warp jump position.

  But the rebels had been rooted out, eventually. Those taken alive were rounded up and put onto the darkship, which was then destroyed with massed lance battery fire.

  When the death toll was counted, between the operations on the star fort and Geryon platform, and the revolution of Sarpedon's victory, the Soul Drinkers had lost fully one third of their number. Sarpedon felt the loss of the rebels because on one level they were his brothers, but he celebrated their deaths as traitors. If they had to die to ensure the Soul Drinkers would be free of the Imperial yoke, then so be it. He had led men to their deaths before, and not regretted it. Sometimes, he realized then, a commander must be hard.

  The only one that really stuck in his mind was Michairas, the Marine who had once attended upon Caeon, and who witnessed Sarpedon conducting the ceremony of the chalice. Sarpedon had faced him personally as he led a band of novices trying to flee off the Glory - he tore out Michairas's rebreather implants and threw him out of an airlock. For some reason that stuck with him. He could see Michairas's eyes even now, brimming with fear but tempered by defiance.

  Brave boy. But he had to die. That was the price of truth, and nobody said the truth was an easy thing to follow.

  When the dead were offered up to Dorn or cast out of the debris hatches according to their allegiance, the fleet had been in a grim position. An Imperial battlefleet would find them soon - if not the one led by Inquisitor Tsouras then another under an admiral hungry for the scalp of an Excom­municate Chapter. The Soul Drinkers' fleet was large and impossible to conceal forever, and the Imperial Navy could muster enough ships to destroy them in a decisive engage­ment or harry them to the ends of the galaxy. The Soul Drinkers were alone in the universe, with no allies or safe harbour, and it was a matter of time before they were hunted down.

  It was Yser who had shown them a way. The Architect of Fate had appeared in his dreams wearing a crown of many stars - Yser had recalled the image in exact detail, and the crown had formed a star chart that led them to the hulk. Another miracle, and Yser seemed certain that the Emperor had seen the Chapter's suffering and was gifting them a new home and a new start. By now the Chaplain and Marine alike hung on his word and he was acting as Sarpedon's principal adviser. Without Yser, perhaps the Chapter would have torn itself apart completely, but he provided a spiritual leadership alongside Sarpedon's authority.

  Huge, ancient, and devoid of life save the isolated stealer colony, the hulk
had been perfect. It was formed of perhaps a score of other ships, crushed and fused into one - it was large enough to house the whole Chapter but, as only one ship, it would be more difficult to track than an entire fleet. With so many dead areas it could hide in debris fields or dust clouds, and the Tech-Marines had suggested that it possessed enough armament, once refitted and repaired, to create a for­midable bastion. Its monstrous bulk was so twisted and deformed that it had been christened the Brokenback.

  The Brokenback. The new home of an excommunicate and renegade Chapter. Somehow, it seemed fitting.

  'SAD TO SEE them go, commander?' said Lygris.

  'A little.' replied Sarpedon. 'But we should use this as an opportunity to start again. To refound the Chapter.'

  'Perhaps.'

  'Does this not grieve you, Lygris? As a Tech-Marine I would have imagined the loss of so many fine ships would be like losing a limb.'

  Lygris smiled, his dead-skinned face just managing to turn up the corners of his mouth. 'With the loss of the fleet with Chapter will lose a part of its soul, commander. But we have lost so much already, it is perhaps better to destroy everything that ties us to the lies of our past. And it should not be for­gotten what we have here in the Brokenback. We may have lost a fleet, but we have gained one of the largest space hulks ever taken intact. There must be thirty plasma reactors in the structure. The warp drive potential alone is astonishing.'

  They were in one of the more recognizable parts of the Bro­kenback - a private yacht that had been owned a couple of centuries before by some rich noble or trading magnate. Whoever it was had not possessed a subtlety of taste, and every surface was covered with flowing scrollwork or gilt sculpture, now dark and tarnished with age. This was the yacht's viewing gallery, where parties of dignitaries would gather to witness some celestial phenomenon over a glass of chilled amasec - a great ocular viewing window swallowed the whole ceiling and looked out onto space.

  The Soul Drinkers' fleet was drifting dark and powerless outside. Once the stealers had been cleared out - a swift and simple operation with Tellos at the fore, hand-blades slick with alien filth - the Chapter had been moved into the Brokenback. Now no longer needed, the fleet was a liability, large and easy to track. It had to be scuttled.