Soul Drinker

by Ben Counter

  Sarpedon hurtled up the side of the closest gun casing, talons gouging scars against the surface of the ancient metal. He reached the apex of the casing and leapt upwards, finding the wall, then the ceiling, until he was scuttling upside-down, watching the shadowy depths of the gun deck flitting by beneath him.

  The battle-brothers had no doubt, either. Ever since the violence of the Sarpedon's ascendance he had not felt one echo of dissent. Many of the brothers were themselves chang­ing - Givrillian with his many eyes, Tellos with his strangely changed flesh and keener senses. Every day brought some new gift to light - Brother Zaen was growing sharp triangular scales down his back and upper arms, while the fingers of Sergeant Graevus's right hand were so long and powerful that he could handle his power axe as if it weighed no more than a combat knife.

  Sarpedon flipped off the ceiling and dropped, his eight legs spread to cushion his landing as he slammed into the floor, denting the rusted metal.

  Mutant? No, his new form and those of his battle-brothers were gifts from the Emperor, a sign that they had been set further apart from the mindless masses of humanity, that they were as different in body as they were in spirit. It was fitting that the weak-stomached inhabitants of the Imperium would mistake them for unclean mutants - it was just one more symptom of their feeble-mindedness.

  In a chamber towards the stern of the Brokenback, the Tech-Marines would be routing the shattered remnants of Sector Indigo's mem-banks to the information feed cluster they had assembled in the sensorium dome of the yacht-ship. If mere was anything left to find, it might tell them something about why the foulness had dedicated itself to winning control of the Brokenback.

  THE PLACE HAD no name. But that made no sense - every planet had a name, even if it was only a number assigned to it by the navi-cogitators mapping the area. Here, there was nothing - every field in the readout was blank. The only information available was its location. That, and the image. But that was of little use, for the world was smeared with a layer of thick cloud, a swirling grey-white mantle that wrapped the planet from pole to pole. The milky glare of the image cast sharp-toothed shadows on the walls of the cap­tain's quarters being converted into Sarpedon's chambers.

  'There is nothing here that warrants our attention.' said Sarpedon, sitting back on the haunches of his newly black­ened legs.

  Tech-Marine Solun adjusted the servitor's holo-array and the image drew out, revealing a shattered grid of information - hundreds of panels of planetary data, all scarred and defaced until not one world was legible. It was the visual rep­resentation of a database that had been corrupted beyond redemption.

  'The mem-banks to which the machine-spirit had access were in an appalling state.' said Solun. 'The infection had destroyed the information systematically. The mem-plates were nearly liquid when we opened them up.'

  'So it left this one world. But why?'

  Solun adjusted the servitor again and the image flickered into a complex map of Sector Indigo's navigational systems. Solun was, like all Tech-Marines, responsible for mainte­nance of the Chapter's battlegear and field engineering duties.

  Unlike most Tech-Marines, however, his area of expertise was in the arcane and near-magical world of information, retrieving and storing it. Temporary mem-banks were ranged in black slabs on his armour's backpack and shoulder blades, while his servo-arm was tipped with a syringe-like data-thief probe.

  'This is Sector Indigo's own navigational system.' said Solun, as a section of the map flickered red. 'It's been hooked up to the bridges of at least eight more of the Brokenback's components craft. Most notably, a high-capacity cargo freighter and a xenos ship currently in a quarantined sector. It is probable that controlled movement of these ships would have allowed the Brokenback to be flown very effectively.'

  'So it was about control? It was taking over the ship and fly­ing it to our mystery planet.'

  Solus nodded. 'That would be our conclusion.'

  'Very well. Good work, Tech-Marine.' Sarpedon looked towards another figure, half-covered in the shadows cast by the holo-array. 'Now, do we know what it was?'

  The black-armoured bulk of Chaplain Iktinos loomed from the darkness. 'It was a daemon.' he said evenly. 'You say you felt its intelligence. It was a hatred you recognised, com­mander. That was no alien or man-made abomination. It was a servant of the enemy.'

  A daemon. A foot-soldier of the powers of the warp, a ser­vant of the Dark Gods of Chaos. Chaos was the horror that the Emperor had died to thwart. It was the dread Horus, Warmaster of Chaos, who had been slain by the Emperor at the height of the battle for Earth, and who had grievously wounded the Emperor in return. It had been Chaos that had corrupted the weak hearts of the lesser primarchs and brought the foul traitor legions into being.

  When Sarpedon had turned his back on the Imperium it was apparent to him how Chaos might thrive in such a tyranny - there were so many corrupt institutions through which Chaos might seep into the galaxy. Sarpedon had har­boured visions of the Soul Drinkers battling the pure horror of Chaos, and even dismantling the Imperium to deny the enemy a breeding ground. But now, the touch of Chaos was here, on the Brokenback.

  A thought came unbidden - at last, Sarpedon, you can get to grips with a foe worth fighting.

  But there was more. A tiny incessant voice at the back of his mind...

  You have seen this place before. You have been here in your dreams, and felt the stink of what lives there. Peel back the layers of cloud and the raw, bleeding planet revealed will be more familiar to you than your own battlegear.

  'It was going to this place, wasn't it?' said Sarpedon. The daemon-disease was supposed to corrupt the Brokenback's guidance systems so it could be flown to this planet.'

  'That would be my conclusion, commander. The Librarians concur. The question remaining is why?'

  'Because it is an evil place, Iktinos.' Sarpedon looked from the milky sphere of the unnamed planet to the Chaplain's impassive helmet mask. This is the place Yser spoke of. This is where we are required to prove our worth to the immortal Emperor. I have seen the evil that is waiting for us here, and now the Emperor has delivered us proof. That evil sent a dae­mon to bring it the Brokenback, but we got here before it could complete its mission. And the Brokenback will sail to this world, but with us as masters.'

  'I take it, Lord Sarpedon, that you would have me deliver the litanies of readiness.' said Iktinos, as if he had expected this all along.

  'Indeed, Chaplain. As soon as we are warp-worthy, this is where we will be headed.' Sarpedon pointed at the unnamed world - and though it was clouded and obscure, he could see burning bright behind his eyes the nightmare that boiled on its surface.

  Was there any greater blessing for a warrior? Here was something utterly evil that could be brought to battle and crushed. Something wicked formed not from betrayal or greed but pure, understandable sin.

  Something he could face.

  Something he could kill.

  Chapter Nine

  THE UPPER ATMOSPHERE was freezing and harsh, but even there he could feel the warm pulse of unholy life throbbing thou­sands of metres below. Yser knew that if he looked down he would see the same sight again, the same one that had threat­ened to strip his sanity away these last few months - but he also knew that he could not just shut his eyes and refuse to believe. He was here for a reason - for nothing would hap­pen to him that the Architect of Fate did not will.

  There was a hideous lurch as Yser dropped into freefall. He opened his eyes and saw the yellowing banks of clouds sweeping up towards him before he was plunged into a foul-reeking soup of pollution. It was thick against his skin, heaving like a diseased lung drawing breath. But there was worse, he knew. He had been here more times than he could remember, and knew the next layer was worse.

  As always, he heard it before he saw it. A saw-like hum that cut through the howling winds and the sinister bubbling of the rot-cloud, an oath hummed by a trillion tiny throats. He braced himself, but knew it w
ould not be enough. The hor­ror was welling up inside him a second before he hit.

  Flies. A near-solid slab of fat-bodied flies half a kilometre deep, a foul black choir of insect vermin. They burst against his skin and became a shell of thick liquid gore, forcing up his nose and into his ears, prying at his lips and eyelids. The roar of millions of ripping bodies flooded his ears as he tore deeper into the fly-layer, arms flailing.

  And past that would be the worst of all. For a second he was almost begging for the stratum of insects to hold him forever, just so he wouldn't have to see what lay beyond. But their slimy grip was weak and he slipped deeper and deeper until the fly-layer thinned out and now it was heavy, clammy air mat squeezed the sweat from Yser's frail body.

  He opened his eyes. He had to. The Architect wanted him to see.

  Yser knew it would not look like this. But this was how it would feel. To his eyes it was black shot through with purple, a mile-high bloom of dark flame. The heat billowing off it was damp and heavy. Its massive flickering form was watching him - Yser could feel that hard, cold, evil intelligence burning against his mind. It was speaking to him, taunting him in words he couldn't hear. It was laughing. It could see him, and knew how weak and pathetic he was in the face of such evil.

  He forced his eyes down. The Architect wanted him to see.

  A million million corpses were piled into a wet, pale land­scape of suffering. Yser knew they were all good men and women, those whose souls the Architect of Fate wished to seek out and introduce to His light. This hideous darkness had taken them, enslaved them, butchered them in their mil­lions and was living off them like a wily predator lived off carrion.

  They were the fuel for the flame. This abomination lived by consuming their goodness and truth, and the black-hot fire rippled over the deathscape reducing the corpses to crumbling husks. It needed decency and honesty and purity to survive, for it fed by corrupting their purity into some­thing it could live upon. These men and women were the last chance of humanity, the only ones with the strength to face the truth of the Architect's will, and the evil force here would consume them until there was nothing left.

  One day, it would be Yser's turn to become fuel for the flame of darkness.

  Unless it was stopped. That was the message the Architect was giving Yser by forcing him to see this horror. The vision was not of the present but of the future, a universe where evil had triumphed and the Architect's flock lay amongst the heaps of the dead. A future that could be prevented if Yser and the sacred warriors of the Emperor could find the night­mare and end it before it became that all-consuming flame.

  A force seized Yser like a huge invisible hand, yanking him upwards away from the deathscape, ripping through the fly-slab and through the clouds of pollution. Then faster, further, into the raw cold of space.

  The last sight was always the same - a glimpse of the world they had to cleanse. Clouded and pale like an immense cataract, it festered in orbit around a star that was bloated and dying as if the hell-planet had infected it with its evil.

  Then blackness washed over everything, and the vision was over.

  WHEN YSER TOLD Sarpedon of his latest vision, it was in the new Cathedral of Dorn, the air heavy with a mix of ancient engine oil and burning incense, and resounding with the echoes of prayers old and new.

  'It was the same?'

  'No. More intense, Lord Sarpedon, More real.'

  'As if you were closer?'

  'Yes. Yes, that was it. We are close, I feel it.' Yser held the copy of the Catechisms Martial in still-shaking hands - Daenyathos's masterpiece was never far from his side now. His voice sounded small and feeble in the high-ceilinged nave that had been selected as the new Cathedral of Dorn, and though Yser was far cleaner and healthier than when he had been found on the star fort it was still very apparent that he was a frail old man.

  'Are you afraid, father?'

  Yser's old, watery eyes looked up from the hidebound book. 'Lord Sarpedon, it does not matter if I am. I will do what I must. We all will.'

  The nave had once held hundreds of torpedoes, racked up ready for loading into the tubes of a blocky, squat warship. The torpedoes had long since been looted leaving a massive pyramidal cavity with its apex lost in the shadows overhead.

  The statues of Chapter heroes had been transferred from the fleet before its scuttling and were now standing around the edges of the chamber, glaring and huge. In the centre was the colossal statue of the Primarch Rogal Dorn - his power sword was bolstered but his combat blade was drawn, symbolizing the potency of a compact, cunningly-wielded force like the Soul Drinkers. His noble, high-browed face was turned upwards and away from the half-formed spawn beneath his feet that represented the creatures of Chaos. Overlooked by the stone primarch was a lectern of black wood, where the Chaplains would hold their sermons, and from where Yser would preach the new, true faith to the Soul Drinkers. The Chaplains themselves were receiving instruction from Yser, so that it was with words of truth that they would inspire their men.

  'Will they rebuild the window, do you think?' said Yser unexpectedly. 'The one that was broken.'

  Sarpedon remembered the storm of shattered glass as he plunged through the stained-glass window of the first cathe­dral. The shards had been gathered from the floor of the Hall of Novices and transported aboard the Brokenback before the scuppering of the fleet. But Sarpedon somehow felt it would be inappropriate to reforge the window, symbolizing as it did the Chapter bound to the whims of the Imperium. They had left the Imperium behind now, and every symbol of the Chapter would have to be reworked to reflect their freedom. The artificers will craft a new one. 'I shall see to it once we have returned.'

  'You will be here one day, Lord Sarpedon,' said Yser, ges­turing at the stern-faced statues ranged around the chamber.

  Sarpedon smiled. 'I hope they include all the scars. I would hate to be remembered as a handsome man.'

  'And the legs.'

  'Of course.'

  The silence of the cathedral was light and calming. It was hard to imagine the maelstrom of the warp that boiled around the Brokenback. For several weeks now the Brokenback had traversed the warp once more, but this time it was under human control, its massive array of warp engines linked up to the nav-cogitators of the Macharia Victrix and a half-dozen other semi-intact ship's bridges. The co-ordinates of the unnamed planet from the mem-banks of the Bellerophon were hard-wired into every system. Within a scant few days the Brokenback would arrive close enough to begin preliminary scans.

  'And what about you, Sarpedon?' asked Yser. 'What have you seen?'

  Sarpedon paused, recalling the depths of the dreams he had witnessed in half-sleep. 'Quixian Obscura again. But... there is something else. When I am up on the battlements and I cannot fathom why I am fighting, there is something new behind it all. Not just in the distance - I mean it is beneath everything, as if it was in layer of reality that I could not see before. It is huge and dark, like a black cloud. I can feel its hunger, Yser. I can hear it laughing at me. When I have fought off the aliens and Kallis is dead, Caeon looks round to me and his words are lost in the laughter coming from all around me.'

  Yser smiled. 'And when it is done, you see the tainted world like a blind eye in orbit.'

  'Yes, father. The same as you.'

  'Then it is good, Sarpedon. You know what you must do. How many of us ever really know what our true purpose is? There are billions of men who are lost and stumbling, unaware of the truth or how best to serve their Emperor. But you - you have seen it. You know where you must go and you have seen the magnitude of the evil you must destroy there. Is this not a blessing, Sarpedon?'

  Sarpedon looked up at the towering statue of Rogal Dorn. Soon, when the serf battalions had finished dressing the stone taken from the hold of the Glory and the artificers had completed their carving, there would be a new statue behind the primarch, towering over it. It would be the Emperor, the Architect of Fate, as He appeared in the scrawlings of Yser's
flock and the fleeting visionary moments of the Marines - face masked, shoulders broad, great jewelled wings of truth spreading from His back. It would be the first properly ren­dered image of the Emperor as the Soul Drinkers now worshipped him.

  And he would look down on them, eyes searching, accus­ing if they failed and proud if they succeeded. Never would they forget the Emperor's eyes on them.

  'Yes, Yser.' said Sarpedon. 'I am blessed. Chances like ours are rare indeed. I know I can count on you for guidance, Yser and the brothers can too. But the Emperor will not have set us a simple task to prove our worth. I will be taking our finest warriors with me, and even if we are victorious you may have to counsel a Chapter which has lost many of its best to this evil.'

  'I have given my life to service in the name of the Architect of Fate, Sarpedon. I may not hold a gun but I know I have my part to play.'

  Sarpedon stood, flexing his legs. They were almost healed - the tightness around the joints was gone. He felt as if he could punch a talon through solid rock. 'Of course, Yser. But I would not be much of a commander if I was not sure you knew what you might have to do.'

  'Don't worry about me, commander. This Chapter is my flock now, and I will give them my heart and soul if that is what they need.'

  Sarpedon knew the statue of Dorn was mostly conjecture - the primarch was a legend, his deeds half-myth, and no one could claim to know what he had looked like. But a symbol of him was enough. Dorn was amongst them, watching over them, judging them, so that when the end came he would know the best of men were at his side in the final battle.

  'And commander?'

  'Yser?'

  'Kill a few for me.'

  IT WAS RAINING on the forge world Koden Tertius, which meant a total lockdown. Triple-layered armaplas shutters slid down over the viewports and doorways, and the sensoria were drawn into smooth white sheaths against the elements. The sulphuric acid rain and nuclear lightning-storms sheeting down outside would kill even the most unfleshed tech-priest in seconds, and every facility on the planet had to be sealed completely. Acid could get in anywhere and eat away essen­tial power feeds, and any metallic contact could channel lethal shocks into the bodies of the laboratories and manufactoria. When the great storms of Koden Tertius were overhead, all manufacturing stopped, and the acolytes of the tech-priesthood withdrew into the habitats deep in the rock to contemplate their devotion to the masterpiece of the Omnissiah.