Fabius Bile: Clonelord

by Josh Reynolds

  Eidolon paused, eyes narrowed. Fabius chuckled and probed his teeth with his tongue. A few were loose from the sonic blow. No matter. ‘Oh, yes, I know that you have been seeking to curry favour with that dull-witted brute. Joining him on his little expeditions. Has the Legion forgiven him his crimes, then? Or have you merely turned coat once again?’

  ‘Bile by name, bile by nature,’ Eidolon muttered.

  Fabius nodded. ‘If you like. What would your loyal dogs, your so-called Phoenix Conclave, out there do, if they knew on whose behalf you shed Legion blood? Would they applaud your foresight and wisdom? Or would they tear you apart?’

  ‘It would depend on who told them, I think.’

  ‘Possibly. Then, you were never well liked, Eidolon.’

  ‘Neither were you, Fabius.’

  Fabius dipped his head, in acknowledgement of the point. ‘Then, I ask again. Why go through all of this… farce, just to bring me here, and tell me this? What do you need from me, Eidolon? You have your own fleshcrafters, crude though they are. They would serve well enough, to make use of such a bounty. If it even exists.’

  ‘It exists. Of that you can be sure.’ Eidolon turned away. He was silent for a moment, as if considering his next words. ‘You say we died here. That our back was broken, our hearts burst. That Abaddon killed us. And that is true. But the Phoenix must die, in order to be reborn. We have died three times, and been reborn stronger each time. As we are being reborn even now. Those dogs, as you call them, are but the first. Others will come, old friends and new, until the Legion is unified once more.’

  ‘So this is an appeal to brotherhood. How quaint.’

  Eidolon laughed. ‘No. Nor is it an appeal to your vanity. I know you too well for that. No, this is an appeal to your pragmatism, Fabius. You claim you are hunted, harried across the Eye? Who will hunt you, if you are safe once more behind the shields of your brothers? Who will dare?’

  ‘Abaddon.’

  Eidolon gestured dismissively. ‘Abaddon is no fool. He puts no stock in honour, save that it benefits him. He knows well your uses, whether he admits it or not. Indeed, he has often said as much to me.’

  ‘And how often were those kind words accompanied by the desire that you bring me to him in chains?’

  ‘No more than once or twice, I assure you.’

  Fabius snorted. He strode past Eidolon to the tower’s edge, and looked out over the devastation. ‘What do you truly want of me, Eidolon? Am I to be your hunting hound, seeking out this prize on your behalf?’

  ‘If you like. With that ship, and its contents, brother, we might be able to build the Legion anew. A Legion of gods, not monsters. Think of it as a canvas upon which you will paint your masterpiece. And I am your obliging patron. Whatever you need, whatever you wish, I shall endeavour to make happen. All for the price of a thing you would do for free.’

  Fabius smiled. The thought was a pleasing one. It had been so long since he’d had access to that amount of raw material. And not just cloned scraps, either, but fresh. ‘And what will Abaddon think, I wonder, when he gets word of this? Or the Dark Council of Sicarius? The Legion Wars are not so long over that our estranged brothers will have forgotten. They will not wish to see a resurgent Third.’

  ‘Nonetheless, see it they will. And once it is done, their… disapproval will mean less than nothing to us. We shall resume our rightful place as the rulers of this hell. But only if we have the numbers to do so.’

  ‘And that is why you need me,’ Fabius said. It was an intriguing offer. He had not contemplated a project on such a scale in some time. But if it bought him the good graces of his brothers, and the time to perfect his own creations then perhaps it was worth considering. He glanced at Eidolon. ‘I am the only one who can guarantee the necessary success rate.’ He hesitated. ‘I will choose the aspirants myself, yes? There must be no taint in them, no weakness of soul or flesh.’ That would be the most important part. They must be perfect at the outset, or the likelihood of rejection would be increased beyond acceptable parameters.

  ‘Agreed. Though I suspect that will come in time.’ Eidolon’s leer was unpleasant. Fabius almost changed his mind there and then. But spite for its own sake served little purpose. ‘Find me my army, brother, and I will see to it that your name is once again whispered throughout the Eye.’

  Fabius looked at him, pondering. An army. A restored Third Legion. Once, he might have leapt at the opportunity. Now, it was a matter that required careful consideration. Still, there were benefits to such an arrangement. And the terms of the agreement could always be altered, when it came to it. If necessary.

  After a moment, he nodded, smiling thinly.

  ‘Very well. We have an accord… brother.’

  Chapter ten

  Divine Seed

  Fabius stood in the remains of his first great laboratorium and looked on the ruins of centuries of work. Cracked containment cylinders bled coolant and nutrient waste across the floor and walls, as sickly strands of cloned flesh stretched like creeper vines through the ­canopy of rusted power conduits and fibre bundles.

  He removed his helmet and sucked in a lungful of mouldering air. The faintest traces of old experiments were discernible, even now. The chemical stink had permeated the stone so thoroughly that not even the fires of destruction could fully scour them clean.

  Eidolon had given him leave to plunder through his old haunts, seeking anything that might yet be of value. He’d hoped there would be something, given the wealth of knowledge and raw material he’d been forced to abandon, but precious little remained. Time and scavengers had picked the bones clean.

  He’d descended into the depths of the great building alone. He had no doubt Eidolon had someone watching him, in some fashion, but the sensor baffles he’d installed in his power armour would take care of any prying, artificial eyes. While outwardly his battleplate was still the same ceramite he’d worn on the killing fields of Isstvan and Terra, inwardly it had seen much augmentation. Beyond the enhanced sensory array and the baffle filters, there were any number of odds and ends, including one that was the direct result of his recent studies into eldar technology.

  Idly, he tapped the stud of circular metal set into his brow. While it resembled nothing more than an antiquated service stud, it was in actuality a neural buffer. Every few moments, it copied his neural patterns – all that made him, him – and remotely uploaded them to the databanks in his laboratorium. In such a way, his knowledge and personality were preserved, in the event of misfortune.

  With a sigh, he pulled his helmet back on. He would need the sensor feed to identify and locate anything of value that might yet remain. As the visual feed flickered to life, he turned, examining his surroundings in greater detail.

  The reinforced super-structure of the facility had survived the impact of Abaddon’s spear, but only just. Massive cracks ran through every flat surface, and most of the machinery had shorted out instantly. That which hadn’t, had puttered on for a few decades before finally succumbing to neglect and power loss. Clone-tanks lined one wall, their contents slumped at the bottom of each. He wandered down the line, studying rotting husks huddled in their own liquid effluvia. The ident-scanner built into his vambrace whirred and pinged as it read the binaric code etched into the face-plate of every tank.

  The clones had been grown from samples taken from a thousand key figures in the Imperial hierarchy – key figures at the time, at least. Iterators, senior Administratum staff, division heads of the Estate Imperium, and even a few senior officers of the Militarum Tempestus. The samples had been provided by agents of the Lernaean Proxies, accompanied by certain neural wetware to be implanted before the decanting process had begun. Mass-produced double-agents, to better serve Alpharius – or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

  ‘I am Alpharius,’ he murmured, and chuckled. It was a given that all of the sons of the Hydra were Alpharius
. It was just a shame that Alpharius had proven himself to be so dull. ‘Whatever else, Fulgrim never committed the sin of vacuity. Never tried to stamp us in a mould of his own making.’

  The destruction of the clones had precipitated the breakdown of his once-cordial relations with the representatives of the Alpha Legion. Another thing to thank Abaddon for, if they ever crossed paths again. And not just the Alpha Legion. He turned, spying canisters of long-rotted gene-seed, stolen from the recruiting worlds of the World Eaters in some forgotten raid. He could not recall what he had been planning to do with it. Something more practical than its original owners intended, no doubt.

  He paused suddenly and turned back. Something was missing. Several somethings, in fact. Machinery far too cumbersome to be carted off by scavengers – not fully, at any rate. He cycled through sensor frequencies, as his gaze followed a series of conduits. They were still active. But where was the power going?

  Curious, he followed the conduits as they devolved into crudely spliced cables, all leading further down. There were thousands of kilometres of access tunnels beneath the city, many of them once occupied by the machinery necessary to keep an urban centre of such mammoth proportions functioning. Recalling the loose flesh he’d seen bubbling up through the streets, he wondered what might have taken them over since the city’s destruction.

  ‘Only one way to find out, I suppose,’ he murmured.

  The hatchways to the access tunnels were right where he’d left them. The last time he’d used them, the tunnels had been full of his creations, seeking vain refuge from the coming enemy. He could still recall the stink of their fear, and the howling, as he and his bodyguards had fought their way to the underground teleportarium he’d had the foresight to design and maintain. Now it was empty, save for shadows and filth.

  Broken bones littered the narrow corridors, and burst chem-dispensers and fried power cables dangled from the cracked ceiling high overhead. The locking mechanisms of the security bulkheads had been cooked in the electromagnetic death-knell of the shattered Tlaloc, leaving most of them open. Those that weren’t had been shattered, or simply torn loose from the walls. Bulkheads were only as impassable as the walls they occupied.

  The stab-lights of his armour flickered to life, sweeping the darkness. A grid-map of the tunnel system surfaced from the data-core of his armour, overlaying the visual feed. His sensors locked on to the tangle of active supply cables and he followed them. As he traversed the tunnels, he saw that the junction-nodes and bleed-off points had all been cracked open and spliced into the central conduit, so that every last erg of energy was flowing to the same source. The deeper he went, the harder it was for his sensors to penetrate the surrounding walls. It was as if something were actively interfering with them.

  When the first whisper slid across his vox, he was not surprised. He had been expecting it, in a way. It was possible that the Harlequins had tracked him to Harmony. There were few places the alien clowns couldn’t go, if they were of a mind. Even daemon worlds were no obstacle to them, mad as they were. And the narrative lure of his current undertaking was too strong for such creatures to resist. A man alone, in the dark of a forgotten ruin, seeking the answer to a mystery. Of course there would be monsters. He stopped at a fourfold junction and hefted Torment, waiting.

  ‘The King, oh, the King, he descended into the underworld, blade in hand…’

  The junction was a baroque crossroads, littered with grotesque ornamentation. Leering faces crowded above vaulted arches, and long-silent vox-casters sat in the stone jaws of hideous gargoyle shapes. The stripped, silent carcasses of four servitors still occupied their alcoves, their darkened optical sensors fixed on something only the dead could see.

  ‘He descended, the King, to challenge the Crone, on her dark throne…’

  He didn’t recognise the voice as it slipped and slid into and out of audibility. It did not sound like the Shadowseer, Veilwalker. The voice was less a giggle than a growl. Though that meant little, where such creatures were concerned. He had long suspected that Veilwalker was not individual but many – a title, rather than a name. A choice role, played by many actors. He turned, slowly, boosting his sensors, trying to pinpoint the source of the signal. ‘If you wish to talk, talk, but spare me your attempts at poetry.’

  ‘The King stumbled through the dark land of death, seeking that which no blade could defeat, no command could sway…’

  ‘I grow weary of this. Reveal yourselves or be silent.’ Fabius swung Torment out in a loose arc. The artefact snarled, filling the air with red light. A shape, undetected by his sensors, twitched back, out of sight. Fabius tensed.

  It had not been a Harlequin. Or, at least unlike any Harlequin he had ever seen. A moment later, he heard something laugh close at hand. He spun, Torment raised. Only the clop of hooves on stone awaited him. A Neverborn, perhaps. Harmony was rife with them. ‘Where did you hear that song?’ he asked.

  ‘From a friend…’

  ‘Who are you?’

  Silence.

  ‘Melusine?’ he murmured, as a sudden suspicion flared. ‘Is that you?’

  More laughter. Like that of a child, delighted at the trick it has played on its parent.

  Fabius snarled in frustration. ‘I grew tired of these games a thousand years ago. Whatever you are, Neverborn or aeldari or something else entirely, know that you are trying my patience. Did you lure me down here merely to spit gibberish at me?’

  ‘Not gibberish, but a story, a story, a story… Tell me a story, Fabius…’

  Fabius twitched his head in annoyance. ‘I do not know any stories.’

  ‘A lie, a lie! You are made of stories, King of Feathers, Father of Monsters, Clonelord and Primogenitor. Every name, a story. Every story, a name.’

  ‘Then perhaps I simply have no patience for indulging a mysterious voice. Speak plainly, or not at all.’ Fabius turned, casting his lights in every nook and crack. Nothing moved save particles of dust, disturbed by his passage.

  ‘Your story is one of damnation and salvation, forwards and backwards,’ the unseen presence sang, causing his vox to crackle painfully. ‘Who will you save, who will you kill?’

  ‘Only those I must,’ Fabius said. ‘That is all I have ever done. What I must, when I must. If I have a god, let it be necessity, for that is what guides my footsteps.’ Sensors swept the broken tunnels, delivering a recalibrated three-dimensional map to his display. Pulses of warmth drew near to his position. Something was coming.

  The chirurgeon clattered in alarm as something touched his arm. He spun, Torment slashing out to pulverise a sagging pillar. There was nothing there. Only the fading echo of a laugh. He cycled through the sensor frequencies, trying to isolate the signal that intruded on his vox. ‘Why don’t you stop singing and come out with it? What do you want?’

  No answer. His helmet feed sparked with static. Strange shadow-shapes seemed to bleed out of the walls and floor for a moment, before vanishing as swiftly as they’d come. The shapes had no substance, no solidity. But he tensed, regardless.

  He flexed his hand, ready to draw his needler at an instant. Steam seeped from broken pipes and boiled up from melting patches of coolant, obscuring the path directly ahead of him. For a moment, he thought he saw something dancing within its folds, but as the steam cleared, the shape was revealed to be nothing more than a trick of the light, or perhaps his own overwrought senses.

  Loose stones shifted. He turned more slowly this time, controlling the kill-instinct. He lifted Torment, and pointed the sceptre at the hunched shape that had sought to take him unawares. It shied back with a whine. A mutant, wrapped in concealing rags. It waved bandaged paws at him, as if begging for mercy. More of them crept out of the darkness, crawling towards him, eyes reflecting his lights.

  Slowly, he removed his helmet. At the sight of his face, they abased themselves. The first one gabbled at him in a semi-co
herent pidgin. He recognised the babble, and replied in kind. More than their ­babble was familiar – his scanners picked out certain markers among the cacophony of their genetic melange.

  The mutants were the descendants of those he’d selected to serve as his assistants. The genetic markers were obvious, to his eyes. In the centuries since the destruction of Canticle City, they’d obviously fled into the depths and bred down in the dark. Inured as they were to pain and hardship, they might even have thrived, in a sense. But only for a time. He could smell the stink of septic wounds and the brittle tang of fear. Once Harmony’s old masters had returned, they would have become nothing more than prey without his protection. Wild mutants were hunted by the Legions, for sport and food.

  They caught at his hands, attempting to lead him down a side corridor. He hesitated, but only for a moment. They meant him no harm. Indeed, it was beyond their capacity to even consider such a thing. He had implanted certain safeguards in their ancestors – safeguards they had passed down to their descendants.

  He followed them deeper into the tunnels. More of them came out of hiding to greet him, or to simply stare in wonder. Twisted paws reached out to touch the fleshy folds of his coat. Malformed faces gazed at him in adulation. Some of them had begun to sing, in broken voices that echoed eerily in the cramped spaces. ‘Ave Pater Mutatis,’ they crooned, lifting squalling infant-things up to him, as if to receive benediction. And he gave it to them, brushing his hands over the squirming, fleshy shapes that squealed and wept. Even after all of this time, they worshipped him.

  The walls of the tunnels were covered in crude paintings. He recognised himself, captured in blood and oil, rising over indistinct, huddled masses like some great, protective spider. He smiled thinly. The mutants led him down, through winding, hand-carved tunnels that branched off from the square access corridors like tumours. The air grew thick and rank, and lumen-light gave way to more primitive forms of illumination. Fires burned in out-of-the-way tunnels, and long shadows capered on the walls.