‘Daemons are not susceptible to mortal plagues,’ Savona scoffed.
Khorag nodded enthusiastically. ‘No, they are not. And yet, I have seen the results myself. That is what he offers me, child. In his shadow, I grow pleasingly feculent.’
‘And what does he get out of it?’
‘Were you not listening? Plagues, child. Swift plagues that can ravage entire systems at impossible rates.’ He chortled. ‘Oh, his mind is a thing of broken beauty. Even Abaddon cannot conceive of genocide on such a scale – it is not war to our Chief Apothecary, but simply… pest control.’ He shook his head. ‘Imagine it. A great silence, falling all at once across a system. A sector. Every imperfect thing, snuffed out like a candle flame. And then… ah, and then, a new beginning.’
‘His New Men,’ Savona said, trying to grasp the scale of it. Even at her most savage, she had never contemplated something so coldly monstrous. ‘Are they immune to it?’
‘Oh, I imagine so. He keeps track of my improvements, and develops vaccines and inoculations aplenty. So I must work all the harder, to brew up something that will eat away at even the hardiest of his creations. A fine game, don’t you think?’
‘Yes,’ she said, more softly than she’d intended. Her flesh crawled as she took in the stacks of canisters and the humid stink of so much gathered death. Khorag laughed at her.
‘And why do you serve him, Savona of the Ruptured Skein?’
She thought about it for a moment, before answering. It was a question she had often considered, in the quiet moments between blood-lettings. There were many answers she could give – Fabius’ patronage was the surest path to leadership of the 12th. By serving him, she was protected from those who might otherwise seek her head, just for who and what she was. But the truth of it was something far simpler. Loyalty to Fabius promised that which she had been seeking since she had first set foot on the path of Dark Prince.
She smiled. ‘He keeps things interesting.’
Chapter thirteen
The Phoenician’s Shadow
An undercurrent of sound filled the laboratorium – the click of cogitators at their calculations, the soft murmur of chemical alembics, the hum of power conduits. And weaving through it all, the gentle trickle of music. A composition of some antiquity, played by the hands of a woman long dead, recorded and disseminated by her adherents down through the centuries. They claimed that to hear her voice was to glimpse the divine.
Fabius thought it an adequate tune. Lacking in creativity, but with a certain grace. That so many had made it the focus of their existence was only more proof that humanity, in its current incarnation, was irreparably damaged.
The limbs of the chirurgeon flashed down, slicing and peeling away at the body on the examination slab. The Space Marine had been one of Thalopsis’ followers. The Gland-hounds had brought him down on the gunnery deck, but left the harvesting for their Benefactor. Now, with nothing else to do but wait until they reached the Maelstrom’s edge, Fabius had at last turned his attentions to the bodies of the fallen.
The dead warrior had been stripped of his battleplate, which now lay discarded in an out-of-the-way corner. The power armour was no longer functional, in the traditional sense, being more in the way of a crustacean’s carapace. But something might yet be made of it. It would provide an adequate base for his experiments with wraithbone, at least.
The Space Marine was proving to be less useful. The mutations were too extensive, down to a cellular level. But something yet might be made of his remains. The chirurgeon’s blades and plasma-cutter worked at the spongy flesh, slicing away layers of fat and unnatural musculature. The black carapace had been completely absorbed into the altered flesh, as had most of the implants. But the progenoid was still whole. It was cradled in a scabrous egg of repurposed carapace, like a hidden treasure.
Deftly, he extracted it, and carefully peeled away the egg. The glistening progenoid was then dropped into a waiting nutrient canister. There would be some mutation, but he would be able to salvage it. At the very least, it would provide fodder for the lesser gene-seed he cultivated for his New Men.
When he had finished, he stepped back. From behind him came the sound of the laboratorium’s entry hatch cycling open. Fabius frowned at the intrusion. ‘Take what’s left to the flesh-vats. Strip the bone and the carapace. Keep them separate. I may find other use for them.’
At his words, several vatborn scurried out of hiding. The sturdy little creatures dragged the gutted carcass off of the slab and swiftly wrapped it in an absorbent shroud. Fabius watched as they removed the body, pleased with their efficiency.
‘There’s no honour left to you, is there?’ Alkenex said.
Fabius didn’t turn. He dunked his bloody gauntlets into a basin next to the slab. The antibacterial solution hissed as it ate away at the effluvia clinging to his armour. ‘It depends on how you define honour, Flavius.’
Alkenex grunted. He wandered the laboratorium for a moment, examining the wonders and horrors that occupied its cramped confines. ‘Prevarication,’ he said, after a time. ‘I expected no less from you.’
‘Are you here just to insult me, or did you have some matter to discuss? If it’s the former, I’ll thank you to leave.’ Fabius glanced meaningfully at the entry hatch. ‘I wouldn’t have given order that you were allowed to enter, if I’d known you had nothing of importance to say.’ The Gland-hounds that were waiting just out of sight would happily fall on the prefect, at Fabius’ command. And Alkenex knew it.
Alkenex glanced at the hatch and then at him. ‘Your… creatures attacked one of my warriors. He drove them off, but they injured him.’
‘Ah. Well, there are any number of Apothecaries aboard. You did not have to bring the matter to me especially.’ Fabius stooped to examine the progenoid he’d just extracted.
Alkenex waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, Alkenex said, ‘What are you going to do about it, then?’
‘Do about what?’
‘I want those creatures’ scalps. They must be punished.’
‘For what? Following their instincts? I gave them orders to leave your warriors alone, so long as they reciprocated. Your warrior should not have been wandering through their territory alone, looking for trouble. It was bound to infuriate them.’ Fabius looked up. ‘What was he looking for, I wonder – and on whose orders?’
The other Space Marine said nothing.
Fabius snorted. ‘Did he wound any of them?’
Alkenex gripped the hilt of his sword. ‘Not that I am aware of.’
Fabius nodded. ‘Good. Then I shall not demand recompense.’
‘Are you listening to me? Those things injured a brother of the Third. Your brother. They must be put down, like the rabid beasts they are.’
‘Then go and put them down.’ Fabius gestured towards the entry hatch. ‘Go and kill them, if you can. I will tender my apologies to Eidolon, afterwards, when they hang you by your heels and carve out your hearts.’ He fixed Alkenex with an unwavering stare. ‘I made them to kill our kind, Flavius, as we were made to slay the foes of our once-master.’
‘And are your brothers your foes, then?’
Fabius laughed. ‘You tell me.’ He touched one of the nutrient jars that lined a nearby shelf. Each one contained a gene-seed, harvested from a member of the 12th Millennial. ‘We were created for a purpose – one we failed to fulfil. My creations will not fail me, as we failed our creator.’
‘Do you fancy yourself an emperor, then? A god-king, with a fawning harem of genetically augmented woman-things?’ Alkenex laughed. ‘I’ve seen the way you dote on her. Why else would you make such useless things? Have you succumbed to vice at last, brother?’ He leaned close. ‘Has Slaanesh inflamed your senses and stirred your–’
‘Enough.’ Fabius studied his reflection in the jars. ‘Do you truly want to know why I uplifted both gende
rs, Flavius? Or are you content with your puerile fancies?’
Alkenex hesitated. ‘Tell me.’
Fabius snorted. ‘Simply put – I will not be around forever. Walking wounded, as I said. So, my creations must be able to persist without my intervention. Some few have been able to grasp my methodology, but like all children, they stretch the common sense of their parent into something approaching a religion.’
Alkenex chuckled. ‘What man doesn’t want to be a god?’
‘Gods are for the weak, Flavius. What can they do for man, that man cannot do for himself, and with less trouble? No, let them revere me if they wish – but not as a god. I am not so arrogant as that. Primogenitor is enough.’
‘Not so arrogant–?’ Alkenex laughed. ‘You are the height of arrogance, Spider. You always have been. You reek of assumed authority. Fulgrim coddled you and elevated you far above your station at every turn.’
Fabius shrugged. ‘The same could be said of many of us. What does it matter now?’
‘It matters when you seek to create monsters, using our gene-seed. It matters when your arrogance drives you to pervert our perfection for your own gain…’
‘You haven’t been listening,’ Fabius said, after a moment. ‘I will gain nothing from my work, save the satisfaction of having fulfilled my function at last. We were crafted to make the galaxy safe for humanity. And so I shall, by making humanity better able to survive the horrors we have unleashed. My New Men will spread through the galaxy, as their predecessors were always meant to do. Guided by my philosophy, perhaps – my wisdom. But not by me. Like all weapons, I will break eventually. And my remains will be put to better use, as the broken sword is converted into a ploughshare.’
Alkenex stared at him. ‘You are mad.’
‘Possibly. Arrogant, mad and a fool.’ Fabius smiled. ‘How does that make me any different from the rest of you?’
Alkenex shook his head. ‘We are nothing alike, Spider. You do not understand what it means to be a warrior. For you, it is a burden. A labour. For me, it is a calling.’ He slapped his sheathed blade. ‘You are correct – we are weapons. And I am content in that. I will be the most perfect weapon in the Phoenician’s arsenal.’
‘Ah, now I understand. I did not, at first. Surely this task was beneath you. But now, I see. You desire the glory that you think will follow this scheme of Eidolon’s. How like you, Flavius. You always were a glutton for such ephemeral rewards.’
‘It’s called ambition, Spider.’
‘Is it? My own ambitions are loftier than a place at Eidolon’s feet. Why be a weapon, when you can be the one who crafts it?’ Fabius sniffed. ‘If you are finished, I have other duties to attend to. Preparations must be made for the implantation and preservation of our bounty, when we find it.’
‘At least you are good for that.’ Alkenex pointed at him. ‘Keep your beasts in line, Fabius, or I will order them purged from this ship.’
Fabius glanced at Alkenex’s finger, and then at his face. ‘You could certainly try.’
Alkenex frowned and turned away. Fabius waited until the hatch had closed behind him, and said, ‘Initiate lockdown procedure Gamma-Fortitude. Encrypt all outgoing vox signals.’ The lumens set into the hatch frame flickered from green to red as the internal locking mechanisms slid home.
Alkenex was moving more swiftly than he’d anticipated. He was unsettling the delicate equilibrium of the Vesalius, and his warriors were causing problems. Honour duels had become common, as had mutant hunts, despite Fabius’ demands to the contrary. Whole sections of the ship were as good as enemy territory. Even as he’d foreseen.
The Lord Commander Primus wanted him in chains. He wanted a tame alchemist for his barbaric little court, much as Kasperos Telmar had. Part of Fabius wondered if this expedition was nothing more than some overly intricate trap, designed to break him to Eidolon’s will – but no. Eidolon had never been that subtle, and Alkenex even less so. The gene-tithe existed, and the only question was who would control it.
‘Patience,’ he muttered. ‘Patience.’ He cleared his throat and whistled once, piercingly. Several vatborn scuttled into view, grunting questioningly. Fabius looked down at them. ‘Follow Alkenex. I want to know who he talks to. Where he goes. Take care not to be seen, if you value your lives. Go.’
The vatborn hurried to obey. They would travel by secret routes, and avoid the eyes of Space Marine and mutant alike. Fabius sighed. That Alkenex was plotting treachery was obvious. The question was – what sort? Would he attempt to take the ship openly? Or simply content himself with picking away at Fabius’ sphere of influence?
He doubted Alkenex was working on his own initiative. This smacked of one of Eidolon’s games. For all his talk of partnership, the Lord Commander Primus was no fool. He expected no loyalty from his old Legion brother, and had undoubtedly planned for treachery. Well, they would not find him unprepared.
He saw and recorded everything that went on aboard this vessel. From those fragments, he would soon glean the shape of the treachery to come. And then, he would act accordingly.
Satisfied that the laboratorium was sealed against all unwanted intrusions, he set his tasks aside and moved to the rear of the chamber, where a concealed hatchway waited. He’d altered the apothecarium himself, installing reinforced internal partitions in order to create a series of smaller observation chambers. Each could be isolated from the others, when necessary. Normally, he used them to observe the results of his experiments in more subtle forms of augmentation.
For the moment, the largest of them had become, for lack of a better term, a nursery. Or it had been, when its occupant had still been a mewling infant. Now it was inhabited by a youth, a boy of twelve cycles, Fabius judged, as he watched through the observation port.
The clone of Fulgrim was aging exponentially, years passing in mere hours. But beyond the physical progression, there was the mental. Too, there was as yet no sign of mental or physical corruption. The thought concerned Fabius, though he could not say why. He had resigned himself to the corrupting influence of Eyespace. It crept into everything. By rights, the clone should have been corrupted while still in his artificial womb, after so long unprotected. And yet, here he was. Perfect.
Fabius did not believe in fate, or signs. Logic was his Pharos. But this defied logic. It was as if someone had given him a gift. And he did not trust gifts. He watched Fulgrim move about the chamber and considered disposing of him. It would be safer, in the long run. His New Men had no need of such a being.
And he would not be able to hide the young demigod for long, not if his maturation continued. There was the slight hope that entropy might claim the clone shortly, but Fabius doubted it. He had created the clones to mature rapidly, but once Fulgrim reached his full growth, his aging would slow to normal levels.
The problem was a thorny one. And one he was reluctant to solve. He keyed in the code and unlocked the hatch. It cycled open with a hiss of displaced, sterile air, and he stepped inside.
The clone looked at him as he entered. ‘Hello, teacher.’
Fabius hesitated, before answering. It was unsettling, being addressed by one who so resembled his lost gene-father. ‘Hello, Fulgrim. What have you learned today?’
‘That the world is greater than I dreamt,’ Fulgrim – the thing that looked like Fulgrim – said, casting aside a data-slate. ‘Bigger. Noisier. More interesting.’
Fabius chuckled. ‘It is that, on occasion.’ He raised an eyebrow at the pile of data-slates that surrounded the being. What few physical books he possessed had been pulled from their shelves and stacked haphazardly in a slightly smaller circle around the clone. ‘How many have you read?’
‘Most of them. With some of them, it is as if I have read them before. In a dream.’ Fulgrim looked up. ‘Why is that?’
Fabius hesitated. ‘I do not know,’ he said finally. The lie tasted sour on his to
ngue. This being was not Fulgrim, and yet was. The falsehood was like poison to him. He had lied to the real Fulgrim often, at the end. But by then, Fulgrim had not been Fulgrim, but something else. A thing that encouraged deceit and appealed only to the worst in his sons. Indeed, Fabius thought it safe to say that this androgynous child before him had more right to the name than the entity that now claimed it. Or would, when he had grown to adulthood.
He would not be the Fulgrim they remembered, but perhaps he might be Fulgrim as he should have been. The Phoenician, Unfettered. A true Illuminator, capable of leading a New Humanity to its destiny.
He recalled a story. It was perhaps one he had heard as a child; a folktale from misty Albia. A sorcerer had raised a king and brought about a golden age. It had not had a happy ending. Such stories rarely did. But this was not a story. He was no sorcerer, guided by portents and hoary wisdom. And the being sitting before him was no man; though he might be a king. Or an emperor.
‘You are smiling,’ Fulgrim said. Fabius blinked, startled from his reverie. Fulgrim smiled himself, and Fabius felt his hearts lurch in their cages of bone and spite. ‘It is good to smile, teacher,’ the clone said. ‘It is better to smile.’ He reached for another data-slate.
‘Yes,’ Fabius said. ‘Stand up.’
Fulgrim stood obediently. Fabius examined him with careful, precise movements. The chirurgeon clicked and hissed as it took blood and dermal samples. Fulgrim did not flinch as his blood was drawn and skin cells were scraped from his arm. The diagnostic scanners built into Fabius’ armour recorded and analysed the clone’s biometric data.
‘Hold out your arm.’
As he ran his fingers along Fulgrim’s arm, probing for any weakness in his musculature, he found his thoughts drawn back to the fall of Harmony and Abaddon’s rampage. A moment of clarity he’d never properly thanked the Warmaster for. When he had remade Horus, it had been a fool’s gamble. Lupercal reborn and the Legions united. The dream of a different man – a desperate man, seeking some purpose in a purposeless universe. Now, those days seemed like a bad dream. A waking fugue of broken moments. He had been wrong. He saw that now.
Fabius Bile: Clonelord Page 20