Fabius Bile: Clonelord

by Josh Reynolds

  ‘Who is it?’ Savona growled, reaching for her maul.

  ‘Just another would-be survivor.’

  The hatchway cycled open to admit Skalagrim. The Son of Horus stood for a moment, and then stepped inside. ‘So this is where it is,’ he said. ‘When you had your mutants lead me here, I half-thought it was a trap.’

  ‘Why would I bother to trap you?’ Fabius turned to the bio-mechanical womb and began to check the vital readings of the clone within. ‘What do you have to report?’

  Skalagrim chuckled. ‘As you suspected, they came to me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Merix, surprisingly.’

  ‘How disappointing. But not unexpected.’

  ‘That traitor,’ Savona snarled.

  Skalagrim laughed. ‘So are we, woman. Traitors, one and all.’ He leaned towards her. ‘We’re rats in a promethium drum, gnawing at each other, even as we attempt to escape. And that’s all we’ve ever been.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, Skalagrim. I aspire to be something more than vermin.’ Savona thrust her face towards his, teeth bared.

  ‘Enough. Skalagrim, continue. After they attempted to suborn you – what?’

  ‘It was just Merix. Alkenex was conspicuously absent.’ Skalagrim scratched at his beard. ‘Up to some mischief somewhere else, no doubt. But he was there in spirit. Merix implied that the whole thing was Eidolon’s doing, though…’

  ‘Though Flavius could very well have been lying about that.’ Fabius nodded. ‘He has always been good at inflating his part in the councils of the high.’

  ‘It would be the best way of securing Merix’s help.’ Savona shook her head. ‘Merix is… nostalgic. He sees only the past. Offer him a return to that and he’d join you in a heartbeat, without thinking.’ She hesitated. ‘That’s how Oleander got to him, back when we all served the Radiant King.’

  Fabius frowned, at the mention of his treacherous disciple. Oleander Koh had tried to manipulate him into taking command of the 12th Millennial, and reassuming his role as lieutenant commander of the Emperor’s Children. The effort had been somewhat successful, if not in the way Oleander had hoped. ‘Then he’s a bigger fool than I thought. But no matter. I have grown tired of being hospitable to such cumbersome creatures – how many others has he suborned?’

  ‘Enough to cause problems, not enough to do so openly,’ Savona said bluntly. ‘Most of them are smart enough to sit it out, after last time. And Alkenex’s warriors aren’t making themselves welcoming, swaggering about as they are. The time of the Legions is done, and there aren’t many who wish their return.’

  ‘Out with the old, in with the new,’ Skalagrim said.

  ‘An apt truism.’

  ‘We can’t trust any of them, obviously,’ Skalagrim said. ‘Never trust a legionary of the Third with a sword and your back. One will find the other every time.’ He glanced at Savona. ‘They can’t help it, it’s just their nature to be treacherous bastards.’

  She smirked. ‘Look who’s talking.’

  ‘Call it the voice of experience,’ Skalagrim said with a shrug. He looked at Fabius. ‘The question is, can we betray them, before they betray us? Or is it already too late?’

  Fabius turned away. ‘No. In all likelihood, they will wait to make their move after we have secured our prize.’ He tapped his needler in its holster of saurian leather. ‘At that point, it will be down to who draws first.’

  ‘Or we could kill them now.’

  ‘No. Flavius is the only one who possesses the correct coordinates for our destination, and he is too wily to give them up to us until he has to.’ Fabius smiled, showing off his yellowing teeth and darkening gums. ‘Besides, I want to see his face when he realises that I’ve beaten him.’ He laughed. ‘Petty, I know, but satisfying.’

  ‘Why aren’t your other assistants here? Saqqara, or Khorag? Arrian?’ Savona frowned. ‘I would think that you would want them to know this as well…’

  Fabius shrugged. ‘Saqqara will do as he’s told, no questions asked. Khorag doesn’t care, so long as he’s left to his studies. And Arrian already knows what must be done.’

  ‘In other words, we’re the weak links,’ Skalagrim said. ‘The two you can’t trust to do as you say.’ He smiled. ‘It’s almost a compliment.’

  Fabius looked at him. ‘If you wish to take it as such. Whatever you choose to call it, the matter is settled. I was not sure of Merix’s loyalties. I am now. Sides are drawn. All that is left is to begin the game. We will–’

  A deep, tolling sound rolled through the ship, echoing through every bulkhead and strut. The chamber shuddered slightly, and the vox crackled. Wolver’s familiar monotone punched through the distortion. ‘Alert – approaching spatial anomaly designate Maelstrom. All hands to active stations. Commander to the bridge. Alert – alert – alert.’

  ‘Finally,’ Fabius said. He looked at the others. ‘Gird yourselves. We prepare to leave one storm behind, but there is another yet to come.’

  Chapter sixteen

  The Maelstrom Zone

  ‘Beautiful,’ Fabius said.

  He stood on the observation dais, watching as thousands of glittering motes grew, swelling on the viewscreens of the Vesalius’ command deck, until they at last became a storm of wrecked vessels. The sensors identified the broken remnants of the warships of the Imperium, floating among the splintered fragments of eldar wrecks. The gutted remains of kroot war-spheres turned in a slow gavotte alongside the burst ruin of hrud warren ships and nicassar dhows. All tumbling together through the inner curve of the Maelstrom – a Sargasso of ruin, brought together by the strange tides of the empyrean.

  ‘Utterly beautiful. Don’t you agree, Flavius?’ Fabius glanced at Alkenex, who stood nearby, with his subordinate, Palos Gyr. Fabius had come alone to the command deck, which seemed to infuriate Alkenex.

  ‘Strangely enough, I do.’ Alkenex stared at the nearest viewscreen, which displayed a magnified image of one of the shattered ships. Particles of shimmering ice crawled across the battle-scarred hull, making weird patterns, and the prefect seemed entranced by them. ‘From ruin, beauty, and from beauty, ruin.’

  ‘The Observations of Rylanor,’ Fabius said, recognising the quote. ‘The Ancient of Rites was wise.’ He smiled. ‘Well, up until the end, at any rate.’

  ‘We are all wise, in our own minds,’ Alkenex said. ‘How soon until we’re out of this clot of dead ships?’

  ‘Not long. We’re nearing the edge now. Look.’ He gestured towards the main display screen. The Vesalius picked its way through the graveyard of ships, its hull creaking and groaning as it scraped against the flotsam and jetsam of the warp rift. Defence turrets spat fire, breaking up any of the larger wrecks that drifted into the frigate’s path. Ahead, the surging currents of the Maelstrom flickered and snarled like an immense knot of lightning. Behind the coruscating curtain of gas and star light, real space and the Ultima Segmentum awaited.

  ‘Energy signatures detected… analysing… analysing…’ Wolver intoned, hands clasped behind its back. ‘The Vesalius senses prey.’

  Fabius grunted. ‘Unfortunate. Numbers?’

  ‘Analysing… indeterminate.’

  ‘As soon as we are clear of the debris field, all ahead full. Whatever is out there, we’ll punch through it before it sees us coming.’

  ‘Acknowledged.’

  Fabius turned to the tacticum display as the ship began to pick up speed. Targeting runes spun and danced across the display, but there was no clear data as to who or what they might be. Frowning, he glanced at the display screen, hoping for some sign of what might be awaiting them. But all he saw was the fury of the Maelstrom unbound – a cosmic wound, leaking the stuff of anti-life into the material realm. Space revolved in swift patterns, the innumerable hues of the warp bleeding into one another until they became nothing more than swirling blackness, slashed
through with the stretched light of distant stars.

  ‘Golden glory, along black walls,’ he murmured, as the words of some Terran scrivener of antiquity echoed through his head. ‘Like that narrow, tottering bridge, which is the only path between time and eternity.’

  ‘What are you muttering about?’ Alkenex demanded. He stared intently at the tacticum display, as if he might force it to reveal the identities behind the spinning runes.

  ‘A bit of doggerel that seemed appropriate, though we seek to ascend out of, rather than descend into the Maelstrom,’ Fabius said. The ship suddenly shuddered, and alarm klaxons sounded. ‘Wolver, ­status report.’

  ‘Sensors detect imminent ionic disruption. Plotting alternate course.’

  ‘What is that homunculus groaning about?’ Alkenex said. The deck shuddered again. Below, a control-cradle burst into flame. The servitor wired into it continued to follow its programming, despite the flames crawling across its withered husk. The air became greasy with the stink of burning flesh.

  ‘This area is dotted with ionic reefs, and worse things besides. It requires precise calculations to navigate.’ Fabius steadied himself with Torment. ‘Otherwise, we’ll be one more hulk added to those wrecks.’ He leaned on the sceptre as the ship quaked, its hull lashed by the cosmic torrent. The Maelstrom was a selfish thing, refusing to allow easy escape. One of the viewscreens above shattered as an energy surge ripped through the system. Sparks cascaded down, and small fires dotted the bridge.

  ‘It feels like this ship is going to shake itself apart,’ Alkenex spat. He held on to the hololith projector for support.

  ‘Calm yourself, Flavius. The Vesalius is sturdier than that, I assure you. And it has made this journey before. Though not in some time.’

  The deck pitched beneath their feet. On the viewscreens, the collapsed cadavers of unlucky vessels spun towards them. Some few connected, and the Vesalius was forced to plough through them. Gouts of fire scraped the hull as the ancient wrecks splintered and burst at the point of impact. The Vesalius roared in pleasure, its engines straining against the omnipresent pull of the Maelstrom.

  Proximity klaxons sounded as the coruscating darkness stretched itself thin and began to tear. Motes of cold silver spun across the tears, blazing into a surge of celestial light as the frigate speared upwards through the currents of the Maelstrom. More than wreckage waited to greet it. Flickering lance-beams cut across the Vesalius’ path like strings of light, stretching from crimson vessels towards what appeared to be spinning meteors, scabbed over with sensor arrays and weapons turrets.

  ‘It seems we’ve arrived at an inopportune moment,’ Fabius said. He gestured to Wolver. ‘Evasive action – find a clear route through this – whatever it is!’

  ‘Surely you recognise a battle when you see one,’ Alkenex said, laughing.

  ‘Alert – hostile action – identifying… identifying…’ Wolver rasped. Light flared across a screen, as one of the red vessels exploded. A vast conglomeration of smaller vessels, somehow united into one singular entity, heaved into view through the spiralling cloud of wreckage. Conflicting ident-runes burst into view as the Vesalius’ sensors tried to identify the component parts of the rapidly approaching monstrosity.

  ‘What in the name of the primarch is that?’ Alkenex demanded.

  ‘Surely you recognise a space hulk when you see one?’ Fabius said, parroting Alkenex’s words back at him. Crude kilometre-wide sigils had been daubed onto the flat places of the hulk’s hull – primitive symbols, with jagged tusks and narrowed eyes. Orks. A moment later, the vox systems strained beneath pirate signals blasted from the approaching vessel. Guttural challenges and bestial laughter echoed through the vox-casters, overriding all internal communications.

  ‘Greenskins,’ Alkenex said. ‘How delightful. I haven’t tasted ork-flesh in centuries.’

  ‘And you won’t now,’ Fabius snapped. He slammed Torment’s ferrule against the deck. ‘Engines all ahead full. I want us out of here – now.’

  Kasra, Shehan of the Red Scimitars Chapter, leaned forward in the command throne of the strike cruiser, Shahmsihr. His golden eyes narrowed as he studied the display screen. ‘That,’ he rumbled, ‘should not be here. Magnify.’ The image on the display swelled.

  The ship had appeared suddenly, erupting from the vast, turning gyre that was the Maelstrom and plunging through the heart of the battle he and his brothers had been so carefully orchestrating for the past thirty-six hours. It had taken the Chapter months to bring the orks to battle, here in the vast sweep of wild space, where the material realm grew frail, and strange stars occupied the firmament. Their carefully constructed trap had been thrown into upheaval by this new, sudden arrival.

  The vast span of void space that was the Maelstrom Zone dwarfed many Imperial sectors in size. There were at least twenty major ork infestations and triple that number of petty pirate kingdoms scattered across the wilderness on the edge of the warp storm. It was impossible to patrol the region in any traditional sense, especially for one Chapter. Creative measures were necessary. And now, the crude vessels of the thresh were seeking to escape the trap, hurtling off in all directions, thanks to this unforeseen intrusion.

  Annoyed, he thumped his fist against the side of his command throne. Nearby crew members glanced around, and then hastily away, before they could meet his gaze. To the serfs who made up the majority of the Shahmsihr’s bridge crew, the Space Marine resembled nothing so much as one of the great hawks of the mountains that stretched across their home world. Kasra was built lean, like the blade that had given his Chapter their name. His crimson-and-black battleplate was marked with little in the way of insignia or heraldry, save for the lines of poetic script delicately etched into many of the flat planes, much of it by his own hand.

  ‘That is not a thresh vessel,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Not unless their aesthetic sensibilities have improved.’

  ‘Always a possibility, my king,’ Hormaz, his second-in-command, replied. Hormaz was stocky, where his Shehan was lean, and, in places, his crimson armour was decorated with similar script to that of his commander. His wide hands rested on the eagle-shaped pommel of the curved blade sheathed on his hip. He stood at ease beside Kasra’s command throne. ‘The greenskins are full of surprises. That’s what makes them so entertaining to hunt.’

  ‘Yes, but would greenskins be so quick to abandon battle?’ Kasra peered at the ship as it surged away from them, towards the empty stretch of stellar gulf that marked the edge of the Maelstrom. It had once been a Gladius-class frigate, and still was, to all appearances. But there was something subtly wrong about its shape and the way it moved. ‘Like a rock adder,’ he murmured, uneasy despite himself. He straightened. ‘Plot an intercept course.’

  The crew snapped to work with admirable haste. Only the swiftest thinkers, those who could make thought into deed without hesitation, were marked for service on the Chapter’s warships. Speed was the most effective weapon in the void, more deadly than energy lance or torpedo battery. ‘Are we pursuing them, then? You should probably alert the other kings,’ Hormaz said.

  Kasra snorted. ‘If their eyes are half as keen as mine, there is no need. They will see it, and see that we are the closest to it, and make the obvious assumption.’ Initiative was the sharpest blade in their Chapter’s armoury – any warrior worth his salt knew when to seize it for his own, and shape the tide of battle to his will.

  ‘Still – it is customary. Not to mention polite.’ The rebuke was gentle, as befitted a subordinate. Hormaz’ gap-toothed smile unfaltering in the face of Kasra’s glare. ‘Then, no one has ever accused you of being polite, eh, my king?’

  ‘Not twice,’ Kasra growled. Hormaz laughed.

  Idly, Kasra brushed his fingers across the delicate lines of script etched across his chest-plate, seeking reassurance from the words of his war-poem. Every Red Scimitar began such a poem on the day he w
as gifted his first set of battleplate, and with every victory, he added to it, line by line. Some of the older suits of power armour were so heavy with the words of the heroes who had worn it that, from a distance, they appeared to be painted black. Thus, every warrior was part of the Chapter’s history, and when their failings were just a memory, their victories would live on, inspiring those who were to come after.

  He wondered if this would simply be another line added to his poem, or the final one? He pushed the thought aside and focused on their prey. The ship was moving away, its weapons clearing a path through the disorganised ork battle-line. Their crude vessels came apart like burning paper before the newcomer, and the black was lit by streaks of red and orange. And still, it plunged on, skirting the attentions of a massive hulk and blazing away. Away from the Maelstrom, striving towards the harsh light of the material realm.

  Something told him that would not be a good thing.

  ‘Alert the other kings. Tell them this prey is ours.’

  He sat back as the crew hurried to follow his orders.

  ‘And when we have it?’ Hormaz asked.

  Kasra smiled. ‘We will crack it open and claim what glory there is to be had from it.’

  ‘Intercept inbound,’ Wolver intoned. ‘Assessing threat potential.’

  Fabius watched as one of the red vessels – some form of cruiser, by its shape – turned slowly, in pursuit. ‘It seems we did not escape notice. Pity. Scan vox-frequencies for chronological coding. Tag anything unusual and follow standard cataloguing procedures.’

  On the screens, the void battle continued to spin around them. They had not been targeted so far, but that would change soon enough, unless they managed to put some distance between themselves and the combatants. The void shields registered multiple incidental impacts, as they weathered the crossfire.