Other plants could be processed into dermal balms and analgesics, if one had the knowledge. Arrian was among the few who did. Phytology was a dying art among those few Apothecaries remaining in the Eye. Oh, they could create drugs or brew alcohol, but little else. The Chief Apothecary, on the other hand, insisted that those who aspired to his tutelage first familiarise themselves with the width and breadth of the natural sciences – among them epigenetics, aerobiology, biochemistry and even, for one brief century, biosemiotics.
Science and medicine were inextricably tied together, in the philosophy of Fabius Bile. To perform one, an individual must have a grounding in the other. To be an Apothecary, one must grasp the whole of the thing, rather than simply its component parts.
For Arrian, the hydroponics bay was a place of quiet contemplation. Few others dared impose themselves on it. He heard the scrape of a soft tread, and saw several of the plants react to a new taste on the air. ‘Igori,’ he said, in greeting, recognising the sound of her approach. She was one of the few of her kind willing to brave the dangers of this place.
‘They have attacked the apothecarium.’ Igori spoke bluntly. A plant stretched a tendril towards her. She drew her knife and sliced through it without taking her eyes from Arrian. ‘Killed my kin.’
Arrian paused, bloody meat dangling from his fingers. He had expected as much, though not so quickly. Alkenex had ensured that the bulk of those loyal to the Chief Apothecary – or at least the status quo – had been sent to the planet below. An old trick, that, ancient even by the time it was used at Isstvan. Now, the prefect moved to establish control of the upper decks – the weapons bays and the flight decks, especially.
‘It was inevitable. But we hold our blow, until he has returned.’ He flipped the piece of meat he held to the plants and looked at her, his once-handsome features impassive. ‘Do you understand, Igori? Hold tight to your kin’s leashes. We are poised on the knife edge. Only with proper timing will we make the perfect cut.’ He patted one of the blades sheathed at his side. ‘Too soon, and we may well wreck the ship, attempting to save it.’
She nodded, and he wondered whether it was in agreement or understanding. After a moment, she said, ‘What if he is wrong?’
The question was so unexpected, he almost dropped the bowl of meat. He looked at her, seeing her for the first time in a long time. She was no longer a child, or even young. It was easy to forget how brief their lives were, even ones as enhanced as these. ‘Wrong?’ he asked. ‘How so?’
‘About this. About all of it.’ She looked away, as if ashamed. ‘He says wait, but what if that is wrong? What if we had a way to win, without him. Would that not be better? Would it not please him, to see us move on our own? To secure victory in his name?’
He said nothing for a few moments. Then, slowly, he said, ‘That is not for me to say. You are not slaves, like the mutants. Servitude is not in you, and he did not make you for that purpose. But even so, he created you, and you owe him fealty.’
‘Not fealty,’ she said. ‘Love. He made us, and we love him. We can do nothing else. But he made us to hunt. To kill prey. And now the prey challenges us, and he says wait – why?’ She absently cleaned her knife on her trousers and sheathed it. ‘I can no longer hunt. He will not let me. But I can do this, even if it angers him.’
Arrian knew, then, what she was asking. Not permission, but understanding of a decision already made. The Chief Apothecary might be blind to it, but Arrian was not. They were no longer children, but something else. And here was their first step – if they could do this thing, if they could defy their creator, and wage war, then the galaxy would hold no further horrors for them.
He looked at her. ‘These nails I have in my head are love writ in steel. A suicide pact, made in the name of our father. A condemnation of all that we might have been, by the one who should have led us to glory. For him, we sacrificed all. And for him, we now die. A little bit at a time. Meat for the beast.’ He tapped the bowl of bloody chunks, as if for emphasis. ‘But Angron’s rage is but a sea-spray of blood, in this galaxy’s endless ocean of murder. A single sanguine drop, in a wine-dark sea. Once I realised that… the rest was easy.’
Arrian lifted a blossom with a finger. The razor-thin petals scraped against the ceramite of his gauntlet. He turned. ‘It’s all the same sea, whatever your course. Wherever you go, there you are.’
Igori smiled. ‘A good philosophy.’
‘A pragmatic philosophy.’ He tossed another chunk of meat to the snarling creepers. The vines tore at the chunk with savage abandon. ‘Death is the end of study, and I have not yet completed my education. So I will live, whatever the nails in my head wish. And whatever my father wishes.’
‘You defy him. The one who made you.’
‘Sometimes a father must be defied, so that the child might prosper.’ Arrian looked at her. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Honoured Arrian. Thank you.’ She bowed, turned and left the hydroponics bay. Arrian did not try and stop her. In time, he turned back to his plants.
As he fed them, he wondered whether he had made the right choice.
The spider-things had not come alone.
More of them came out of the walls. Heretofore hidden alcoves gaped wide, disgorging silvery, skeletal shapes – humanoid, rather than insect-like, but no less disturbing. They moved with steady speed across the catwalks and gantries, advancing towards the Emperor’s Children in ever-growing numbers. They were of myriad textures, colours and markings, alike only in their general shape, and the strange, flickering weapons they clutched in fleshless hands. Strands of green lightning lashed from the barrels of these weapons, cascading across the front ranks of mutants. Malformed warriors were reduced to scattered, greasy atoms, with barely enough time to scream.
The invaders replied in kind. Bolters thundered, punching through metal forms and casting them down. But the relentless advance continued, even as the fallen pulled themselves to their feet, broken bodies repairing themselves before the astonished eyes of the renegades. Fabius turned, his armour’s sensors recording everything. ‘Living metal – fascinating. Skalagrim – I would like a sample, if convenient.’
‘Get it yourself,’ Skalagrim snarled. He took careful aim with his bolt pistol and fired, knocking one of their attackers sprawling. In moments, it was picking itself back up. ‘Why won’t they die?’ the Apothecary roared, pumping more shots into the automaton.
‘Self-repairing systems. Short of absolute destruction, I doubt we possess the means to stop them.’ Fabius glanced at Khorag. ‘What about you, Grave Warden? What sort of plagues are you carrying in that cauldron you call battleplate?’
‘I may have something, but it will require us to abandon our position, lest it devour our armour and weapons along with our foes.’ Khorag hefted his weapon – an ancient storm bolter, wet with oil and rot, and ejected the vaguely skull-shaped ammunition drum. He retrieved another from the reload rack on the back of his armour, this one marked with esoteric hazard sigils, and slammed it into place. The modified storm bolter made a sloshing sound. ‘We must push them back, put as much room as possible between us and them.’
‘Easy enough. Palos, you and the others fall back on my mark.’ Fabius signalled to the closest of his overseers. ‘Unleash the war-mutants.’ The servitors reacted to the order as one. The somnolent war-mutants, crouched behind the front lines, suddenly surged upright as chem-dispensers fired and their cortical implants were remotely activated. They bounded forward with thunderous howls, barrelling into the relentless metal ranks of the enemy.
As the war-mutants fell to their task with gusto, Fabius surreptitiously tapped a button on his vambrace. The signal activated the pain implants in the rest of the surviving mutants. The deformed beasts leapt to join their monstrous brethren, shooting, stabbing and battering the metal guardians from their feet. Tides of flesh and metal met with a sound like water slap
ping stone. Palos and the others fell back, still firing.
‘Khorag, at your convenience,’ Fabius said. The hulking Apothecary hefted his weapon and advanced towards the approaching automatons. He fired as he went. The shots trailed an ugly heat in their wake, and where they pierced the air, it took on an oily sheen. When they struck home, a bilious gas spewed from the craters punched into the skeletal machines. Wherever the gas touched, the silvery metal blackened and corroded, as did the flesh of those mutants unfortunate enough to be caught in its shroud. The front rank of machines collapsed, consumed by Khorag’s concoction.
The Grave Warden continued to fire, until the ammunition drum clicked dry. Piles of corroded metal and the seared bodies of mutants crunched beneath his tread as he retreated. The gas cloud swept over the advancing ranks, eating away at them. ‘Now would be a good time to retreat,’ Khorag said. ‘The cloud will dissipate soon enough, and it is not large enough to devour them all.’
Fabius turned. More silvery shapes were approaching from behind them, bleeding out of the winding galleries like ghosts. ‘Diomat – clear our way,’ he said.
‘None may block our path,’ Diomat bellowed, tromping forward at a ponderous charge. He struck the approaching phalanx of automatons like a thunderbolt, scattering them and opening a gap in their lines. The Dreadnought caught up a struggling machine-warrior and swung it about like an improvised flail, battering at the others. ‘Reap my malediction,’ he roared. ‘Shatter and die, in the name of the Third. Come, brothers – join me in my wrath. Children of the Emperor! Death to his foes!’
‘Fall back,’ Fabius said, gesturing with Torment for the others to follow Diomat. ‘Let Khorag’s weapon do its work. Back to the gunships.’ Emperor’s Children thudded past him, retreating with as much discipline as they could muster. The sound of more alcoves opening echoed down from the upper sub-tiers, even as they fell back towards the immense causeway and the gunships beyond.
It galled him to retreat so soon, but there was nothing for it. There seemed to be no end to these creatures, and the forces they’d brought were proving unequal to the task. Better an ignominious retreat than total destruction. Survival provided an opportunity for success later. Torment snarled in warning, and he spun, crushing a metal ribcage. A blast of energy scorched the edge of his coat as the creature fell, and he stamped on its head.
Something was controlling them, of that much he was certain. Like the nanomachines above, there was a guiding intelligence at work here. One that could be disrupted, if only he could locate it. He reached down and ripped the flattened skull from its chassis, cracking it open in the process. There might be something in it of use. The metal oozed about his probing fingers, as if trying to resist his intrusion. Tucking Torment beneath his arm, he continued to work as he walked, while the battle roared about him.
Maysha and Mayshana stuck close beside him as they retreated, firing their weapons with disciplined precision. Diomat roared, wrenching silvery skeletons apart with his power claws, his chassis and limbs scorched black in places. Fabius caught sight of Savona, smashing an opponent from its feet with her maul, and Saqqara, surrounded by the elemental shapes of lesser Neverborn, hurling a flask filled with raging daemon shapes.
‘Any more tricks?’ he said, glancing at Khorag, as the latter trudged along in his wake, alchemical vents spewing acidic smoke. ‘Another plague or three, perhaps?’ He cursed as the head tried to seal itself around his hand. There seemed to be nothing within it, which was impossible. There had to be some form of control mechanism.
‘Nothing that wouldn’t reduce this place to slag around us,’ Khorag grunted. ‘And if we want to have any hope of finding your gene-ship intact, it would be best to avoid that.’ Storm bolter reloaded, he let rip at a bevy of silvery shapes advancing from the walls to the left. The automatons collapsed, but almost immediately began to rise again. Paz’uz fell upon them, noxious drool reducing the struggling machines to steaming wreckage.
Fabius tossed the head aside in disgust as Palos fell back, joining him. They were passing over the sloped causeway between two sub-tiers. The steep path made for a natural defensive position, forcing their pursuers to slow their advance. Far below, Fabius could see a strange, flickering radiance, leaking up from the heart of the structure. ‘We cannot leave without what we came for, Manflayer,’ Palos growled. His helmet bore blackened scars from numerous near-misses, and his friction axe was humming shrilly.
‘If you would like to chop your way through, then by all means go ahead. But I intend to regroup and return in force. Perhaps after an orbital bombardment or two.’ Fabius frowned as a crackling beam of jade energy swept the life from a nearby legionary, reducing him to drifting motes. ‘Maybe three.’
‘You will not fulfil our mission?’
Fabius glared at him. ‘If you are accusing me of cowardice, you will have to come to the point more quickly.’
‘I am merely making certain,’ Palos grunted. An instant later, he spun on his heel, friction axe splitting the air. Maysha sucked in the air for a scream as the monomolecular axe bit into his chest, but no sound emerged from the Gland-hound’s throat. Mayshana snarled and lunged, drawing her own blade as she leapt on Palos’ back. The knife sank into a gap in his armour, but the renegade didn’t hesitate. Amethyst fingers snagged her by the head and he wrenched her from her perch. Before he could strike, Fabius drove Torment’s haft into the side of the other Space Marine’s head, knocking him off balance.
Palos cast Mayshana aside and spun his axe about, slashing at Fabius. The blade nearly caught him in the abdomen, but he caught it on Torment’s haft, at the last moment. They struggled for a moment, awkwardly perched on the edge of the pathway, as the battle spun on around them, heedless of their private struggle.
‘Are you mad?’ Fabius spat. ‘Now is not the time for this.’
‘Now is the perfect time, Clonelord,’ Palos growled. ‘When none of your beasts can come to your aid. When your guard is down. And when my hand is at your throat. If we salvage nothing else from this, the prefect will at least reward me well for your scalp!’
Chapter twenty-two
War-Song
Igori stood in the bay, watching as the other pack leaders straggled in. There were nearly sixty packs aboard the Vesalius, more even, perhaps, than the Benefactor realised. The packs grew and split like cells, spreading through the hollow places, making the ship their own. Most of the packs were small – only a dozen or so individuals. Others were significantly larger. Her own pack numbered nearly a hundred, a third of whom were only half-grown. One of many reasons why her voice carried the loudest.
She studied the others as they drifted towards her. She could almost smell the suspicion bleeding off of them. It was rare that they met like this, unless commanded by the Benefactor. It was rarer still that she was the one to call for such a thing. They feared a cull, and not without reason. She had been forced, more than once, to butcher her own kin when they forgot their place in the Benefactor’s designs.
Her generation, and those who’d come before, had been built for loyalty. Their devotion to the Benefactor was as much chemical as anything. She knew this, and felt no distaste for it. The Benefactor was wise, and knew what sort of savagery lurked in their hearts. But the generations who’d come after her own were not all hardwired for constancy. Instead, the Benefactor indulged their competitive natures, allowing them to strive as they would among themselves. And some took that as permission to set their sights higher than they ought.
The thought brought with it memories of Paramar, and the treacherous system-lords. Seven generations of nobility, their genetics no less a product of the Benefactor’s skill than her own, but with none of her loyalty – or common sense. They had sought to match their will against that of the Benefactor, and come out the poorer for it. Thanks, in no small part, to the efforts of herself and her pack.
She smiled slightly, recallin
g the look of bewilderment on the face of one of the system-lords as she pulled the strands of monofilament wire tight about his thickly muscled neck. He had clawed at her hands, slamming her into marble columns, and balcony railings as she clung to his back, sawing through his reinforced spinal column. He had thought himself her superior, that she was nothing more than another mutant. He had not realised, until the very end, that she was his successor.
Igori flicked the memory aside as the last of her kin straggled into the bay. All of them were armed, some more obviously than others. She rested her hand on the shuriken pistol thrust through her belt. Between that and her knife, she had few worries.
‘Why did you call us here?’ one of the pack-leaders barked. Grule. Heavy with muscle, and his face covered in spiral tattoos. One of his eyes was missing, lost in a hunt. He wore an eldar spirit stone in its place, the gem flickering oddly.
‘The prey is attempting to take the ship,’ Igori said flatly.
‘Again?’ a pack-leader named Vorsha said. She scratched her cheek. ‘They do not learn.’ Grule laughed at this, and others joined him.
‘They seek to turn the Benefactor’s servants against him, in his absence.’
‘They are meat,’ Grule said dismissively.
‘They are strong meat,’ Igori said.
‘Only if you are weak. Are you weak, Grandmother?’ Grule flexed his fingers, in what might have been anticipation. Grule wanted to be First of Firsts, which was only proper. The Benefactor believed that ambition was to be cherished.
Igori smiled and spread her hands. ‘I am old, Grule. That brings a certain infirmity.’ Her lips peeled back from her teeth. They were still strong. Still sharp. Grule hesitated. His good eye shrank to a slit. He lowered his hands. Igori nodded in satisfaction. ‘They are strong meat,’ she continued. ‘And they do not fear us. If they come against us, we will be hard pressed…’
Fabius Bile: Clonelord Page 34