Around, behind, Talos saw the dark metal walls of the Covenant’s abandoned apothercarion. Octavia had her pistol braced in both hands, cracking off las-rounds as the creature slunk away from her. A repetitive booming announcement rose from her side, as the little attendant she favoured let loose with his shotgun.
Uzas gunned his chainaxe again.
Talos opened his eyes, to see that only Variel remained in the confines of the small chamber. The Apothecary worked alone, unarmoured now, greasing the component pieces of an array of dismantled pistols.
“Uzas,” the prophet said, though the word was broken by his own creaking voice. He swallowed, and tried the name again.
Variel’s eyes were burdened and bloodshot by exhaustion. “They know. Your brothers know. They heard your murmurings as you… dreamed.”
“How long ago?” The prophet rose on aching muscles. “When did they go?”
The Corsair Apothecary scratched his cheek. “I have spent four hours rebuilding your skull and brain with no fewer than thirteen separate tools, saving your sanity and your life in the process. But by all means, ignore that fact in favour of pointless overexcitement.”
“Variel.” He said nothing more. The look in his eyes said what his words did not.
The Flayer sighed. “Nostramo bred ungrateful sons, didn’t it? Very well. What do you wish to know?”
“Just tell me what happened.”
“It is a warp echo,” Uzas voiced from his helm’s speakers. He derided the creature even as he stared at it. “A phantom. A nothing.”
“I know what it is better than you.” She stood by the door, her laspistol raised. “That’s why I was running.”
The Night Lord seemed not to have heard her. “And you are to blame for its presence here.” He turned from the vault, where a creature made of white skin and stinking mist was shivering its way from a morgue locker in bitter recreation of a stillbirth. Uzas’ red eye lenses fixed upon Octavia. “You did this.”
She wouldn’t lower her pistol. “I didn’t mean to.”
The Night Lord turned back to the creature. On shaking limbs, it rose to its full height. The body had been dead for weeks, but refrigeration kept it untouched by the darkening stains of decay. It was naked, headless, grasping no weapon in its curling hands. But its identity was unmistakable.
“You are dead, Dal Karus,” Uzas sneered at the warp-thing.
“…wish to join First Claw…” Its voice was ice on the wind.
Uzas answered by squeezing the trigger on his chainblade’s haft. The axe-teeth gave a throaty, revving whine, frustrated by a feast of thin air.
“…not with Malcharion’s bolter…”
Octavia felt no shame at being immeasurably braver with a Legionary—even this particular Legionary—between her and the spiteful wraith. She fired three shots around Uzas’ towering bulk, and, taking the cue, Hound fired with her. Spent shells rattled along the decking.
Dal Karus bled smoking, milky fluid from the gunshot wounds in his torso, but kept coming in the twisted, awkward stagger. The mist forming his helm stared at the three figures ahead, while his bare feet slapped on the cold floor with each lurch.
“No blood to offer. No skull to treasure.” The Night Lord’s voice slurred, the words half-formed and wet. “No blood. No skull. A waste. Such a waste.” The chainaxe howled louder. “Die twice, Dal Karus. Die twice.”
Uzas charged, devoid of grace, fighting without finesse. He swung the axe wide, arcing down with heavy chops, while stabbing and carving with the gladius in his other hand. His thrashing would’ve been ludicrous had it not been performed by a warrior approaching three metres in height whose weapons tore the wraith apart. Steaming fluid splashed over nearby tables. Chunks of smoking flesh dissolved into sulphurous puddles, eagerly hissing as they devoured the decking.
The fight, such as it was, ended in a matter of moments.
“Hnnnh,” said Uzas in the aftermath. He dropped his weapons in disgust, letting them clatter to the floor. “No blood. No skull. No gene-seed to taste. Just a husk of slime melting into the air.”
“Uzas?” Octavia called his name.
The Night Lord turned to face her. “You do this. You summon the Neverborn to you. I know the stories. You killed with your mutant’s eye. I know this. So the Neverborn come. Weak ones. Easy prey. Kill them before they grow strong. This time, this time. Navigator is lucky. This time, this time.”
“Thank you.” She had no idea if he could even hear her, or would care if he did. “Thank you for killing it while it was… weak.”
The warrior left his weapons where they lay. “The Covenant doesn’t sail without you.” Uzas hesitated, looking back to the vaults. One locker stood open, its door wide and dark—a missing tooth among a multitude. “The pain returns. Slay a piss-weak little daemon thing, and the pain returns. No blood. No skull. Nothing to offer, nothing to prove the deed was done. And the creature was too weak to matter. Not even a true daemon. A lost soul. A phantom. I said that first, didn’t I? I killed your foolish little ghost. Others still chase you, don’t they? Kill with your eye, and they grow stronger. Stories about Navigators. Heard many of them.”
She nodded, her skin crawling at his meandering speech. He’s no better than the warp-echo, though she felt a flood of guilt for thinking it.
“Octavia. The Eighth.”
“Yes… lord.”
“Septimus. The Seventh. He refuses to repair my armour unless Talos commands it. The Seventh is like my brother. He watches me and sees a broken thing.”
She wasn’t sure what to say.
“I am stronger now,” he said, and gave a hollow, quiet little laugh. “But it hurts more. See the truth. Steal the power. A weapon. Not a faith. But it is hard to stay together when your thoughts fly apart.”
All three of them turned as the doors ground open again. Framed in the dim light, three Night Lords stood with raised weapons.
“Uzas,” Xarl fairly spat the name. “What has happened here?”
The Night Lord gathered his dripping weapons. “Nothing.”
“Answer us,” Mercutian warned. The heavy bolter in his hands—a weighty cannon of black iron—panned up and down the slouched figure at the centre of the chamber.
“Get out of my way,” Uzas grunted. “I will go past you, or through you.”
Xarl’s chuckle was sincere, crackling through his helm. “You have quite an imagination, brother.”
“Let him go,” Cyrion moved aside. “Octavia, are you well?”
The Navigator nodded, watching Uzas stalk from the chamber. “I’m… Yes. I’m fine.”
She added the “Lord” several moments too late, but at least she added it for once.
XV
DISQUIET
Lucoryphus of the Bleeding Eyes ran an oiled cloth between the teeth of his chainsword. Boredom didn’t strike him often, for which he was grateful. On the rare occasions it took hold, he struggled to endure the sluggish state of mind that accompanied these prolonged periods of inactivity.
The Covenant functioned as any other Legion vessel in a neutral dock, which is to say it sucked up crew and supplies, stealing what it couldn’t trade for, while vomiting out profit. And all to the dead melody clank-song of repairers’ hammers ringing on the hull.
Vorasha, one of his best, stalked into the cargo hold the Bleeding Eyes had claimed for themselves. The Raptor moved on all fours, that same rapid crawl adopted by most of his kind, metal talons leaving indentations—or outright punctures—in the deck floor.
“Many weeks in dock, yes-yes.”
Lucoryphus exhaled through his vocabulator in reply. Vorasha’s speech always grated against his nerves: the other Raptor barely formed words in full any more, conveying his meanings through a degenerate tongue of clicks and hisses. Statements were often punctuated by an almost infantile assurance. Yes-yes, he’d breathe, time and again. Yes-yes. If Vorasha wasn’t so skilled, Lucoryphus would’ve cut him down long ago.
&n
bsp; “Need to soar,” Vorasha stressed. “Yes-yes.” The engine housings on his back coughed with denied flight, venting a slither of smoke. A charcoal reek of strangled thrust filled the air.
Lucoryphus prefaced his words with a bladed caw, signifying the ire behind his emotionless mask. “Nothing to hunt. Be at ease, pack-brother.”
“Much to hunt,” Vorasha snickered. “Could hunt Corsairs. Crack armour open. Drink the thin blood that runs from split veins.”
“Later.” Lucoryphus shook his head, a rare human gesture. “The prophet agreed to serve the Blood Reaver. An alliance… for now. The betrayal comes later.” He went back to cleaning the teeth tracks of his gutting blade, though even this soured his mood. His bloodless sword needed no cleaning, and therein lay the problem.
The Raptor leader looked around the cargo hold, his neck cabling flexing with machinery purrs. Discarded weapons featured as much as furniture, while a cluster of robed Legion serfs spoke quietly amongst themselves in the far corner.
“Where are the Bleeding Eyes?”
“Some on station. Some on ship. Yes-yes. All waiting for Vilamus.”
Lucoryphus rattled out something like a laugh. Ah, yes. Vilamus.
Talos and Malek stood on opposite sides of the table, unintentionally mirroring their positions on the debate.
“We have to sail with the Corsairs,” the prophet restated. “I am not arguing against honouring our debt to Huron. But the Covenant is the equal to any two cruisers in their fleet. Once Huron’s fleet is scattered at Vilamus, the Covenant will be able to hold off an assault for as long as we need. That is when we move against them. We withdraw quickly from Vilamus, while Huron’s forces are still deployed. Then we take back the Echo of Damnation.”
“This is idiocy.” Malek turned his craggy features to the Exalted on its throne. “My lord, you cannot be considering the prophet’s plan.”
The creature gestured to them both with a magnanimous talon. “Ah, but I like his plan. I share his passion for the blood we must shed, and I also refuse to see the Echo of Damnation commanded by any soul not born of Nostramo.”
“Lord, too much will be left to chance. The Covenant is likely to take massive damage even if we’re successful. And what if we are boarded while the prophet’s plan has left our decks empty?”
“Then the crew, and any of the Legion remaining on board, will die.” The daemon heaved its exoskeletal bulk out of the throne, armour joints creaking. “Prophet.”
“Sir?”
“You are getting ahead of yourself in one regard. Before we retake the Echo of Damnation, we must aid Huron in taking Vilamus. How many men will we lose there? None, if luck dances to our tune. And what if fortune favours another song, as it always does? Every warrior we leave dead at Vilamus is a soul that cannot storm the Echo with you.”
Talos keyed a short code into the table’s hololithic console. The cardinal projector generators blinked into life, beaming a lie before them. The shivering, rotating image of the Red Corsair strike cruiser, Venomous Birthright.
“Just give me the Bleeding Eyes,” he said. “I will lead them in with First Claw. We will take the Echo of Damnation as we sail away from Vilamus.”
The daemon licked a black tongue along its maw. “You ask for much. My best squad, and my newly acquired Raptor cult. These resources are precious to me.”
“I will not fail the Legion,” Talos nodded to the hololithic. “You were the one to come to me, Vandred. You wanted to reforge ourselves anew. Give me what I need, and I’ll return with another warship.”
The Exalted looked long at the prophet. So rare, to see the light of conviction, of zeal, in the warrior’s eyes.
“I trust you,” the daemon said. “Brother. I will grant you the forces you need, and I will hold off the Blood Reaver’s fleet while you enact your plan. I see only one true flaw with your thinking.”
“Name it, sir.”
“If you storm the ship and take it, its own Navigator may refuse to serve you. Worse, he will jump the ship back to Hell’s Iris.”
“I will kill the Birthright’s Navigator,” Talos admitted. “The likelihood of betrayal already occurred to me.”
The daemon tilted its head. “Then how do you plan to pull your new vessel into the warp?”
The prophet hesitated. Ah, the Exalted thought, I am not going to like this. “Octavia,” the daemon said. “You mean to take her with you.”
“Yes. I will take her in the assault. She will jump the ship once we’ve taken it.”
The Exalted growled in foul simulation of laughter. “And the Covenant? Who will guide us through the warp while you race away, leaving us to face Huron’s guns?”
Talos hesitated again. “I… have an idea. It needs to be refined, but I believe I can make it work. I will only proceed with the plan if every piece of the puzzle falls into place. You have my word.”
“Very well. Then I grant you permission. But I need you to focus on the first of our problems. We need to live through our agreement with Huron before we can betray him.”
Malek took a breath, his greying stubble split by a scowl’s trace. “Vilamus.”
“Indeed,” the creature grunted. “First, we must survive Vilamus.”
The weeks passed, and her irritation grew. The Legion drilled and sparred, its warriors honing themselves for a battle no one cared to inform her about. None of First Claw came to see her in her chambers, not that she’d expected them to, but boredom was making her desperate.
Of the mortal crew, the only people she knew were Septimus, Maruc and Hound. The first of that list… Well, she had no desire to see him at the moment, anyway. The last time they’d met had been acutely uncomfortable. She was almost glad Cyrion had interrupted them, not that she was even sure what he’d interrupted.
The second name on the list was usually with Septimus, off-ship and engaged in some nefarious activity neither of them wanted to explain. That left her with Hound, who was—being fair to him—hardly the most cultured of conversationalists. Her royal blood might be watered down by the relative status of her lineage, but she was still a Terran noble, and had played hostess on several occasions to members of the Throneworld’s ruling class.
Her attendant’s main avenue of discussion was his own mistress. He seemed interested in little else, though he was good for helping her learn more Nostraman. The viperous tongue deviated from any possible Gothic roots more than any human language she’d encountered, but once she stopped seeking similarities, it became easier to begin afresh with a clearer outlook.
Still, boredom was always peering over her shoulder. Navigators were not born to sit idle.
Beyond Hound, all she had to distract herself were the endless repair updates, but even they’d dried to a trickle now the Covenant was ready to break dock.
Her door proximity sensor tolled again. Octavia caught herself halfway to reaching to check her bandana. Some habits shouldn’t be developed, and that one was starting to stick. All too often she felt her hand twitch when Hound spoke to her, and she’d keep touching her covered eye with every loud noise echoing down from higher decks.
Hound stumbled his way around her messy chamber, tilting his face up to the viewscreen by the bulkhead.
“It is Septimus,” he said. “He is alone.”
The Navigator made a point of studying her personal viewscreen, the one mounted on the armrest of her throne. Schematics, essays and journal entries wiped across the screen as she cycled through the Covenant’s datacore. The updated feed from Hell’s Iris swelled the ship’s onboard repository of knowledge with a great deal of recent lore about the local subsectors.
“Mistress?”
“I heard you.” Octavia frowned at the glowing screen, and typed VILAMUS for the third time, refining the search.
“Shall I grant him entrance, mistress?”
She shook her head. “No, thank you. Do you know what Vilamus is?”
“No, mistress.” Hound moved away from the door,
resuming his place, sat with his back against the wall.
DATACORE MATCH blinked across her black screen in aggressively green script. She activated the entry, unlocking a stream of scrolling text and numbers.
“It would be useful,” she sighed, “if I could read Badabian.”
Blurry orbital images accompanied the archive data. The Navigator breathed a little “Huh” of surprise as the picts resolved to show a world no different from a thousand others—with one incredible exception. “I don’t see why we’re… Oh. Oh, Throne of the God-Emperor… they can’t mean to attack this.”
Octavia looked up at Hound, who was busy toying with the loose end of a wrist bandage.
“Hound,” she said. “I think I know what Vilamus is.”
Septimus headed to Blackmarket, determined not to let his mood get the better of him. Octavia was a fey creature even in her calmest moments. Trying to understand her was like trying to count the stars.
Several of the traders there greeted him with nods, a few with sneers, and many more with smiles. The massive chamber was a hub of activity, with new wares hawked as soon as they were smuggled on board from Hell’s Iris. Several of the table stalls even had thuggish bodyguards on hand to defend presumably valuable merchandise. The serf raised his eyebrow as he passed a table laid out with what looked like plundered Imperial Guard weaponry—even a chainsword, scaled to fit a human hand. But that wasn’t what drew his eye.
Septimus gestured to the stocky, long form of a lasrifle. Its body and stock looked to be formed of plain, dull metal. Scratches and burn marks along the rifle’s length showed both signs of older wear and more recent desecration, likely the removal of all Imperial aquilas.
“Vulusha?” he asked the ageing merchant in the ragged Legion uniform. “Vulusha sethrishan?”
The man replied with a patently false laugh, naming a prince’s ransom in trade items.
Septimus’ smile was equally insincere. “That’s quite a price. It’s a rifle, my friend. Not a wife.”
02 - Blood Reaver Page 20