02 - Blood Reaver

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  “Warden Primaris?” she called across the chamber.

  Warden Primaris Mataska Shul came closer, bringing her austere silence with her. Tareena sensed a reprimand in the near future, for raising her voice.

  “Yes, sister.” The old woman spoke with exaggerated care.

  Tareena keyed in a retuning code, which changed absolutely nothing on her scanner display. “Warden Primaris, forgive my interruption. I wished only to know if the augurs had refined their estimates on the duration of the interference.”

  The Warden Primaris graced her with a thin-lipped smile. “We are all troubled by the solar storm, sister. The Primaris Council meets with the Tenth Captain at the tolling of the bell for third reflection. Until then, trust in yourself, and your instruments, blinded as they may be for now.”

  Tareena thanked her superior and returned to her console. The sun Vila, at the heart of the Vilamus system, was a temperamental benefactor, no doubt there. Tareena had only just entered her seventh year in the Wardens of Vilamus, and this was Vila’s fifth outburst. None had lasted this long, though. Previous incidents of solar instability ended after a handful of days. This one was already into its third week, with no sign of abating.

  She cycled through archived images of the bright, proud heart of fire in the system’s centre. Several images, among the last recorded by the fortress-monastery’s observation satellites before they lost connection to the surface, showed the sun spurting great arcs of misty plasma from its surface—far above typical solar flare activity.

  Tareena’s expertise training had been focussed on interstellar operation, for her placement in the fortress-monastery’s command strategium. She knew what she was looking at, and though “solar storm” was accurate enough, it wasn’t the phenomenon’s true title.

  Coronal mass ejection. Natural, and not entirely uncommon among stars as aggressive as Vila. Still, it played sweet hell with the monastery’s more sensitive electronics, and she’d rather not be caught on the surface of the planet without a reinforced radiation suit.

  Not that there was anything out there, anyway. Vilamus itself, the fortress-monastery of the Marines Errant, was the only node of life upon the entire world. She was born here, she would die here, just as her parents had, and her children would.

  “Sister Tareena,” said a voice farther down the main console. She turned, seeing Jekris looking her way. His hood was down, revealing a face worn by years of concern and a great deal of smiling. He was close to fifty now, and still unmated. She liked him, liked his fatherly face.

  “Brother Jekris.” She kept her voice soft, aware of the Warden Primaris lurking nearby.

  “Sister, I would ask you to aim a specific scrye-pulse to the east, at the following coordinates.”

  She glanced at the coordinates he sent to her screen, but shook her head. “My instruments fail me, brother. Do yours not do the same?”

  “Please,” he said. “Indulge me, if you would.”

  She keyed in the digits, aiming a focussed auspex burst at the specified area of land. It took almost a minute, for the radar dishes on the fortress’ battlements needed the time to turn and realign. She keyed in her personal code when the READY glyph flashed.

  The imagery came back as a washed-over smear of meaningless junk. The charts came back with even less clarity.

  “I see nothing through the storm,” she told him. “I am sorry, brother.”

  “Please,” he said again, his gentle voice betraying a curious edge. “Try again, if you would.”

  She complied—it wasn’t as if she had anything else to do anyway—and spent several moments looking at a returned spread of the same garbled results.

  “I see nothing, brother.”

  “Would you examine my results?”

  She blinked. “Of course.”

  Jekris transmitted several images to her secondary monitor, which she cycled through in turn.

  “Do you see it?” he asked.

  She wasn’t sure. In several of the images, there looked to be some kind of structure in the wastelands, but interference stole any chance of comprehending its scale, let alone if it was actually there. Little more than a thumb-sized smear marked the centre of several picts, almost lost in the turmoil of distortion.

  “I don’t think so,” she admitted. Tareena transferred them to her primary screen, coding in a demand for image recognition. No matches came up. “It’s a scanner ghost, brother. I’m certain of it.” She flicked a glance to the Warden Primaris, though. Such things had to be reported in times of auspex failure.

  Jekris nodded, and summoned the elder with a raised hand.

  Tareena focussed another scan at the location, tightening the auspex pulse to its smallest scope. The returning image was no clearer than anything else she’d performed in weeks, with no sign of the ghost image at all. As the senior scrye-mistress present, she initiated a purge of previous data from her scanner cache, and set up each element of her comprehensive scrying to run separately. Motion; thermal; bio-signs; everything. One by one, they came back negative, negative, negative.

  All except the very last.

  “I… have a reading,” she announced. “Traces of iron detected, two hundred and sixty kilometres east of the fortress walls.”

  “Mass readings?” The Warden Primaris was noticeably more alert all of sudden.

  “No mass.” Tareena shook her head. “The distortion won’t allow specifics.”

  “It is a drop-pod,” said Jekris. “Look at the shape.”

  Tareena made a soft, “Huh…” sound as she looked back at Jekris’ images. No. It couldn’t be.

  “The Marines Errant have no forces in orbit,” she objected. “Where would they have come from?”

  “We have no idea what the Errants do or do not have in orbit, sister.” Jekris gave a shy smile, hesitant to disagree with her. “For we cannot see what is up there.”

  “It’s likely one of our satellites. An observer, or a missile platform. With coronal mass ejection of this intensity, it’s almost guaranteed that several of our satellites will malfunction, falling into degrading orbits.”

  “So soon?”

  “Much depends on the satellites themselves, and the nature of the malfunction. But, yes, so soon.”

  Jekris looked to the Warden Primaris, no longer trying to convince anyone but the elder.

  “It’s a drop-pod, mistress. I am certain of it.”

  Tareena stared at the imagery again, sucking her teeth. But, at last, she nodded. “I cannot say, either way. It could be a satellite. It could be a drop-pod.”

  The Warden Primaris nodded. “I will inform the Marines Errant at once. They will surely choose to investigate.”

  The radiation was brutal, so they sent Taras and Morthaud. Adeptus Astartes Scouts, despite their extensive modification, would still suffer out on the wastelands with the sunstorm raging through the system. That left the task to experienced Space Marines: Taras and Morthaud volunteered right away.

  Both wore the heraldry of Eighth Company with pride, their squad designation emblazoned on their armour. Both wore their helms, split by halved paint schemes of white and blue. Both, as always, were arguing.

  “This will be a false alarm,” Morthaud said. “Mark my words, we are chasing a downed chunk of rock, or worse, an auspex ghost.” He delivered this proclamation from the land speeder’s gunner seat, his hands gripping the heavy bolter’s handles.

  Taras, by contrast, worked the pilot’s controls, easing the skimmer over the jagged landscape at full thrust. A cloudy plume of rock-dust streamed behind them, pushed into smoky shapes by the burning, howling engines.

  They spoke over the vox, suit to suit, not afflicted by the stellar unrest taking place in the heavens. Their suits of armour were certainly miracles of machinery to the wider Imperium, but the relatively crude simplicity and limited sensor suites left war plate immune to the kind of interference that slaughtered more sensitive and intricate systems.

  “You�
��ll see,” Morthaud finished his insistent little diatribe. The speeder banked as it dodged around a smooth up-cropping of eroded stone, jostling both warriors in their seats. Taras didn’t glance at his brother; his focus on the wastelands ripping past was absolute.

  “Would that not be preferable to the alternative?”

  Morthaud scoffed as he sighted through the cannon’s targeting reticule. “It would hardly be the first time we’ve had satellites degrade and strike the surface.”

  “No,” said Taras. “The other alternative.”

  “Why would one of our ships—”

  “I am not speaking of one of our ships. You know I am not; cease being stubborn. The initiates may find it amusing, but I do not.”

  Morthaud, like his brother, remained locked to his duty with unwavering resolution. Everywhere he looked, the heavy bolter’s fat-mouthed muzzle followed. “Now you speak in impossibilities.”

  Taras said nothing for several moments. “Chapter home worlds are not immune to attack,” he muttered.

  “Perhaps. But we are far from the mindless xenos breeds that have attempted such things in the past. Come, brother, be serious. What is this bizarre melancholy?”

  Taras veered sharply around a towering jut of rock, watching as the landscape grew harsher, cracking into ravines the deeper they travelled into the wastes. “We have been garrisoned too long. That is all. I yearn to crusade once more.”

  He seemed on the edge of saying more, but instead uttered a muted, “Hold.” The speeder’s engines eased their prolonged roar, quieting to a throttled whine. The wastelands raced past at speed, instead of flashing by in an endless, colourless blur that almost defied perception.

  “We’re close now,” said Taras. “Just over the next ridge.”

  Morthaud ran his gauntlet along the scarred heat-shielding, brushing away the sooty ash of atmospheric entry. It was undeniably a drop-pod. And it was undeniably not one of theirs.

  Before converging on the pod, they’d tried to raise Vilamus on the vox, with the expected result of such a futile gesture. Taras had led them in an extensive sweep of the local area, before they’d disembarked and made their way down into the canyon. Even without their squad, echoes of that unified loyalty showed in every movement—one would descend to a stable section of wall, while his brother covered him, aiming a bolter into the canyon below.

  At the bottom, they split up, tracking separately while maintaining a steady stream of vox updates. The Marines Errant met again by the downed pod, once they were certain the area was secure.

  “A single pod, in the midst of the storm.” Taras regarded the empty restraint thrones inside the open pod. “And in this ravine… It is a wonder the scryers managed to track it at all.”

  Morthaud hovered his hand-held auspex over the pod’s scorched hull. “The carbon-scoring is fresh. It’s been down no longer than a week.”

  “Look for marks of allegiance.” While his brother scanned, Taras kept his bolter up and ready, panning around for any signs of foes. “Be swift. We must return to the fortress.”

  Morthaud deactivated his scanner, brushing aside more of the cindery dust from the pod’s armour plating. His efforts revealed a faded symbol: a horned skull, backed by splayed daemonic wings.

  “Do you see anything?” Taras voxed.

  “Aye.” Morthaud stared at the symbol, feeling his skin crawl. “Traitors.”

  Failure, they’d told him, came with no shame. He was still useful. He still had a role to play in the Chapter’s solemn duty. Indeed, failure came with its share of bittersweet triumph, for to even survive a failed trial was a feat relatively few managed to achieve, amongst the thousands that made the attempt. The rolls of the ignoble dead were long, their names listed as afterthoughts, for the sake of completion rather than remembrance.

  Yet he was still human, and still at the mercy of his emotions. Each time he bowed before one of his masters, he would swallow the writhing twists of regret and jealousy. Always the same questions bubbled up from below: What if he’d tried harder? What if he’d managed to endure for a few more moments? Would he be the one now standing in blessed ceramite, while lowly humans bowed and scraped before him?

  “To serve is to know purity”: the words inscribed above each of the archways leading into the serf dormitories. He took great pride in his work, of course. All of the Wardens did. Their role was a vital one, and their diligence beyond question. From the lowliest programmer of servitors to the most respected of artificers, the Wardens treasured their irreplaceable position at the Chapter’s heart.

  This duality sat better in some hearts than others. He erred on the side of caution when discussing his regrets, though. Many of his robed brothers and sisters seemed to take nothing but joy in their duties, eager to serve the Chapter with no heed for what might have been.

  Yeshic raised his hood against the ever-present chill permeating the great halls. His nightly duty stretched out before him—a long shift in the Meritoriam, writing the Chapter’s deeds onto scrolls and purity seals for their suits of holy armour. Difficult work, for the scripture had to be exact and the writing perfectly formed. In some cases, the deeds were so extensive that the lettering on purity seal parchment was unreadable to the naked eye. Yeshic did good work, and he knew it. The Third Captain himself had once written him a commendation for his elegant poetry in expressing the officer’s deeds. After taking the commendation to the Warden Primaris, he’d been honoured with a branding of the Chapter’s holy sigil, the falling star, burned into the flesh of his forearm.

  Upon entering Meritoriam Secondus, the lesser of the two chambers used for such work, he passed dozens of occupied desks, nodding in greeting at several of the other scribes. The wooden box under his arm contained his personal inks, which he placed at the edge of his table, pressing it into its waiting niche. With meticulous care, Yeshic prepared the inks, his quill pens, and the pots of sand used to help the lettering dry.

  He was reaching for his first parchment when he heard the noise come from the antechamber.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked Lissel, the young woman at the next table. She frowned at the interruption, her quill not resting in its scratching flow. Silence was rarely broken here. Lissel shook her head without looking up from her work.

  There it was again. A muffled, minute clang, the report of metal against metal.

  He looked over his shoulder, to the doorway leading into the antechamber.

  “It’s nothing,” Lissel murmured. “Just Cadry, tidying the stores. He went in a few minutes before you arrived.”

  Yeshic rose from his seat nevertheless, moving over to the closed door and keying the release code. As the portal opened on smooth hinges, nothing untoward met his questing gaze. Meritoriam Secondus had an immense storage chamber, with a shelf-forest of parchment racks, scroll tubes, ink vials and tools to mix pigments.

  He stepped inside, closing the door so the others wouldn’t be disturbed as he quietly called Cadry’s name.

  An irritating thrum in the air set his gums itching, though he couldn’t fathom its source. A machine sound, without a doubt. Perhaps the grinder pestle was malfunctioning; not an unprecedented event, by any means. Yeshic moved deeper, heading through the rows of shelving. The feeling of static in his mouth grew stronger. The resonating hum grew louder in unison. It almost sounded like the growl of awakened ceramite, consecrated in the Emperor’s name. But the Marines Errant never ventured into this wing of the fortress. Yeshic smiled at the very idea; an Errant would struggle to even fit through the doorway here.

  “Cadry? Cad—Ah.” The elder sat hunched over the automated grinder, while the machine sat idle in its place on a workbench. The abrasive thrumming was everywhere now, more invasive than truly loud, strong enough to warm his eyes with subtle vibrations. He looked around for any sign of an Errant nearby, but saw nothing. All was in perfect order, bar Cadry’s slack posture.

  “Cadry? Are you well?” He touched the old man’s shoulder. With a
boneless slouch, Cadry fell face forwards onto the bench.

  A heart attack, then. The poor old fool. Yeshic checked for a pulse at the elder’s neck, and found nothing. His skin was still warm, though. The younger scribe muttered a prayer, stumbling over just what to say. Cadry had served with honour for seven decades. Many of the Wardens would attend his funerary rites, perhaps even one or two of the few Marines Errant remaining in Vilamus.

  Yeshic turned the body to see the elder’s face, intending to close the eyes before the funereal attendants arrived.

  Blood painted the old man’s chest. The eyes were gone. Hollow sockets wept and stared in their place, blackened by wounding, wet with fluid.

  Yeshic turned, running only a single step before hitting the hand launching against his throat. Iron-skinned and shockingly cold, the grip clenched tight, leaving him capable of nothing but spraying wordless spit from flapping lips.

  He looked up, following the arm that caught him. His attacker hung from the ceiling, armoured in ornate, ancient ceramite of a kind the serf had never seen. One of the Errant hands clutched the rim of a maintenance shaft, the other dragged the writhing serf up from the floor with no difficulty at all, no matter how the human thrashed.

  Within three beats of Yeshic’s heart, the Errant had hauled himself up into the maintenance conduit, dragging the serf with him.

  Not an Errant not an Errant not an Errant.

  “Do not pray…” the warrior whispered in a tinny crackle of vox, leering with red eye lenses, “…to your Emperor. Or you die even slower.”

  Not an Errant… How… Who…

  “Who—”

  The warrior squeezed again, choking off his air. “And do not ask foolish questions, or I will feed you your own eyes.”

  The image of Cadry flashed back to him through his racing thoughts. The fat old man, blinded by mutilation, his eyes pulled from his head and placed upon his tongue. Maybe he’d even choked on them, before they went down…

  “Thank you,” the warrior whispered. “Your obedience has spared you the same last meal your friend enjoyed.”