Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne

by Chris Wraight

  No part of that world was free of the hand of man. Viewed from space, the planet’s night-shrouded hemisphere glittered with constellations of neon and sulphur, while its sunlit hemisphere gasped in a hot haze of pale grey. Its skies were clogged with voidcraft and lifters, packed with the manufactures and commodities that kept the teeming world from starving itself. With those commodities came living bodies – pilgrims by the million, products of a migration that never ended, bringing souls from across the vastness of space whose only wish was to live long enough to reach the sacred precincts of the Palace itself; to somehow endure the crowds and the hardship and the myriad predators that circled them for just one glimpse, even the smallest, of the golden towers portrayed in the Ecclesiarchy vid-picts, before they died in rapture.

  So few made it. Most died on the warp journey, either of old age or through the loss of their ships in the void. Those who reached the solar system waited for years in the processing pens on Luna, then the vast orbital stations within sight of the planet below. It was said that a man could be born, live and die within those cavernous holding centres, all while his documentation worked its way tortuously through the offices of scribes and under-scribes. Often it would be lost, sometimes stolen, a mere speck amid the avalanche of parchment folios that fuelled the administrative machinery of the Imperium’s sclerotic heart.

  And yet, those few who by luck or the will of the Emperor made it to the sacred soils of humanity’s birthworld still numbered in the millions, such was the fecundity of the eternal pilgrimage. Like the forgotten tides of Old Earth, the flow waxed and waned, governed by the great festivals of the Ministorum, the feasts of the saints and the Lords of Terra. And of all the sacred days ordained for the masses to partake in, by far the most sacred was the remembrance of the Angel – Sanguinala, the Red Feast, the Festival of the Blessed Sacrifice. On that day, once every solar year, the numbers swelled beyond reason, and the pilgrims crammed like cattle into the feeder stations, clawing at the gates and screaming at the guards to let them in. The most exalted of all, so they said, would be permitted to approach the Eternity Gate itself, to witness the rites of remembrance performed on the site of the Angel’s legendary stand as the feast reached its frenetic climax.

  Now Sanguinala was just a week away, and the canyons of Terra’s world-city were already bursting. Every looping thoroughfare and crumbling causeway was swollen with a living carpet of supplicants, chanting the rituals, swaying in unison, moving with the inexorable purpose of an invading army towards the cavernous maws of the Outer Palace itself. Over them all hung the attack craft of the Adeptus Arbites, the black-clad judges, more watchful than ever for the bad seeds hidden among the multitudes. Every passing hour saw them swooping into the throngs, dragging out a ranting disciple or witch-in-potentia and bundling them into the crew-bays of their hovering scrutiny-lifters.

  The air was hot. Frenzy gripped the megapolis, and supplicants went mad amid the dust. Looming above the lesser towers, massive beyond imagination, the titanic walls of the Outer Palace soared in tarnished splendour, waiting for the inundation to crash against their flanks.

  Interrogator Luce Spinoza watched those walls now, their outline half-lost in the haze of morning. The parapets were over fifty kilometres away, but still they dominated the northern horizon, as imposing as the mountains had been that now served as their foundations.

  She stood before a floor-to-ceiling crystalflex window set atop the highest level of a spire’s crown, over a kilometre up, just one of thousands of towers that jostled and crammed the cityscape in all directions. Away in the east, the dim light of the world’s sun tried to pierce the ever-drifting clouds of smog, casting a weak and dirty light across the steel and adamantium.

  Spinoza had never laid eyes on the Palace before. To witness the holy site, even from such a distance, gave her a kind of vertigo. Somewhere within, she knew, buried deep inside that man-made continent, He endured. The thought of it was enough to make her weep for the sacrifice, as she had done, many times.

  Spinoza was so lost in contemplation that the soft approach of her superior went unnoticed. On another day she might have been given penance for the lapse, but Adamara Rassilo understood the occasion, and made no note.

  ‘You never get used to it,’ Rassilo said, coming to stand beside her. ‘Seeing it unfiltered, knowing what it holds.’

  Spinoza bowed to her. ‘I can only imagine, lord.’

  Inquisitor-Lord Rassilo wore armour of deep crimson marked with the fleur-de-lys of her allied Chambers Militant. Her hair was olive green, sheer and close-cut, exposing a smooth face that gave away no determinate sign of age. Her rosette was a pearl-ringed jewel, at first glance as clear as glass, but which on closer inspection reflected the icon of an Inquisitorial skull from within its depths.

  ‘How was the journey?’ Rassilo asked.

  The journey had been hell. Nine warp stages from the outer edge of Segmentum Solar, all taken in a battle-damaged ordo frigate with a depleted crew and an astropath who had gone mad on the run from Priax.

  ‘It was fine,’ Spinoza said. ‘I am glad to be here.’

  ‘And we are glad to have you. So, come, let us speak.’

  Rassilo turned away from the viewing portal. Her chamber was large and luxuriously appointed. A patterned marble floor, worth a governor’s stipend alone, underpinned an artful arrangement of Vandire-era furnishing, most fashioned from genuine organics and only a few betraying the telltale of synthesis. Wax candles flickered in wrought-iron holders, augmenting the always-weak daylight from the windows.

  Rassilo gestured towards a chair for Spinoza, and the two of them sat opposite one another, framing a holo-fireplace that cracked and spat in an antique grate. Rassilo clicked her fingers and a diminutive dwarf-servitor scuttled to her side, arms stuffed with reams of parchment. The dead-eyed creature handed one to her, burbled something, then wobbled away.

  ‘Interrogator Luce Spinoza,’ read Rassilo, leafing through the file. ‘Admitted from Schola Progenium Astranta under the watch of Inquisitor Tur. Initial actions performed with commendation. Graduated to Explicator under Tur’s tutelage, before his lamented death on Karalsis Nine. Thence several further appointments – I will not list them all. Notable attachment with the Adeptus Astartes.’ She looked up at Spinoza. ‘The Imperial Fists, eh? How did you find them?’

  Spinoza remembered every moment. They had been perfection to her, the very embodiment of His divine will. They had accepted her, too, in the end, and the alliance had been fruitful – so much so that Chaplain Erastus had gifted her his crozius arcanum, Argent, when they parted after the successful reduction of Forfoda, an honour beyond words. Even now, five years later, the gesture still humbled her.

  ‘They were true servants,’ she said, with feeling.

  ‘And dangerous ones,’ said Rassilo. ‘No world knows that more than this one. But it is good you are returned. The Throneworld has need of witch hunters. There are never enough.’

  Spinoza stiffened. Returning to the heart of the Imperium had never been her plan – the void was where the true war was. And yet, in Tur’s absence, there was no resisting orders from the centre, for she was not inquisitor yet, and she had always known another mentor would be found for her.

  ‘No greater honour exists,’ she said, and that was truthful enough.

  Rassilo nodded. ‘You’ve seen the state of things. This world is invaded every hour in greater numbers than our enemies could ever muster. Think on that. Every single pilgrim is screened, and screened again, but it can never be enough. All are suspect, all are dangerous, and if taint is suffered to flourish here, then we are lost.’

  ‘I yearn only to serve again.’

  Rassilo closed the file and laid it on her lap. ‘You’ve been asked for by the Inquisitor Erasmus Crowl – do you know the name?’

  Spinoza shook her head.

  ‘Perhaps not the master
I would have chosen for you, but I cannot refuse him. He has been here too long, alone, but no servant of the Throne is more dedicated. He will drive you hard, in his own way, but he is fair, and you will learn much if your ears and eyes stay open.’

  Spinoza’s expression never flickered. She remembered the killing fields of Forfoda, the glory of the Space Marines: unstoppable, a living wall of gold set against the parapets of faithlessness.

  ‘What does he require of me?’ she asked.

  ‘He has no retinue,’ said Rassilo. ‘For years he never demanded one. Now he wishes for an acolyte. Why? I do not know. It is his right, though, and I suppose he judges your qualities will balance his own.’

  ‘I will learn what I can.’

  Rassilo smiled. ‘You need not hide your feelings, interrogator. This station will not last forever. Acquit yourself well here, and there are those in the ordo who will notice.’

  ‘My apologies, I did not mean–’

  ‘You are young, you have ambition.’ Rassilo clicked her fingers again. ‘Your time will come. In the meantime, let me make your path a little easier.’ The dwarf-servitor waddled back into the room, this time towards Spinoza. In its chubby grey hands was another file, bound with snapwire and sealed with a thick dollop of wax. The servitor held it up and gazed at Spinoza with a vacant, dumbly sorrowful expression.

  Spinoza took the file. It was marked in the ordo routine cipher: Crowl, E., O.H. 4589-643.

  ‘Read it,’ said Rassilo. ‘It will assist your introduction.’

  Spinoza looked up at her. ‘Is this…’ she started. ‘Does he know?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Rassilo leaned forwards in her chair. Her armour-plates were artfully made, and moved like folds of fabric around her. ‘Consider it a gift made in recognition of sacrifice. This is Terra, child – one gift given, another returned.’

  Spinoza looked down at the file, and ran her finger down its spine. The servitor stalked off again, its bare grey feet tottering across the wooden floor.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Rassilo waved that away. ‘I appreciate your vision of service. We talk and talk – puritans, radicals, whatever that means – but ignore the real divisions. We need those whose blood is hot.’

  Rassilo rose from her seat, and Spinoza followed suit. The interview was at an end. The two of them walked to the door, Rassilo ahead, Spinoza following. Before taking leave, Rassilo embraced her formally, then studied her a final time.

  ‘There are many battlefields, interrogator,’ she said. ‘This is just another one – just as deadly, just as noble. Remember that.’

  Spinoza nodded.

  ‘I will,’ she said.

  Chapter Two

  From Rassilo’s tower, within sight of the Palace walls, Spinoza took an air shuttle to travel south. The pilot wore a dark grey uniform bearing the ordo symbol – a bronze skull superimposed on the Inquisitorial ‘I’ device. As she boarded, she glanced at his neck just above the stiff collar and invoked the filter over her left iris. A false-colour security tattoo showed up on his flesh: barcode, the reference number, operational history.

  ‘Location, interrogator?’ he asked as she took her seat next to him.

  ‘Down-grid, Salvator sector, 456-42-Delta-Delta,’ she said, securing herself.

  The air shuttle powered up from the pad, its landing gear folding inwards as it turned on a wave of superheated downdraught.

  Spinoza looked out of the nearside portal. The airspace around them was thick with boiling tox-spirals, twisting up from the cityscape below. The shuttle pushed up into regulated airspace – the preserve of Adeptus Arbites, the Inquisition and other exempted Imperial agents – and the craft’s macro-turbines opened up.

  Below them, a thousand lesser aircraft plied filth-trailed passages from spire to spire, feeding the gritty haze that shrouded the depths below. Marker-lumens, red and filmy, blinked by the million, faint beacons amid a sea of perpetual murk.

  Above them, just visible against the bone-grey of the sky, were the shadows of the sentinel watch-stations, hanging in low orbit, each crammed with listening devices and augur batteries, forever scanning. Above them in turn were the behemoths of the defence grid, some as old as the Imperium itself, and above them, out into the icy vacuum, were the voidships – millions of them, embarking, arriving or engaged in ceaseless patrols.

  Spinoza had served with Tur on major hive worlds, but the multitudes here were still numbing. She looked down, watching the airborne fleets mingle and congest, and knowing that below, far below, groundcars and grav-transits were crawling through stacked-deep tunnels and catacombs, ferrying far more souls than could ever hope to afford privileged above-ground passage. She also knew that what she witnessed was the same on every single square kilometre of the world’s surface – there were no forests, no seas, just an unbroken press of spires, hab towers, temples, gaols, crypts and garrisons, grasping and throttling the entire globe in a vice of iron and rockcrete.

  As they travelled south, the monumental profile of the Outer Palace finally dipped below the horizon. The tips of the spires below them became less ornate, the film of smog thicker. The background stench of unwashed humanity, always present on Terra, became more pungent. They were heading into less exalted zones.

  Eventually the pilot brought the air shuttle down, spinning it on its axis as it descended past the tower-crowns. The light around them faded, and the flanks of the spires rose up on all sides, dark with age and pollution. Directly below, less imposing than the colossal constructions soaring up around it, was another tower – coal-dark, buttressed and crenellated in the classical gothic style. Steep-angled roofs and stacks of age-darkened blast shielding gave the impression of a rambling, tottering mortuary, archaic and lit from within by strange fires. At its summit was a wide landing platform, ringed with las-batteries and marked with an ordo skull sigil.

  The shuttle touched down and the doors released, ushering in a waft of hot, astringent air. Spinoza disembarked, to be greeted by a storm trooper captain, clad in battle-armour though helmless. A team of servitors limped across the platform to retrieve her sealed void-crates from the shuttle’s hold.

  As standard, as she walked, she scanned the man before her.

  Physique human-normal, she noted. Heavily built. Trace stance-type indicates non-progena intake. Hellpistol, combat-knife. Nine visible combat honours, three of them exemplar militaris. Impressive.

  ‘Welcome to Courvain, interrogator,’ the captain said, making the sign of the aquila. ‘Captain Maldo Revus, personal attachment commander to the Lord Crowl. The inquisitor awaits within.’

  As they walked towards the exit ramp, hot wind whipped across the platform, stirring up the films of fine dust that coated every exposed surface. Ordo gun-drones whined overhead, tracking every aircraft within a few hundred metres of the fortress. The sounds of the infinite world-city rose up around them, above and below, a dull roar like the crash of the planet’s long-forgotten waves.

  ‘You have served here long, captain?’ she asked, wishing to see if his answers matched the information she had already processed.

  ‘Eight years,’ said Revus.

  ‘That is good,’ Spinoza said. To stay alive that long in the company of an active inquisitor was rare, and indicated either great luck or capability. ‘That is very good.’

  Revus didn’t reply. Perhaps he considered the subject beneath him.

  Once inside, thick blast shutters closed over them both, sealing them within an environment-type she was familiar with. The walls were black, glossy, embossed with litanies from major Ministorum devotion screeds. The sealed atmosphere was filtered, pulling out the worst of the filth but exposing the other aromas of an ordo fortress – warding incense, surgical chemicals, the lingering human excretions of fear.

  They descended steep flights of stairs. They passed robed scribes, their faces hi
dden under heavy synthwool cowls, shuffling between scriptoria with dusty bundles of parchment clasped under their arms. Servo-skulls blundered through the shadows, chittering mindlessly. Echoing clanks, origin indeterminate, rose up from the depths below.

  Spinoza took in the detail. Tur’s demesne had been different. He had been a crusading inquisitor, as most were, forever tracking the void in search of deviation, and so his travelling entourage had been extensive – assassins, gun-servitors, priests, together with standing response arrangements with three separate chambers of the Adepta Sororitas. As a result, Tur’s permanent base of operations, on the death world of Regita V, had been an echoing, half-empty place, visited only to consult the archives or interrogate the most challenging of subjects.

  But this fortress was very much occupied, very much in use. Spinoza could hear the overlapping whisper of leather-soled sandals, hundreds of them, moving from one candlelit chamber to the next. She could sense the press of warm bodies above and below her, teeming like flies on rotting sugar, stuffed tight, running down level after level, until the holding chambers were reached, and despair was the only emotion left.

  Revus showed her to a pair of closed wooden doors, finely made but sparsely adorned. Over the doorway was a brass death’s head, spotted with patina, under which was inscribed the High Gothic Servitio Aeternam Ad Mortem.

  ‘I will leave you here, interrogator,’ he said, bowing.