Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne

by Chris Wraight

  With the toxic rad-zone behind them, the stars at last came out – a dazzling belt of rawlight strewn across the velvet darkness. After so long down in the grime, seeing that purity nearly made Spinoza cry out loud. This was the element she loved, where war could be conducted in the open, in the vaults of the heavens where the fires wheeled.

  Except this was not empty space. Over to their left, the vast curve of an orbital plate gently turned, its withered grey armour stretching off into darkness. Defence stations loomed further up, each the size of cities, studded with gape-mawed novacannons and graviton world-enders. A colossal grand cruiser bearing the livery of Battlefleet Solar crawled off into the middle distance, escorted by wings of frigates. Between those giants swam shoals of lesser craft – fleet tenders, guide-tugs, the hundreds of orbital lifters, all of them fat and clumsy, riding on dull red cushions of plasma-glow.

  ‘Do you have a fix?’ Crowl asked Aneela.

  ‘Clear,’ Aneela replied, swinging the gunship around and setting course across the planet’s face. ‘You’ll see it soon.’

  With the Spiderwidow’s angle steepening, Spinoza could look back down over the seething mass of cloud that swathed the planet’s atmosphere. The world’s arc looked like some eerie desert, underlit by piercing swells of colour leaking from the masked city below. Great circles, continent-spanning circles, glimmered dully, tracing out ancient patterns of conurbation, still intact even after millennia of rampant growth, regrowth and decay.

  One zone was more brilliant than any other, overwatched by the most turbulent of storms, circling and boiling like a rad-inferno, as wide as half the hemisphere, unsettled and flecked by spasms of lightning.

  He is there. Buried deep, but He is there. Even the elements pay tribute. Even the planet mourns.

  They climbed higher, and the horizon fell away, curving at the edges. The sun, for so long weak, became a yellow-white hole in the void, brilliant and dazzling. More defence stations swam into view, antique monsters, floating like castles in the void, their walls still blackened from munitions fired ten thousand years ago. Truly massive voidships lurked on the edge of sensor range, far too huge to enter the patrolled orbital zone and attended to by flocks of scurrying lifters. They were virtually invisible, those giants, hulking out in the frigid wastes, their scale only given away by flickering marker lights in the deep.

  ‘Coming into augur-margins, now,’ reported Aneela, steering the Spiderwidow under the shadow of a defence cluster and out past the gravity distortion of a second orbital plate. ‘Do you wish me to run silent?’

  ‘No, not this time,’ Crowl replied, looking a little distracted by the spectacle unfolding around them. There was something irresistibly stately about it, the choreographed interplay of so many archaic edifices, rotating silently, standing eternal vigil over the ravaged globe below. ‘They know we’re coming.’

  Spinoza glanced down at her control console, and caught sight of the target on a pict-screen – a mid-size deep-void carrier, no more than four kilometres long, comprising ridged modular sections slung under a hunched command cluster. It was a washed-out earth-brown, its variegated sides both charred from repeated warp entry and bleached from the undiluted glare of too many suns.

  ‘We have initial hails,’ said Aneela, sliding out from the plate’s pull and into the open void. The Rhadamanthys appeared on the real-viewers, a lump of light little bigger than the stars beyond it, but growing fast. ‘How do you wish me to respond?’

  Gorgias began to get excited, and bobbed up and down as if caught in a grav-trap. ‘Hereticus-majoris. In stellam negatoriam, hunt them, hunt them. All will be infernis.’

  Crowl ignored the skull.

  ‘Give the captain cordial greetings and request boarding rights as per standard protocol.’ He swung around in his seat and looked at Spinoza. ‘Time for you to suit up, I think.’

  Captain-General Thalek Arjanda watched the vid-relay picts of the Inquisition vessel entering reception hangar nine. He watched his first officer Fliox receive the guest and take him inside. He watched them walk through the passageways and up the spiral staircases. It didn’t take them long – just a few minutes – not enough to learn much. The guest was tall, cloaked, almost pallid. He carried himself like they all carried themselves – as if everything in their line of sight were guilty, ripe for the fires.

  This one had extremely fine armour, though. Must be worth some coin, Arjanda thought. He could do something with that, and they’d pay for it in the outer reaches.

  And then, all too soon, the approach lights blinked on, the bridge door chimes sounded, and he had to rise and do his duty. He pushed himself from his command throne, dusted down the last evidence of a hasty meal and risked a final glance in a handheld mirror, just to check no crumbs clung on to his protruding moustache and forked beard.

  Arjanda was of the old-school mercantile captain type, dressed in fine cloth and wearing real-leather boots, over-the-knee and buckled with real steel. A long waistcoat had been stretched over his old-age girth, straining against a row of bronze-gold buttons. His gloves were catskin and smoothed by use, and his half-length cloak had a gold thread inlay bought after a lucrative run to Tentrion nine standard ago.

  The effect normally helped him cultivate an aura of authority. Crews liked working for a captain whose success was obvious – they shared in it. Now, though, faced with this walking shade, one who didn’t have to scrimp and deal and connive to scramble in order to procure his finery, he felt suddenly puffed up and vulnerable.

  Perhaps no one ever felt differently, faced with one of them. No one with any sense, anyway.

  Arjanda picked up his jewelled walking cane and strolled towards the rear of his expansive bridge, where the doors were now opening and Fliox was ushering the spectre inside. On either side of the incoming party, banks of cogitators locked in thick metal cages chattered away, attended by both free-crew and indentured menials. Above them was a high domed roof, marked with tarnished silver astrological patterns and old Navigator House sigils. Ten metres down was the narrow strip of real-viewers, manned by augur-servitors and showing the pale grey arc of Terra’s upper atmosphere.

  ‘My greetings to you, lord inquisitor,’ Arjanda said, bowing. ‘I trust the passage was trouble-free.’

  The inquisitor inclined his pale head slightly. His movements were precise, weighted like a swordsman’s, refined. Up close, the artfulness of his armour could be clearly seen – it was like a skin of black plates, silver-lined, barely audible but clearly tight-packed with power. His hair was slicked back severely from a high forehead, his lips thin, his eyes hollow. When he spoke, the voice was unusual – dry, precise in diction, infused with more Low Gothic contractions than might have been expected.

  ‘Were you expecting trouble, captain-general?’ Crowl asked.

  ‘Not at all. Not here.’

  ‘Tell me about your ship.’

  Arjanda swallowed. He could feel sweat beginning to prick at the base of his spine. He could sense Fliox hovering, the rest of the crew looking up at them when they dared.

  ‘This old thing?’ he asked, risking a half-laugh. ‘Four hundred years old, so she’s got some life in her yet. Never had any trouble. Never been impounded, nor held to combat-majoris. We’ve had some run-ins with pirates over the years, but they never did much more than scrape the paint. You can take a look around her, if you wish.’

  ‘What cargo do you carry?’ The inquisitor never moved his eyes away. There was something terrible lingering in those eyes, something that was hard to pin down but was most definitely resident and which made Arjanda feel faintly nauseous.

  ‘All sorts.’ Arjanda gestured towards one of the cogitator banks, where a plugged-in menial was busy clattering on a runeboard. ‘You can see the manifests if you wish. Mostly foodstuffs, taken from the Crag Belt. We can haul industrials, chem-vats, fuels. It’s all documented.’
/>   ‘Do you carry weapons?’

  ‘That would be prohibited, lord. We’re not a sanctioned Navy transport, and we don’t have the licences.’

  Crowl smiled, a chilling expression. ‘Any lapses, captain? Any time you have made some mistake with the scholarship? Such things are possible, even for the diligent.’

  Arjanda stiffened, hoping that sweat had not broken out across his balding pate. ‘Never,’ he said, hoping it looked reasonably convincing. ‘Never. Look at the logs.’

  Crowl nodded, with an expression on his face that betrayed just what he thought of the veracity of the Rhadamanthys’ own logs. ‘When did you make orbit?’

  ‘Eighteen days ago, standard.’

  ‘Inbound from?’

  ‘Hesperus.’

  ‘Carrying?’

  ‘Ninety per cent grain derivatives, for processing on-world. Eight per cent sundry industrials – I can give you an inventory. Two per cent empty.’

  ‘That’s a lot of empty.’

  ‘We were let down by a supplier. We had to move. You can’t keep the Schedulists waiting, or they–’

  ‘No delays en route?’

  ‘One small wait in-system, off Luna. There were hold-ups in the stack.’

  Crowl nodded. ‘They were running Tier Four scrutiny. Were you boarded?’

  ‘We were.’

  ‘Who by?’

  Arjanda began to get flustered. The questions were delivered politely, softly, but they were relentless, one after the other. ‘A scour-team from the Provost Marshal’s division. I forget the names. Fliox? He will retrieve them for you.’

  ‘Did they find anything?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  For the first time since arriving on the bridge, Crowl finally took his eyes away from Arjanda’s and ran his cold gaze across the cramped and cluttered space. He looked at the battered bridge stations, the faded metalwork, the chipped bulkheads. Every glance seemed weighted, as if calculating how efficiently he could destroy it all.

  Arjanda clutched the handle of his cane, and felt the ivory tip bore into his clenched palm. No one dared speak. The crew pretended to work, but their tension was palpable.

  Eventually, Crowl drew in a deep breath. It looked like that pained him a little, for the ghost of a wince flickered over his austere features.

  ‘You offered to demonstrate your voyage data,’ he said. ‘So then, show me what you’ve got.’

  Chapter Twelve

  A Threadneedle boarding capsule was a hateful thing, designed by a lunatic and outfitted by sadists. The concept had been derived from the posthumous writings of the heretic tech-priest Xho-Xho of Targaron V, who it was rumoured had taken his inspiration from an unsanctioned dissection of a failed boarding torpedo variant STC, radically reducing it in size and scope and adding novel aspects of his own devising. The Mechanicus looked dimly on such acts of initiative – hence the writings being abruptly posthumous – and quietly ensured that the design lay unlooked-at in the hidden archives of Mars for three thousand years. Only in the mid-41st millennium, as the long arc of the war began to turn and the imperative of desperation sparked interest in the previously forbidden, did radical members of the Priesthood uncover the blueprints again and begin to consider turning them into actuality. What became known as Project Chaldea was originally intended for use in individual ship-boarding actions by the Adeptus Astartes and certain factions of the mechanised skitarii, but Xho-Xho’s design parameters were never robust enough for that, and so it was repurposed for use by the specialist elements of the Adeptus Terra – the assassins, the spies, the Inquisition.

  Spinoza herself knew almost nothing of this chequered history, but as she felt the innards of the despicable machine rattle, kicking her against the strapped-tight bonds of the restraint cradle, she mouthed a series of profane curses against whoever or whatever had created it.

  She could see nothing. All she could hear was the roar of the plasma burner, which filled the tiny space and made her ear protectors swell. Her limbs were swaddled hard about her, and the torpedo’s walls were less than a hand’s width from her face. Above her head were the tight-crammed electro-mechanics, chittering and hissing as they reacted to the stream of incoming data. The machine-spirits of these things were vicious souls, as crabbed and spiteful as the devices they had been interred within, and Spinoza felt sure they made the ride deliberately uncomfortable.

  A genuine boarding torpedo was ten times the size of a Threadneedle, and did its work through brute force and melta charges. This thing went slower, like a knife in the dark, and operated in void-silence. The first Spinoza knew of the impact was a gentle crump, followed by the deployment of whining armour-scalpels. Augur-bluffs whirred into action, disabling any sensor arrays in the cut-zone. The machine shuddered, shivered, then crept forwards again, indicating that a breach had been secured. Spinoza listened to the tortured sounds of rending metal, then heard the damnable plasma burner finally wind down. There was a final spasm of activity, then the interior of the tube was flooded with red light and the outer casing cracked open.

  With relief, Spinoza blink-commanded the restraint harness to unsheathe. The synthleather straps snapped back into their holders, and she was able to shove the hatch open. Struggling for a moment, wriggling against the hard interior and pushing with her heels, she eventually crawled out, going on hands and knees until she was free of the capsule and could look about her.

  The Threadneedle had entered as instructed – in an abandoned compartment under the Rhadamanthys’ main bulk storage halls. The incision in the vessel’s outer hull was less than two metres in diameter, and the temporary gauze of a void-seal shimmered across the breach. The torpedo may have been hateful, but it had done its job – flying in under the watch of the conveyor’s sensor grid, worming inside and then making good the damage. As it lay in the dark, its smooth exterior coated in crystalline frost, Spinoza gave it a grudging kick of acknowledgement.

  That brought Gorgias swaying out of the rear compartment, its eye a disorientated lime-green. The skull collided with a beam overhead and spun around, needle gun primed.

  ‘Silence!’ hissed Spinoza, gesturing for it to calm down. ‘Your sense-grid is scrambled. Focus now. Crowl said you would be useful.’

  Gorgias pivoted back round, dipping down to face her, and she saw just how old the remnant-bone was among all that scaffolding of Mechanicus motive-units and augur-housings. The thing’s spinal trail clattered over her forearm, linked metal sliding on the ceramite.

  ‘Interio?’ the skull demanded.

  ‘So it seems. How do you feel?’

  A brief pause. Then the eye bled back to its habitual blood-red. ‘Crowl ingressus, ergo hurry-hurry.’

  Spinoza edged forwards, gathering data on their position. She was fully armoured and helmed, and for all its combat advantages the enclosed headwear did nothing to dispel the lingering sense of being buried alive.

  The compartment was only a few metres long, one of thousands of buffers between the interior units and the main hull-skin. Ahead of her was the interior access portal, thick with rust and clearly not used in a long time. She pulled a tumbler-cracker from her gauntlet, clamped it on to the lock-bolts and waited for the seal to break. Once done, she had to haul the hatch open manually, its motors having long since corroded away. Then she was through.

  The interior of an unloaded bulk carrier was cavernous, echoing, unlit, nearly as empty as the abyss outside. Spinoza crept across the deserted plasteel deck. Above her soared mighty section dividers – huge walls ribbed with adamantium and marked by elevator-tracks. The construction was modular, and twenty-metre-high classification runes marched into the darkness at regular intervals. It was hard to imagine the volume filled by the millions of containers that the Rhadamanthys would have carried when loaded – now it was tomb-like.

  Spinoza started scanning, using he
r helm’s inbuilt auspex capability to flood the walls with variant soak-tests. Gorgias went ahead of her, its lumen-points like stars in the dark.

  Every so often, she came across a seal printed in ultraviolet – a sign left by the arbitrators on their scheduled scrutiny sweep. They had been thorough, ticking off each bay in turn, then stamping it with an auspex-visible seal of purity. Back when the arbitrators had been present, of course, the hauler would have been laden.

  ‘Nihil,’ chattered Gorgias, powering on ahead, then swerving around a bulwark and further into the gloom. ‘Dum-de-dum.’

  ‘We are just beginning,’ said Spinoza, but in truth she began to share the same misgivings. Crowl had brought them up here after investigations of his own, ones in which she had had no involvement. Perhaps his judgement was sound, but there had been too little time with him to truly tell. It was wholly unclear what they were looking for. If there had been something to hide, it was unclear to her why the arbitrators would not have discovered it – a Tier Four sweep was a serious undertaking, conducted by serious operators whose life depended on not making a mistake.

  Despite her misgivings, they covered the ground fast. A hauler’s crew was small in number – just a few dozen in most cases – and there was no reason for them to be present when the ship was empty. The skull ran wide-angle scans as they headed back down the length of the ship, rack after rack, chamber after chamber.

  Soon enough, the final units beckoned – shabbier than the rest, faintly stinking of their last cargo. The metal decks were strewn with a few lost grains of freeze-dried wheat, rotting in the shadows. Spinoza edged around the corner and spied a chamber much like all the others. Diligently, she ran her array of scans.

  Once again, nothing. She tallied the scrutiny marks, one by one. Everything had been checked. Wearily, she turned, looking for Gorgias. The skull was hovering halfway up the far wall.

  ‘Enough,’ she voxed, beckoning for it to come down. ‘We do not have much time.’