Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne

by Chris Wraight

  ‘Should we report this?’ asked Spinoza.

  ‘Report what?’ asked Crowl, smiling dryly. ‘Valco’s records are gone, the Rhadamanthys is gone, Phaelias is gone. They – and we – are doing a decent job of covering their tracks.’

  ‘And we don’t know what happened to the cargo,’ said Revus.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Crowl. ‘My apologies, Spinoza – you were right to be frustrated on the bridge, but I was not lingering in order to vex you. A ranged augur record may contain data on ship types, displacements, even names. That was our last chance to gain intelligence on the transfer, and I was working to extract what I could.’ He took another sip. ‘At first, I believed that nothing would be retrievable. There was a short data-burst stored in the augur record, buried in the block-header, part of the stan­dard exchange when a tracker beam finds its mark, but it was nonsense. Just alphanumeric runes in a sequence I didn’t recognise – 00726174686F – just where the vessel ident should have been, if any had been picked up.’

  ‘You still recall the sequence?’ asked Spinoza, taken aback.

  ‘Detail,’ said Crowl. ‘A specialism. But then I had another thought – difficult, with the place falling apart, but stress can induce a certain mental clarity. I’d assumed that this ship was an Imperial vessel, responding with an Imperial signal that would be understood and transliterated by the Rhadamanthys’ receiver systems. But there are non-Imperial ships in Terran orbital, many thousands of them. What if it were Martian? And if so, then the answer was obvious. The Rhadamanthys would have left the ident in its native raw format, an encoding that predates the Imperium by many thousands of years – sigil pairs in hexadecimal notation. On return to Courvain, I was able to locate the key and unfold the sequence. My first attempt was unpromising: 0ratho. Then it became clear that the initial zero was a terminator, and that the sigil-pairs had arrived in reverse order. That gave me the true name – Ohtar. So it’s a Mechanicus ship.’

  Revus nodded. Spinoza looked more sceptical. ‘Then we have a name,’ she said, ‘but how can we use it? They won’t have put the landing data into records we can access.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Crowl. ‘But we know the destination was Terra, and on Terra there are limits to where a Mechanicus vessel can find safe harbour and still remain secret – in theory, they are vessels of a distinct sovereign empire, and are treated as such. The main Martian embassy temples are within the Palace and would not have the facilities to receive an incoming voidship, not to mention the levels of security over that airspace. But outside the walls there is Skhallax. It’s big enough, it’s ugly enough, and you could hide a flotilla in there if you really had to.’

  ‘Skhallax?’ asked Spinoza.

  ‘Mechanicus enclave, south of the Outer Palace wall,’ said Revus.

  ‘A city within a city,’ said Crowl. ‘Built to enable the Priests of Mars to oversee the rebuilding of Terra following the Great Heresy, but they never left. Nominally under the control of the Administratum, but in practice the Fabricator General runs it as his private fiefdom.’

  ‘I did not think such things were tolerated,’ Spinoza said.

  ‘You’d be surprised what the High Lords will tolerate. The situation hardly aids us – an Inquisition rosette doesn’t carry much weight in there, whatever the treaties dictate – but we have to get inside. My suspicion is that Phaelias made the same decision, which would explain why nothing has been heard of him since.’

  ‘They will know you are coming,’ said Spinoza. ‘The orbital authorities might accept that the destruction of a void-hauler was accidental, but they will know someone was on board. If the captain was able to get a signal away, then they might even know your identity.’

  ‘I never gave the captain a name,’ said Crowl. ‘But you’re right – they’ll know someone was sniffing around, and they’ll be searching for who that was. And they have no compunction over killing an inquisitor – we know that at least.’ He drained the goblet and poured himself another. ‘This is what I propose. Spinoza, go after the False Angel again. Make as much noise about it as you can. Take Hegain, take as many troops as you need. If you can run down this Falx, so much the better. I want it to appear as if all our efforts are bent towards these flesh-gangs. It is a worthy objective in any case, and if it brings you into contact with Quantrain that is good, for his connections will spread the news. I will go to Skhallax. There’s not much to be accomplished there in numbers – we’ll have to go carefully in the tech-priests’ realm.’ He looked at his acolyte. ‘You said you picked up readings in that cargo-chamber?’

  Spinoza nodded. ‘They are stored, and I will analyse them.’

  ‘Supposition?’

  ‘I do not know.’ She paused. ‘Some kind of radiation? Chem-weapons? They might have been unstable, hence the signs of use.’

  ‘Talk to Erunion,’ said Crowl. ‘That sounds like something he’d enjoy looking into.’ He drained his goblet and pulled himself to his feet. After the exertions on the void-hauler, the movement was stiffer than normal. ‘I need not tell you we do not have much time. In two days the whole planet will be disabled by this damned Feast-fever, and even moving around will become difficult. But I have faith in you, both of you, for we are engaged in this thing now, and secret-hunting is why we were made.’

  He pushed the goblet away. He was drinking too much of that stuff, and it would revert to the old poison all too soon if he overdid it.

  ‘So, hunters,’ he said. ‘It begins again. May He guide your paths, and lead us all into glory.’

  After the conference, Spinoza went back to her personal chambers. It was late morning by then, but felt far later. She needed to collect herself, consider how she was to enact the tasks given to her, study the files from Huk that waited on her desk. The command to run down the flesh-gangs was far from unwelcome – that was the work she had urged Crowl to prioritise from the start – but there were no fresh leads. She could go out into the labyrinth again, hoping to find something, and perhaps some scent would emerge, but the time remaining was ticking down rapidly.

  She reached her cell, activated the lock and went inside. Her limbs dragging, she made her way over to the cot – unslept in – and lowered herself down onto the coarse blanket. For a moment, she allowed herself to relax, resting her head on the bolster and closing her eyes.

  Images cycled through her mind. She remembered the lithochromes Crowl had taken from the den in the underhives, the bloodstains and the frozen images of torture. Then she saw the inside of the cargo chamber on the void-hauler again, just as bloody, its horror augmented by the stench that was so hard to place. Then she saw the masked face of Falx, glistening from the condensing fat droplets filling the air like rain, crouched to pounce, her sword shining. Then there was Gloch, hauling her to safety, then Rassilo, smiling at her in the warmth and splendour of her private apartments.

  This is Terra, child. One gift given, another returned.

  The chime went, startling her out of her gentle slide into slumber.

  Spinoza cursed, feeling her body tremble back into full wakefulness. She needed to get some rest, some time. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

  ‘If you please, lord. Yessika.’

  Spinoza swung her legs over the cot’s edge, blinked twice. ‘Come,’ she said.

  The girl entered, slipping through the gap warily. She was as pale as before, as sickly as before, her shift hanging over its bony frame. She stood before Spinoza for a moment, uncertain. She carried nothing with her.

  ‘What is it?’ Spinoza asked.

  ‘I thought you…’ Then she trailed off. ‘You said that…’

  Spinoza waited. ‘Are you well?’ she asked eventually. ‘You are not being maltreated?’

  Yessika shook her head. ‘Something to tell you.’ She looked around then, as if suddenly fearful she were being overheard.

  ‘Go on. We are alone.�
�

  ‘He is sick, interrogator,’ said Yessika, very quietly. ‘He is very sick. I spoke to those who serve his chamber, and they showed me what they make for him. Medicines. That’s all he takes now, they told me. It’s getting worse.’

  Spinoza regarded her carefully. ‘Why do you tell me this?’

  Yessika began to look worried. ‘I thought that…’ she started. ‘I thought you wanted me to. I wish him no harm, though. No harm at all. The ones that serve him close, they wish him no harm either, but they’re worried, because the doses are growing, and they know that it can mean no good. If he goes, then–’

  ‘He is not going anywhere.’ Spinoza got up, moved closer to Yessika and tried to give her a smile. She reached out and smoothed a stray line of tangled hair from her dirty face. ‘You must know that an inquisitor is a precious asset to the Imperium. Each one is worth more than an entire world. If he is taking medication, then he is healing. That is how it works.’

  ‘But they say–’

  ‘I did wish you to share this with me. If you learn of any other things that concern you, then you must always feel free to come to me. You will do this, yes?’

  Yessika, who had looked conflicted until then, brightened a little. ‘That’s all I have for now. I can keep an eye on it, though. Vider, she serves in the upper refectory, she knows more about the household business, though I do not like her, but I will try to listen when she speaks to Gerog, because they are close I think, though they try to keep it secret.’

  As Spinoza listened, it was like being given a tiny glimpse of the labyrinthine politics of Courvain’s menial levels. No doubt there were rivalries and jealousies in the shadows to rival anything in the grand palaces of the Lords of Terra. Yessika prattled on for a while longer, and Spinoza let her. The girl was obviously lonely. As Spinoza had been taught in the earliest months of her long instruction, that offered up opportunity.

  ‘You have been valuable, Yessika,’ Spinoza said. ‘I will find some way to give you a reward, when I can. Keep your eyes open. Let me know if you discover anything else. It is our task, yours and mine, to keep the inquisitor safe – you understand this?’

  ‘I do.’ Yessika’s eyes were wide and guileless. ‘He wasn’t always alone, they say.’

  ‘They do indeed,’ said Spinoza, guiding her back to the door. ‘Now do not tarry – you will be missed, and I do not wish to see you punished for this.’

  Yessika slipped off just as she had arrived – a slip of grey, light as dust, scampering warily back into the shadows of the corridor outside.

  Once she had gone, Spinoza closed the door again, sat back on her cot, and thought on the news. It might be worth knowing, it might not. An inquisitor of Crowl’s seniority was likely to have augmetics, physical implants, chemical-balance alterations. All of that required constant attention from an apothecary, just to keep the balance stable. In all probability, that was all that was happening here.

  In all probability.

  The chance for sleep had gone now, though. She was alert again, thinking through the implications, such as they might be. She pressed the secure command bead at her armour’s collar, ready to do what she had been putting off for too long.

  ‘Yes, lord?’ came the grating voice of a duty officer, though it wasn’t one of Courvain’s.

  ‘Spinoza, Luce,’ she said, coldly. ‘Code sequence beta-beta-chimeric.’

  There was a click, the sound of shuffling parchment, the clunk of an algorithmic engine completing.

  ‘Very good, lord. Audex cipher accepted. I shall put you through.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Crowl and Revus took a Shade from Courvain’s fleet and piloted it north west, out of Salvator and out towards the approaches to Skhallax. As they gained loft, a scatter of dirt-caked spires ran away towards the gradual rise that culminated in the Palace, a faintly visible smudge of darkness on the horizon. The night’s fires had gone out by then, but the last remnants of smoke twisted up into the heavens like greasy tresses.

  Gun-barges now hovered over all the major thoroughfares, their bolter banks steadily tracking anything within range. They were ugly things – old hulls, dragged out of semi-dormancy for counter-insurgency work with weapon-racks capable of levelling city blocks. Higher up, amid the tox-haze, Imperial Navy fighters were busy blank-strafing imaginary targets, sweeping back and forth ahead of the controlled airspace of the Palace itself in tight-held formations.

  The cloud mantle had darkened, curdling like spoiled milk and twisting in eerie patterns where the hot wind ruffled it. Flickers of pale lightning danced along the horizon. The air felt heavy, close, ripe to detonate. The soaring faces of oratories and cathedrals gazed out over the fervid atmosphere, their gables studded with rows of eyeless statues. Those static figures had seen it all – the invasions, the reconstructions, the purges, on and on, cycling across the millennia in a black comedy of repetition.

  Revus, at the controls, said nothing. Crowl, happy not to break the silence, prepared the Shade’s augurs for deployment. A dormant Gorgias hung back behind the cockpit seats.

  Soon the towers of Skhallax became visible through the murk, first as a series of dull red lights in the gloom, then in the stepped outlines of ziggurats and forge-temples. Temperature gauges in the Shade’s cockpit rose a little higher. Revus lowered his speed, brought the craft down a few hundred metres, hugging the shoulders of the hab towers.

  The place was many hundreds of square kilometres across, a scar of off-world edifices intertwined with the jungle of habitation-blocks at its fringes. A confection of manufactoria, refineries and ritual sites for the worship of the Mechanicus’ strange theological construction the Omnissiah, Skhallax had risen up over thousands of years of alternating growth and stagnation, its great factories built atop the shells of older factories, its complex systems of cabling and pipework and power generators and heat exchangers patched and repaired but never fully replaced. Now most of the structure was deemed sacred, an ossified relic to be tended, not extended, and over the most recent centuries, in keeping with the long slide into decrepitude across the entire planet, it had begun to degrade into a swamp of corrosion. Its steep flanks remained caked in the dark red skin that all Martian architecture employed, though Terra’s grinding winds had bled most of the colour out of the highest walls, slowly eroding its distinctiveness and imposing its own uniform pall of pale grey.

  The Shade’s chronos ticked over to midday, a time when favoured parts of the Throneworld experienced a modicum of filmy sunlight, but Skhallax remained dark. Churning fumes rose up around it like steadily intensifying layers of gauze, masking the full extent of the structures within. The earth trembled, as if massive hammers rotated in the deeps below. Flames writhed out of exhaust pits like the geysers of Old Earth, raging for moments, or hours, or days, before suddenly gusting out again.

  At its heart, swathed by the roil and the tumult, jutted a cluster of monolithic columns, blunt-edged, brutal in construction, all bearing the Cog Mechanicus illuminated in bloody-edged lumen-glows. Aside from the Palace and the truly colossal halls of the Ministorum itself, no greater structure than Skhallax had been raised on this hemisphere of the Throneworld, a permanent reminder of the prestige of the Red Planet’s ancient rival hegemony.

  They got closer. Crowl began to run low-level scans, cross-referencing the Shade’s records with data from the augurs. The site was so enormous that it was not obvious where to start looking, but even in such a place there would be limitations on the possible. Bringing down a sub-warp vessel of the Ohtar’s void-profile required an appropriate landing stage, and that was not something Skhallax had in abundance, for it had never been designed as a space port. There were a number of likely locations returned by the augurs, though one stood out – a long way from the red-eyed centre, out west past a hunchbacked line of refineries, lodged amid what looked like semi-abandoned works on the enclave’s bord
er.

  ‘Silence now, I think,’ said Crowl.

  Revus swung the Shade down lower, activating quiet protocol. The gunship’s lights blinked out, its auspex-baffles activated, its engines throttled back to a whisper. Amid the tumbling smog-banks, it might have been just another drifting shadow. That was well, for they had entered proscribed space, liable to interdiction from the Mechanicus guard-drones that patrolled the rim of their esoteric kingdom.

  Crowl gazed out of the cockpit. Precipitous walls, weathered and rust-laced, rose up tight against the sweep of cracked raised transitways. Beyond the outer bastions were the first of the old manufactoria, crowned with lattices of scaffolding over the heavy segmented walls, broken up by the thrust of exhaust chimneys and great cooling towers. Long jets of brown steam hissed out of hidden grilles before dissipating into the thick brume like oil sinking to the sump.

  They had not yet crossed the threshold. The Shade ghosted low, skirting the border, watching as the mountainous edifices steadily fell into greater states of disrepair. More than half of Skhallax seemed to be moribund, on the surface at least. Perhaps there were intact workings further down, deeper into the world’s core, where descending a hundred metres could mean going back in time by a thousand years. You never knew, not with the Priesthood of Mars.

  ‘Detecting no shadows,’ Revus reported, maintaining a metronomic speed and keeping them comfortably within the palls of shifting smoke.

  ‘You have the location,’ said Crowl. ‘Take us in when you’re sure.’

  There was no movement visible on the walls. No crawlers burned their way between the rotting engine sheds, no phalanxes of infantry stalked the high parapets under the watchful eyes of robed tech-priests. It looked deserted.

  ‘Ants,’ said Revus.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t kick the nest.’

  Crowl grunted in agreement, and turned back to the view ahead. A landscape of heavy-boled pipelines ran ahead of them, punctuated by burner towers. Further into the gloom were the first landing stages they’d detected, raised on cross-braced scaffolds and overlooked by lumpen, slope-walled control towers. The complex looked as mournful and neglected as the rest.