Lords and Tyrants

by Warhammer 40K

  No! Voyle tried to scream, but he no longer had a mouth. It belonged to the Voice now.

  Bhoral’s burst cannon vented smoke as it spewed plasma bolts at the four-armed abominations infesting the hanger bay. The creatures zigzagged between banks of machinery as they circled her, their sinuous forms hunched into an insect-like scuttle. Their bodies were sheathed in blue chitin that flared into spines at their joints and along the ridge of their bulbous skulls. In place of jaws their faces trailed thorn-tipped tentacles that whipped about as the creatures moved.

  Drones skimmed around the beasts, chattering electronically as they harried them with bursts of plasma, but the machines were falling faster than their prey, their rigid minds confounded by their enemies’ erratic movements. Bhoral hissed as another of the flying discs was yanked from the air and shredded. The beasts’ claws were improbably strong. Even her battlesuit’s armour wouldn’t last long against a prolonged attack.

  There are too many, Bhoral judged, immolating an abomination with a spurt of fire as it veered towards her. Her flamethrower’s ammunition gauge chimed a warning. The weapon had already been running low when she’d entered the hanger and engaged the infiltrators. There had been seven when she’d arrived, but more had crawled from the ducts lining the walls, arriving faster than she could cull them. She had summoned all her forces, but they had turned up sporadically, never giving her the numbers to mount a concerted counterattack. Hurrell’s gue’vesa team had been overwhelmed within seconds of their arrival. The drones had fared better because of their mobility, but less than twenty remained now and the chitinous onslaught hadn’t faltered. The battle couldn’t be won.

  ‘Kor’vre Ubor’ka,’ Bhoral transmitted to the ship’s flight deck. ‘Withdraw the Whispering Hand immediately. The Concordance must be alerted to this treachery.’

  ‘I cannot abandon the exalted one,’ the pilot protested.

  ‘We must assume he is lost.’ Bhoral abhorred the words, but Kyuhai had made her duty clear. ‘The ship will be overrun if you delay. Authorisation cypher follows.’ She sent the code as her cannon finally overheated and fell silent.

  ‘I understand, Shas’vre. Signal me when you are on board.’

  ‘That is not an option. Go!’

  Bhoral kept the beasts at bay with brief bursts from her flamethrower as the docking clamps disengaged and released the slumbering ship. Before their echoes had faded the vessel’s engines rumbled into life, sending tremors through the chamber.

  ‘Come then,’ Bhoral whispered as her flamethrower ran dry. The tentacled abominations surged forward, vaulting over one-another in their eagerness to reach her. She clubbed the first one aside with a clumsy swing of her cannon and rammed her flamethrower into the face of the next, shattering its skull. Then they were upon her, hissing as they raked at her armour. Within seconds her battlesuit’s damage indicator was flashing red in countless places. She ignored it, knowing there was nothing more to be done. Chanting a mantra of certitude, she stood motionless. Waiting.

  The hanger’s massive external doors slid open behind her, unleashing a shriek of void-wracked air. A heartbeat later Bhoral was wrenched into the emptiness beyond, trailing a string of chitinous horrors. As she whirled about in the vacuum she glimpsed the departing glow of the Whispering Hand’s engines.

  ‘The circle closes,’ she said and overloaded her battlesuit’s power core. For a brief moment she burned brighter than the engines.

  I didn’t warn Erzul, Voyle thought bitterly, remembering his promise to the pathfinder. He sat stiffly in his chair, his hands steering the truck of their own accord. He couldn’t even turn his head to check if the woman slumped beside him was still breathing. His comrades hadn’t seen the violence that had transpired in the cabin, nor could they know the treachery playing out now.

  I’ve betrayed them all.

  ‘No, you have saved them, Ulver. Along with yourself.’ The voice was his, but the words were not.

  You lied to me, Voyle accused, struggling to break free. Where are you taking us?

  ‘You shall all be enlightened, but the Ethereal among you is of singular importance.’

  The Seeker… How…?

  ‘What you know, I now know, child.’

  Shame washed over Voyle in a corrosive wave, scouring him of all the hopes and hates that had bedevilled him since his long fall began. Finally all that remained was a bleak yearning for nothingness.

  ‘It is your shadow to burn,’ the Stormlight had advised. ‘Only you can light the fire.’

  Hesitantly at first, then with growing conviction, Voyle began to recite the nineteenth mantra of self-sublimation. The-Winter-That-Rises-Within focused on attaining a state of perfect stillness, conditioning its aspirants to slow their breathing and lock their muscles rigid as they purged their minds of desire. Voyle had always been drawn to its oblique words and the ephemeral oblivion they offered.

  Emptiness unwound blinds the light that binds unseen.

  He repeated the spiralling phrase over-and-over, speaking with his mind until his body listened… and remembered. Like creeping frost his grip on the wheel tightened then froze, locking the truck to its current path. From somewhere far away he heard his own voice calling to him, wheedling then reasoning then railing, becoming ever more strident as the road ahead curved yet the vehicle didn’t follow.

  None of it mattered. None of it was real.

  But the deceiver was blind to such truths, and in its turmoil its control frayed. The lapse was brief, but it was enough for Voyle to stamp down on the accelerator.

  Emptiness unwound…

  With a roar the truck leapt forward, its frame rattling as its wheels left the road.

  …blinds the light…

  The usurper fled his mind as the building ahead rushed towards the windscreen.

  …that binds unseen.

  ‘Bloodtight,’ Voyle sighed, closing his eyes.

  Kyuhai hit the ground hard, but his armour absorbed the worst of the impact. He rolled with the fall and swept to his feet. For a moment he stood motionless, gazing inward to assess his body. There was some damage, but nothing significant. As in the recent crash, his armour and training had served him well, though he would not welcome a third such incident any time soon. He scanned the surrounding buildings but saw nobody. Up ahead the wrecked truck was still blazing, its death throes casting a red haze over the street.

  ‘Your truth dies with you, Ulver Voyle,’ Kyuhai said, then turned his attention to the living. Akuryo knelt nearby, wrestling with his helmet. Its dome was cracked and sparks flickered behind its shattered lenses. One of the gue’vesa lay further along the road, his neck twisted at a strange angle. None of the others had jumped from the speeding vehicle in time.

  ‘How will we reach the ship?’ Akuryo asked, finally tearing his helmet free.

  ‘We cannot,’ the Ethereal replied. ‘It is too late. Either the ship is gone or it is in the enemy’s hands now.’

  ‘Then only vengeance remains to us,’ the Fire Warrior said bitterly, throwing his ruined helmet aside.

  ‘Vengeance is immaterial. No, we shall keep to the shadows and learn our enemy’s truth.’

  ‘To what purpose, Seeker?’ Akuryo rose to his feet unsteadily. His scalp was scorched and bleeding.

  ‘To destroy it.’ Kyuhai sliced the air with his right hand, indicating an-outcome-already-proven. ‘It must be done. Of this I am certain.’

  ‘With respect… we are but two.’

  ‘We will find others. I suspect this broken world harbours many secrets, shas’el.’ Kyuhai allowed himself the ghost of a smile, though it passed unseen beneath his helm. ‘And we are four.’

  Akuryo swung round as a rangy avian figure dropped down beside him, landing in a feral crouch. A moment later a second one leapt from the roof behind to join it.

  ‘For Greater Good!’ the
kroot carnivores growled together.

  – THE SPIRAL –

  OBLIVION

  Por’el Adibh opened her eyes as the door of her chamber opened. A t’au stood in the doorway – a female of the Water caste like herself, but much younger and clad in the purple robes Adibh had come to loathe.

  ‘So Fai’sahl was not the last of his embassy,’ Adibh observed, rising from her chair.

  ‘Eleven of us remain,’ the newcomer replied. She shared the malignant vigour that Fai’sahl had projected, though her aura was less pronounced. ‘I am Por’ui Beyaal. Por’vre Fai’sahl was my bonded mate.’

  ‘His death was difficult,’ Adibh said flatly.

  ‘His death served the Greatest Good,’ Beyaal said without a trace of sorrow. ‘I trust your injuries have been attended to, por’el?’

  ‘You know they have, traitor.’ Several days had passed since the Order’s minions had recovered her from the wrecked vehicle, along with the monstrous warrior that had seized her. Since then she had been confined to this room and her questions had gone unanswered. ‘You are aware that your attack on my embassy will be construed as an act of war,’ she challenged.

  ‘You attacked us,’ Beyaal demurred serenely. ‘Without provocation.’

  ‘I do not accept that, but I advise you to release me without delay.’ Adibh softened her tone. ‘Perhaps an accord may yet be reached.’

  ‘That is our aspiration.’ Beyaal extended her hands, palms upward. ‘The Cog Eternal has embraced the Greatest Good. It has always sought an alliance with the T’au Empire.’

  ‘Then release me.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Beyaal bowed her head. ‘Please follow me, por’el.’

  Adibh didn’t move. ‘You agree?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘The Animus-Alpha will address all your concerns,’ Beyaal assured her.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He is the First Architect of the Cog Eternal, but many of us have come to see him as a father. I believe you shall too.’

  Adibh’s eyes narrowed as she spotted something lurking in the passageway behind Beyaal.

  ‘Your pardon, por’el,’ Beyaal said, catching her glance. ‘I wanted to introduce my son, Geb’rah.’ She called over her shoulder. ‘Enter, child! There is nothing to fear.’

  A squat figure shambled in, its heavyset form swaddled in robes. Lovingly Beyaal pulled its hood back and smiled at her prisoner.

  Adibh stared, aghast, struggling to make sense of the infant’s face.

  ‘He is but three tau’cyr,’ Beyaal crooned, ‘but children grow swiftly here.’

  As the hybrid thing grinned at her through a veil of tendrils Adibh’s composure finally unravelled and a dark thought flashed through her mind: Perhaps the xenophobia of the gue’la is not a sickness, but a strength.

  THE PATH UNCLEAR

  Mike Brooks

  The dig had once been the site of a tenement block but was now a chewed-up mess of red dirt. Occasional broken-off stumps of pale pillars flecked with pearlescence had been revealed. Alyss thought they looked like giant ribs covered in drying blood.

  ‘Xenos,’ Aberfell Duscaris said, kicking one.

  ‘Yes,’ Alyss agreed.

  Fell raised a greying eyebrow at her. ‘And how would you know that, scholam girl?’

  ‘I’ve been studying the inquisitor’s texts,’ Alyss told him archly. ‘How do you know it’s xenos?’

  Fell snorted. ‘I blew up something similar when campaigning with the Eighty-First Tarradis. Also, if it wasn’t xenos, Jonas wouldn’t have half-killed an astropath to contact us.’ He jumped down into the main dig site, his bionic arm steadying the combi-bolter slung over his shoulder.

  ‘Who is this Jonas, anyway?’ Alyss asked, following him. It galled her to ask the bluff ex-Guardsman so many questions, but she didn’t want to pester the inquisitor, and the rest of her new companions had their own idiosyncrasies.

  ‘Harral Jonas, archaeologist,’ Fell replied. ‘One of the boss’ contacts. If he finds something interesting or concerning, then he brings it to her attention. Given how hard we pushed to get here, I’d say she thought he was on to something.’

  Alyss followed Fell across the mud. People and servitors were working around the edges and directly in front of her was a large case apparently made of plasteel-bound crystal, across which two people were talking. The man on the left had to be Harral Jonas: unshaven, pale-skinned and sporting a battered hat of dark felt. Alyss had come to know the other well already.

  Inquisitor Zaretta Ngiri was tall, graceful and ageless, her dark skin smooth and her hair an almost-pure white cut into a blunt fringe at the front. She favoured sober, dark suits and a high-collared jacket in a vaguely military cut. At her shoulder lurked the imposing, armoured presence of Davis of Rawl, the Crusader sworn to her unto death.

  Jonas stopped in mid-sentence and turned towards them, then relaxed when he saw Fell. Ngiri beckoned them closer.

  ‘Jonas, I’m sure you remember Fell. This is Alyssana Nero, whom I recently recruited from the schola progenium.’

  ‘Mamzel,’ Jonas greeted her, then turned back to Ngiri and gestured at the case. ‘This is why I asked you to come.’

  Ngiri nodded. ‘Fell, Nero. Your first impressions, please?’

  Fell looked down. ‘It’s an old sword. Not military, probably not mass produced at all, actually. Blade just under a metre, hand-and-a-half grip. Looks perfectly normal. I can’t see a power source anywhere, or any manner of crystals for a witch to use it.’ He glanced sideways at Alyss. ‘No offence.’

  ‘None taken,’ she assured him.

  Jonas blinked and looked at her again.

  ‘Another psyker, inquisitor? Has something happened to Carmine?’

  ‘No,’ Ngiri replied with a faint smile. ‘Carmine’s excellent at employing brute psychic force, but Nero has a more… intuitive gift.’

  ‘Would you like me to read the sword, milady?’ Alyss asked.

  ‘No,’ Ngiri said firmly. ‘Just your eyes for the moment.’

  Alyss studied the sword, trying to look knowledgeable. In truth she could see nothing more than Fell had, but she didn’t want to let the inquisitor down in front of her associate so she kept looking… and suddenly, there it was. Not the sword itself, but its surroundings.

  ‘This is a stasis cabinet,’ she said, looking up, and knew from Ngiri’s nod that she’d got it right. ‘I imagine you have it for fragile relics, but the sword doesn’t look particularly fragile. Why is it in there?’

  ‘An excellent question,’ Ngiri said. ‘Jonas?’

  ‘As soon as we found it, the locals started claiming it was the Blade of Saint Aruba,’ Jonas said, wiping his brow with his hat. ‘She led the resistance against xenos slavers here in the thirty-third millennium. Sacrificed herself to kill their warchief, apparently. There might even be something to it, because then the dreams started coming.’

  ‘Dreams?’ Ngiri asked. ‘What manner of dreams?’

  ‘Can’t say – never had one,’ Jonas replied, ‘but several of the crew did. They couldn’t describe them properly but I couldn’t get decent work out of them after that – they always seemed distracted, off staring at something. Unrest has increased massively since the sword was found. The governor threw a public holiday in the saint’s honour to quell things, but it’s not done much. Half the population appears to have been overcome by some sort of fervour. You’ve got factory workers downing tools and demanding to sign up for the Astra Militarum then getting ugly when they’re told no. There’s been mysterious deaths. Everyone seems to want to fight for the Emperor, and that’s all well and good, but the timing of it made me nervous.’

  ‘So you put the blade into stasis?’ Ngiri asked.

  ‘Yes, milady,’ Jonas nodded. ‘Things have quietened down somewhat since, although not to where they were. I can examin
e an artefact and try to work out which xenos race might have made it, and even hazard a guess as to why, but saintly relics are outside my field of expertise. I don’t want to stand in the way of something holy, but I wanted to bring in someone with more knowledge.’

  ‘And did you touch it yourself?’

  Jonas barked a laugh. ‘Throne, no! Everything gets lifted from the ground by servitors. You can’t be too careful in xenos ruins.’

  They’d just finished the dust-caked trudge back to the inquisitor’s gun-cutter when Jekri approached from the other side of the small craft and threw something at Fell without a word of warning. Fell snatched it out of the air and glowered at the skitarii ranger.

  ‘What’s this?’ he demanded, examining it. Alyss peered at it and saw a small box of delicately carved wood.

  ‘A local juvenile presented this to me with the request that it be passed to you,’ Jekri said. ‘Specifically, “the big Guardsman with the metal arm”. They said they had been paid by a tall, thin man to deliver it.’

  Fell’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘And you just threw it at me?’

  ‘Enginseer Lentzen has determined it is not dangerous,’ Jekri said, with the momentary sideways tilt of its head that Alyss had come to associate with a shrug.

  ‘Regardless, be more careful,’ Ngiri cut in. She turned to look at Fell. ‘Well?’

  Fell flipped the box open and frowned, then emptied something small and shiny out onto his palm and dropped the box. Alyss caught sight of a thin chain and two rectangles of metal before Fell closed his fist, his jaw working in apparent anger.

  ‘Ident-tags?’ Alyss asked.

  ‘These were Katzeed’s,’ Fell said, his voice low and dangerous. ‘One of my squad from Abram’s World. When the… when we killed the Manchewer.’

  ‘You were part of that squad?’ Alyss exclaimed. She’d heard of the heroism of the Astra Militarum kill team that assassinated the monstrous ork warboss who had devastated half a dozen Imperial worlds. She’d also heard that only one of them had survived. ‘You never told me you were part of that!’