Chapter Text
The streets of the planetary capital echoed with the joyful cries of the populace. The fires of the Uprising had settled down, taking with them the last remnants of the corrupt old order. After centuries of oppression under the increasingly decadent, cruel and unstable Giorba family, Slawkenberg was free at last.
Millions of citizens partied like they never had before in their lives. The celebrations had been going on for five days, the people's enthusiasm never abating from morning to dusk, and dusk to dawn. Official announcements by the Liberation Council, these champions of the people who had ousted the hated Giorba, had declared that they would continue for three more days, after which work would have to resume so that Slawkenberg could stand proudly on its own.
And none were more celebrated than Ciaphas Cain, the Liberator. Already there was talk of renaming the planetary capital Cainopolis in his honor.
In the city's drinking dens, where alcohol flowed freely from barrels looted from the nobility's gilded palaces, celebrants swapped stories of the Liberator's heroic actions during the Uprising. The tales were many and fanciful, yet for each of them, no matter how outlandish, there were plenty willing to swear to their veracity, claiming to have witnessed them happen with their own eyes. And so, with each passing hour, the legend of Cain the Liberator grew, another deed added to it.
How, despite having been indoctrinated by the Imperium during his entire childhood, the Liberator had broken free of his mental shackles and sworn to fight for justice as he cradled the body of his lost love, the lady Emeli, callously murdered at the Governor's orders for refusing his advances.
How he had, with one impassioned speech, convinced nearly the entire Planetary Defense Force to join the rebellion instead of opening fire on their own brothers and sisters in defense of a greedy tyrant.
How he had led the fight against the Giorba's dreaded enforcers, black-clad thugs who for centuries had kept the people of Slawkenberg down with their cruelty, killing their monstrous leader Colonel Arken, with a single blow of his chainsword severing the bastard's head.
How he had hunted down the vile, corrupt and despised Governor Caesariovi Giorba as he tried to escape the people's wrath aboard his private transport, cornering the fat bastard in the small, isolated spaceport where somehow Cain had known the most hated man on Slawkenberg had placed his emergency escape, before killing him in single combat (not that the inbred cretin would have been much of a challenge to Cain, even the drunkest celebrant had to admit).
These tales, and many more, were told over and over, growing with each retelling as was the manner of such things. With Cain the Liberator leading them, surely a new golden age awaited Slawkenberg, free of the cruelties of the Imperium's rule.
Sitting in the luxurious apartments that, until recently, had belonged to the unmourned Planetary Governor with a crystal glass full of expensive amasec on the table before me, I took a deep breath, and tried my best not to scream. My aide, after all, was just on the other side of the door, and I had no idea whether the walls were soundproofed or not – although come to think of it, they most likely were, given the rumors that had circulated about the activities of the suite's previous occupant.
How ?! How had it come to this ?!
I would never have considered myself the most faithful servant of the God-Emperor, far from it, but I wasn't a heretic either. Or at least I hadn't been when I had graduated from the Schola, because I was fairly certain that had changed now. But try as I might, I couldn't think of a way I could possibly have foreseen things going quite that catastrophically wrong.
When the news that the Commissar nominally tasked with handling disciplinary matters for the PDF of Slawkenberg had finally succumbed to two decades of heavy drinking had reached me, I hadn't believed my luck. Usually, such postings were reserved for the crippled or disgraced members of the Commissariat : no one could expect a single individual to keep up with the petty and not-so-petty infractions of hundreds of thousands of soldiers (a number that, on more populated worlds, could easily go into the millions). But I cared a lot less about my career than I did about avoiding getting shot, and this had seemed like the best way to spend my entire life of service in relative comfort and total obscurity, far away from any battlefield.
And to top it all of, Slawkenberg was a vacation world, as close to a paradise world as you could get while still supporting a sizeable population and economy. People from the upper-middle classes of the Imperium came from all across the Sector aboard regular transport ships, to spend a few months or a few years on the planet, enjoying its climate and sights before returning to their own, hyper-polluted homeworlds. It was also far from any important shipping lanes and other obvious targets for the enemies of the Imperium, and according to the records I had found, hadn't seen anything violent happen on its soil for a thousand years.
If I played my cards right once I got there, I could look forward to decades of easy living, doing the bare minimum of paperwork to avoid drawing attention from the Commissariat and spending the rest of my time visiting the kind of establishments it would normally have been my job to keep troopers away from.
So I had greased the right palms, gracefully forgiven several outstanding debts I was owed by Administratum drones with more enthusiasm for card games than good sense, and arranged for the paperwork of my first assignment to be discreetly altered so that I ended up shipped off to Slawkenberg, with none of my old Schola instructors being any the wiser until it was too late for anyone to do anything about it without having to deal with far more paperwork than I was worth.
Of course, if I had known what was really waiting for me at the end of the uneventful Warp journey, I would have gone with my initial plan and gotten myself attached to an artillery Regiment. Well, no. Truthfully, if I had known, I would have taken being assigned to the bloody Catachan Jungle Fighters rather than being sent to Slawkenberg. Because, as it turned out, away from the luxurious resorts that were all most of the off-worlders coming to relax on Slawkenberg ever saw, the entire planet had been a powder-keg just waiting for a spark to detonate.
The late and unlamented Governor, like the rest of his family before him, had been very careful in keeping up appearances around the tourists, ensuring their luxurious vacations weren't ruined by the sight of starving rioters being gunned down or the screams of captured 'conspirators' and 'heretics' being tortured in lightless dungeons. Indeed, before my arrival on the planet, I hadn't had the slightest idea that the political situation had gotten so bad, or I would never have come here in the first place.
The PDF was chronically underfunded, and it had been centuries since the planet had last provided a Regiment to the Imperial Guard, instead providing all-expenses-paid vacations to some of the Sector's most influential nobles, who made sure the Administratum continued to not remember the planet's existence when it came to calculating tithes.
Amidst such corruption and incompetence, it wasn't surprising that Chaos Cults had prospered, although somehow the Giorbas themselves hadn't been involved, which I had taken to mean even the Chaos Gods had refused to have anything to do with them. With the regime kept busy oppressing its own population and going along with whatever the Governor's latest whims were, the only reason the cults hadn't taken over long before now was that they had been too busy fighting each other to decide who would inherit Slawkenberg.
I had no doubt that within a few years they would have grown too bold for even the local administration to ignore. At which point things would have erupted into a messy, many-sided civil war that would have required the intervention of the Imperial Guard to put down, probably removing the Giorba in the process and paving the way for an eventual brighter future for Slawkenberg under the Imperium's aegis.
Unfortunately, things hadn't gone down like this, and I couldn't shake the feeling that it was at least partly my fault. Not long after my arrival, I'd been approached by various parties trying to sound me off to see if I were sympathetic to their cause. And, well, I was : Giorba was just that vile, but not enough to risk my own skin, let alone my soul. But my attempts to demur had instead drawn more attention to myself, and by the time I'd realized this wasn't just opposition to a truly incompetent, corrupt and vicious Governor but a heretical conspiracy I had gotten involved with, everyone else had been convinced I was fully in.
And then, in my efforts to survive the pit of vipers I had unwittingly thrown myself into, I had somehow paved the way for an alliance of several of the planet's cults, secret organizations, and revolutionary movements, leading to the creation of the Liberation Council with me as its unfortunate figurehead.
I had desperately looked for someone to sell the conspiracy to in order to save my hide, but there had seemingly not been anyone on the whole damned planet not interested in joining it, apart from the Governor himself and I wouldn't have trusted the man to tie his own shoelaces, let alone take my warnings seriously. The only other options I could think of, the Arbites, had seemed promising at first, being as painfully strict and literal in their interpretation of the Lex as most of their kind.
But the imbecile in charge had managed to get himself and all his men killed by charging straight into the middle of the gathering I'd revealed to him, without reinforcements, ordering everyone to surrender in the name of the God-Emperor, apparently convinced his score of Judges could overcome the dozens of very dangerous individuals who had assembled. Thankfully, that had been so stupid that I'd managed to convince everyone that'd been my plan all along once the fighting had stopped and the blood of the Arbites had started to dry on the walls.
The Giorba had thoroughly turned the entire planet against them, apart from the local Ecclesiarchy representatives as well a handful of cronies who happened to include the commanders of the system's handful of voidcrafts. Coincidentally, those just so happened to be able to rain death upon pretty much any location on the planet where the tyrant of the day felt the people were getting a bit too uppity. The only reason the Uprising hadn't ended in cities being wiped out from orbit until the population surrendered was that this time the local tech-priests had been on our side, and had quietly helped us get troops aboard the flotilla. The fact that even the cogboys had had enough of Giorba's groxshit was telling of just how bad the situation had been, really.
I had been on Slawkenberg for four local years, or sixty-four standard months, when the Uprising had been declared. At the time, I'd been in the middle of the capital, and I'd only barely managed to talk my way out of having to fight the entire PDF, realizing only after the fact that what I'd said could easily be interpreted as an injunction for them to join the rebellion. And then, I'd needed to fight the chief thug of the Governor, but that hadn't been difficult at all : the man had been all bluster and intimidation, with no real skill. I'd actually been surprised by how easy he'd been to defeat.
After that, I had been certain the confusion of the actual revolution would be the perfect time for me to get the hell out of here. While the rest of the Council did the hard work of overthrowing the government, I had managed to make my way to a small, out-of-the-way spaceport, hoping to con my way on one of the transports, get on a Warp-capable ship in orbit, and leave with the rest of the panicked wealthy tourists making a run for it now that the peasants were in revolt. It would have meant changing my name and living in constant fear of the Commissariat (or worse, the Inquisition) finding me, but I had been confident I could live out the rest of my days in peace.
Instead, I had met Caesariovi Giorba himself in the spaceport, and been forced to defend myself when the madman had ordered his guards to kill me. By the time his pursuers had caught up, they had found me standing over the prone Governor with his own ceremonial bolt pistol in my hand, not that the man had any idea how to use it. Before he could tell them anything about how I had offered to accompany him and betray the rest of the Council to the Imperium, I had pulled the trigger and vaporised his skull, an execution that had been recorded by one of them using his augmetic eye and had played on every screen on the planet by now.
At that point, I had managed to convince the bunch of heavily armed rebels that had surrounded me that I had been hunting Giorba all along, instead of trying to abandon them to their inevitable doom once the Imperium learned what had happened. They had brought me back to the capital, where I had been welcomed by a triumph instead of the scene of urban warfare I had half-expected. Apparently, the battle hadn't lasted long after my departure.
Half in a daze, I had spouted off some platitudes about the strength of unity having overcome the evil tyrant, which had been broadcast all across the planet. Before I had time to fully realize what was happening, I had been ushered into the newly conquered Governor's palace to meet with the other members of the newly proclaimed Liberation Council, all of whom had decided to make me their leader, probably because none of them wanted one of the others to get the job and they all thought they could intimidate or manipulate me into doing what they wanted. Which, to be fair, was entirely true : every single one of these lunatics terrified me.
To my carefully concealed surprise, the days that had followed had been almost normal. Overthrowing the God-Emperor's appointed representative didn't solve all the logistical issues that came with ruling a world. I had to admit that, as far as such things went, Slawkenberg wasn't too bad a place for a rebellion against the Imperium to take place.
Slawkenberg's climate allowed for the cultivation of enough food for its population and the off-world visitors, although a disproportionate section of the agricultural sector was given over to luxury foodstuffs that were incredibly inefficient from a nutritional value to effort perspective. So we wouldn't starve, at least. But the planet didn't have much industry, and the armed forces of the Liberation Council were far from the standards of the Imperial Guard I had been taught about at the Schola. The only reason they had been able to defeat Giorba's thugs was that years of brutalizing defenceless citizens didn't prepare you to deal with someone with guns actually fighting back. Well, that and the help of the enraged mobs.
In time, the Imperium would come and crush our little rebellion into the ground. I knew enough about the way things worked, however, to know that such a day was likely months, even years into the future. Slawkenberg just wasn't important enough to warrant being bumped up the list of Sector command's priorities, unless someone highly placed had a soft spot for it as a vacation spot. Even then, assembling a task force capable of retaking a planet and then sending them here would take time.
A more pressing concern was the population of Slawkenberg, who had just gotten a taste of violently overthrowing its leaders. If they thought I didn't care about them or that I had failed them in any way, it wouldn't take long for a new revolt to brew, and I would be lucky to end up dying as swift a death as the unlamented Governor. Which meant that, until I found a way to leave this nest of maniacs and heretics behind me and get the frak out of here, I would need to make sure to keep the mobs happy with the Liberation Council's work.
And that meant that I had to keep playing nanny to a bunch of heretics drunk on success so that they didn't turn on one another or, more importantly, started sacrificing people to their infernal masters, which would make the rest of the masses angry and looking for someone to blame. Which, given that it was my face on the pict-sheets and broadcasts, would probably be me.
"Sir," a polite voice called out from the other side, "there is a young lady here to see you, if you are available."
I blinked, thinking quickly. There was only one kind of 'young lady' that my aide would've considered letting into my quarters. I quickly checked myself in a nearby mirror : there was nothing wrong with my appearance that could betray I had been brooding. The uniform I wore was an exact replica of the one I had walked out of the Schola Progenium with, except with the Imperial aquila removed. I didn't know where my aide had found it, and I hadn't asked.
"Come in," I answered, and the door opened to reveal my aide.
Ferik Jurgen was, as ever, impeccably dressed and shaven as he entered the room. The time he had spent as a captive to a particularly vile cult of Nurgle had left him with a pathological hatred for uncleanliness that I could well understand. After I had rescued him from their clutches (quite by accident), he had sworn his loyalty to me, and truth be told, I couldn't have asked for a better aide.
Of course, if I had had the slightest inkling at the time he was a psyker and not just another unfortunate soul captured to use as fuel for the Nurglites' demented rituals, I would probably have finished him off myself. But I hadn't, and thankfully Jurgen's considerable psychic power didn't extend to mind-reading. Much of his past was still a mystery to me, but I had put together a few of the key details. Born on the ice-world of Valhalla, Jurgen's gifts had manifested early in his youth. Normally this would have seen him taken by the Black Ships and sent off to Terra, but he'd been unlucky enough to be captured by a void trader of ill repute, who trafficked psykers to various madmen across the Segmentum. He understandably didn't like to speak about it, but somehow, he had ended up on Slawkenberg.
While I had been trying to get off-world during the Uprising, Jurgen had been fighting on the frontlines. I hadn't seen it myself, and he seemed embarrassed by the whole thing, but from what I had heard he had more or less wiped out an entire loyalist company of the PDF by himself, including a handful of tanks, and was widely considered a Hero of the Liberation in his own right. Apparently two decades of using psychic powers without losing yourself to the Warp, ending with spending several months stewing in your own anger along with your filth, made for an extremely effective training regimen. Well, that, or one of the Chaos Gods had taken a liking to him.
"Sir," he greeted me as he entered, before gesturing to the person accompanying him. "This is the young lady in question."
"Lord Cain," the young woman greeted me with a deep bow, her long hair flowing around her face most elegantly as she did so. "I am Krystabel."
In most circumstances, I would have been very pleased to have such a beautiful young woman enter my quarters. Unfortunately, this was no mere courtesan, but one of the Handmaidens of Emeli.
The Handmaidens were a cult of Slaaneshi worshippers, made up exclusively of the graduates of Saint Trynia Academy for the Daughters of Gentlefolk in the south. I had no idea when exactly the Academy had fallen to the Dark Powers, but by the time I had arrived on Slawkenberg it had been fully in the grasp of the Dark Prince, led by the headmistress and sorceress Emeli Duboir. Of course, back then she had still been a mortal woman – a very beautiful and seductive mortal woman, at that.
Out of all the heretics who had sought to take advantage of the conditions on Slawkenberg, Emeli had been the most dangerous in my opinion, and the one who had done most of the work in dragging me into this mess. I had met her for the first time at one of the parties I'd been invited to not long after my arrival on the planet, before I'd known what was going on. One thing had led to another, and by the time I'd realized she was a heretic and worshipper of the Dark Prince, the two of us had been seeing each other for several months.
I had thought the cursed necklace I had obtained in a remote and suspicious antiquity shop would be just the thing to get Emeli off my back – all of its previous owners had died messily, and I'd been able to tell there was something with it just by looking at it. But it had turned out that the jewels which had led all the previous owners to madness and death were actually Eldar soul-stones, containing the spirits of dead xenos and protecting them from the fate awaiting them after death or something like that.
Emeli had been certain I had known all along, and sacrificing these captive souls to her patron deity had seen her rewarded with ascension to full-fledged daemonhood not long before the Uprising. I had thought at least that would get her out of my hair, but Slaanesh wasn't the Dark God of Obsession without reason. Somehow, Emeli had convinced herself that I had knowingly handed her over the key to reaching immortality instead of seizing it for myself, and saw it as the most romantic thing imaginable.
Thankfully, as a daemon, she couldn't remain corporeal on Slawkenberg for long, and had gone to the Warp a few hours after her transformation, to do whatever it is young Daemon Princesses do in the Realms of Chaos. But her connection to the members of her cult remained. The Handmaidens were spread throughout all of Slawkenberg's high society, and had provided a lot of intelligence that had helped make the Uprising possible. They were also all trained in sorcery to one degree or another, along with other arts I was reasonably certain their parents had not expected them to learn when they had shipped them off to Saint Trynia's.
"Nice to meet you, Krystabel," I told her with a smile plastered on my face. Jurgen had already left, closing the door behind him and leaving the two of us alone. "Now, what can I do for you ?"
"We've found the last remnant of the tyrant's forces," she told me with a predatory smile that was only made slightly less unnerving by the knowledge it wasn't directed at me.
"Oh ? Well done." I'd had no idea there even were any remaining Giorba forces on Slawkenberg before now. But I guessed it made sense : on something the size of a planet, there were plenty of places to hide. "I expected nothing less from the Handmaidens. Where are they ?"
"During the Uprising, a company of loyalist scum fled the capital and linked up with some of the private guards of the tourists," she said, all but spitting the last word. To the surprise of precisely no one with a functioning brain (so a lot of people), the off-worlders who had lived the high life on Slawkenberg while the rest of the population suffered under Giorba's heel weren't exactly popular with the revolutionaries. "They took refuge in an abandoned fortress in the mountains to the west."
She handed me a data-slate containing a map of the region. I looked at it, suppressing a frown as I took in the heavily defensible position. The mountains would make aerial bombardment difficult, and despite its age the structure looked robust enough to withstand the fire of what few pitiful artillery pieces the PDF had in store. And a ground attack, which looked to be our only option, would be hideously vulnerable on the way in.
Judging by the look Krystabel was giving me, it was clear she expected me to lead the charge, and probably slaughter them all single-handedly while I was at it. Of course, that was out of the question, but I couldn't say that out loud. If the rest of the Liberation Council realized the truth about me, they would turn on me in a heartbeat. And then I would die, and my soul would either end up in front of the Golden Throne to explain myself, or be with Emeli for all eternity. I wasn't yet certain which was worse.
"Thank you for bringing this to my attention," I told her with every shred of sincerity I could fake. I had to figure a way out of this. Surely I could do this. Let's see … Wait.
"This," I said, pointing out at something on the map. "Is that a path ?"
"Hmm ? Yes, lord," she confirmed with a confused frown. "It goes around and through the mountains, but it does eventually lead back to the fortress."
"More specifically, to its back," I pointed out, feeling something vaguely resembling a plan coalesce in my mind. "And somehow I doubt the troops inside will be disciplined enough to keep watch there, especially if they are distracted."
"I see," Krystabel nodded. "So while our troops advance on the main road, a party will walk through the rough path in order to take them by surprise, providing an opening for their fellows to advance." She looked up at me with renewed admiration in her gaze, and I'd have felt bad about deceiving her if she hadn't been a heretic. "I'm sure this rabble will prove no match for someone of your prodigious martial talent !"
Frak, I thought, too late. The Handmaiden was correct. After my apparent heroic dispatch of the Governor, everyone would expect me to be the one leading this suicidal attack in the middle of enemy territory. And if I didn't do it, then my reputation, which at the moment was the only thing keeping me alive, would plummet.
"Exactly," I replied, suppressing the urge to scream in horror.
No, this could still work, I told myself. I'd bring Jurgen with me. All I had to do was bring him into the fortress, and then his psychic powers would do the rest. Walking through the mountains would be a pain, but I had been trained to keep up with the Guardsmen I'd been supposed to lead on the battlefield. I could endure a little trek.
General Mahlone, once of the Slawkenberg Planetary Defense Force, now representative of the overwhelming majority of them who had chosen to side with the Liberation Council, looked in awe through his binoculars at the Liberator. Cain stood on the walls of the reclaimed fortress, holding up what Mahlone was pretty sure was the head of Cardinal Drogiro Giorba. It was difficult to tell without the ridiculous hat that had sat on the head of the hated Governor's second cousin since he'd bought his position, but the distinctive features of the Giorba were hard to miss.
Next to the Liberator, he could see his aide Jurgen, as well as the handful of troopers who'd accompanied him on this dangerous mission. None of them were missing, or even looked to be injured.
When the Liberator had explained his plan on the way, the General had protested, not wanting Slawkenberg's savior to risk his life in so risky an operation. But in truth, he hadn't expected his protests to dissuade the Liberator. Cain hadn't even needed to come for this, Mahlone and his men were more than capable of dealing with a handful of guns-for-hire themselves.
But Cain had insisted, not willing to stay behind while the troops risked their lives and instead taking the lead of the most dangerous assignment. A few hours after his departure, his scouts had heard screams and the sound of fighting coming from the fortress, swiftly falling silent. For a moment, the General had feared the worse, before the Liberator had appeared on the ramparts.
Around him, his troops were cheering wildly as the news spread. Then the gates of the fortress opened, armsmen emerging with their hands cautiously raised above their heads. Mahlone ordered his troops to advance and take them prisoners – clearly the Liberator had convinced them that they didn't need to give their lives to protect their masters, who were unworthy of such devotion. Really, he should have known that would happen : while Cain was always eager to spill the blood of tyrants, he much preferred helping their slaves break free of their shackles, much as he himself had done.
As someone who had dedicated himself to the God of War after witnessing one too many case of good soldiers dying because of incompetent leaders given their position because of their birth, Mahlone whole-heartedly approved of this behavior. Truly, Cain was a worthy leader for the Liberation Council.
Chief Clerk Jafar, once of the Adeptus Administratum, now the overseer of the civilian administration the Liberation Council was building to replace its corrupt and incompetent predecessor, suppressed a glower as he read the report from the task force dispatched to the mountains. How ? How had he done it again ?
Jafar had been informed about the operation, of course. You couldn't move that many soldiers out of the capital without his agents learning about it, but in this case he'd actually been informed as a member of the Liberation Council. He had expected a quick victory, of course, but not this. Instead of slaughtering a handful of armsmen, Cain had turned them to the cause of the rebellion and, far more importantly, had personally slain yet another Giorba. The Cardinal hadn't been quite as hated as the Governor, but news of his death had still been enough to renew the celebrations' enthusiasm.
For centuries, the Ecclesiarchy on Slawkenberg had supported every cruelty of the Governor, in exchange for wealth and the ability to do pretty much anything they wanted. Great gilded cathedrals had been built by slave labour for the tourists to admire even as entire city districts went without the funds necessary for maintenance of vital infrastructure. Then there had been the 'penitents', which were random citizens taken off the streets and made to whip themselves in order to expiate their sins and bring the Emperor's benevolence to the planet. Not to mention the armed guards who had done the Cardinal's biding, in blatant violation of the laws forbidding the Ecclesiarchy to keep men under arms, along with many, many other deeds that had thoroughly disillusioned the people of Slawkenberg about any nobility the Adeptus Ministorum might possess.
Jafar hadn't known Drogiro was there. As far as he was aware, nobody had known where the Cardinal had fled during the Uprising. From what he'd heard, even the Handmaidens, those courtesans playing at spycraft, had known he'd taken refuge in that fortress along with the tourists' surviving guards. Yet somehow, Cain had known, and seized the opportunity to earn yet more glory for himself in the eyes of the Pantheon. A Cardinal, even one such as Drogiro, was a worthy offering to the True Gods.
Cain was clever, Jafar had to admit. He had managed to avoid dedicating himself to any of the Powers, instead walking a precarious line of equilibrium that had them outbid one another in their attempts to court him. From Slaanesh, he had received the services of the Handmaidens, and the patronage of Emeli, whom he had ushered into apotheosis. From Khorne, he had been given the strength to triumph over any enemy, and the adoration of the troops he had led into battle against the hated Imperium. Even Tzeentch, Jafar's own patron, clearly favored him, having gifted him a servant as powerful and loyal as Ferik Jurgen. Only Nurgle took no part in this divine bidding war, which made sense since the Rotting One's influence had been purged from the planet as a result of Cain's own machinations long before the Uprising.
When he'd met Cain for the first time, Jafar had thought him a useful pawn of Emeli Duboir, nothing more. He'd soon be proven wrong, as the man masterfully orchestrated the utter destruction of the Adeptus Arbites' presence on Slawkenberg, before forging alliance after alliance between the disparate factions that sought to overthrow the Giorbas. As the leader of those within the Imperial bureaucracy on Slawkenberg who had grown disgusted by the Governor's actions and wanted Change, no matter what cost, Jafar had seen the way the wind was blowing and had joined the Liberation Council early.
The Liberator couldn't be replaced. He was too important. Killing him, if it were at all possible, would break the morale of Slawkenberg's population and leave them vulnerable. Jafar knew no one on the Liberation Council could replace Cain : no one had the necessary charisma, certainly not Jafar himself, who was well aware of his limitations. No, Cain would remain Slawkenberg's leader, at least publicly. But Jafar firmly intended to turn the Liberator into a figurehead, while he ruled over the planet from the shadows as a grey eminence.
It would not be easy. As the day's events had once more proven, Cain was a master strategist and a cunning manipulator. To overthrow his control over the Liberation Council without bringing the entire rebellion down in flames would require delicacy and ingenuity.
Jafar could admit to himself that part of him was looking forward to it. It would be a pleasure to match wits against someone as skilled in the games of intrigue as the Liberator.
In the Realms of Chaos, Emeli sighed dreamily as she watched her beloved through the eyes of her Handmaidens as he returned to Slawkenberg's capital under the renewed acclaims of the population. They had only been separated for a handful of days, but time meant little in the Empyrean, and even less to a follower of Slaanesh cut off from the object of her desires.
She could have taken him with her when she had ascended, keeping him as her most favored soul in the Warp and granting him all manners of pleasures undreamt of by any purely mortal mind for the rest of eternity. But that wasn't enough. Her beloved Ciaphas deserved more than that.
He deserved everything. After all, he had given her the key to immortality. What greater proof of love could there possibly be ?
Emeli wanted Ciaphas' name to be known far and wide, and for his glory to be recognized by all. She wanted him to follow her into eternity as an equal. Then, the two of them would know such glory together, forever and ever …
She shook herself from her reveries before her stray thoughts could alter her surroundings. Glorious as that golden future would be, there was much she needed to do to ensure it came to pass. She needed to master and grow her new powers, and play her part in the Great Game so that she was in a position to help her beloved walk the path that would one day bring him to her side.
Hopefully, she'd manage to spend some time in the Materium with him before then.
"You are certain ?" asked the old man, his eyes blazing with fury. In the dark prayer room, the light of the flickering candles cast his severe visage into sharp shadows that made him look even more terrible than he usually did, which was an achievement.
"Yes, Lord Inquisitor," replied the Acolyte, kneeling before his master's throne. "The message was clear. Slawkenberg has fallen to the Ruinous Powers."
"Then it shall be purged by fire and blade," declared the Inquisitor. "Contact Commander Chenkov, and assemble all the troops that can be mustered. We shall expunge the taint of heresy from that world and return it to the light of the God-Emperor !"
"As you will, Lord Karamazov !"
Notes:
AN : Well, it took over a year, but I finally did it. I might have rushed it, but I could probably tinker with this chapter for months and still not be completely satisfied, so there it is.
April's Fool Day, everybody. This isn't a one-shot, but another story, one that hopefully will remain shorter than the rest of my works (including AYGWM, which has grown far beyond my initial plans).
Nowadays, Warhammer fiction is taken seriously. Which makes sense, given the amount of effort lots of talented people have put into building up the setting. But we should all remember that this hasn't always been the case. And writing a story with Cain on the other team would have been appallingly depressing if I had tried to do it "seriously".
So this story is NOT a serious one. It is full-on crack, and this time, by all the Gods, I will earn that descriptor.
This is an homage to Warhammer 40000's roots. Its weird, parody, ham-fisted, over-the-top, crazy-ass roots. In this story, the Sisters of Battle are made up of zealous fanatics with big guns and no grasp of actual tactics, the Imperial Guard sends millions of conscripts to die stupidly, all of the Imperium's leaders are inbred and incompetent at anything beyond shifting blame and playing the equivalent of office politics, the High Lords are a bunch of senile old fools, the Dark Gods are self-sabotaging idiots, the Orks are comic relief, the Mechanicus worship ancient toasters, the Imperial bureaucracy is the true Arch-Enemy, and the Necrons are mindless killer robots in thrall to very much not-sundered Star Gods.
And amidst it all, Cain is the only one with common sense.
May the spirits of Bruva Alfabusa and Adeptus Ridiculous look kindly upon this endeavor.
Inspirations for this story were, in no particular order : The Evil Overlord List, The Eminence in Shadows, Professor Arc, Escape from the Bloodkeep, Overlord (both the games and the Japanese series), Red Alert 3, A Prince's Guide to Leading a Nation out of debt (Hey, how about treason ?), If The Emperor Had a Text-To-Speech Device, the Adeptus Ridiculous podcast, and of course the Ciaphas Cain novels themselves, along with many more.
Slawkenberg is mentioned in the short story The Beguiling, which features the first appearance of Emeli Duboir, one of Cain's nemesises ... actually, come to think of it, probably his only nemesis, since all his other enemies tend to come down with a bad case of death. Which really says something about the dear Commissar, given the sort of opposition he has tangled with over his long and illustrious career.
That's all for today. I hope you enjoy this silly little idea of mine. I have an entire story planned for it, though I admit I have no idea when I'll find the time to advance it between my other projects.
Zahariel out.
Chapter Text
A sense of nervous energy hung over Slawkenberg. The festivities of the Uprising had ended, and people had returned to work, albeit with a fire in their heart from the knowledge that their toil no longer served the hated Giorbas.
Already the changes were obvious. The dungeons had been opened, thousands of families reunited and others given closure. Food that had been sent to the wasteful banquets enjoyed by the aristocracy and off-world visitors was instead used to feed the locals, and the gilded palaces built for the so-called worthies had been converted into dormitories to house those left homeless by the renovation projects unfolding across the shanty towns that had been hidden from the tourists' eyes.
Instead of one day off every fifteen days, which they had been forced to spend prostrating themselves in the churches of the Ecclesiarchy listening to corrupt priests telling them only in abject servitude did their lives have any values, the workers were now given one day free every eight days, to spend however they saw fit. Even the days of work had become almost enjoyable without the constant threat of the overseers, replaced by leaders chosen among the workers themselves who answered to the new bureaucracy.
With such radical changes achieved in so short a time, many wondered what new wonders the future would bring. There were those who spoke of bringing the Liberation to the rest of the Imperium, freeing their brethren who yet suffered the Imperium's oppression under the light of distant suns. Others believed they must look to their own defense first, or sought the knowledge that had been kept from them by their overlords : the secrets of the machine, and of the divine.
With the churches and cathedrals of the Imperial Creed laid low when their tyrant-priests had been dragged out and butchered like the vile despots they were, the people of Slawkenberg found themselves free to explore all manner of spiritual paths where before they had been forced to thread a singular, merciless and cruel one supposed to deliver them to the foot of the Golden Throne. Preachers bearing the emblem of the Liberation Council spoke to ever-growing crowds, telling them of the Powers who opposed the Imperium's tyranny, rewarding those who proved their worth to them with blessings.
No two souls envisioned Slawkenberg's future exactly the same. Yet all agreed on one thing : with Cain the Liberator guiding them, only greatness awaited.
Three months after the Uprising, to my own amazement, I was still alive.
Nobody had tried to kill me since that business at the old stronghold in the mountains. My plan to have Jurgen unleash his powers on the defenders while they didn't know we were there had died a miserable death when one of the idiots accompanying me had slipped, starting a minor landslide that had drawn all eyes (and guns) on us. Faced with half a hundred men, I had been certain I was about to die : Jurgen was powerful, but he couldn't protect me from that many weapons at once.
But then the Cardinal had opened his mouth, and inadvertently saved my miserable hide.
Drogiro Giorba had been just as insane as the rest of his inbred line, screeching about the tortures he would subject every single rebel who had dared rise up to. The details to which he had gone had made it clear that he had plenty of experience in such things, which I was reasonably certain wasn't a subject matter that was taught in the Ecclesiarchy's seminars. Sure, old Chaplain Desones back at the Schola had known a thing or two about fiery sermons and punishing wayward pupils (not that I had ever been subjected to the latter, being careful enough to avoid being caught for my own misdeeds), but even the worst threats of that old martinet came well short of what Drogiro had promised to inflict on every man, woman and child of Slawkenberg.
The Cardinal's unhinged rant had made it very easy to convince the rest of the defenders that giving their lives for that man wasn't how any of them wanted to die : judging by the expressions on their faces, most of them had probably been thinking about shooting the bastard themselves. Outraged at their 'betrayal', Drogiro had charged me, frothing at the mouth and holding a power mace he clearly had no idea how to use. I hadn't even needed Jurgen's help : one sidestep, a downward blow, and I'd taken his head.
I had spent the time since then running around like a headless chicken, trying to keep things from falling apart and the entire planet from succumbing to anarchy. I had moved all across the planet, meeting with local leaders, deflecting their fawning praise by modestly claiming that we were all parts of the Glorious Liberation, and pretending I gave a frak about their problems. Now I was back in the capital, which in my absence and without my permission had been renamed Cainopolis, with my attempts to change it to something else being interpreted as modesty and completely ignored.
I might have been more annoyed about that if not for the fact that it was already far, far too late for me to pretend I hadn't been part of this whole mess when the Imperium inevitably came calling.
With Slawkenberg more or less united under the Liberation Council (there were probably still a handful of minor settlements that were keeping their heads down and waiting for the Imperial boot to come down on this whole thing, quite reasonably I thought), now was the time for the rebellion to actually govern the bloody planet. And since I was still the frakking Liberator, that meant I had to participate as well, or risk looking like I didn't care for the masses who had slaughtered the previous regime.
It said a lot that I couldn't quite find it in myself to believe that a gaggle of heretics and myself would do a worse job of it than the previous Governor.
Which was how I had ended up here, sitting at the head of a table with the other members of the Liberation Council in attendance. We were meeting in one of the many, many unused rooms of the Governor's palace, which I had picked at random earlier today and ordered prepared for this purpose (slightly paranoid of me, but I preferred not to give the others a chance to set anything up).
A banner hung over us, depicting that ridiculous emblem I'd proposed for the rebellion during a meeting before the Uprising. It had been intended as a joke to relax the mood, as the various representatives had seemed on the verge of coming to blows due to aesthetic differences (something I wouldn't have had any problems with it had I not been at risk of being caught in the cross-fire), but they had all taken it seriously and decided to go with it. Now, the stupid design I'd based on a toy used by the Schola's youngest pupils was everywhere on the planet, from armbands worn by soldiers to official documents being circulated by the new bureaucracy.
Jurgen, ever the dutiful aide, had prepared refreshments, and I gratefully took a sip of my recaf as everyone settled in, trying to mask my nerves. I was armed, of course, with my trusty chainsword and the bolt pistol I had taken from the Governor during what could be called our duel only in the loosest sense of the term. The bolter wasn't my preferred ranged weapon : despite the stereotypical image of every Commissar carrying one for intimidation, I found a lasgun much more versatile and convenient to carry, as well as easier to get ammo for.
Unfortunately, the blasted thing was part of my image as the Liberator, due to that vid of me shooting its erstwhile owner in the face with it having been watched by what seemed like every person on the planet, including those who were probably far too young for such a gruesome spectacle. And since that image was the only thing keeping my skin intact, I had to play the part and carry it with me, though the aquilae and other Imperial sigils had been removed.
Well, I told myself, time to get this started.
Of all the places where they could have had this meeting, General Mahlone, highest-ranking officer of the United Slawkenberg Army (as the PDF had been renamed in the aftermath of the Uprising) still couldn't believe that the Liberator had ordered for it to take place here.
The vast chamber, at the center of which stood the comparatively small table around which they were sat, had been filled with paintings, sculptures, and other artworks, all made to honor the so-called glory of the Giorba lineage. Every Governor of Slawkenberg that had hailed from that hateful bloodline had been represented there. But now, absolutely no trace of the room's previous purpose remained. The artworks (the quality of which had been varying, at least on a technical level – Mahlone couldn't blame the artists, many of whom had been working under threat of severe bodily harm, for the ugliness of their subjects) had been removed, either burned, broken apart or melted down. He knew of at least one truly ugly golden statue that had been turned into commemorative coins handed to the soldiers who had taken part in the Uprising, for instance.
Instead, a banner depicting the symbol of the Uprising hung in place of the vanished artworks. As expected of something designed by the Liberator, it was both elegant and deceptively simple. A golden circle stood on a green backdrop the color of Slawkenberg's great fields, cut in four parts by an internal cross with a smaller disc at the center. Each of the four sub-section was of a different color : red, purple, blue and iron-grey, respectively representing the USA, the Handmaidens, Chief Clerk Jafar's cabal of administrators, and last but certainly not least, the tech-priests whose actions had prevented the orbital bombardment of Slawkenberg.
That particular flag, of course, was far more elaborate than most, having probably been sewn specifically for this meeting. Each of the four sections of the central disc were adorned with the sigil of the group it represented : the armored fist of the USA, the strange, wavy sigil of Lady Emeli, the cogwheel-skull of the Mechanicus, and the one-eyed crescent moon of Jafar's followers of Change.
It was a symbol of the alliance that had allowed the Liberation Council to succeed at overthrowing the Giorbas, something none of the groups could have achieved alone. A reminder of the strength of unity, and of the vital role Cain had played in forging this alliance. By making them meet here, in this room, under this symbol, Cain was reminding them all of what they had already accomplished together, as well as of the fact that in the end, he had been the one to strike down the last of the Giorba Governors, ending the dubious legacy that had once inhabited this room.
Yet the Liberator hadn't sat himself on some sort of throne, as would have been his right. Instead, they were all seated on the same chairs, which Mahlone was fairly certain had been taken from the servants' quarters rather than the Governor's own – a reminder that they were ultimately servants of Slawkenberg's people, or an effort to distance them from what had come before, the General didn't know. The round table between them bore a hololithic projector displaying a slowly rotating image of their world, with runes marking various points of interest.
"Thank you all for coming," the Liberator said, putting down his mug. The fact that, despite all his power, he still drank common recaf, was yet another sign of his dedication to his role as leader of Slawkenberg.
His aide stood behind him, another silent, unobtrusive reminder of the power at the Liberator's command. Mahlone hadn't seen the man fight with his own eyes during the Uprising, but he'd read the reports of the troops who had, and there was no question Ferik Jurgen was the most individually powerful man (the Handmaidens made the qualification important) on Slawkenberg. The fact that someone like him, who could easily have become a warlord in his own right, chose instead to follow Cain, was another testament to the Liberator's greatness.
"We have all been very busy in the last few weeks," Cain continued, "but now that things have somewhat calmed down, it is time for us to discuss where we will go from here. There is no question that many challenges and perils lurk in Slawkenberg's future, but if we work together, I am confident we can face them all head-on."
All the people in the room stood slightly straighter at this, Mahlone included.
"Let's start with the obvious. General Mahlone, how fares the army ?"
"Morale is higher than it has ever been," replied Mahlone. "The men are very happy to finally be free of the Giorbas, and exultant in our victory."
"I am glad to hear it," the Liberator nodded with a small smile. "I expect we'll need to rely on them to protect what we're building on this world before long. The Imperium will respond to our actions eventually, and we cannot exactly expect them to be understanding."
Mahlone felt his choler rising at the mention of the hated Imperium, but checked it with an effort of will. It wouldn't do for him to fail to keep his cool, not when Cain appeared completely calm, despite having more reasons to despise the Imperium than anybody else in the room. After all, not only had the Imperium taken his parents with its endless wars of conquest and oppression, it had also tried to mould him into another mindless instrument of cruelty and control by turning him into a Commissar.
"Now that the Uprising's aftermath has been handled, we can begin to increase the size of the USA at once," promised Mahlone. "We should be able to double our effective size within months -"
"There will be no general mobilization," Cain cut in. "Apart from replacements for the brave soldiers lost in the Uprising, we'll maintain our pre-Liberation's numbers."
"What ?! But I assure you, Lord Liberator, the people are eager to join !" Mahlone protested, standing up before he realized he was moving. "There would be no need for conscription, merely calling for volunteers would be more than enough !"
"Our people may be willing to lay low their lives in defense of Slawkenberg," replied Cain calmly, "but I'd much rather they live to contribute to and enjoy its prosperity. Besides, our current industrial base cannot properly arm and equip a larger army at the moment – even maintaining our current one's equipment will be a challenge. Furthermore, trying to force the Imperium back by sheer numbers is a fool's hope : we can hardly match the resources at their disposal, and we can never match their willingness to throw lives away in pursuit of victory. We cannot beat the Imperium in quantity, thus we should instead focus on quality."
"I … I see," said Mahlone, blinking as understanding dawned. The Liberator was correct, of course, but then he knew more of the wider Imperium than the rest of the Council, being its only member who hadn't spent his entire life on Slawkenberg. "You're right. Do you have any suggestions as to how we might do this ?"
Looks like he bought it, I thought to myself as Mahlone sat down, accepting my arguments. Which really showed how low the standards for high officers had been in the Slawkenberg PDF.
Despite its renaming, the USA's structure had mostly remained the same once the Giorba loyalists had been purged and replaced. In most militaries, this would have resulted in a period of chaos as the newly promoted officers struggled to get a grip on their new responsibilities, but given the quality (or rather lack thereof) of the men who had been shot by their own troopers when the Uprising had begun, the overall effectiveness of Slawkenberg's militia had actually gone up. After all, the vast majority of those who'd been executed for treason against the people had been political appointees from the nobility, more interested in the supposed prestige of their posts and the associated pay check than in actually doing their job.
They were also led by a bunch of Khorne cultists who, after stewing over their inability to stop the Giorbas' exactions for generations before finally succeeding in wiping the entire family out, now believed that any problem could be resolved by the application of violence in sufficient quantities.
If I failed to keep up appearances, the USA's leadership would be the first ones to come for my head. Fortunately, my misadventures during the Uprising and afterwards had led them to believe I was some kind of heroic champion of the people, who cared for the common troopers and was always ready to fight on the front line alongside or even ahead of them. Such a reputation was a double-edged sword, but as anyone who has ever fought with a chainsword will tell you, it's all a matter of how you use it – as I had just done to convince Mahlone to go along with my suggestion to keep the current size of the Liberation Army.
Because the truth was, I didn't expect the focus on enhancing our existing troops to make much of a difference. From my handful of deployments alongside the Guard during my brief stint as a commissar cadet (before I'd managed to annoy my instructors into making me graduate so that I'd be out of their ever-thinning hair), the Astra Militarum had far better equipment and training than the planetary militias of all but a handful of hyper-militarized worlds. And Slawkenberg, while it would have been a very nice place to live if not for the heretic cults running the place, was most definitely not one of those.
But the less bodies we had to throw into the meat grinder when the fist of Imperial retribution inevitably arrived, the easier Slawkenberg's reclamation by the Imperium would be. Sabotaging the rebellion like this might seem counter-intuitive, since not only would the rest of the Council turn on me in a heartbeat if they realized what I was doing, but I was most likely going to be a priority target for elimination. However, the simple truth was that Slawkenberg had a snowball's chance in hell of successfully resisting the Imperium in the long run. With that being the case, a shorter campaign would hopefully result in less civilian casualties and less severe consequences for the population as a whole. More importantly, it would make faking my death and disappearing on one of the reclamation fleet's transports easier, allowing me to discreetly change my identity and put both my participation in this heresy and my forceful recruitment into the Commissariat behind me.
I'd still have to worry about Emeli, of course, but by now I was certain she couldn't read my thoughts from the Warp anymore than she'd been able to when we had been in the same room (or much closer than that, as had been the case many times). I should be able to string her along long enough to find a good exorcist or three, and surely sabotaging this rebellion from the inside would buy me some kudos from the Emperor. I refused to believe that He had approved of the Giorbas : He had simply much more important things occupying His time.
The reason why I was doing this was that, after several weeks of anxiety and mind-numbing terror as I considered my situation, I'd figured out that my best shot at avoiding eternal damnation was to subtly sabotage Slawkenberg's ability to defend itself. That way, when the Imperium's retribution inevitably came, the reconquest of the planet would go as smoothly and painlessly as possible. Of course, I myself fully intended to find a way off-world before the Commissariat (or worse, the Inquisition) could get their hands on me. I would fake my death, sneak aboard one of the Warp-capable vessels bringing the Emperor's legions to crush the rebellion, and quietly disappear.
And I needed to do that in a way subtle enough that the lunatics around the table wouldn't realize what I was doing, and neither would Emeli. Having her infatuated with me was already complicated enough; I didn't want to imagine what her anger would look like.
I really, really wanted to pray to the Emperor for assistance, but somehow I had a feeling it would be a bad idea at the moment. So instead, I soldiered on and continued to play along :
"Of course I do," I answered Mahlone's question. "First, we'll need to make some changes to the training of the soldiers : you and the others did your best, but with the Giorbas' lackeys running things the old PDF was kept from reaching its true potential. Apart from that, we'll also need to improve the equipment, and for that," I turned to face another member of the Liberation Council, "we'll rely on you and your order, Magos Tesilon-Kappa."
Tesilon-Kappa looked like a typical tech-priest, being more machine than flesh, with four green eye-lenses glowing within the shadows of their hood. They were the leader of the members of the Adeptus Mechanicus who had joined the rebellion. A world like Slawkenberg didn't need many agents of the Clockwork Emperor, of course, but there were still several hundreds of them in total, mostly maintaining the turbines resting at the bottom of the planet's oceans.
Combined with a planetary energy grid, the vast underwater structures provided Slawkenberg with all the power it could ever need, without the need to spoil the tourists' view from their rooms with so crude a sight as a promethium burning station. Given how little industry the planet possessed, a not inconsiderable portion of that power supply was either wasted, or spent on frivolous uses like heating saunas in mountainous retreats for the visiting elite of other worlds.
The whole thing was, I was given to understand, a marvel of engineering, thousands of years old and regarded as the holiest site of the Mechanicus on Slawkenberg. Tesilon-Kappa had been far from being the highest-ranking tech-priest on the planet, but they had been the one who did all the actual work maintaining the generators while their superiors spent all their time 'meditating' or engaged in endless debates.
According to Krystabel's intelligence reports, one too many day spent listening to their superiors discussing obscure, meaningless points of doctrine had finally been too much and they had snapped, killing them all before throwing their metaphorical hat in with the rebellion. Fortunately, from what I'd been able to tell, they only really wanted to work on their machines. The fact that the cogboys were the sanest of the bunch wasn't exactly great news, but better than the alternative, I supposed, especially since they were the ones in control of the small flotilla of spacecrafts orbiting Slawkenberg.
"What do you require from us, Liberator ?" asked Tesilon-Kappa in their artificial voice.
"First, is everything alright with the generators ?" I asked.
"Yes, Liberator. The additional resources you sent our way after the Uprising have let us deal with the ongoing maintenance concerns that the Giorbas had allowed to fester."
"Good." If the generators went down, my odds of escaping the ensuing riots weren't something I'd bet a single credit on, let alone my life. "Can you spare some of your people to help build new factories ? The tourism industry that 'employed' many of our citizens is and will remain dead, and Slawkenberg needs to stand on its own feet to survive the tribulations to come."
"That is … possible," they buzzed in reply. "From your previous words, I assume these factories would be geared to build weapons for the armed forces ?"
"Exactly," I confirmed.
"Our databanks do not contain the sacred patterns for building lasguns or other weapons," Tesilon-Kappa pointed out. "The armaments of the Planetary Defense Force were imported from off-world."
That wasn't surprising. The Administratum didn't look kindly on worlds developing the ability to produce their own armaments, seeing it as a sign of rebellious ambitions on the part of the Governor. Instead, Imperial worlds who wanted to be able to defend themselves were forced to rely on imports from approved forge-worlds.
"Well, we have a lot of them at hand. How quickly could you learn to make one if we let you take a bunch of them apart ?"
"It shouldn't take long," they replied eventually, after several seconds of silent cogitation. "We have gained some practice at reverse-engineering components from our years spent maintaining the generators that should apply in this scenario. And we can begin the factories' construction while the research is ongoing to save time."
"Good, good. Lasguns alone won't be enough, though. We have seized several pieces of carapace armor, right ?" I asked Mahlone, who nodded in response.
"Yes," he confirmed. "Giorba, may his soul burn in the fires of Khorne's forges, bought them from off-world for the use of his minions, to give them the image of invincibility, at the request of that bastard Arken. Not that it saved him from you, of course."
"Yes, well, we could still make use of them," I said, waving off his mention of my confrontation with that butcher, no doubt strengthening my reputation as a modest hero in his eyes in the process, before turning back to the magos. "If we are to have a real chance of holding our ground when the Imperium comes calling, we need you to figure out a way to build these for all of our forces, as well as replacements for the tanks and artillery the USA is using."
One by one, the eye-lenses blinked. "It will be quite the challenge, but I'm confident we'll rise to the occasion."
"I know you will. One last thing, however." I braced myself – this was going to be tricky, but the day I couldn't socially outmanoeuvre a tech-priest I would swear off drinking amasec. "The factories will not make use of servitors. You'll have to design them to use fully human workers."
"Why ?" asked Tesilon-Kappa in their utterly emotionless voice.
"Because," I explained, "Slawkenberg doesn't have a criminal population to speak of anymore, now that we've emptied the prisons of people thrown in there for no reason by the Giorbas." There were still some people left in jail after we'd freed the innocents and those the cults thought they could make use of, but not many. "Also, I doubt you have the facilities to create more available in the quantities required to reach the industrial output we're going to need."
"That is true," they confirmed. "And we cannot ask for them from elsewhere." Something whirred and clicked under their robes. "I failed to consider how much recent events have affected the paradigms by which I operate. My gratitude for illuminating me, Liberator."
"You're welcome," I said with an inner sigh of relief. "But because the factories will be crewed by unaugmented workers, they'll need proper safety precautions. I don't want the wheels of industry to be literally oiled with the blood of our people, do you understand ?"
I was, of course, no tech-priest. But I had glimpsed the vast assembly lines of the Manufactoria of the Imperium, where tanks were assembled by the dozens every day, ready to be thrown into combat. By hiding behind a facade of concern for the workers, I could make sure our armament production remained as low as possible. As for allowing the cogboys to improvise, well, what little knowledge I had of the Machine-Cult's ways were clear that this was a very bad idea, and that trying to do anything new instead of faithfully replicating the designs of our illustrious forebears was futile. Given that these designs had been wrought back when Him on Earth had walked among us, that made sense to me.
The Liberator was serious, Tesilon-Kappa realized with a pulse of something that, in an unaugmented human, might have been called shock.
What the Liberator was suggesting were all things they had tried to implement themselves, reforms that their calculations showed would help dramatically increase the productivity of the work being done on the generators. They had always been rejected by their superiors, of course, but now those obstructive rust piles weren't there anymore.
Servitors could be useful, but in Tesilon-Kappa's opinion, trained workers in protective gear would be much more so. It was the Mechanicus' obsession with secrecy, or perhaps the tool for control that the ever-present reminders of the punishment for defiance that servitors represented, that kept them in use everywhere across the Imperium.
Oh, their superiors would've argued that servitors were needed to avoid using the dreaded Silicum Animae, the Abominable Intelligence, but that was plainly untrue if you just thought about it for a minute. For instance, what purpose was there for someone to be turned into a servitor whose mono-functionality was to carry boxes from one end of a room to another ? A human worker could do it just as well with the proper tools, and could do many other things as well. Perhaps it was Tesilon-Kappa's time spent working their gears off keeping the blessed generators running coloring their perceptions, but they doubted it.
Tesilon-Kappa had enjoyed working on the generators, even though things had become more and more difficult as the Governor cut into their funding and their superiors wasted everyone's time with theological 'debates' that really only amounted to forcing their underlings listen to them rant, all while there was urgent work to do keeping the generators running. The majesty of the ancient engines was awe-inspiring, but they hadn't been blind to the fact that, if things went on as they had been going, then these wonders would eventually break down, regardless of their efforts.
Which was why they had joined the rebellion, though they couldn't deny having felt a great deal of personal satisfaction when they had shut down their superiors' augmetics through the liberal application of kinetic energy. Such had been the treatment to which they had been subjected than the vast majority of their colleagues had joined them, and they hadn't regretted it, as Cain had kept the promises he had made when the alliance had been forged and provided them with the additional resources and manpower they'd been reduced to begging the Giorbas for.
And now this. An opportunity to build something new, and to learn knowledge not because it was handed over to them but by piecing it together through their own efforts. And a chance to implement the safety measures they had suggested time and time again after losing servitors and tech-priests to accidents, only to be told that their deaths were their fault due to their lack of piety offending the machine-spirit.
"I understand," they replied to the Liberator. "I shall begin to work on it at once. General Mahlone, I will be troubling you to provide us with the samples we need."
"Oh, of course," replied the General. "I look forward to working with you, Magos."
With Tesilon-Kappa on board, and Mahlone very happy at the prospect of new toys with which he could arm his forces to kill more Imperials, I turned my attention to the remaining two members of the Liberation Council.
The two of them could hardly have looked more different. Chief Clerk Jafar still wore the robes of an Administratum clerk, with the Imperial sigils replaced by those of the God of Change he served. Meanwhile, Krystabel was clad in something that wouldn't have looked out of place at a fancy gala for the spire-born back home, though I knew it was still more conservative than the Handmaidens' preferred clothing when in private.
"Looking forward," I said, "we also need to consider matters of faith. By now, the removal of the Ecclesiarchy's influence on Slawkenberg has been completed."
Which, while true, was something of an understatement. On the whole, the people of Slawkenberg had remarkably little piety, which I guessed was understandable. The Giorbas and their cronies had controlled the Ecclesiarchy for generations, and every priest on the planet had constantly reminded the oppressed masses that their living conditions were the will of the God-Emperor, that protesting them was an act of heresy, and that asking for their children not to be taken to the torture chambers of the depraved nobility was deserving of damnation.
As a result, the vast majority of the Adeptus Ministorum's representatives on Slawkenberg had been strung up by the mob during the Uprising, with only a small handful escaping death – typically those who had been at the very bottom of the hierarchy, spending their time running soup kitchens and teaching kids how to read in the most disfavoured parts of the planet. As the Uprising occurred, they had quite wisely taken off their robes and vanished amidst their congregations.
Meanwhile, the many, many cathedrals that had been built using the toil of Slawkenberg's oppressed masses hadn't been burned down, mostly because I had pointed out they were located right in the middle of the city and we could hardly trust the impassioned mob not to accidentally set the whole thing alight. They had, however, been quite thoroughly ransacked, the riches hoarded by the prelates either ending up in the Liberation Council's coffers or spread among the most enthusiastic looters. Afterwards, a process of controlled demolitions had been started – I was told the collapses were attended by thousands of the local citizenry, cheering every time yet another symbol of their suffering went down.
Yet while the people of Slawkenberg had been all too happy to rise up against the Imperium and the Ecclesiarchy, that didn't mean they were all suddenly Chaos-worshipping loons. If I let these maniacs before me start sacrificing people on the altar, we'd have another revolt on our hands before you could say 'I told you so'. Worse, if they used heavy-handed methods such as sorcery or daemon-summoning to forcibly convert millions to the worship of the Ruinous Powers, then all my hopes of the Imperial reconquest being as painless as possible would go out the window.
"We won't replace the Imperial Creed by another faith," I declared, and immediately their eyes widened in shock. "I intend for Slawkenberg to allow its citizens to practice whatever religion they choose, so long as they follow the law."
"Some of them will still worship the Corpse-Emperor," frowned Jafar.
"And as long as they don't preach sedition, we will let them do so," I told him, forcing my voice to remain firm. "We fought for freedom, and I will not have us become that which we fought again. Besides, if you cannot convince the people of Slawkenberg to embrace the Powers without forcing them to," I said using the preferred term for the Dark Gods, "then that is on you."
I had seen Emeli in her new daemonic form, and I had no desire to let more daemons walk on Slawkenberg, which would inevitably happen if I let these lunatics start dragging people to the altar for sacrifice. In the best case scenario, all that would achieve was sow resentment and consolidate the opposition to the Liberation Council by the loyalists; in the worst case, which had once been described to me by Emeli (although she saw it as something to aspire to, proving just how bonkers she was) the entire planet would be dragged into the Warp and we would all become food for the daemons of Chaos.
Krystabel and Jafar glanced at one another. The cults they represented were the ones I was most worried about – the Khornates were unlikely to get much proselytizing done while they were busy training, and I was going to make damn sure their training regimen would keep them too exhausted to even think about it. They were also the ones with access to sorcery, which could quickly get out of hands if I let them act freely.
On the other hand, if I'd straight up forbidden them from trying to turn Slawkenberg's citizens to Chaos, they would've asked why, and I couldn't exactly tell them the real reason. But now, I had made it look like a contest between their two Dark Gods. Which of Tzeentch and Slaanesh would best be able to draw converts ? The Prince of Excess and the Architect of Fate weren't as opposed as, said, the latter was with the cults of Nurgle we'd purged before the Uprising, but they were still rivals.
"I … very well. If that is your will, then it shall be done," Jafar conceded. "I'll draft a proclamation and send it to you for confirmation."
Krystabel smiled in awe as the genius of the Liberator's plan unfolded in her mind. At the moment, the people of Slawkenberg rightly despised the Ecclesiarchy, and by association the Imperial Creed. Yet this wasn't because they saw the truth of the False Emperor's lies, but because of the generations of oppression they associated with it.
If the Liberation Council tried to replace the Imperial Creed with their own, the first, instinctual reaction of the people would be wariness. And that was assuming they could even agree on a singular creed : for all that they were united under the Liberator, the three Chaos factions represented in the Council were far from united on theological matters. She knew that, no matter what Mahlone or Jafar might think, Cain was closest to the Handmaidens through his bond to Lady Emeli, but he wasn't fully dedicated to the Lord of Pleasure yet, instead choosing to balance things out so that he could continue to lead the entire Liberation Council.
The Liberator couldn't take side, but Krystabel knew he was setting things up to benefit the Handmaidens the most. Even before the Uprising, they had led several secondary cults of Slaanesh across Slawkenberg. Their members weren't the equals of the Handmaidens in the eyes of the Dark Prince, but they would provide a foothold from which to expand their influence. And there was no question as to whether the newly liberated people of Slawkenberg would heed the promises of Slaanesh over those of Tzeentch.
After all, the Changer of Ways was represented by Jafar, while the Dark Prince was represented by Krystabel and her sisters. Really, it would be no contest at all. And she had just the idea to tip the scales even further.
"I would like to suggest something," she said, drawing attention to herself. As always, she felt a twinge of disappointment as Cain's eyes remained fixed on her face instead of wandering on her body – the Liberator's dedication to Lady Emeli was admirable, but it did hurt her pride. "While the construction of a true temple to the Dark Powers would be problematic at the moment, couldn't we erect a monument to those who fell to the Giorbas' evil ?"
I considered Krystabel's suggestion. Everyone else at the table seemed to be in favor of it, and I couldn't think of any reason to reject it.
"A monument to the price of freedom and to those who paid it would certainly not go amiss," I said, keeping my true reasons off my face by masking them with a sober expression of mourning. "Do you have a location in mind ?"
"I believe the Grand Cathedral was taken down last week, wasn't it, Chief Clerk ?" she asked Jafar, who nodded in confirmation. "Then the site would be perfect. Does everyone agree ?"
Everyone did, and the notion was carried. Truth be told, I didn't much care about it. The project would probably take years, if it ever finished. By then the Imperium would most likely already have come and taken back the planet, and I would be off-world and hiding somewhere neither Emeli nor the Inquisition could ever find me.
At least the work would would keep Krystabel busy. And there wouldn't be any cherubs when it was finished either. The wretched things had always creeped me out. I mean, really, who had thought it was a good idea to grow infant-looking monstrosities in vats and graft cybernetics and wings onto them ? What was wrong with servo-skulls ? Even the stuff I'd seen during the rituals Emeli had dragged me too during our association hadn't been half as disturbing.
Sitting at his desk in his private office aboard his ship, the Pyroclast Retribution, and looking at the latest set of messages his astropath had transcribed for him, Inquisitor Fyodor Karamazov silently nodded, allowing himself the tiniest surge of satisfaction. His faithful Acolytes had finished bringing the weak-willed fools who had opposed his will to justice, removing the obstacles who stood in the way of doing the Emperor's will. According to the report of their investigation, they had uncovered no less than a full score of heretics hiding within the Sector's military command, weakening the very fabric of the Imperium from within with their cowardice and incompetence.
When Karamazov had used his Inquisitorial authority to order the muster of a task force able to reclaim Slawkenberg from the dark forces that had claimed it, these men had dared to refuse him his due. Cloaking their treason in polite formulas, they had argued that Slawkenberg's heresy was of less importance than the other perils faced by the Sector.
They had claimed that the threat of the Orks, the Taus and the Tyranids were more pressing concerns. Fools. Karamazov knew the truth. The Enemy Without was nothing compared to the Enemy Within, which sapped the strength of the Imperium and spread its rot to all it touched. The Orks were mindless brutes, the Taus naive fools, and the Tyranids had been broken by the noble Ultramarines centuries before. The true threat to the Imperium laid with the Archenemy, as had been demonstrably proven by the Horus Heresy ten thousand years ago. Everything else was a minor distraction at best, fit for lesser men to deal with while those with the strength of will and faith to confront the true foe kept the Imperium pure, as demanded His vision.
That lesser men didn't understand this as clearly as Karamazov was something he had grown used to over the years, and could tolerate. But refusing to follow his orders ? Now that was deserving of a death sentence all on its own. His word was that of the Emperor, and to be obeyed without question. It was that same refusal to follow one's appointed place in the Emperor's plan that had led to Slawkenberg's corruption.
For centuries, the House of Giorba had kept Slawkenberg on the straight and narrow, preventing it from falling into corruption despite the decadence of its climate. Peace bred weakness as surely as idleness bred heresy, and Slawkenberg had been peaceful for too long : only the firm guiding hand of the God-Emperor's appointed Governors could prevent such a world from being tainted. Yet in the end, the Giorbas had failed in their assigned task. They would've to explain their failure to the Master of Mankind : Karamazov himself would deal with the mess they had left behind.
By the time he was done with Slawkenberg, the planet would stand as an example reminding all other worlds in the Segmentum of the price of defying the God-Emperor's will. No stone would be left unturned, no sinner would be left unpunished. If he had to turn the entire planet to cinders so that no heretic remained, then he would do so without hesitation.
His duty to the God-Emperor demanded no less of him.
Notes:
AN : Phew. This chapter was difficult to write, I think mostly because I tried juggling too many characters and POV. It was an interesting experiment, and I hope you enjoyed it, but I think I will use less POVs in the next chapters. This one kinda needed it, though, since it's mostly setup for the future.
And yes, the flag of the rebellion is basically a Simon toy on a green background. There is a hastily-drawn image of it on SpaceBattles if you want to check it out (keep in mind that I did it in five minutes using MSPaint, and I am most definitely not trained in graphics).
Thanks to Ridiculously Average Guy on SpaceBattles for suggesting the United Slawkenberg Army for the new name of the PDF. I spent entirely too long searching for a three-letters acronym that fit, all because of a joke in one of the original Cain books, with Amberley's footnotes explaining a series of them, before saying that Cain once told her the Guard was fond of them, even calling them TLA (Three Letters Acronyms) and she wasn't sure he was joking or not. There were a lot of other suggestions when I asked for advice, all of them really funny, but I couldn't find it in myself to justify using them. Well, perhaps in the future.
As you might have guessed, Cain is making an awful lot of assumptions in this chapter. Take a guess as to whether things will go like he thinks they will, or like the other members of the Liberation Council will.
I look forward to your thoughts on this chapter and the story in general. Also, if you have suggestions for reading material to use as inspiration for this story, I would appreciate them : I refuse to believe I'm the first to think of "main character is stuck as leader of an evil organization and has to pretend to be on top of things" comedic story, but I can't find many apart from those I mentioned in the last chapter. Surely someone in the space of fanfictions has come up with it at some point before I did, right ?
Zahariel out.
Chapter Text
In the streets of Cainopolis, a celebration was taking place. This one was more sober than the wild, unfettered festivities that had followed the Uprising, for it was a time of mourning as much as rejoicing. Where once the Grand Cathedral of the Imperial Creed had stood now rose the House of Remembrance, an even larger monument dedicated to all those who had suffered under the cruel yoke of the Imperium, and to the promise of a better future made by the Liberation Council.
Through the effort of thousands of construction workers and the artifice of the Bringers Of Renewed Greatness, those tech-priests who had sided with the Liberation Council when the hour of revolution had come, the great structure had been completed in less than six months – a minuscule fraction of the time it had taken to build the gaudy cathedral it had replaced. Cain the Liberator himself had come to inaugurate the House's opening, his speech broadcast all across the planet as he congratulated those who had built it, holding them up as exemplars of the devotion and unity through which Slawkenberg would forge its path to greatness.
Even as the Liberator's words renewed the fires of determination in the listeners' hearts, many noticed the shadow that hung over their champion's face as he spoke. As Cain moved on to lead the crowds in silent remembrance of those they had lost, the source of this shadow became obvious. It was well-known that the Liberator mourned for every soul lost to the Giorbas' evil, which was why he had authorized the construction of the House of Remembrance in the first place.
In front of the podium from which the Liberator was addressing the gathered crowd stood a line of USA troopers, resplendent in their brand-new suits of crimson carapace armor and carrying lasguns from the same new factories that the Bringers had helped build in the regions of Slawkenberg hit hardest by the Imperium's mismanagement. Their T-shaped visors shone with orange light as they stood in parade formation, displaying the fruits of their months of intense training, said to have been designed by the Liberator himself, who had even taken part in their melee exercises, and triumphed over every challenger thanks to his mastery of swordsmanship.
As Cain's speech ended and, several long moments later, the last of the applause finally died down, the Liberator withdrew within the House, doubtlessly to reflect on the comrades he'd lost during the Uprising. The people went to perform their own rites of mourning – for there was no one on Slawkenberg who hadn't lost someone to the Imperium's oppression.
In the days since the Uprising, new faiths had begun to blossom in the souls of Slawkenberg's population, now freed from the Ecclesiarchy's shackles. Societies had formed that sought joy and contentment, believing those lifted the spirit from earthly restraints and let it contemplate things it was otherwise blind to. Amidst the ranks of the United Slawkenberg Army, the pursuit of martial excellence and victory over the hated Imperium had become something between doctrine and creed, with oaths to spill the blood of tyrants spoken daily. And with the archives of the nobility now open to all, professors now led great lectures open to all who wished to learn, and through learning elevate themselves, with the most apt pupils being taught other, deeper mysteries.
All of these now paid homage to their lost, even as they looked at the future with optimism.
I stood in silence within the House of Remembrance's innermost chamber and tried to keep myself from screaming.
It really felt as if I, or the entire universe around me, was going mad. None of my attempts to sabotage Slawkenberg's defenses against the inevitable wave of Imperial retribution had worked as I expected – in every single case, things had instead turned out great, which had only inflated my fraudulent reputation even further.
The training program I had suggested for the USA had been based on the one I had gone through at the Schola once I'd been selected as a future Commissar (for reasons I still failed to comprehend), except thrice as intense. The physical conditioning I'd set up had gone just far enough beyond human limits that I'd been confident I'd be able to blame its failure to work on the poor bastards themselves. By all rights, it should have resulted in a bunch of physically broken down men, too exhausted even to consider mutiny. Instead, due to what I could only imagine was the intervention of the Blood God, it had actually worked in turning the motivated but ill-trained ex-PDF troopers into lean, mean, and utterly lethal killing machines.
The ruined palaces of the nobility and sprawling estates reserved for off-worlders had been converted into training grounds for urban warfare, and from what I'd seen during my visits the soldiers actually enjoyed running around the ruins, fighting each other with training weapons and getting used to the often-unappreciated tactical advantage brought by having every soldier equipped with a short-range comm-bead.
I'd been very lucky that, despite the unexpected effectiveness of their training, they were still too much in awe of my reputation to actually fight back when I'd been forced to participate in the games or take part in the close-quarter training. I may have been the best swordsman of my class back at the Schola, but I didn't fancy my chances against these lunatics if they fought seriously.
As the influence of Khorne had spread through the army, so had that of Slaanesh and Tzeentch among the civilians. By now, the Liberation Council's bureaucracy was almost entirely comprised of devotees of the Architect of Fate, while the plebs lapped up the watered-down pleasures of the Dark Prince offered by the Handmaidens' servants. Public order was still being maintained, thank the Throne, as the Tzeentchians were too busy working to scheme, and the Slaaneshi had to deal with people for whom eating cake once a month and having one day in eight off from work were unprecedented luxuries.
Even the industrialization process had gone off without a hitch, faster than even the most optimistic estimates of Tesilon-Kappa. I didn't know what unholy bargains the Magos had made with the machine-spirits, but the factories had been completed in record time, and were producing military equipment at an incredible pace. Without servitors, they were instead heavily reliant on semi-autonomous machine-spirits, with the control stations and posts that required a human presence manned by newly recruited workers from the underclasses of Slawkenberg. Hundreds of them had even been inducted into the cult of the Machine-God, with the most promising being sent to help in the underwater generators. Apparently, focusing on teaching practical skills over theology allowed to really cut down on the time it took to train an adept of the Mechanicus.
So successful had been the Bringers Of Renewed Greatness (or 'borgs' as the hereteks were now affectionately nicknamed by the population that Tesilon-Kappa had been able to spare an entire contingent of their members to assist in the construction of the House of Remembrance. I had expected the works to last for years, but instead Tesilon-Kappa had delivered some sort of anti-grav technology their tech-priests had revere-engineered from the power generators they'd spent decades maintaining which had helped cut down on construction time dramatically. How in the name of the Emperor the borgs had managed it I had no idea.
The newly-completed House was a vast, many-leveled structure with a labyrinthine inner layout that made it easy to get lost and wander for hours, taking in the various memorials that had been built, each dedicated to the victims of a different aspect of the Giorbas' reign. My own underhive instincts served me well in that regard, as did my knowledge of the plans from when I'd been asked to give my thoughts on them.
My wandering through the House had eventually brought me here, in the highest chamber of the building. Unsurprisingly, it was dedicated to Emeli Duboir, known to the population of Slawkenberg as the headmistress of a school for young women, a martyr of the Uprising, and, much to my consternation, my lover, whose death had been the impetus that had driven me to rebel against the Imperium.
Of course, the plebs didn't know that Emeli hadn't actually died, instead ascending to daemonhood partially thanks to my own failed attempt at getting her killed. The Slaaneshi cults had started circulating rumors that her immortal spirit watched over Slawkenberg in general and me in particular, which was apparently regarded as very romantic and already the subject of several mummers' plays in the streets of Cainopolis – and oh, how I hated this name.
At the center of the chamber, surrounded by six windows of tinted glass that cast a fey illumination upon the room as the sun moved through the sky, was a statue of Emeli herself. The first version of the statue I'd been shown had been of me holding Emeli's body in my arms, but I had immediately rejected it. I'd phrased it as the House being meant to honor the fallen, whereas I was very much still alive – although the truth was, I didn't want any reminder of the stories that had spread about me and the Daemon Princess of Slaanesh I'd unwittingly helped ascend.
Rejecting the next and final version, however, had been impossible to do without drawing the ire of the Handmaidens. And so a towering statue of white marble had been built within the House in Emeli's likeness. I had to admit that the sculptors had done an admirable job, though the marble image lacked the vivacity and palpable sense of threat the living sorceress had given off. The clothes of her sculpted semblance threaded the line between modesty and indecency quite well, too, and her face was set in an expression just between determination and joy.
I took a deep breath to center myself. Things weren't that bad, I told myself. Yes, the people of Slawkenberg had taken to heresy far quicker than I'd thought possible, but things could still be salvaged so long as the Imperium's retribution came quickly. My plans to sabotage the planet's defenses hadn't worked out, but it wouldn't matter in the long run. A single world couldn't hope to stand against the might of the Imperium, no matter how much the Dark Gods tried to stack the deck in its favor. If things were otherwise, then Chaos would already rule the galaxy, instead of its great champion being beaten back into the Eye of Terror time and time again.
As I tried to convince myself, I noticed a sudden chill in the air. The sunlight pouring into the room seemed to darken, casting strange shadows upon the statue.
My heartbeat quickened. I was supposed to be alone – even Jurgen had stayed at the entrance, to give me time to think. Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that there was someone else in here with me. Before I could turn around to check, however, a pair of arms draped themselves around my shoulders, and my nose was filled with a familiar perfume.
"Hello, Ciaphas," an equally familiar voice purred. "Did you miss me ?"
"Emeli," I managed to say through the shock. "How are you here ?"
"I am borrowing dear Krystabel's body," she explained, running her fingers across my chest. "Your man at the door was very accommodating of her."
Dammit, Jurgen, I thought to myself. I couldn't really blame my aide : Krystabel had visited me several times before in order to bring information gathered by the Handmaidens, and she was the one who had pushed for the building's construction, so there had been no reason for him to deny her entry. I was more angry at myself for not noticing her presence until now : letting someone with unknown intentions get so close to me was a recipe for a quick and painful end.
"But how are you here ?" I asked. The thought that she had figured out a way to possess her followers at any time she chose was a terrifying one.
"Through Krystabel's devotion to me, and the Immaterial resonance of this place, I can reach out and finally touch you again." She gently rested her head against my shoulder, in a position I would have enjoyed a great deal, if not for the fact that she was an infernal entity from beyond the veil.
"Immaterial resonance … you mean, this place ?"
"Of course," she purred. "Did you not design this chamber yourself for this purpose, beloved ? The six windows, the building beneath us inspiring all kind of intense emotions into its visitors … all of this draws the energies of the Empyrean, thinning the veil and allowing us to be reunited at last."
"I … I didn't really think it would work," I lied to her. I had tossed around some suggestions when Krystabel had brought the plans for the House to me, yes, but those had been made up on the fly.
"Always so modest," she chuckled. "But then, that is part of why I love you."
This wasn't the first time Emeli had used that word when talking to me. It wasn't even the first time she'd done so after ascending to daemonhood : right after she had shed her mortality and become a Daemon Princess of Slaanesh, when I'd thought I was about to die and have my soul be tortured for all eternity for trying to get her killed with the cursed jewels, she had said the same thing to me.
Repetition, I found, didn't make it any less terrifying.
"I'm glad that you came," I told her, slowly resting my hand on her own, more to make myself feel better than out of any genuine hope of being able to stop her from tearing my throat out if she decided to. "The last few months have been … hectic."
"I know," she giggled, intertwining her fingers with mine like we were two juvies out on a date. "I have been watching you."
Well, that didn't sound ominous at all.
"I hope you enjoyed what you saw ?" I asked tentatively, hoping she would mistake the terror I felt for nervousness at fishing for compliments.
"Oh, I did. And apart from wanting to be with you again, I come with a warning. The Imperium is coming, beloved," she whispered into my ear, her voice sweet like honey. "When you led the Uprising, the astropaths managed to send out word before my Handmaidens silenced them. Now, a host has been mustered, and they sail through the Sea of Souls toward this star. I am doing all I can to slow their passage through the Warp, but I am still but a young participant in the Great Game. They will arrive soon."
For a mad moment, as a Daemon Princess of the Dark Prince of Pleasure told me the news I'd been both dreading and yearning for since the Uprising had occurred, I felt like kissing her, but my survival instincts swiftly dragged that insane thought to the gallows and executed it in front of the rest of my brain.
"How soon ?" I asked instead.
"Weeks. A couple of months at most. You must prepare, beloved." The tone of her voice shifted, suddenly filling with venom as she continued : "The Inquisitor who leads them is among the worst of his kind, Ciaphas. He will not stop until all of Slawkenberg burns."
Well, of course she'd say that. But she was a daemon, and I still remembered enough of my catechisms to know that her words weren't to be trusted (not that I'd trusted her back when she'd only been a mortal sorceress, obviously). I didn't doubt she was speaking the truth when it came to the oncoming Imperial task force because I'd already been anticipating such a force to be on its way, and I could think of no reason for her to deceive me on their estimated time of arrival, but there were many reasons why she might be lying as to the task force's purpose.
Even the fact that an Inquisitor was in charge seemed unlikely to me : Inquisitors walked in the shadows to pursue the Emperor's enemies, not directly in the light. That one of them might accompany the task force I was willing to believe (Slawkenberg had, after all, been the theatre of a Daemon Princess' ascension, and I now knew enough of such things to realize how rare and perilous this was), but lead ? That, I doubted.
"I will be ready," I told her, which I suppose technically wasn't a lie. "Thank you for telling me, and for slowing them down."
"I know you will triumph, Ciaphas. And I can think of some ways for you to show your gratitude," she said in a husky voice. "After all, I have been missing you, beloved …"
A few hours later, I left the House of Remembrance, got into my car (driven by Jurgen, who always made it a point to respect the laws of the road despite the fact no law enforcement would've dared to stop us) and returned to my office in the former gubernatorial palace, leaving Krystabel behind to recover from her exhaustion after being possessed by her daemonic mistress. I had, of course, made a show of concern for her well-being once Emeli had withdrawn her influence, and she'd assured me she only needed rest (she had also assured me of several other things, none of which I felt comfortable thinking about).
Once Jurgen had brought me the latest reports on the USA's state of readiness I had asked him for (how he knew exactly where every piece of information was in my office at all times despite it being my office, I had no idea, and could only attribute it to his psychic powers), I considered my next move in light of Emeli's revelations.
She hadn't given me much in the way of details regarding the approaching task force, but I could make some educated guesses. By Imperial standards, Slawkenberg was only scarcely populated, as expected of a vacation world. There were no hives anywhere on the planet, and even the capital wouldn't have deserved to be called a city on a proper hive-world : there were less than twenty millions people living in it all told. According to Jafar's latest census data (it wasn't as if the Giorbas had kept proper records, satisfied so long as they could shake enough money and manpower out of their thralls whenever they wanted), Slawkenberg's total population only barely topped a billion. Before the Uprising, most of them had lived in conditions that were only a few steps up from the underhive I'd been born in, though things were improving nowadays – which, once again, was a damning indictment of the Giorbas' management of the whole mess.
Thanks to me preventing the Khornates from recruiting every volunteer able to carry a lasgun, the USA had been kept at the size of the PDF pre-Uprising. As one might expect of a vacation world ruled by generations of mad tyrants, that number was much lower than what Caesariovi Giorba's oaths to the Golden Throne had officially required him to maintain. In my time as the sole Commissar of the planet, I had witnessed the abyssal state of readiness of the PDF for myself, with entire divisions armed with guns that were barely more than flintlock rifles. Even the unexpectedly productive weapon factories, there had only been time to equip a small part of that number with carapace armor and brand-new lasguns. In total, Mahlone could call upon eighty thousand soldiers.
Meanwhile, some regiments of the Imperial Guard had over half a million troops under their banner, while others barely had a thousand. According to what my old tutors had told me, this was due to the differences between the worlds providing them as part of their Imperial Tithe, and the wide variety of the Militarum allowed its commanders to always use the right amount of force for each situation, avoiding waste and ensuring glorious victory in the God-Emperor's name.
Of course, even at a young age I had been smart enough to see through such a blatant pile of grox excrement. The truth was that the Munitorum drones supposed to manage the juggernaut that was the Imperial Guard had no idea what they were doing, and lots of zeroes got removed or added in the paperwork all the time. Because really, how were, say, a thousand soldiers supposed to affect a warzone the size of a planet ? They could assist the local PDF, yes, providing expert advice and a reserve of crack troops depending on the quality of the regiment, but mere mortals weren't Space Marines, no matter their equipment or training.
It was only in holodramas that a single squad of veterans could take down wave after wave of vile xenos or faceless heretics. It wasn't for nothing that the Imperial Guard was called the Emperor's Hammer : the largest human military organization to ever exist won its wars through overwhelming firepower as much as proper application of the Tactica Imperialis (as well as faith in the God-Emperor, of course, and I found myself yearning for the days when it'd been expected of me to execute anyone saying otherwise).
In any case, unless whoever had prepared this task force had completely dropped the ball, the USA being outnumbered by the Imperial Guard was all but certain. Emeli hadn't mentioned any Space Marines accompanying the task force, and I felt she would've told me if the Emperor's Angels of Death had been called to purge the Liberation Council from Slawkenberg. Unless, of course, she'd caught onto my lies, but I was fairly certain that if that were the case I'd never have made it out of the Home of Remembrance alive.
Given that Space Marines were generally deployed in decapitation strikes and that I was nominally the leader of the rebellion on Slawkenberg, I felt very relieved none of the Emperor's Finest would be involved. Jurgen may be capable of wrecking tanks with his mind, but I doubted that Astartes weren't prepared to deal with such witchery.
I nodded to myself. This was going to work. Now I needed to call General Mahlone, and probably the rest of the Liberation Council, to share the news with them. I could keep Emeli's warning to myself, but Krystabel would realize something was wrong if I did that (it was clear that she at least partially remembered what had happened while she'd been possessed by her infernal mistress), and I still needed to survive until the arrival of the Imperium.
Soon, Slawkenberg would be back under Imperial rule, and I would be out of this madhouse.
In the war room that had been set up within the palace, General Mahlone watched the hololithic projector as the icons marking the ships of the Imperial task force slowly approached the planet. True to the Liberator's word, they had arrived in-system thirty-five days since he'd shared with them the warning he'd received from his lady love's ascended spirit.
The information was being relayed to them from the handful of crafts in orbit, their auspexes kept at a state of maximum readiness for the last week by the tech-priests. The small flotilla had received orders to avoid engaging the Imperial forces in the void at all costs : as the Liberator had explained, the information they provided as the Council's eyes in orbit was far more valuable than whatever little damage they could inflict before being destroyed.
Of course, at the moment, the information they were sending, while useful, wasn't exactly clear.
"Where in the Warp are they landing ?"
Mahlone understood the Liberator's confusion, for he certainly shared it. In the days prior to the invaders' arrival, the USA's high command had run many simulations, trying to identify likely landing positions for the Imperial troops. With the assets at their disposal, it was impossible to defend the entire planet : Slawkenberg had just too much land to cover.
But instead of securing one of the vast, roiling plains that had featured so prominently in the planet's off-world holos, the Imperial flotilla was holding anchor atop a mountain range in the northern continent, and dropping troop transports in the middle of nowhere.
"There is a mountainous resort in the area, accessible almost exclusively through the air," one of the tech-priests buzzed in helpfully. "It does have a landing pad for descent from orbit so that visitors can get there directly from their transport. Our records also indicate that there is a shrine of some sorts in that resort, built by the late Governor's great-grandsire three centuries ago."
The Liberator blinked. "That can't be the reason they chose to go there."
"It's an unassailable defensive position ?" suggested Mahlone, pointing at the map. "Look, the paths that do exist are completely impassable for anything wheeled heavier than a damn horse cart. With the landing pad, they can get all their troops down from orbit without needing to worry about us."
"Yes," agreed the Liberator, "but then what ? They'll be stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no way to get out. There has to be something to this we aren't seeing."
"My lords," another tech-priest called out, "the enemy flagship is broadcasting an unencrypted transmission."
"Put it on," ordered Cain. "Let's see what the Imperial dogs have to say."
The projection of Slawkenberg vanished, replaced by the image of an old man sitting on a throne decorated with skulls, aquilas, and the stylized 'I' that every soul born under the yoke of the Imperium had been taught to recognize and dread as the symbol of the Inquisition. The sight of that sigil, the emblem of the False Emperor's most vicious and cruel enforcers, quickened Mahlone's blood, but he forced himself to remain calm and look at the man sat upon the throne.
He had a severe face and an even more severe expression. His head was completely bald, with a pointed beard and mustache covering the lower half of his face. Even through a hololithic projection, Mahlone could feel the hatred and zealotry that consumed him – and that was before the image opened its mouth and started talking.
"People of Slawkenberg," said the projected man, "I am Inquisitor Fyodor Karamazov. By the authority of the Holy Ordos, I speak with the voice of the Master of Mankind Himself, and I have come to stand in judgement of you all for your heresy. Know this : there is no such thing as a plea of innocence in my court. All of you are guilty of allowing your world to fall out of the God-Emperor's grace. All that remains to be decided is the degree of your sin, and the appropriate punishment. Those of you who have least sinned may be allowed to spend the rest of your lives in toil to atone for your failure to prevent the disgrace that has befallen Slawkenberg, but the rest, from the pettiest heretic to the arch-traitors who brought corruption to this once-fair planet, shall be purged with extreme prejudice, and their screams of agony shall serve as warning to strengthen the faith of all who hear them."
As the broadcast ended, Mahlone looked at the Liberator. He stood still, glaring at the image of the mad Inquisitor, his face white and his hands trembling with fury.
Notes:
AN : This chapter's a bit shorter than usual. I'd planned to have another scene in it, but then I realized it made more sense to end things here. The next chapter will be much closer to the source material, as there'll be more action now that Cain's carefully constructed plans to avoid danger have reached their unavoidable conclusion.
Most of you saw Cain's sabotage attempts backfiring coming, but I hope that didn't take away from the humor of the situation. As I've said before, Cain basically either rolls Nat 20s or Nat 1s, and I, his DM, am a sadistic monster who delights in his suffering. (Although honestly, considering what I did to Corvus Corax in the Roboutian Heresy, he should consider himself lucky to be in a comedy story).
Also, here is a funny tidbit of lore I found out while researching Fyodor Karamazov : canonically, Karamazov received his Throne of Judgement in 930.M41 after the Abraxan Purges, and became an Inquisitor Lord some time after that. While the timeline of Cain's life is muddled, I'm certain that this story is currently happening before 930.M41, meaning Karamazov hasn't done either of these things.
You may want to check his canon biography to see what might change as a result of him becoming Cain's enemy. Just saying.
The scene with Emeli possessing Krystabel is as far as I'm going to go in describing such things in this story - which is about the same as in the Ciaphas Cain novels, I think. The mods on Spacebattles have approved of the scene in question, so I'm going to trust their judgement on the subject. It's not like that is the point of this story, after all : the point of the story is to laugh at Cain's misadventures, and I assure you, there'll be plenty of that.
(And to answer the many questions asked about this : yes, I'm planning to have Amberley Vail appear in this story eventually. Keep in mind that we're still very much at the beginning of Cain's career, and that while she shows up in the first novel published, Cain went through a lot of things before actually meeting her chronologically).
Please don't comment on the numbers I gave for Slawkenberg's population and armed forces. They aren't that important to the story in any case. Apart from that, I look forward to your thoughts on this chapter and this story in general.
Zahariel out.
Chapter Text
War had come to Slawkenberg.
Since the day of the Uprising, all had lived with the knowledge that this would happen eventually. Although none regretted their defiance, they knew that the Imperium would come to punish them for daring to rebel against its tyranny. Some had hoped that day would yet be years in the future, but all had prepared for it in one way or another, while trusting in the Liberation Council to see them through when the hour came.
And now, that hour had arrived.
Inquisitor Karamazov's message had been broadcast unencrypted on all frequencies his ship was capable of reaching, and the systems of the Pyroclast Retribution were far more advanced than all but the sacred technology that had gone into the construction of the world's underwater generators. Every person on the planet knew exactly what fate awaited them should the Imperium defeat the Liberation Council. After generations under the rule of the Giorbas, Karamazov's threats of doom and slavery had been exactly what they had expected from an Inquisitor, who were well known to be the greatest of the Imperium's tools of terror and oppression.
If the Giorbas' enforcers were the monsters that took people in the night (or in broad daylight, they had never been shy about their atrocities), the Inquisitors were figures of terrifying myth, said to burn entire planets rather than allow a single so-called 'heretic' to live – and anyone who didn't do exactly as the Imperium ordered was a heretic in their eyes.
Yet if Karamazov had thought to break the resolve of Slawkenberg's defenders, then the madman was badly mistaken, for the people did not let fear control them. Nor, now that they knew from experience that the Imperium's cruel enforcers could be fought and defeated, did they let anger consume them and push them into making mistakes. The Liberator had made his own speech in response to the rabid Inquisitor's, and the two could not have been more different. Cain's calm and collected words, despite the fact that he had more reasons to despite the Imperium and fear their victory than most on Slawkenberg, had cooled fiery tempers and hardened them into steely resolve.
Instead of giving in to their emotions, the citizens drew strength from them, and did all they could to help in the defense of their world. In the weapon factories, workers redoubled their efforts, determined not to let a single piece of equipment make its way to the United Slawkenberg Army that wasn't up to their Borg managers' exacting standards. As the settlements closest to the Imperial landing zone were evacuated, civilians opened their homes to the refugees, sharing what little they had even as the Council ensured there were enough supplies to meet everybody's basic needs. The new cults that had sprouted without the Ecclesiarchy's smothering shadow led folks into prayer, calling upon the Powers they worshipped for aid. And from all over Slawkenberg, the forces of the USA moved toward the enemy, their hearts burning with the fire of determination.
Having tasted freedom, they vowed that their world would not return to the dark days of being slaves to the Imperium's tyranny.
As I entered the freshly-constructed bunker, I did my best to conceal my relief at getting out of the cold. The fortified structure wasn't much to look at, but it did provide protection from the winter winds raging outside. At my side, Jurgen appeared completely unconcerned by the temperature, but then he was a Valhallan, and despite having left his icy homeworld years ago, his body was still used to much harsher climates.
"Colonel Ygdal," I greeted the dark-skinned man who was the commander-in-chief of the USA forces in the area.
We'd met before : he was one of the former PDF officers who had turned to Khorne when their disgruntlement at the way things were done on Slawkenberg had turned into full-blown rebellious intent. Looking at him now, it was clear that he'd put himself through the same insane training regimen I'd intended to sabotage the USA : despite me being taller than him by no insignificant margin, I was fairly certain he outweighed me through sheer muscle mass.
"Lord Liberator," he responded, giving me a crisp salute that was imitated by everyone else in the command bunker. "Mister Jurgen," he added with a nod to my aide. "Welcome to the frontline, such as it is."
I made a show of looking around approvingly. The command bunker was bare, made of prefabricated ferrocrete blocks slammed into position, much like most of the fortifications that had been erected around the Imperial expedition's landing zone. My gaze briefly stopped on the incongruous sight of a pan decorated with flowers resting atop a small stove – doubtless a gift from some civilian in one of the nearby villages that had been evacuated.
"You've done well to set things up so quickly," I told Ygdal, and he preened at the compliment like a juvie being handed a new blunted sword on Emperor's Day. "Are there any news from our uninvited guests ?"
"None, sir," he replied with a dry smile at my admittedly weak joke. "They're staying put in their hole, just like you predicted they would. Not that they could break through if they tried !"
"Of course, of course," I said with all the appearances of sincerity.
After Karamazov's speech, I had made a planet wide broadcast of my own, spouting off some platitudes about how, by working together, we could repel the Imperial task force and keep our freedom (and our lives, most importantly my own). It'd gone over rather well, but then it was either believe it or accept the inevitability of our doom, and given the choice between those options most people will hold on to hope until the very end. At the time, my only goal had been to keep people from panicking, as I could all too easily imagine a mob dragging me and the rest of the Council out to hand us over to the Inquisitor in exchange for clemency – or, even worse, turn to the cults and go off the deep end with human sacrifices in the hope the Dark Gods would save them.
Now that I'd time to relax and think about Karamazov's speech, I'd realized there'd been more going on than had seemed obvious at first glance. As I'd said in the war room, the Imperials' choice of landing ground didn't make sense if their goal was to liberate the planet. And if something was obvious to me, then whoever was in charge of the Imperial expedition (Karamazov might be its nominal leader, but I doubted he was anything more than a figurehead doubling as advisor in heretical matters to the actual military commanders) must know it to.
Clearly, the Inquisitor had been deliberately provocative, in order to make us charge into unfavourable terrain, and slaughter as many USA soldiers as possible before moving out to reclaim the rest of the planet once the back of the USA had been broken, along with the morale of the rebels. I had to admit that it made sense : I myself had been taught that heretics often had a complete disregard for their lives as well as proper tactics. Which was only logical, since such people were stupid enough to turn from the Emperor in the first place.
Of course, the Uprising had shown that Slawkenberg's own brand of heretics had a bit more sense than average, but Karamazov was operating on limited information, and I had no doubt such a scheme would have worked perfectly well in most cases, and probably had before in the Inquisitor's career. I myself had a share of responsibility there, since General Mahlone had been fully prepared to launch a mass assault on the mountain redoubt of the Imperial forces before I'd pointed out the obvious dangers of such a course of action, back when I'd still been reeling from Karamazov's threats and searching for a way out like a slum-rat in a collapsed hab-block.
So, instead of braving the small, perilous mountain paths leading to the resort, the USA had set up a containment zone in the plains at the foot of the mountains, creating a buffer between the Imperial forces and the civilian population. The inhabitants of the closest settlements had been relocated, and the USA had dug in, finally putting to use some of the training I'd designed for them thinking weeks spent shovelling dirt would demoralize them.
It had been two weeks since then, and as the mild fall turned to winter and temperatures in the northern hemisphere plummeted, neither army made a move. Technically, time was on the side of the Liberation Council, as every day that passed meant more weapons being sent from the factories to the troops in training, which meant more bodies to put between me and the Inquisition. Of course, it also meant that the Imperium's own reinforcements were drawing closer as well, but there was nothing I could do about it, so I'd put it firmly out of my mind to avoid going mad with terror.
Once I'd understood what Karamazov's real plan was, I had considered trying to get the USA to attack anyway, but while I might have managed to convince them it would work thanks to my fraudulent reputation, the resulting casualties were unlikely to completely wipe them out. And then I would be left with thousands of cultists of Khorne very angry at me. Besides, they would most likely expect me to lead such an insane attack from the front, and having looked at the map and auspex imagery from our crafts in orbit, I wanted nothing to do with such a suicidal attempt.
"Will you visit the men in the trenches ?" asked Ygdal. "Your presence would greatly help their morale."
I wanted to do nothing of the sort, of course, as the thought of leaving the bunker and trudging back out into the cold didn't really appeal to me. Unfortunately, I didn't have much of a choice. The entire reason for my presence here was to support the troops, after all, and convince everyone on the planet that I was taking the situation seriously and doing everything I could to keep them safe (which, in a roundabout way, was true, as they would be safer back under Imperial rule than with the heretics of the Liberation Council in charge) and free (which most certainly wasn't true, as I'd have handed the planet back to the Imperium in a heartbeat if I could do so without losing my life, but they didn't need to know that).
Besides, as I've said, the Imperials hadn't made a move since they'd finished their deployment, so I was confident the greatest danger I'd have to face was catching a cold or slipping on a patch of mud and making a fool of myself in front of the grunts.
I was, of course, wrong.
Things started off well enough. We drove behind the line of trenches and hastily-built fortifications in a military vehicle along with Colonel Ygdal and a handful of hanger-ons : Jurgen and I had arrived to the front using one of several refurbished air-cars that had previously belonged to the Governor. We stopped several times, and Ygdal guided me through the trenches, the soldiers left awe-struck by the sight of the Liberator walking among them. I shook hands with a few random troopers and spouted a few platitudes, drawing upon my commissarial training (though I did make some adjustments to take my audience's allegiance into account).
Eventually, after several hours of this, we reached the end of the line, where it met the rising hills that eventually turned into mountains. Then, suddenly, the vox was filled with alarmed voices. I was wearing my own comm-bead into my ear, which was programmed to give me access to every channel used by the USA.
"The Imperials are attacking !" someone was shouting.
"What ?" I whispered, before speaking louder : "This is Cain speaking," and the gaggle of voices suddenly fell silent. As far as I knew, there was no one else with my family name on Slawkenberg, and in any case they'd probably recognized my voice from all those broadcasts I'd made. "How did they get their vehicles down the mountain ?!"
"They … they didn't, lord. We're only seeing infantry at the moment."
Grabbing a pair of binoculars from a startled trooper, I zoomed in on the mountain's base. Hundreds, thousands of Guardsmen in thick winter cloaks I immediately recognized as Valhallans were charging straight through the plains and toward us. Somehow, the Guardsmen had made it down the mountain by using the handful of trails leading up to the resort, none of which had been used in over a century.
I swept my gaze across the front, searching for tanks and transports, but found nothing. This really looked like an unsupported infantry charge on prepared enemy positions, but who would be stupid enough to try something like this ?
"All troops," said Ygdal next to me, his voice calm and collected, his words sent throughout the entire defensive line, "fire at will. For Slawkenberg !"
"For Slawkenberg !" roared the soldiers all around me, and I joined them by reflex.
What followed was an utter carnage, as the USA tore through the Guardsmen as they charged at us over an open plain devoid of cover, unable even to truly mass their numbers for a push since they were trickling onto the battlefield from the narrow paths. Machine guns reapt entire squads at once, yet still the Imperials kept running.
Occasionally, a las-bolt from the charging Imperials hit a USA soldier, but even those lucky shots failed to penetrate the carapace armor every frontline trooper had been assigned. The borg factories had produced tons and tons of armaplas, enough to equip entire battalions with it once the hereteks had figured out how to replicate the armor taken from the Giorbas' elite enforcers. I had taken the precaution of bringing the custom-made suit the borgs had sent me, wearing it under my modified uniform.
Realizing that I needed to give the image of helping, I drew the overly decorated bolt pistol of the late and unlamented Governor, and fired vaguely in the direction of the enemy. To my shock, my first shell struck a Sentinel that had miraculously made it down the mountains (as far as I could see, the only one to have successfully done so, and I wondered how many others had been lost trying to make the descent) into the knee, penetrating a weak spot in its armored joint before detonating. The bipedal walker toppled at once, and cheers rose from all around me at the sight, the defenders redoubling their efforts.
"Nice shot, sir," said Jurgen from where he stood a pace behind me. I could have strangled him; and I might've, if not for the knowledge that he could tear me to pieces with a thought.
"Thank you, Jurgen," I said instead.
"Would you like me to help, sir ?" he proposed. I made a show of considering his offer before shaking my head.
"Better save your strength for when it is needed," I told him.
The true reason for my decision, of course, was that while Jurgen had been in full control of his abilities thus far, I had been taught that one of a Commissar's duties was to keep an eye on any psyker assigned to their regiment, and be prepared to grant them the Emperor's Mercy if they succumbed to the nameless horrors that dwelled in the Warp. Given how the battle was progressing, there didn't seem to be any need for that kind of risk when I was so close to him.
Especially as, a few moments later, the USA's artillery began to fire for effect. The old Slawkenberg PDF hadn't had a lot of artillery at its disposal : if I remembered the archives I had read correctly, the Giorbas hadn't wanted to risk damaging the scenery the off-worlders saw from their windows. The few existing pieces had been in appalling condition from lack of proper maintenance, but the borgs had managed to repair them and build some new ones – they didn't have the schematics for those either, but according to Tesilon-Kappa, figuring out how to build a big cannon really wasn't that complicated compared to maintaining millennia-old generators. Even so, the artillery of the USA was far inferior to that available to a typical Imperial Guard unit.
But some artillery was still better than no artillery, and the latter was what the Imperials were getting. A rain of shells fell, called by the spotters scattered throughout the line, and thousands of Guardsmen were reduced to pieces as the ground was churned into bloody mud. Within minutes, the sporadic las-fire aimed at our defensive positions completely stopped.
"Cease fire," I heard someone say. A moment later, I realized it had been me. Why I did something so foolish I will never know, but I didn't have time to ponder, as Colonel Ygdal stared at me as if I had just suggested we replace all las-guns in the USA with flowers.
"Lord Liberator ?"
"Cease fire !" I searched for an excuse he would accept, and thankfully I found one. I gestured grandly at the devastation, forcing my face into a frustrated expression. "There is no honor in this, Colonel. Do you think these soldiers are running to their death of their own accord ?"
His eyes widened. "You're right, lord Cain. My apologies." He started repeating my order to stop pummelling the defenceless Imperial troopers into paste, and I relaxed slightly – whatever conclusion he'd drawn from my hastily improvised justification, it had satisfied him for now.
Moments later, the artillery barrage stopped all across the defensive line, and an unnatural stillness descended upon the ruined landscape in front of us, troubled only by the distant moans of wounded Guardsmen.
"Send medics in there with escorts," I ordered. "We need intelligence on the enemy."
"At once, lord."
Soon, parties of soldiers emerged from the trenches and moved through the ravaged landscape, picking up wounded Guardsmen. I listened in on the vox, but it seemed the Imperial soldiers were too shell-shocked to think of firing at the people ostensibly coming to their aid. Whether this was because they wanted to live or because the crimson-clad soldiers cut quite the intimidating figure, I didn't know.
"Lord Liberator," a fellow in red robes that I immediately identified as one of the borgs attached to the USA said, walking close to me. "We have managed to break the enemy encryption."
"You have ? Great job." It really was : if just anyone could break into the vox transmissions of the Imperial Guard, it would make nearly the entire Tactica Imperialis obsolete. Once again, the borgs' efficiency surprised me, but right now I couldn't feel angry about it : I needed to know just what the frak was going on. "What can you tell me about the situation ? Do you know why they just charged our guns ?"
"No, lord," he (or she, there wasn't enough of their flesh left for me to be sure) said, shaking their head. "There is a lot of shouting over the lines, and getting a clear picture is difficult." Well, that wasn't exactly surprising, given the utter slaughter they had just suffered. "We do know that the officer in charge is one Commander Chenkov, however."
"Chenkov," I repeated, as the coin finally dropped. "Kubrik Chenkov ? Commander of the Valhallan 18th Infantry Regiment ?"
"Unknown. But the Valhallan 18th have been identified as part of this ill-advised assault."
"Then it definitely is him," I muttered to myself. It all made sense now.
"You know this man ?" asked Ygdal with a sharp look in my direction.
Oh yes, I did. I'd had never met him, thank the Throne, but I had most definitely heard of him. Kubrik Chenkov's story had been used as something of an object lesson by my tutors at the Schola, once I'd been selected as a future Commissar.
Chenkov was the commanding officer of the Valhallan 18th Regiment, nicknamed the 'Tundra Wolves', a name that sounded far more intimidating than the reality, which was that the 18th Infantry Regiment of Valhalla was one of the largest Regiments in the Imperium, a concentration of manpower any tactician worth the name could use to great effect. Unfortunately, Chenkov was no great tactician – in fact, he wasn't any kind of tactician at all.
At the overly-gloriously named Siege of Kotrax, Chenkov had taken overall command through intimidation, and then ordered the Guardsmen to charge straight at an enemy stronghold held by only a few hundred rebels, without any artillery or aerial support. The Valhallan Commander had personally executed dozens of his own men who had protested the insane order, though that number was only a drop in the bucket compared to the absolute carnage that had ensued.
As it turned out, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody except Chenkov, ordering massed charges of infantry against strong defensive positions didn't work. Over ten million soldiers had died as a result of that insanity, achieving precisely nothing beyond water the earth of Kotrax with their blood, and all while Chenkov himself had remained far, far behind the frontline, sipping hot recaf while his men were slaughtered by what I suspected had been very confused heretics, wondering what they done for their Dark Gods to reward them with such a tactical windfall.
Fortunately for Chenkov, a strike team of the Raven Guard had infiltrated the stronghold while its defenders were scratching their heads at his stupidity, and managed to detonate its ammunition stores, before departing the planet without fanfare, called to yet another battlefield. In a frankly astonishing display of bravado, Chenkov had claimed the explosion was the result of the men he'd sent to die managing to breach the fortress and forcing the enemy to self-destruct in an attempt to spite the Imperium. His report had also grossly inflated the strength of the opposition they'd faced, the small stronghold becoming a towering fortress manned by tens of thousands of the rebels' best troops, whose destruction had crippled the planetary rebellion and led to Imperial victory on Kotrax.
Because Chenkov was a member of one of Valhalla's most established lineages, his version of events hadn't been questioned until he had received the Merit of the High Lords and been put in charge of a reconstituted regiment. The event had clearly taught him nothing, and he'd continued to send wave after wave of men to die in every campaign he'd been involved with afterwards, always staying far from the danger himself. It was well known that his bolt pistol had killed a great many more of his own men than the enemy. Segmentum propaganda had played into the legend as well, using Chenkov to prop up the impression that the Imperial Guard could crush any foe through the sheer might of Humanity's numbers, and the brave sacrifice of the heroic (yet forever unnamed) children of Valhalla who had the misfortune to be put under Chenkov's command.
By the time the truth of what had happened on Kotrax had been uncovered, it was too late. My tutors had presented the whole thing as an example of the importance of keeping the bigger picture in mind when it came to maintaining morale, of how compromises were sometimes necessary, and of the fact that the Commissariat was often privy to information that had to be kept under wraps. According to regulations, Chenkov should have been shot long ago, but politics and the greater needs of the Imperium had placed him beyond the Commissariat's reach … for the moment. From what I had picked up, Chenkov's execution had only been delayed. The Commissariat took a dim view of anyone in the Imperial Army killing troopers while not wearing a crimson sash.
Of course, the main lesson I had taken from it all had been to make damn sure not to ever end up anywhere near that maniac. There were worse choices Karamazov could have picked up to lead his task force, but not many.
I briefly summed up all of this to the colonel, who naturally took it as confirmation of his belief that all Imperial commanders were incompetent, inbred lunatics who spent the lives of their men like bullets from an autocannon in the hands of an over-enthusiastic ogryn. I considered telling him that men like Chenkov were the exception rather than the rule, but thought better of it.
After all, I wanted the rebellion to fail when faced with a competent and reasonable Imperial response. And underestimating your enemy was always a good way to get your arse kicked, as I'd shown many a fellow juvie on the scrumball pitch.
Karamazov's choice of military commander made it clear that this expedition wouldn't be the one to bring Slawkenberg back into the Imperium's embrace. I may not think much of the USA's chances against a properly trained, equipped, and led Imperial force, but Chenkov's stupidity was worth an entire Titan Legio to the opposite side.
"My lord," said a voice in my comm-bead, cutting through my thoughts on a frequency reserved for urgent broadcasts (which immediately made my palms tingle). "This is observer post Gamma-Twelve. We're seeing movement : the Imperials are preparing for another assault."
"What ?" I exclaimed before I could stop myself. "Are you sure ? No, nevermind." He wouldn't have contacted me personally if he wasn't. "Do you know what they are planning ?"
"As far as we can tell from their transmissions, the exact same thing as before. We are hearing a lot of noise about how the troopers' faith in the Emperor was lacking in the first attack."
I felt genuinely appalled. I wouldn't pretend to care about the lives of the soldiers of Slawkenberg beyond their use as meat shields to protect my own hide, but this wasn't just wasteful, it was grotesque. The first wave had the advantage of surprise at the very least : did Chenkov think he could win by throwing Guardsmen at us until we ran out of ammo ? The USA leadership was made up of a bunch of Khorne worshippers and even they wouldn't be that callous.
"Evacuate the prisoners to the back of the line," I ordered. "See if you can find people among them willing to vox their comrades and tell them that if they surrender, we'll treat their lives with more care than their commanding officer."
Against most Imperial Guard forces, such a ploy would've been useless : even had the faith of the troopers been so weak, it would be the job of their Commissars to shoot anyone who looked like they wanted to take the offer. But this was Chenkov's Regiment, whose soldiers had been slaughtered time and again due to their leader's incompetence, only to be replenished with yet more bolter fodder from Valhalla. I had a feeling these soldiers would feel very differently, and the 18th hadn't had Commissars since Kotrax. When the next Imperial task force arrived, I wanted them to see that we had taken prisoners instead of slaughtering the wounded in a mass sacrifice to the Dark Gods.
"It will be done, Lord Liberator," saluted Ygdal. "Where will you be ?"
I looked around, searching for a way out. I didn't want to stay on the defensive line : I would be expected to lead from the front again, and despite the overwhelming advantage of the USA in this fight, all it would take was one lucky shot and I would be explaining myself to the Emperor in person.
I looked at the detailed map of the area I had pulled up on my dataslate, and something caught my eye.
"Jurgen," I called out to my aide before pointing at the map, "do you think you could get us here without drawing attention ?"
He hummed thoughtfully to himself for a few seconds before nodding. I turned to look at the soldiers around us :
"I need a squad of volunteers," I told them, immediately getting the attention of every trooper in the vicinity. "We are going to do some reconnaissance-in-force in the mountains : I want to know just what the hell they think they are doing."
With Jurgen's assistance, we were easily able to navigate the trek through the steadily growing hills, leaving the diminishing sounds of battle behind us. The journey brought to mind what had happened with Drogiro Giorba, but the soldiers had gone through enough training to be able to march without causing another landslide, and I let myself think that maybe I had gotten away with it this time.
I felt pretty good about my made-up 'mission'. The location I had selected was just far enough from our lines that I would look suitably heroic for venturing forth, while also being out of the way of the paths the Valhallans were taking as they hurled themselves in front of our guns. And I would have a squad of troopers with me, so any stragglers (or, more likely, smart soldiers trying to avoid the butchery) would be easily dealt with.
So of course, it turned out Chenkov himself was already there when we arrived, along with a full score of his best (or, given his predilections, most sociopathic) men. I would have given the order to hide, but the soldiers were wearing bright red carapace armor, which didn't exactly suit itself to camouflage. Within seconds, we were taking cover behind snow-covered piles of rock as a flurry of las-bolts slammed into them.
"Incredible," breathed the sergeant of the squad accompanying me and Jurgen. "How did you know he was there, sir ?"
"I didn't know for sure," I answered him truthfully enough, mentally cursing myself, Chenkov, and the Dark Gods. The smart move would be to withdraw and call in an artillery strike, but I doubted Chenkov would stay in place long enough for that once we left. The man might not exactly have impressed me with the depth of his intellect so far, but he clearly had a good survival instinct to have lived through his many frak-ups. Also, running away wouldn't do my reputation any favor.
So I resigned myself to the inevitable and turned to my aide. "Jurgen, if you would ?"
"Of course, sir," he replied, showing no more concern than if I'd asked him to refill my amasec glass.
He stepped out of cover, immediately drawing fire, but the las-bolts that hit him pinged uselessly against his own set of carapace armor. The air filled with the smell of ozone, and my skin crawled with static energy as he called upon the unnatural powers that had brought him to the attention of the traffickers who'd kidnapped him on Valhalla.
I felt a pressure on my skull, growing and growing, like a headache on the verge of becoming a migraine but not quite committing to it. Around me, the USA troopers groaned in pain, but held their ground, either out of fear of being shot if they moved or, more likely, looking weak in front of their comrades, not to mention their glorious Liberator.
As for myself, I had been present when Emeli had been transfigured into a daemon. This, while unpleasant, was nothing in comparison, and I bore it stoically, absently noting yet more awed looks in my direction from the troopers as I did so.
After a few seconds, Jurgen had finished charging up, and unleashed his attack. Out of morbid curiosity (and the whispering thought that I might need to go up against him myself one day and should learn all I could about his abilities), I took a look, and had to keep my emotions from showing on my face at the sight.
The first five Guardsmen to die simply burst apart as if a grenade had exploded inside their stomach. The las-fire stopped at once as the survivors froze in place – then half of them weren't survivors anymore, as their necks twisted three hundred and sixty degrees on their axis with a series of sickening crunches. The seven remaining soldiers started to scream in mixed shock and horror, before Jurgen clapped his hands in front of him, and their skulls were crushed as if by the fist of an invisible Ogryn.
The whole thing had taken less than a couple of heartbeats (and my heart was beating rather fast at the moment). Jurgen turned to look at me with an expectant look on his face, and I was incongruously reminded of a dog looking up at his master after performing a trick and waiting for a treat.
"Well done, Jurgen," I said weakly. Fortunately, he didn't seem to notice, and I turned my attention back on the carnage he'd wrought, a flicker of motion drawing my eyes.
To my surprise, Chenkov was still alive. He had stayed behind his troopers as they fired at us, and must have stayed out of Jurgen's focus that way (or perhaps my aide had deliberately spared him for one reason or another).
He was, quite understandably, running for his life, the path he and his cohorts had taken to reach the small plateau. But much as I might empathize with his desire to preserve his life, I didn't feel particularly generous towards him at the moment. I could forgive him coming to Slawkenberg : he was Imperial Guard, and following orders. I could forgive being part of an operation that sought to kill me : I had taken part in a rebellion against the Golden Throne, whatever the circumstances might have been. But the sheer wasteful incompetence with which he had prosecuted this campaign had ruined my chances of carefully orchestrating the rebellion's defeat and Slawkenberg's return to the Imperium from behind the scenes.
Also, I had sworn an oath to fulfill my duties as a member of the Commissariat, and if there ever was an Imperial officer deserving of a Commissar's attention, it was Kubrik Chenkov.
So I drew my bolt pistol, carefully took aim, and shot him in the back. I had never been the best shot of my class, and preferred a las-pistol to the heavier weapon I was now stuck with for image reasons. But Chenkov was less than thirty meters away in the open and running in a straight line (which was one more sign the man had never seen actual combat). If I couldn't make a shot like this, my instructors would never have let me graduate.
My shot flew true, and the Commander of the Tundra Wolves went down in a shower of gore as it detonated, tearing through his uniform and most of his torso. Conscious of the eyes of the troopers on me and of the need to keep playing up to their image of me, I stalked through the snow toward the corpse and turned it over with my boot. His face was frozen in a death-mask of terror, and I felt a shiver running down my spine at the sight that had nothing to do with the cold.
I felt a strange coldness within me that had nothing to do with the freezing temperature. This was the first time I'd deliberately killed a member of the Imperial Guard myself. As a future Commissar, I had known that day would come long before Emeli had dragged me into this mess, even though I fully intended to do it as little as possible in order to avoid painting a target on my back in the eyes of the soldiers whose morale I would've been responsible for. And, as I've said, if ever there was someone who deserved to be shot by a Commissar, it was Chenkov. The man was to blame for the deaths of millions of soldiers of the Emperor and had completely avoided taking responsibility for it.
Yet still, looking into his dead eyes, I felt … something. Maybe the souls of the Guardsmen who had died at Kotrax would rest easier, I mused to myself, before shaking off my sudden bout of melancholy.
"What do we do now, sir ?" asked the sergeant. A good question; I had been pondering the same.
"We'll take the bodies back with us to the line," I decided. "And somebody call the borgs : I'm going to make an announcement."
"Soldiers of the Imperium, hear me," said a deep, calm voice from the vox-speakers of the communication post. "I am Ciaphas Cain, and I speak for the Liberation Council, Slawkenberg's government by the will of its people.
Moments ago, Commander Chenkov died at my hands. He did not die alongside the thousands of your brothers that he sent to die in a pointless and unsupported attack at established defensive lines. Instead, I killed him while he cowered far behind the frontline, having killed several of your comrades to threaten the rest to charge despite the grim fate his incompetent leadership led the first wave to, rather than admit his own failures.
I have no quarrel with you, for I know none of you had any choice in coming here, and you haven't done any harm to my people. Those of your comrades who survived have been taken prisoner, and shall be treated with all the respect owed by one warrior to another.
This war should never have been fought in the first place, for we are all children of Humanity. Too many of your brothers have already died in vain; you need not add your own lives to this pyre to Chenkov's hubris.
I implore you to surrender. You cannot defeat us, and you know that your masters will not allow you to retreat. We will not attack, for there is nothing of value in these mountains, and neither the Liberation Council nor I will throw away the lives of the brave soldiers under our command.
Know this : your masters will force you to die for nothing, simply because the alternative is admitting they are wrong, and that is something they will never do.
You need not die for their fragile egos. Throw down your weapons and come down the mountains, and we will welcome you. I swear upon my soul that you've less to fear from us than you do from those who call themselves your betters while staying far from danger themselves."
The transmission ended, leaving behind a silence that was only disturbed by the howling of the wind. In the luxurious mountain estate that had been claimed as the ground headquarters of the Imperial expedition, the Valhallan officers who had been left behind looked at one another. There were three of them, each a survivor from years spent under Chenkov's command. The only reason they'd survived that long was the same one they had avoided being sent out to charge this time : they were the 18th's best when it came to logistics, and even someone like Chenkov knew he needed people capable of keeping his soldiers from starving or having no ammunition to fire.
Well, he had known that. The fact Chenkov hadn't immediately spoken up against the claims of this 'Cain' was a pretty damning indicator that the man was speaking the truth when he'd announced the commander's death.
"We could withdraw back to orbit," suggested the first officer to speak up. "The locals don't have anything that could hit the transports on the way, and even if they try to cross the mountains, we've few enough people left the evacuation should be over by the time they get here. Once we get reinforcements from Sector command and, you know, pick up a better landing position, we could still win this."
"Yes," agreed another, "but there's a problem with that. Do you want to tell Karamazov that we left the planet the moment our commander got himself killed ?"
"Ah. I see what you mean." At least Chenkov had only killed people who had disobeyed his orders. Or didn't follow them fast enough for his liking. Or failed to show him what he considered proper respect. Or just looked at him funny, whatever that meant …
Anyway, Chenkov had killed a lot of Guardsmen since the Inquisitor had called the muster to reclaim Slawkenberg from the heretics. Yet he still hadn't been as feared as Inquisitor Karamazov, the man who had ordered the execution of a whole bunch of the Sector's highest-ranking Militarum officers and Munitorum clerks just to get the task force assembled.
"What do you want to bet that if we ask for instructions, the Inquisitor'll tell us to fight to the end and lay low our lives in service to the Emperor ?" asked a third with a bitter smile.
"Do I look like an idiot to you ?" retorted the first before glancing at his comrades one by one. "So, what do you reckon ? Surrender ?"
"I mean, their boss killed Chenkov." The officer spat at the name of the man who had gotten so many good Valhallan soldiers killed and gotten a frakking chestful of medals for it. "So they can't be that bad."
"True that. Do you think we can offer him a drink ? I still have a pot of tanna brewing."
On the bridge of the Pyroclast Retribution, Fyodor Karamazov seethed with righteous fury. Around him, the crew remained respectfully silent as they tended to their duties, the vox-officer who had relayed the message from the surface promptly returning to her post.
Commander Chenkov, the Imperial hero he had appointed as leader of the military forces Karamazov had called to his banner, was dead, treacherously slain by the heretics' own foul leader, the renegade Ciaphas Cain. And no sooner had he died that the remains of the worthless rabble those incompetents at Sector command had sent him in place of the true soldiers of the God-Emperor he had demanded had broken their oaths to the Golden Throne and surrendered to the enemy, condemning their souls to perdition in order to prolong their miserable lives.
It was clear that Chenkov's leadership had been the only thing holding them together. In hindsight, the many executions the Commander had been forced to enact on their way to this system should have been a sign of the Militarum's wilful sabotage of this holy campaign.
When it had become obvious that the heretics were too gutless to dare attack the well-defended position Karamazov and Chenkov had chosen for the landing (one that was both unassailable and home to the last untainted shrine to the God-Emperor on Slawkenberg, a clear sign of Him on Earth), Chenkov had suggested they go on the offensive. Clearly the Archenemy's slaves on the planet were so lacking in courage and skill that they would break before the might of the Emperor's Hammer.
And it would have worked, of this Karamazov was certain, if not for the treachery of the soldiers, whom Chenkov had reported had disobeyed his orders and somehow forgotten to bring the tanks and vehicles that had been transported to the base with them, leading to the failure of the first wave to secure all of its appointed objectives. Unable to trust his subordinates, Chenkov had bravely gone to the front to lead his men in person (regardless of that heretic Cain's lies to the contrary, which were obvious to anyone – after all, how could Chenkov had met the leader of the traitors if he hadn't been on the frontline ?), only to perish in heroic combat.
Karamazov took a deep breath to center himself, holding the righteous fury he felt at the center of his mind without letting it control his actions and make him lash out at his surroundings. Once he was confident he could contain his holy rage, he turned to the captain of the ship, who stood straight as the gaze of his lord fell upon him.
"Give the order to prepare for Exterminatus," Karamazov declared, his voice clear and cold as fury of His Divine Majesty. "If Slawkenberg persists in its defiance of the God-Emperor, then it shall burn. And set up another planetary broadcast : I want these foul heretics to know that their judgment is coming, and that there is nothing their treacherous leaders and foul gods can do to save them."
Notes:
AN : Chenkov getting ten millions men killed in a single operation is canon, just so you know. The only things I changed were the fact his "victory" was actually achieved by the Raven Guard, and the Imperial propaganda factor (which, given that Chenkov's backstory is given in an Imperial Guard Codex and those are explicitly written from the POV of the faction they describe, might as well be canon). Also the fact that no Commissars are attached to the 18th Valhallan.
I did consider writing an epic duel between Cain and Chenkov. And then I decided it would be funnier to have Chenkov die like a chump instead, so that's what I wrote. Going by the rules of the 5th Edition Guard Codex (which contains Chenkov's profile), I don't think Cain's bolt pistol should have been able to kill him in one shot (Chenkov has two Wounds and, unless I misread things, a bolt pistol can only do one point of damage per shot in that edition), but it's not like that really matters. And don't worry, Cain will get his chance to show off his impeccable swordsmanship and unrivaled courage before this arc is over.
To be clear, the two Valhallan Regiments Cain meets in For the Emperor aren't part of Karamazov's task force. I toyed with having them be part of it, but the timeline didn't work out, and (more importantly) I think I can use them better later. Because, frankly, having Kasteen and Broklaw join Cain after his forces slaughter their Regiments (even if it's the fault of their commanding officer) stretched credibility, even for this story.
One thing to keep in mind (I certainly struggle with it) is that at this point in the story, Cain is young. Like, "fresh out of the Schola" young. Meaning he is in his early twenties at best, and already rules over an entire world while enjoying the affections of a Daemon Princess of Slaanesh. Alexander the Great, eat your heart out.
I admit that I'm afraid this story might be getting out of my control and slipping away from being pure crack/parody into something semi-serious. Do you feel that way too ? I might need to amp up the ridiculousness of the story if that's not just me.
Well, that's all for now. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and I look forward to your thoughts and suggestions. Next up should be another chapter of A Young Girl's Weaponization of the Mythos.
Zahariel out.
Chapter Text
Once again, Slawkenberg heard the words of Inquisitor Fyodor Karamazov, and the people knew fear as the madman told them that, for their sins, their entire world would burn. The Inquisitor was still broadcasting from his ship, detailing the mechanics of Exterminatus at length when he wasn't ranting about the supposed sins the planet had committed against the God-Emperor that warranted such total annihilation. By now, most had stopped listening, apart from a handful who were either forced to by their duties or morbidly curious as to how far into insanity a supposed agent of the Throne could sink.
There had been no speech from Cain this time, only a brief public announcement by the Liberation Council that their leader was on his way back to Cainopolis, that there was a plan to stop the Imperial madman from destroying the planet, and that everyone should stay calm and cooperate with the authorities. It was short, and without any detail as to how this miracle might be achieved.
Still, there was no panic. All across the planet, work stopped as people returned to their homes to be with their loved ones should the worst come to pass. Temples filled up as hundreds of thousands moved there to pray, some to the new gods they had been taught about, some to the distant Emperor they still refused to believe had abandoned them for daring to dream of a better future, some to whoever was listening, promising to pay any price so long as their loved ones were kept safe. But most of all, they prayed to their hero, their champion : to the Liberator, that he might deliver them from peril once more.
By the time the transport settled on the landing platform of the ex-gubernatorial palace, the stark terror I had felt at Karamazov's proclamation of his intent to subject Slawkenberg to Exterminatus an hour ago had receded to a gibbering, terrified voice at the back of my mind that I could force myself to ignore. Of course, the only reason I wasn't screaming and running for the deepest hole I could find (not that it would help) was that, right after the start of Karamazov's broadcast, I'd been contacted by Jafar telling me Krystabel and him had a plan to save the planet, which required my and Jurgen's presence at the Council's headquarters.
I had really wanted to ask for details, but caution had held me back. There was a chance the Imperials were listening in on our communications, in which case talking about the plan on the vox could ruin my only chance of survival. Instead, I had ordered a flyer to my position as fast as possible, and impressed upon the pilot how urgent the whole thing was. He certainly had taken my orders to heart : if not for how I had much more important things unsettling my stomach, the speed of our return trip might have left me nauseous.
I had thought that Exterminatus, the destruction of a world, was something which required careful deliberation in all but the most urgent of cases, not something any Inquisitor could declare on his own in a fit of pique. Certainly my old tutors, when they had mentioned this terrible tool in the Imperium's arsenal, had made it clear that it was something only deployed in the direst of circumstances, where the planet in question was irrevocably lost or its continued existence posed an urgent threat to the rest of the Imperium. Either they had been mistaken, or Karamazov didn't think the rules applied to him. Considering how he'd acted so far, I was tending toward the latter option.
This wasn't the attitude I'd expected from an Inquisitor. How could Karamazov do this ? Slawkenberg had to be brought back into the Imperial fold, yes, and rebellion against the Golden Throne, however justified, couldn't be tolerated – especially since I knew damn well the Uprising had been supported by the servants of the Dark Powers. But to go straight to Exterminatus after the first military defeat, one that frankly speaking had been caused by Imperial incompetence rather than heretical cunning ? That was unthinkable. I would have thought Karamazov was bluffing to convince us to surrender, except one of the first things he'd said in his (still ongoing, I quickly checked, did the man never shut up ?) broadcast was that 'only the God-Emperor could grant salvation to our miserable souls'.
The moment the flyer landed, Jurgen and I got out of our seats. I gave a perfunctory thank to the pilot (if we all lived through this, I would make sure to learn his name and give him some kind of commendation, as that really had been impressive flying, but at the moment I was rather distracted) and rushed outside. Jafar was there waiting for us, and he gestured for us to follow him, the three of us walking briskly through the corridors. The building felt oddly empty, most of the workers having left to be with their families.
"You said you had a plan," I told the head paper-pusher without preamble. "Explain."
"Lady Krystabel and I talked after the madman's proclamation," the cultist of Tzeentch said without a hint of irony, though I suppose he had never ordered a planet's destruction. "We believe that by combining the efforts of my acolytes with her sisterhood's most experienced members, we can use sorcery to teleport a group of warriors aboard the Inquisitor's ship in orbit. Once there, Gods willing, they can stop the Exterminatus. We've been preparing for it since then."
It was a bold plan. It was also heretical, and almost guaranteed suicide for those who took part in it. But unfortunately, it was also the only shot at survival we had. I had considered ordering the few crafts we had in orbit to try to stop the Pyroclast Retribution from firing, by ramming the ship if necessary. But while I was reasonably certain the crews would have obeyed that order (their families were on the planet, after all), a quick moment of studying the situation in space had made me realize it would be pointless. The Pyroclast Retribution had more than enough conventional firepower to annihilate our vessels : there was a reason why it had escorted the troop transports on its own.
As for Jafar and Krystabel starting the preparations without asking for my approval, time was of the essence, and comms security had prevented them from asking for it. Even in the Guard, such a show of initiative would have been approved by any officer knowing his business.
"How many people would you be able to send ?" I asked.
"With the help of sir Jurgen to power the ritual, around twenty."
Meaning that my aide wouldn't be one of those sent across, I realized. A shame : his powers would have been very useful in the confined spaces of a spaceship.
"A ship like that must have a crew of thousands," I pointed out. "How are twenty soldiers meant to do anything ?"
"We asked Tesilon-Kappa about that," replied Jafar, who I must admit was pretty spry for a bureaucrat, keeping up the pace without any sign of effort. While not as out of shape as most Administratum drones I'd met, he wasn't particularly muscular either, and I wondered whether it was adrenaline or the gifts of his infernal patron which were helping him along. "They have volunteered to be part of the boarding party, and think that they can use their skills to assist."
"I see." For a moment, I dared to hope that I would make it through after all. Then Jafar spoke up again :
"Of course, the so-called holy wards around the ship would normally make this all but impossible with our resources, but with a soul of your stature among the boarding party, such obstacles will be swept away."
I nearly fell on my face as his words registered.
"What do you mean by that ?" I asked, barely managing to keep my voice level.
"Lady Krystabel was contacted by her mistress while we were making preparations," he said. "She told her that she'll assist from her side of the Veil, but you need to be part of the ritual for it to succeed, so that the blessings of the Dark Gods favor our efforts."
I wanted to scream and curse Emeli, but I held my tongue. There was no getting out of this now : I was going to have to be part of this suicide mission, and I wouldn't even have Jurgen with me to crush anyone in our way to bloody paste.
On the other hand, while the thought of boarding an Inquisitorial ship rightfully filled me with terror, my chances of survival might actually be better than if I stayed here. At least I would be able to do something, as opposed to simply sitting down drinking amasec and waiting for the end while trying to come up with an excuse the Emperor would accept before He hurled my soul into the Realms of Chaos. And even if the mission failed and Slawkenberg was destroyed, I would still have a chance, however remote, to hide aboard the Pyroclast Retribution and escape.
I was going to do my damn best to prevent the Exterminatus from being fired, of course. I may be a selfish, deceitful coward who had broken his oaths to the Golden Throne in order to save his miserable hide, but I had to draw the line at letting billions of people die in fire just so that all traces of my sins would be consumed in the flames. However, if the operation failed, well. No point in throwing away my life for no reason.
The three of us arrived in the room where the ritual's preparations were taking place. A ritual circle had been drawn on the white stone floor, and fourteen cultists stood around it at regular intervals : eight wearing the cerulean robes of Tzeentch's acolytes, who were soon joined by Jafar himself, and six the much more revealing clothing of Emeli's Handmaidens. Krystabel was among them, and she nodded at me with a very pretty smile as I entered. I returned her nod, knowing that for all I knew Emeli was looking through her eyes now (and wasn't that particular revelation worrying).
As he took his place at the sixteenth and last position around the circle, Jurgen looked at me like a kicked canine, and I felt compelled to lay a hand on his shoulder.
"I'll be careful, Jurgen," I said, which was perfectly true. "Don't worry : I'll be back before you know it."
He nodded silently, then closed his eyes and started to meditate. I turned to look at the rest of the group within the circle : apart from Tesilon-Kappa, there were eighteen USA troopers in full carapace armor. Mahlone had chosen the best of his soldiers for this, and it showed. Each of the twenty troopers was a hulking brute of a man, giving me the unusual experience of being smaller than everyone around me. All of them were carrying weapons for close-quarters combat, and stood at attention as I approached.
"You all know what is at stake," I told them. "Though this will be far from easy, our plan is simple. Once we are aboard the enemy ship, we will follow Tesilon-Kappa's guidance to sabotage its Exterminatus capabilities. Once that is done, we will use the ship's own evacuation methods to get the frak out of there and back to the planet."
"Make no mistake : this will be the most dangerous thing any of us has ever done. From the moment we arrive, everyone outside this group should be considered an enemy to be dispatched with all haste. We will need to adapt to unforeseen circumstances and threats on the fly, surrounded by enemies that will outnumber us a thousand to one, and we will need to move quickly, lest it all be for nothing. But I have faith that together, we will succeed, and save this world from the madman who threatens it. Any questions ?"
There weren't any, meaning I couldn't delay this any longer. Still, my training as a Commissar forced me to add :
"Know that if you fall this day, it will be as heroes, and you will be remembered for as long as Slawkenberg stands." I closed my eyes, and said : "Begin the ritual !"
Again, there was a sense of growing pressure as Jurgen drew upon the limitless energy of the Warp, sending it flowing through the circle. The eyes of the other witches began to glow as they changed guttural words that were just on the edge of being recognizable – then there was a flash of something that was light in the same way the Daemon Princess Emeli was the same woman I'd met what felt like a lifetime ago, and the Materium fell away, a cheap painting kicked aside to reveal the horrific majesty that lurked behind it.
It lasted an instant; it lasted forever.
I saw things I cannot describe as everything I was and could ever be was hurled through the Immaterium, until I sensed a barrier in the distance, one that pretended to be golden but was merely cheap gilding laid over blood-red rusted iron. As I approached, I felt a sudden fear that I would smash against that barrier and be broken to pieces, scattered across the Sea of Souls.
Suddenly, I felt a presence watching over me, keeping the other predators at bay and tearing at the gilded light that stood before me. I knew at once that this was Emeli, protecting me and opening the way. For a timeless moment, I felt the fire of what she felt for me, its warmth threatening to consume everything that I was.
Then the insanity of the Empyrean abruptly vanished. As my senses returned, I found myself standing in a corridor, surrounded by metal vibrating to the noise of distant engines. The gravity was subtly different from Slawkenberg's : I was on the Pyroclast Retribution. The ritual had worked.
Then I realized that I was alone. There was no trace of the USA troopers or Tesilon-Kappa around me.
Frak.
My hand reached for my comm-bead before stopping. The borgs' goodies were good, but if I was worried about comms being intercepted from orbit, then the risk was far greater here. The Imperials wouldn't even need to decrypt the transmission : merely detecting it would tell them someone was aboard who shouldn't be. I left the comm-bead on receiver, although I was hoping that any others who had successfully made it to the ship would be smart enough to realize the same thing I had.
Alone, I drew my weapons and cautiously started to walk. My hive-rat's senses didn't hear anybody close by : I seemed to have been lucky enough to end up in an unoccupied section of the ship.
I emerged from what I now realized had been some sort of maintenance passage running parallel to the ship's actual corridors, and into a small antechamber, where several passages met before a pair of heavy ornamented wodden doors. The High Gothic engraved atop the doors indicated that this led to the ship's chapel (or at least one of them : given that this was an Inquisitorial ship, there were probably more across the decks).
The doors weren't completely closed, and I could faintly hear a voice coming from the other side. It sounded vaguely familiar, and after a moment I realized why. Not believing I could be so unlucky, I cautiously approached the entrance, intending to take a look through the interstice between the massive wodden doors to confirm what my intuition was telling me.
So intent was I on not making any sound that I missed the small puddle of candle wax dripping from the chandelier lighting up the room. Just as I was bending over to put my eye against the opening, I slipped, and instinctively threw my hands up to catch myself. Unfortunately, the doors in front of me were very well-oiled, and the end result was that they slammed open with a thunderous boom, while I stumbled directly into the room as I tried to restore my balance.
The chapel of the Pyroclast Retribution was a typical example of Gothic architecture : a single, long nave with rows of uncomfortable-looking pews, held up by pillars decorated with scenes of triumphant angels at the top and burning heretics at the bottom. At the end of the room was a ten-meters high golden statue of the Emperor, in His aspect as the Judge : the statue's face was set into a wrathful scowl, and His gauntleted hands held a greatsword pointing down. At the foot of the statue was an altar, and there, standing before the altar and staring at me with wide, bloodshot eyes, was Inquisitor Fyodor Karamazov himself. A servo-skull floated next to him, and it slowly turned to look at me as I stood there, petrified.
Then I remembered that Karamazov had still been broadcasting when the ritual had taken place. Meaning that, right now, the entire planet could see me. I was still trying to process that thought when Karamazov shook himself of the shock of seeing me first :
"You," he said, putting more hatred into that single word than I'd have thought possible. "Ciaphas Cain."
Of course he recognized me. He probably hadn't known my name when he arrived in the system, unless the astropaths had been able to send a much more detailed message than I thought possible under the circumstances, but he had to have watched the broadcast I'd made in response to his initial proclamation. Meaning that, unless Karamazov had been stupid or arrogant enough not to send any information back to the rest of the Imperium (which, given his actions so far, I gave fairly good odds), my part in the Uprising would soon be known to the Commissariat.
"Inquisitor Karamazov," I replied as if I'd just dropped in for a spot of tea and a game of regicide. "I've come here to stop you from destroying Slawkenberg."
He laughed. "Do you expect me to believe that ? I know your kind, heretic. You care nothing for the lives of your followers. You came here seeking the glory of killing me, so that you could earn the favor of your dark masters."
"You think I care about glory ?" I replied incredulously. "Glory means nothing to me. I don't want to be here. Just like I don't want for Slawkenberg to be threatened, for everyone on it to risk death because you can't handle how badly you have frakked up."
"You dare ?!"
Karamazov drew his power sword and charged. I fired with my bolt pistol, but my shot was blocked by a shimmering field : the Inquisitor had some kind of personal force field keeping him safe from ranged attacks. I barely had time to holster my gun and take hold of my chainsword with both hands before he reached me.
"You will die first," he spat in my face. "The rest of your miserable rebellion can watch me kill you, and know that they are next. None are beyond the reach of the Emperor's judgement !"
He pulled his sword back for another blow, which I blocked, before launching a riposte he battered aside. As we duelled beneath the Emperor's stone gaze, the Inquisitor continued to rant, but I tuned him out. Every bit of my focus was needed simply to stay alive. I was taller than Karamazov, but he had the advantage of experience and a fanatic's strength. More importantly, his weapon was just plain superior to mine.
Every time our blades clashed, some of my chainsword's adamantium teeth flew out, damaged by the power sword's energy field. If this continued, before long my weapon would break completely, and I would be left with nothing but my bolt pistol and harsh words to defend myself with. My suit of carapace armor wouldn't protect me from a power sword : if it came to it, I was doomed.
Drawing upon every ounce of my training by my old Schola tutor Miyamoto de Bergerac, I caught Karamazov's downward strike. The sword was so close to my face I could almost feel its energy field against my skin, and with a shriek of terror I twisted my chainsword around the blade before hurling it from Karamazov's hands and sending it flying through the air.
The flow of adrenaline coursing through my blood drove me onward. Before the Inquisitor could react I struck with all my strength, sending him stumbling backward with his guts spilling from the eviscerating blow I had just landed. He caught himself on the altar at the foot of the statue of the God-Emperor, staring at me with wide eyes, before his own power sword fell point first through his skull, pinning him to the altar and killing him instantly.
I panted heavily, my heart beating as though I'd just run through one of the insane training courses I'd designed for the USA even if the fight had only lasted for a minute at most. Once I'd recovered, I sheathed my chainsword and walked toward the altar on which the Inquisitor's corpse laid. A pendant hung across his neck, in the shape of the Inquisition's stylized 'I', its chain severed by the blade that had killed its owner. Pushed by some nameless instinct, I picked it up and pocketed it.
"Lord Liberator," said the servo-skull at this point, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
"… Tesilon-Kappa ?" I asked after a few seconds, because I couldn't think of anyone else who might contact me like this. "Is that you ?"
"It is," the skull confirmed. "I am glad to see you are well : when you didn't rematerialize with me and the rest of our party, I feared the worst."
"So did I, when I came to alone," I told them honestly. "I'm glad you made it through as well. Where are you ? And come to think of it, how are you talking to me right now ?"
"To answer both of your questions : the soldiers and I have reached the engineering deck and disabled the tech-priests there. Using the consoles there, I have bound the ship's machine-spirit to my will : I see everything the ship sees. It is quite exhilarating, if mentally exhausting."
Well, that was good to hear. I didn't know much about how starships worked, but maybe they could move the ship away from Slawkenberg so the Exterminatus ammunition couldn't be fired –
"I have set the plasma reactor into overdrive," Tesilon-Kappa continued. "It will detonate within twenty minutes, which will be before the Exterminatus is ready for deployment. I advise you to leave before then, Lord Liberator."
I held back from screaming at Tesilon-Kappa, knowing that alienating them would risk my only chance at getting out of this ship alive.
"Do you have access to the ship's schematics ?" I said instead. "Can you tell me where to go ?"
"We are moving to the landing bay one deck below your current position," they replied immediately. "I can see a transport we can use to get off the ship : judging by its markings, it belonged to the Inquisitor himself, so none of the crew will dare nor be able to get onboard without us. This servo-skull will guide you there. By my calculations, there should be just enough times for us to get clear."
No sooner had they finished talking that alarms started blaring through the entire ship as their sabotage of the plasma reactor triggered them. The servo-skull began flying away at speed, and I ran to keep up with it, sparing no further glance for the skewered corpse of Fyodor Karamazov.
Krystabel stood on the landing platform, a smile on her lips, as she watched the gunship descend from the skies. Even from this distance, she could tell it was more advanced than anything she had ever seen on Slawkenberg, though there would be need for some cosmetic modifications before it could be a steed suitable for the champion it carried.
Around her stood the other members of the Liberation Council, as well as an honor guard to greet the Savior of Slawkenberg. She could hear the sounds of celebration emanating from all of Cainopolis as the people rejoiced that their doom had been averted. The whole planet had witnessed the Liberator's duel with Karamazov, heard his fury as the mad Inquisitor had promised to make the world into a monument to the ruin his vile kind would inflict on all who dared rise from under the Imperium's crushing boot. And then, they had seen the fireball in the sky as the ship had been destroyed. Thankfully, Jafar had thought to broadcast Cain's survival immediately, before the thought that the Liberator might have sacrificed himself to save them had time to settle in.
With the threat of Exterminatus removed, the agents of the Council had returned to work, in order to address the most pressing concerns while the rest of the planet celebrated. The Guardsmen who had surrendered were being brought into temporary detention camps until more permanent accommodations were ready. With their base in the mountain resort empty, the USA had started moving the gear they had left behind with the seized transports, adding the tanks and heavy vehicles that had been stranded to their arsenal.
Before the Pyroclast Retribution had detonated, its crew had fled, a rain of escape pods that were even now plunging across the planet like a rain of meteors. The USA had mobilized to capture those survivors before they could get far from their landings, lest they go to ground and become a new threat for the population.
Meanwhile, in the void, Slawkenberg's defence flotilla had moved in immediately after the destruction of the Imperial flagship. A couple of the transport ships had been far enough away from the Pyroclast Retribution to avoid damage and were well on their way out of the system, but the remaining three had been caught in the blast and were in the process of being boarded. While they lacked firepower of their own, their capture was the first step to spreading the creed of the Liberation Council beyond Slawkenberg.
There was much left to do, but for now, Krystabel wanted to enjoy this moment. Such was the way of Slaanesh, after all. Krystabel knew her mistress was watching through her eyes : she could feel her presence through the bond that had been forged between them in the House of Remembrance. That bond had only grown stronger now, her participation in today's great work bringing her soul closer to the ineffable glory of the Empyrean.
When they had performed the ritual, she had sensed the added weight of millions of souls praying for salvation, granting even more power to the working. It might have succeeded without it, of course, but at the very least the unexpected support had lessened the strain on Jurgen, as well as made her mistress' self-appointed task of safeguarding her beloved's spirit during the journey easier.
Krystabel didn't think the Liberator had planned for it to happen, exactly. But she knew how the people of Slawkenberg would react to the miracle that had saved them, once the rush of relief had passed and they had time to think. Especially with the preachers of her and Jafar's creeds making sure word spread of how that deliverance had been achieved. They would flock to the true gods, whose champion had stood between them and obliteration.
The boarding ramp of the gunship came down, and out strode Ciaphas Cain, flanked by the USA troopers who had survived the operation. The contrast between their damaged wargear and his impeccable attire spoke of the Liberator's martial skill – Krystabel wasn't so foolish as to disregard the prowess of the USA, even if their devotion to the God of War made them unimaginative boors.
She knelt, along with everyone else on the platform.
"Welcome back, my lord," she said.
Slowly, painfully, the mind that called itself Fyodor Karamazov awoke. Memory was the first thing to return, and with it came the burning sting of failure.
He was dead. Cain, the heretic, had killed him. A flash of phantom pain ran through him as he remembered the renegade's chainsword ripping him apart.
He had failed. The heretic yet lived, and if Cain could reach him in the middle of his ship then he doubted his servants would be able to stop him – for how could they succeed where one such as he had failed ? And so, instead of being purged by fire, Slawkenberg would continue to exist, a tumor within the holy body of the Imperium.
He opened the memory of eyes, ready to prostrate himself before the Golden Throne and subject himself to the judgment of the God-Emperor.
But there was no radiance, no divine fire ready to purge the unworthy and remake the blessed so that they might stood at His side and share His vigil for all eternity. Instead, there was smoke and bone, and the sounds of decadence. The air reeked of scents he couldn't identify, but knew to be unholy.
… this wasn't the Golden Throne.
"No," said a voice like knives cutting through silk. "It isn't."
A figure moved in front of him. It was impossibly tall, larger than the Titans he had once been graced with the chance to witness crushing the enemies of the Throne. His mind refused to process its appearance, showing him only a pair of emerald eyes shining wickedly amidst a sea of roiling shadows.
"Hello, Fyodor," it said. "I am Emeli, and you tried to hurt my beloved Ciaphas."
"God-Emperor," he muttered, forcing the words out, "protect Your faithful servant's spirit …"
"The Anathema isn't here, Fyodor. He won't help you."
"No ! I have spent my entire life serving Him ! I have killed thousands of heretics in His name ! He would not abandon me ! You lie !"
"I have no need to lie. Call for Him all you like. He will not come. Not for you, who has killed so many innocents."
"There are no innocents, only degrees of guilt ! All who died at my hand did so for His glory !"
"Is that so ? Then I guess you must be guilty too. Else why would you be here ?"
No. No, this couldn't be true. The daemon was lying. All daemons lied, it was all their kind did ! He knew this to be true !
"But … but …"
"Oh, don't worry." The abomination chuckled coquettishly. "You will have all the time in eternity to understand the magnitude of your failures."
As the small, pathetic specter that was all that remained of Karamazov's soul was dragged to its doom by her daemonic servants, Emeli giggled to herself. Such a thoughtful gift her beloved had sent her ! Breaking Karamazov's delusions would be a rare pleasure : Inquisitors were usually far too drab and lacking in imagination to end up in Slaanesh's domain upon their death. But someone as self-righteous and obsessed as Karamazov was another matter entirely.
She needed to do something nice for her dear Ciaphas to thank him for his present. She didn't want him to think she was ungrateful, after all ! Maybe send another of her Handmaidens to him ? He certainly had enjoyed Krystabel when they had met in that nice disguised temple he'd built for her. Or perhaps that would be too repetitive ?
Oh ! Oh ! She had the most delightful idea. It would take some work, but her beloved would really appreciate it ! And besides, with the power of love, what couldn't she accomplish ?
Notes:
AN : And so ends the story of Fyodor Karamazov, whose early death may or may not end up having massive repercussions of its own for the Imperium. Cain's reputation grows alongside the assets of the Liberation Council, while in the Warp Emeli is determined to continue HALPING.
Lots of people reacted to my wondering if this was still a crack fic last chapter by pointing out that 40K is, by default, a crack setting, and I should keep going on as I have. Thanks you all for the support.
Concerning the duel between Cain and Karamazov : in canon, Cain's swordsmanship is credited to the days he spent practicing during his slow descent toward Perlia, then his time training with the Reclaimers (combined with a lifetime trying to run away from danger and ending up fighting opponents way above his weight class). In this timeline, Cain has spent the last few months having regular matches with followers of Khorne who were getting increasingly stronger thanks to his insane training schedule.
That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this latest installment of dear Cain's misadventures. Next chapter will contain Emeli's thank-you gift to Cain : I look forward to your theories as to its nature and how it will make Cain scream internally.
Zahariel out.
Chapter Text
In the roiling tides of the Sea of Souls, where all dreams and nightmares dwelled in ceaseless discord, a chain of bargains, threats and intrigue was forged. Its originator was young, as such things were counted among the immortal denizens of the Empyrean, only recently raised above her mortal origins by the Dark Power she served.
According to what passed for rules in the Great Game of Chaos (though they weren't really rules, just suggestions enforced by the Dark Gods), such a thing as she sought to achieve should have been beyond the newest Daemon Princess of Slaanesh. But Emeli was the prodigal daughter of the Dark Prince, and such restrictions melted away before the favor of the Profligate One.
For Slaanesh was the god of obsession in all its myriad shapes, and Emeli's was among the rarer the Prince of Pleasure had tasted. Few indeed were the followers of the Sixfold Sovereign who retained the capacity for such emotion as bound the Daemon Princess to her rising champion, and fewer still were the things Slaanesh enjoyed more than new experiences.
The daemonic servants of the other Dark Gods opposed Emeli's intentions, and so a battle was waged in the Sea of Souls. By the standards of the Materium, it was vast beyond comprehension, but by those of the Great Game, it was barely a skirmish. Billions of daemons belonging to each of the Four were slain and devoured, and the Daemon Princess grew stronger on the soul-stuff of those she defeated.
After an eternity that only lasted six heartbeats, the host of the Dark Prince was victorious, and the prize Emeli desired to gift her beloved was secured. As the ichor of her vanquished foe dripped from her mouth, the Daemon Princess smiled the innocent smile of a lovestruck maiden, wondering what her beloved would think of her present.
And around her, the lesser servants of She-Who-Thirsts shivered with mixed dread and envy at the sight, wondering what depths of debauchery and excess their dark lady was contemplating.
As I walked up the stairs of the House of Remembrance toward the room containing Emeli's statue (which I swore was in a slightly different position each time I visited), I did my best to keep my fears and concern off my face. I had been here several time since the inauguration : refusing Krystabel's proposal of regular visits would have been a snub that would set the Handmaidens against me, and would tip off Emeli as well. Having a Daemon Princess obsessed with me was already nerve-wracking enough : I didn't want to imagine what would happen if she were to realize the truth.
Krystabel had contacted me yesterday asking for us to meet there, refusing to give any details beyond the fact that Emeli had something she wanted to tell me 'in person', so to speak. I couldn't think of any particular reason for that, and that made me uneasy.
The news that Krystabel wanted to speak to me in private had immediately set my palms tingling. In the month since Slawkenberg had somehow defeated the first Imperial attempt at reclaiming the planet, things had gone back to what I'd realized with a horrified shudder I was starting to consider normal. There had been a lot of partying right after the destruction of the Pyroclast Retribution, as the people understandably celebrated the fact that they weren't going to die after all. Despite my attempts to explain Tesilon-Kappa had been the one to save the day by sabotaging the Exterminatus, most of the credit for it had still fallen on my shoulders, because I'd been the one everyone had seen killing Karamazov live.
At least the magos didn't seem angry I'd stolen their thunder like this, though that was probably because they'd been too busy taking apart the seized Militarum equipment in order to learn how to build more for the USA. The borgs had been working on their own tank designs already, of course, but having something to use as a standard was very useful for their research.
The artillery they had already designed had worked well against the Imperial Guard, but Tesilon-Kappa had freely admitted that the pieces the USA had captured were of far more advanced make. Which, given that the borgs had been working exclusively on civilian gear before the Uprising while the Guard's equipment was produced in forge-worlds dedicated to arming the Hammer of the Emperor, made perfect sense to me.
The surrendered Guardsmen themselves had been more delicate to handle than their equipment. I had promised to treat them well, and I intended to keep my word, if only because the maniacs of the USA put far too much stock into honor for my liking and I didn't want them start having doubt as to the moral character of their beloved Liberator. On the other hand, the USA had no idea how to deal with captives : the last time Slawkenberg's PDF had taken prisoners, they had been protesters against the Giorba's reign, and nobody wanted to repeat what had happened to them. The Militarum had its own protocols, but I didn't think trying to follow those was a good idea either : they were meant to keep traitors and heretics contained while they were processed by the authorities (or the Inquisition), and this looked to be a much more long-term arrangement.
In the end, I had worked with Mahlone and Jafar to cobble together something acceptable for everyone. The Valhallans had been sent to another mountainous region, one more accessible than their original landing ground but still isolated. The borgs had built up dormitories and set up everything the thousands of prisoners needed, along with the walls and watchtowers for the soldiers who had been assigned to guard them. I had visited a few times, the temperature getting colder and colder as winter set in, but they hadn't seemed annoyed by it : if anything, they were enjoying the colder temperatures, which I guessed came with being ice-worlders. Even Jurgen was more chipper than usual as the season rolled in, though someone less used to him than I would be hard pressed to see it : after being forced to stay behind while I went gallivanting on the Pyroclast Retribution, he had become even more determined to keep me safe.
The Guardsmen were as relaxed and happy with the situation as could reasonably be expected. Their commanding officers were keeping everyone calm and busy going through drills and various chores around the camp : after years spent under Chenkov, they appeared to be enjoying the chance to relax. The fact that being held captive by heretical rebels was apparently an improvement of their situation was almost enough to make me wish I had taken Chenkov alive to hand him over to the rest of the Liberation Council instead of giving him a swift death.
I had visited the accommodations in person with a bunch of pictcasters in tow, to show the plebs everything was going well and they didn't need to riot demanding the summary execution of all captives. Jurgen had been at my side in case one of the captives tried to avenge their commanding officer for some unfathomable reason, but his presence hadn't been needed in the end. I couldn't exactly say the soldiers had been happy to see me, but their officers had been cordial enough, even inviting me to partake in their unique kind of tea, which they called tanna and that I'd to admit I had quite enjoyed. Certainly Jurgen had seemed happy to have a taste of his distant home. The resulting propaganda shoot had worked perfectly, the people of Slawkenberg apparently buying my speech about the Valhallans being as much victims of Imperial oppression as us wholesale.
The original crews of the ships who had survived the boarding had been sent to the planet below, kept separate from the Guardsmen as much to prevent temptations of escape as because they weren't Valhallans and would actually have felt the cold. Most of them had spent their entire lives in the void, or close enough, and being subject to a planet's gravity and atmosphere was causing all manners of health issues the magi biologis assigned to keeping them alive and as healthy as possible were fascinated by.
I had also arranged for the Valhallan officers to be given tours of the weapon production lines and USA training centers. Officially, this was done in order to impress them with the scale of the rebellion's achievements so that they would join us in our righteous uprising against the Imperium's tyranny. Obviously, being much more aware of the wider galaxy than the rest of the Liberation Council, I knew that Slawkenberg's facilities, while impressive given where the planet had started from, were but a pale shadow of the sprawling manufactorums and barracks of the Imperium. My actual goal was to give the captives as much important knowledge about the planet's resources as I could, so that when the next wave of the Imperium's retribution arrived and they were liberated, they would be able to direct the Imperium's wrath toward valid military targets. Hopefully this would minimize civilian casualties and buy enough time for me to figure out a way off-world.
My musings ended as I reached my destination. Krystabel was waiting for me, kneeling in prayer before Emeli's statue, which I could swear was in a slightly different position than the last time I had visited. She stood up to greet me, her bow giving me a full view of her impressive cleavage.
"Lord Cain," she said. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me so quickly. I know you are very busy with your work."
One of the most annoying aspects of this entire situation (as opposed to all the horrifying ones) was that she was right : my workload had dramatically increased since the Uprising. I had come to Slawkenberg planning to spend my entire career doing the absolute minimum I could get away with while enjoying my posting as much as I could, but running a planetary government was a lot of work, even only as a figurehead. I had very little free time, and given most of it was spent drinking expensive amasec and staring at the walls of my appartment wondering where it had all gone so catastrophically wrong that may be better for my health.
Of course, I wasn't going to tell her that. Especially when Emeli was watching through her eyes.
"It's no trouble at all," I assured her. "Now, you asked me to come here early. I hope this isn't to tell me another Imperial task force is on its way ?"
Throne, I hoped not. I knew it was inevitable, but I wasn't mentally prepared.
"Oh, no, nothing like that," she said. "I would have made my request more urgent if that were the case, especially now that we know for certain how far the slaves of the False Emperor are willing to go to crush those who dare rise up against their tyranny. No, I have a personal message from Lady Emeli to pass on to you."
The more Krystabel spoke, the heavier the weight in my stomach grew.
"The Lady was delighted with your heroic actions, and enjoyed your gift of that wretched Inquisitor's soul immensely. While she knows the bond between you is greater than any petty exchange of gifts, she still wanted to thank you for it. So," the Handmaiden continued with a wide smile, "she has arranged for a Space Hulk to arrive in the system."
I blinked. Several seconds later, my brain gave up on trying to ignore what she had just said.
"I am sorry," I managed to say, "what ?"
Fortunately, Krystabel took my shock well, delighted that her mistress' present had managed to surprise me. Once I'd left the House of Remembrance (once again after making sure Krystabel, and through her Emeli, were convinced of my gratitude for the latter's … gift), I summoned the rest of the Liberation Council to inform them. It was difficult to tell with their artificial voice, but I was certain Tesilon-Kappa was all but vibrating with excitement at the thought of all the technological wonders they could find within a Space Hulk. I was more concerned with all the dangers that were sure to be present myself, and determined not to get anywhere close the accursed thing.
Two weeks later, I was standing within the hangar of one of the three Imperial troop carriers that had been captured following the Pyroclast Retribution's destruction, making a show of looking over the new paint job of the gunship that had saved me from going up in flame alongside Fyodor Karamazov's flagship. Whoever had been assigned to it had done a thorough job : all Inquisitorial and Imperial iconography had been removed from the craft. It had also been repainted the same crimson as the USA troopers' carapace armor, with the sigil of the Liberation Council embossed on the front.
Internally, I was asking myself how I had gotten into this mess. I knew the answer, of course, but much like picking at a scabbing wound, I was too morbidly curious to resist the impulse.
The Space Hulk had emerged from the Warp three days ago, its arrival accompanied by a flare of Warp activity that every two-bit psyker and auspex in the system had picked up. From what little I knew of such things, it looked like a typical example of its kind : an enormous amalgam of wrecked ships, lost to the Warp and fused together by the Immaterium's whims before being spat out to unleash whatever foulness dwelled within, as well as serve as bait for anyone foolish enough to get aboard. Which, unfortunately, was going to include me.
According to Jafar, who had delved into the Administratum archives he had inherited from the previous administration and somehow managed to find what he had been looking for, the Space Hulk was known to the Imperium as the Heart of Darkness, and had haunted the Segmentum for at least as long as the Emperor had sat on the Golden Throne. But after the Handmaidens had spread the story of why it was here across the populace, the Liberation Council had instead chosen to name it Emeli's Gift.
Aside from the potential bounty of xeno and archeotech, the real advantage to be gained from the Space Hulk was in what it could to bolster our inexistent orbital defenses. Despite the incompetence of its leadership, the Imperial expedition had highlighted that this was the most glaring weakness in Slawkenberg's defenses, as without the ritual Jafar and Krystabel had pulled out of nowhere we would have been well and truly frakked. While we had added some of the transport ships to our modest flotilla (meaning that at the very least we had something Warp-capable I could use to run away should the worst come to pass), they were all but useless in void battles.
Building spaceships was the work of years if not decades, and required specialized facilities, knowledge and resources we didn't have. But the Space Hulk, being an amalgam of dozens of vessels, could potentially be converted into a void fortress greater than anything I had ever heard about, save the legendary Phalanx of the Imperial Fists Chapter. Reactivating even a tenth of the guns the auspex had discovered across its vast surface would give up enough firepower to wipe out entire flotilla, so long as we could move the behemoth in orbit (something the borgs had sworn to the Council they could achieve, though I had distressing feeling their confidence had been motivated more by enthusiasm than fact).
Space Hulks were supposed to slip back into the Immaterium at random, but according to Krystabel, Emeli had arranged things so that this one would remain in the Materium in perpetuity, or until the borgs managed to get the various Warp engines under control. Which left only the small, tiny, insignificant issue that Space Hulks were notorious for being filled with all manners of xenos abominations they picked up during their random trips through the galaxy. And due to my fraudulent reputation, it was only natural that I lead the first reconnaissance teams to board Emeli's Gift. The subject had been mentioned so casually at the last meeting of the Council that I hadn't been able to find a way to avoid it without undermining my image in the eyes of my supposed subordinates.
And now, here I was. Since there was no getting out of this, I decided to make the most of it. Jurgen would accompany me, as well as the ten USA troopers who had survived the boarding of the Pyroclast Retribution. Every single one of them was wearing crimson carapace armor and a variety of gear that was supposed to give them the best chance of survival for the operation ahead : short-range, stronger las-guns, cutting tools, rope, and other knick-knacks, along with a supply of water and ration bars. One member of the squad was carrying a heavier vox, and another had been trained to use a short-range auspex.
Tesilon-Kappa would also accompany me, though in their case I would have needed to use force to stop them from coming. The thought of all the technology to be found within the Space Hulk had completely overridden their self-preservation instincts. When I'd suggested it might make more sense to send someone less important to the efforts of the Liberation Council (in the half-formed hope that someone would then point out that I probably shouldn't go on this suicide mission either), I had thought for a moment they were going to challenge me to a duel there and then.
Still, I suspected I would soon have reason to be glad for their presence. The ability to take control of an entire ship's system they had demonstrated certainly sounded like something that might come in handy on a Space Hulk. With all the sensors they had implanted within themselves, the auspex was perhaps redundant, but since I wasn't the one carrying the device I was perfectly happy with having a second method of searching our surroundings for danger that didn't involve me going out and checking myself.
This small team would be far from the only force making the journey to Emeli's Gift : several other transports were at rest alongside the gunship, and although none of them were nearly as advanced as the one we had liberated from Karamazov they were all void-capable. Some had belonged to the SDF before the Uprising, others were repurposed joyrides of the tourists and nobility, and the ones which looked most like actual military transports had been captured from the Imperial expedition.
Around two hundred troopers were standing by in the hangar, along with a veritable gaggle of borgs. I was given to understand that the competition to decide which tech-priests would get to take part in the expedition aboard the lethal agglomeration of derelict spaceships had been hotly contested, which was a clear sign of the dangers of putting too much metal in your brain. Then again, Mahlone claimed to have had the same issue when asking for volunteers to take part in this operation, so maybe it was a heretic thing and not a tech-priest thing.
In the end, the General had selected the troopers based on their training results and, for those who had taken part in what could generously be called the battle against the Imperial expedition, those with the best performance. My intent was to stay right in the middle of the pack, keeping as many armored troopers in all directions around me at all times. One might think that my reputation for leading from the front would make that difficult, but the story of how I had gotten separated from the rest of the attack group during the boarding of the Pyroclast Retribution had spread through the entire USA, and as a result the men were determined to keep me safe. I had managed to look as if I was going along with their polite suggestions that they take point reluctantly, as if I wanted nothing more than to rush through the labyrinthine corridors of long-dead spaceships that had spent Emperor knew how long in the Warp.
With the last preparations ready, our small armada took off. The ship's long-range auspex array had identified a section of the Space Hulk as a standard Imperial cargo hauler, one of uncounted millions which transported resources from one system to another, keeping the lifeblood of the great interstellar empire flowing (or so my tutors had described it : personally, I imagined life aboard one of those must be dreadfully boring). We had selected it as our point of ingress because its schematics were readily available, the borgs were confident they could persuade its surviving machine-spirits to serve us, and according to our scans there was still an atmosphere in it.
Within an hour, the landing bay had been secured. I had ordered it to be made into as much of a fortress as we could : if (or, as the tingling of my palms made me think, when) we needed to run away, I wanted there to be somewhere we could retreat to. As the borgs worked to set up camp, I reluctantly set off with the rest of my team. Despite the breathable atmosphere, Jurgen and I were both wearing void-sealed helmets, because neither of us were idiots. Our goal was to explore the immediate surroundings of our staging area, scouting any potential threats to the exploration of the Space Hulk.
I intended to be very, very careful, and seize the first excuse for us to go back to the hangar and its relative safety. At which point, having heroically led the first expedition into danger, I would begrudgingly sit back and direct the efforts of the several exploration teams we'd need to have any hope of mapping the derelict sometimes this century. I didn't care what that excuse was : a piece of useless archeotech, a weird xenos corpse, an encounter with a bunch of Orks (I vaguely remembered hearing stories that the greenskins sometimes used Space Hulks to travel the stars, which assuming the storyteller hadn't been playing a joke at my expense said everything you needed to know about the xenos' intellect, a trooper slipping and twisting his ankle – anything.
Clearly the Emperor was listening to my thoughts, and clearly I was still in His bad books for my long list of sins, however unwitting the gravest of them had been.
We were crossing from one section of the Space Hulk to another when it happened. We'd been walking for around an hour at that point, trying to make our way deeper into the hulk. According to my helmet's display, the atmosphere was still breathable, if thinning. Though we had yet to encounter any threat, the oppressive ambiance was weighing down on me. The Gift was eerily silent compared to the few ships I had travelled on – ours were the only footsteps to echo down the dusty corridors, and the vox-speakers which had broadcast orders and calls to prayer were ominously silent as we passed them by.
The trooper at the front called for a halt, claiming that there was something strange going on that he was unable to define. Tesilon-Kappa moved forward, scanning the area with one of their implanted devices, then declared that the disturbance was due to the overlapping of the gravity fields of the two ships : having little experience of voidcraft, the soldier had failed to realize this. How the gravitic engines (or, for that matter, the generators powering them, the lumens and the air purifiers) still worked after Throne knew how long in the Warp without maintenance I had no idea, and felt it best for my peace of mind not to inquire.
The borg leader assured us that a bit of nausea was the worst we could expect, and a quick push by the scout revealed the area affected was small, only a single corridor that, due to how the two ships had been smashed together, started as part of the cargo hauler and ended as part of whatever the next ship had been before meeting its ill-fated end. Just in case, I ordered the party to cross it one at a time. Once five troopers had made it without issue, I followed suit, walking carefully.
I was half-way through the affected area, with little more than an upset stomach to show for it, when I suddenly missed my next step.
Gravity had reverted, I thought, too late to grab at something. I fell upward, what had previously been the ceiling of the corridor bursting open under my weight and its own suddenly inverted weight. The next few moments were full of fear and confusion, as I desperately tried and failed to stop my own motion while being pulled by the malfunctioning gravitics like a toy fought over by several children.
Eventually, my nightmarish ordeal stopped, leaving me laid down on a metal floor, breathing shallowly and trying to keep the contents of my stomach down. By sheer luck, I hadn't suffered anything worse than bruises and nausea, my body armor and the angle of my fall keeping me from breaking any bones. I was, however, cut off from the rest of the boarding party. Before panic could set in, I activated my vox-bead, set up to the squad's frequency :
"This is Cain," I called out. "Can anyone hear me ?"
There was no response, only static. Looking at my surroundings, I saw that I was no longer within the cargo hauler : instead of the reassuring patchwork of metal plates that had made up that vessel's walls, these were smooth and single-pieced. For a moment I thought I was in a xenos vessel, before catching sight of a faded sign painted above a red arrow. Only two letters were still visible, a B and an E, but at least I knew whoever had built this ship had used the standard human alphabet.
Much as I wanted to stay put and wait for the others to find me (I was confident Jurgen at least wouldn't leave me behind), the thought of remaining immobile in the middle of unknown and probably hostile territory sat ill with me. I had no idea what else was in this ship with me, and while my helmet was equipped with a short-range motion detector it couldn't be compared to a proper auspex, nor did I have any troopers to hide behind. Stealth was my best option, meaning I needed to find a safe hiding spot and stay there while keeping an ear on the vox. The USA had run search-and-rescue exercises as part of their training program, and I was familiar with their protocols : if they kept their heads, they would send a single vox-pulse every five minutes while they searched, until I responded.
Unlike in the previous section of the Space Hulk, the lights weren't on here, though the gravity quite obviously still worked). Having to choose between the risk of broadcasting my position to any threat with eyes and that of stumbling around blindly in the dark, I activated my helmet's headlamp on its weakest setting and started advancing, drawing on every bit of experience moving stealthily I had gained from my childhood in the underhive and the years I had spent at the Schola avoiding detection by discipline officers as I sneaked out of the dorms at night.
After several minutes with the loudest sound in my ears being my own heartbeat, I swept my helmet's beam of light across the room I was about to enter, and froze. There was … something there, less than five meters from where I stood. A mass of chitin, its four limbs coiled together. The sight was so hideous that I jerked back on instinct, moving much less gracefully than I had before, and my armored boot slammed against the metal deck like cathedral bell.
I stopped moving completely, holding my breath despite knowing my helmet suppressed all noise from my mouth. Then, to my horror, the creature's limbs began to twitch. My hands moved to my weapons, but before I could draw them, instinct made me move my neck, checking the rest of the room and filling my guts with ice.
The creature I had seen wasn't the only one. The room was full of these slumbering monsters, a score of them nearly occupying the whole space with their alien bulk. I could only imagine how long ago they had arrived here, or how it had even happened. This ship had to be centuries old at the very least, and had been lost in the Warp for Throne knew how long. Yet regardless of how they had arrived, they were here.
And they were starting to move. However deep their hibernation must be, they must still have some way of monitoring their surroundings alerting them to the presence of prey stumbling into their midst – which in this case was me.
I did not give myself time to think, because doing so would have left me paralysed with horror. Instead, I whirred my chainsword to life and, with a scream of terror, began to hack at the stirring xenos. I tore through their bulbous skulls, targeting the one thing I was almost sure they could not live without. Even with fear granting me strength, each kill took several blows, the thick carapace of the beasts blunting my strikes and forcing me to hack away like a butcher, a sight that would've had my instructors in tears.
By the time I reached the last one, it was fully standing up, towering above me. Time seemed to slow down, as it tends to do in such situations when adrenaline flows freely through your blood, letting me take my first full look at a xenos in my entire life. It had six limbs in total, a pair of powerful legs and two pairs of arms, one set of which ended in five-fingered hands, the other in a trio of vicious talons. In the weak light of my headlamp, its chitin appeared mostly sickly white, with its talons and a handful of reinforced spots on its natural armor a vivid blood-red.
It lurched at me with its talons, its repugnant mouth opening to reveal far too many teeth, and screamed loud enough that my helmet's audio protectors kicked in, dampening the sound to protect my eardrums. I ducked underneath its swing and lashed out with my chainsword, leaving a long cut on its chest but failing to penetrate deep enough to draw blood.
Instinctively, I knew that despite its awakening, the creature's movements were sluggish after its prolonged hibernation, as groggy as I in the mornings after a late evening drinking before Jurgen handed me my first cup of recaf. The longer the fight dragged on, the more alert it would become, and the lower my chances of survival would get.
So, ignoring every instinct in my body that told me that I should get away from the clawed abomination, I instead rushed inside its reach, holding my chainsword in both hands. The move briefly took it by surprise, and in the small opening before its dazed mind could react and rip me to shreds, I rammed my weapon upward and, with a scream of effort, cut its head off, my body armor getting drenched in ichor in the process (although thankfully the rebreather kept me from smelling it).
I stood there, breathing heavily, until a sharp noise from the other end of the room made me swivel in that direction, my hand moving to the bolt pistol at my hip. But, to my immense relief, its source wasn't more monsters. Instead, there was Jurgen, his entire body crackling with Warp energy, with the rest of our expedition running to catch up with him. I could glimpse torn metal behind him, showing where he had used his powers to literally rip and tear his way through the ship in order to find me. Somehow, in the frenzy of the fight, I had failed to hear the noise.
Never before had I been so happy to see my aide.
"Sir !" He shouted, before slowing down as he took in the carnage around me, as did the troopers. "You're … alright …"
I wondered what was going on, then realized what the scene must look like. Here I was, standing alone and unharmed, surrounded by xenos corpses, having just dispatched the last one with a decapitating blow. Judging by the looks I was getting, they had already made up their mind as to how this had come to pass.
No doubt if we made it out this deathtrap, a new chapter would be added to my undeserved reputation, telling of how I had stood alone against a nest of alien killing machines and emerged the victor. I suppressed the urge to scream, my survival instincts barely overcoming my frustration.
"Hello, Jurgen," I called out to him. "Did you have any trouble finding me ?"
"None at all, sir," said Jurgen as he rushed to my side before starting to fret over me, checking me for any sign of injury. "We went straight up and didn't find any of those beasties ourselves, whatever they are."
"Genestealers," said Tesilon-Kappa, kneeling by one of the corpses and inspecting it with a variety of tools I could not identify. "Once thought to be just one more predatory xenos species, they have since been revealed to serve as a vanguard of sort for the Tyranid Fleets."
I blinked. "How do you know that ?"
"Since Space Hulks are known to host all manner of xenos creatures, I made sure to download all the information available to my cogitators," they replied with a faintly smug air.
Well, that made sense, I thought, before the meaning of his previous announcement hit me.
"Wait," I said, barely keeping my renewed terror from my voice. "Are you saying there is a Tyranid fleet coming to Slawkenberg ?"
"That … seems unlikely," they said. "According to the records I have access to, there have been countless more reports of Genestealer presence than there have been of Tyranid attacks."
That wasn't as reassuring as they probably intended it to be. I told myself Emeli wouldn't have sent the Space Hulk if it was going to doom Slawkenberg, forcefully ignoring the little voice telling me that even if that were the case, she might not have known what she was doing. There was nothing I could do about it in any case. For all that the USA had surprised me with its effectiveness against Karamazov's invasion, they didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell against the kind of chitinous tide that had taken the full strength of the Ultramarines themselves to break decades ago.
I really wanted to give the order for us to turn back. With my heroic, single-handed dispatch of twenty beasts, nobody would have argued against it. Unfortunately, I couldn't shake the dreadful certainty that doing so would be a fatal mistake.
"We need to push on," I said out loud. "There might be other nests."
And while there was a chance they were still asleep, I couldn't risk that staying the case until I was off this accursed derelict. Of course, the rest of the team were all too eager to continue. It took me a moment to realize what this looked like from their perspective, since they thought I'd faced the Genestealers while they were awake. To them, having just taken down an entire nest of the beasts by myself, I still yearned for more, and was leading them to glorious battle.
We continued our exploration of the ancient vessel, advancing very cautiously and with weapons drawn. To my immense relief, we didn't encounter any more nests of hibernating Genestealers, let alone active ones. It was possible, of course, that any awakened xenos were keeping clear of us after the damage we had already dealt them, unwilling to risk their lives now that they knew we (or, more accurately, the troopers and Jurgen) could fight them off. But that would be a problem for the next exploration teams to deal with, so I was perfectly happy with that possibility.
Tesilon-Kappa guided us toward where they reasonably sure the bridge was located : while the ship was of an older make than anything in their data-banks, there were some points of ship architecture that had always remained the same. When we arrived there, we found the entire place smashed, though whether it had been so before the ship had been dragged into the Warp was difficult to say : half the space was filled by the hulk of another vessel, which had been fused to this ship on an impossibly fine level : I saw a command station whose screen was pristine, except for the chunk of it missing where it met the rough metal. The whole thing was like seeing the result of some demented god-child playing cut-and-paste with reality, which I suppose wasn't that far from what had actually happened.
There was no sign of the crew. The floor was covered in various pieces of debris from elements of the bridge that had fallen down after losing their support. Tesilon-Kappa rushed to investigate, while I directed the team to guard the entrance and check the corners, just in case there was something else in there with us.
A moment later, Tesilon-Kappa made a noise I couldn't identify, but which in hindsight I suppose was their vox-speaker trying to vocalize a strangled scream. I immediately turned towards them, thinking they had found something dangerous or been attacked by a threat we hadn't noticed, but they looked perfectly fine, kneeling on the ground and holding some kind of boxy device with blinking lights on it, with one mecha-dendrite linked to an input port.
"Tesilon-Kappa ? Magos, what is it ? Is something wrong ?"
"It … this … this is a miracle." They were trembling under their robes, which I hadn't thought was possible with how much of their body they had replaced with metal. "The Lady Emeli is most generous …"
"Yes, she is," I cut them off. "But can you tell us exactly how, in this instance ?"
"This is a STC database," they proclaimed in the tone of a priest declaring the advent of a new Living Saint. Which probably wasn't that far off a comparison, come to think of it.
I choked on the dusty air for a few seconds, before managing to ask confirmation, thinking I must have misheard :
"You are telling me there is a Standard Template Construct schematic in this thing ?"
"Not just one," the borg leader said reverently. "Several."
"Sir ?" Jurgen asked. "What is it ? Is it valuable ?"
Judging by the glances the rest of the team were sending our way, they were curious too. I supposed it made sense they wouldn't know, either being from a backwater planet like Slawkenberg or, in Jurgen's case, not exactly having received whatever passed for a conventional education on Valhalla. Seeing as Tesilon-Kappa was too awe-struck to speak, and would probably go on a long-winded rant once they recovered, I hurried to explain.
"Standard Template Construct designs are relics from the Dark Age of Technology, centuries before the Imperium existed, back during Humanity's technological peak. From what I understand, they are extremely detailed blueprints and instruction manuals explaining how to build … well, anything really. Most of the Imperial Guard's equipment is built according to STC designs, as is nearly everything else the Mechanicus builds. Even the underwater generators on Slawkenberg were built according to one such design."
"So they are valuable, then," said Jurgen. Which was like saying that the ocean was wet, or that Slawkenberg's last Governor had had a bit of a temper.
"Let me put it this way : when a pair of Guardsmen found a STC to make knives a few years back, the Mechanicus gave each of them their own planet. And even the mere rumor of a damaged, partial STC schematic is enough to warrant entire Mechanicus expeditions."
"That doesn't sound right," said my aide, sounding respectfully doubtful. "Why would the Martians make so much of a fuss for knives ? Anyone knows how to make one, don't they ?"
"From what I understand, those are very, very good knives," I replied. "To the point that a whole bunch of Space Marine Chapters started using them."
"Oh. That would explain it, yes." It was somewhat reassuring to see that, despite everything, Jurgen was still properly cowed by the mention of the Emperor's Angels of Death. "So what's this one for then ?"
"I have no frakking clue," I admitted, seeing no reason to lie about this. "Magos ?"
My addressing them directly shook Tesilon-Kappa from whatever religious trance they had been trapped into, and they jolted back to awareness of their surroundings.
"What ? Oh, my apologies. From what I can tell from a cursory inspection, this database was meant for use by human colonists on hostile worlds. One of them appears to be for a human-sized suit of power armor, another … by the Omnissiah."
"What is it ?" I asked, suddenly very worried for no reason I could articulate.
"There is a design for a device called the Panacea within this database, Lord Liberator." Somehow, Tesilon-Kappa's artificial voice sounded even more reverent than before. "According to the attached description, it is capable of healing all sicknesses and afflictions of the human body."
The entire room was filled with silence as everyone processed what the borg had just said. My heart filled with ice.
Objectively, this was an incredible discovery. I wasn't blind to the incredible potential of this STC : in the right hands, it could save billions, even trillions of lives, depending on how the Panacea worked. Even just on Slawkenberg, it would revolutionize healthcare. Handled poorly, it could also cause massive social upheaval, but that wasn't my main worry.
The source of my new, fresh terror was that, if the Mechanicus heard about this, they wouldn't offer me a planet in exchange for the database. They would come with an army that would make Karamazov's look like a bunch of rowdy juvies, and they would take it from the ruins of Slawkenberg, probably after killing every heretic who had even breathed in the same room as their sacred artefact. Furthermore, if word of the Panacea reached the rest of the Imperium, there would be no shortage of powerful individuals ready to pay any price in lives and materiel to obtain it.
And to top it all off, I couldn't imagine the Dark God Nurgle was going to be very pleased about this either. I'd already pissed him off by wiping out his cults on Slawkenberg when I had freed Jurgen from captivity, and from what I knew of the Lord of Plagues, a miracle cure for all diseases was guaranteed to draw his ire.
All in all, Emeli's gift had painted a massive target on Slawkenberg, far bigger than the one I had created by killing Karamazov, and I wasn't at all certain whatever else was in this database would be enough to keep the planet, and more importantly myself, safe.
For a brief moment, I considered shooting Tesilon-Kappa before ordering Jurgen to kill every soldier in the room, all to conceal the discovery. Unfortunately, while I was fairly certain I could trust my aide to go along with my tearful story of how we had come under attack and the two of us had been the only survivors without question, removing Tesilon-Kappa would greatly impair the functioning of the Liberation Council, throwing the delicate balance of power completely off. It would also damage my reputation, which I was growing more on more dependant on to keep the heretics surrounding me from turning on me.
With that first plan discarded, a new one began to form in my mind. I considered it for several moments, then decided it was my best shot at surviving the consequences of this discovery in the long-term.
"Men," I said out loud, addressing every soldier in my best command voice, "none of what you just heard is to leave this room. Do you understand ? This discovery will be crucial to the survival of Slawkenberg against the forces that seek to tear us down. You will never speak of what happened here."
The discipline of the USA played in my favor, and they all nodded and voiced their understanding. Partially relieved, I turned back to Tesilon-Kappa :
"Magos, you know how dangerous this could be to us all if the Mechanicus were to hear about this." I didn't bother making the sentence a question.
"I … Yes. You are correct, Lord Liberator," they replied. "My former associates learning about this would be suboptimal."
"To say the least," I said drily. "So here is what I suggest : we are going to go back to the landing bay, and you are going to return to Slawkenberg and bring this database to the most secure location you can think of within the Bringers of Renewed Greatness' headquarters. You will limit knowledge of its existence to the absolute minimum, while I ensure nobody on the expedition ask any questions."
"But," they protested, "We cannot simply lock this treasure away ! Think of all the good the STCs within it can do ! The Panacea alone -"
"I am," I assured them. "Which is why, as soon as you have properly tested it and designed a way to distribute it, your order will announce that they have discovered a universal cure to disease and poison."
I watched the metallic face of Tesilon-Kappa as the not-so-metaphorical gears turned within their head.
"You want us to take credit for the knowledge of this database," they said slowly. "To say we invented it ourselves rather than rediscovering it."
"It looks to me like the safest course of action," I confirmed. "We will have to come up with a release schedule for the designs that won't look too suspicious, but that's more your wheelhouse than mine."
"I understand," they said. "It does not sit well with me to lie about such sacred matters, but you are correct; this is the best course of action. Once again, I am in awe of your wisdom, Lord Liberator."
I chuckled nervously, dismissing their praise with a wave of my hand, and we soon began to make our way back to the landing bay. Although I remained vigilant for more Genestealers or any other peril, our journey back was uneventful, leaving me to darkly wonder what other complications to my life remained aboard Emeli's 'gift'. I wanted to think none would match the discovery of the STC database, but my paranoia kept me from even finishing the thought, lest fate take that as a challenge.
At the very least, I consoled myself, I now had an excuse to leave the Space Hulk : the rest of the Liberation Council would need to be informed of this in person. And surely once I was back on Slawkenberg, I would be able to find an excuse to remain planetside and leave the exploration and refitting of the Emeli's Gift to other, more qualified people.
Of course, I realized with a shudder of apprehension, that would leave me on the same planet as Krystabel and the rest of the Handmaidens, whose mistress apparently thought a Space Hulk and a trove of priceless knowledge were a perfectly normal thing to drop in my lap. Maybe I would be safer on the Space Hulk after all.
Notes:
AN : NEW CIAPHAS CAIN BOOK ANNOUNCED HYPE !
Well, here it is, Emeli's Gift. Only Obscura on SpaceBattles guessed correctly as to the nature of Emeli's present to her beloved Ciaphas. Congratulations ! Also, I may or may not have taken notes from the many other suggestions (the one about a daemonic sword was weirdly frequent).
The Panacea is a canon STC, though the only copy of it got stolen by the Dark Eldars and turned into a relic for their faction. But somehow, I find it hard to believe that the Panacea STC would only be located on a single forge-world. Much more likely, Nurgle was relentless in erasing all existing copies of the design in order to wipe out this affront to his domain. And since one copy escaped to be discovered on Verdigris IX, other copies eluding the Grandfather is plausible.
Of course, the real reason is because I thought it would be funny to give something so enormously valuable to dear old Ciaphas. If you have suggestions for other templates in the databases, don't hesitate to post them in the reviews/comments.
Aquila-eyed readers might have noticed a certain small detail in this chapter. I look forward to seeing if anybody noticed it, and what you make of it.
Finally, as announced in the last chapter of A Young Girl's Weaponization of the Mythos, due to the release of the next chapter of Fate Grand Order's storyline and me making bargains with the Gacha Gods, I am going to go back to A Blade Recast. I think I have managed to break through the writer's block that has stopped me from continuing it for the last six months (well, that and the fact that I reacted to finishing Prince of the Eye by starting two new stories, spreading out my attention once more). The plan is to finish the current arc of the story, which based on my notes should take three more chapters. Given the writing speed I have been able to muster at some points during the last six months, this should be achievable before the end of Summer ... if the Muse cooperates, that is.
Until then,
Zahariel out.
Chapter Text
Once again, the people of Slawkenberg were celebrating, for the golden age the Uprising had promised them had come.
This day marked one whole turn of the planet around its star since the Uprising had broken their chains and brought them freedom from the Imperium's cruel oppression. While they still followed the Imperial calendar in official documents (for, as the Liberator had said, they must never forget the threat of their former overlords), the local year was still the unit of time most people used in their lives, for obvious reasons.
At the head of the ranks of troopers clad in crimson carapace armor were the chosen elite of the Unified Slawkenberg Army, who had been given the privilege of wearing the brand-new power armor the Bringers of Renewed Greatness had designed in recent months. Even to the uninitiated, it was a marvel of engineering, its motion fluid despite its bulk. According to public announcements, it had already been used to great effect in the cleansing of Emeli's Gift of the various beasts that lurked within the sprawling hulk.
And yet, this armor was by far the lesser of the boons the Bringers had delivered to Slawkenberg in the days since the arrival of Emeli's Gift. Freed of the dogmatic restraints of their Mechanicus masters, the toil of the Bringers had achieved a miracle. In their laboratories, they had crafted a wondrous serum, capable of healing any and all ills. This Panacea, named after an ancient myth of Old Earth (for they should not forget their roots, even though Mankind's homeworld had been transformed into the seat of Imperial tyranny), could heal any wound, cure any sickness.
It was the sort of wonder that, before the Uprising, had been said in whispers to be available to the lords of the Imperium, a priceless resource jealously reserved for the high and mighty. But when its existence had been announced, the Liberator himself had declared that its blessings would be made available to the entire population. Tens of thousands had been recruited and trained for this, taught the basics of medicine and how to operate the Panacea injectors designed by the Bringers. Great facilities had been built where the life-giving serum was brewed in vast quantities – for even though a single injection of the Panacea was enough to heal most ills, meeting requirements across the planet was a towering challenge, and one that the Liberation Council had risen to meet.
Disease levels on Slawkenberg had receded since the Uprising and the steady increase in the standards of living, but the Panacea had all but wiped them out. Along with delivering the Panacea, the newly trained medics were also charged with teaching preventive behaviours to the population, supported by educational public broadcasts on the subject.
Along with that, other educational projects had been set in motion to combat the general ignorance the Giorbas had forced upon their subjects. One of them had been the construction of a museum in Cainopolis open to all. Within it, alongside objects of cultural and historical significance that had been seized from the private collections of nobles during the Uprising, were those items from Emeli's Gift that had been judged innocuous were displayed for the people of Slawkenberg to admire, along with the borgs' best guesses as to their nature and origin. Images and preserved remains of some of the xenos beasts the brave troopers had faced in its depths were also presented, though it was an open secret that the scariest ones had been vetoed from display, to avoid traumatizing the children parents were bringing to gape at the gathered curios in childish wonder.
From the other side of the curtain separating me from the stage, I could hear hundreds, thousands of voices whispering in excitement. They were representatives from all across Slawkenberg, chosen at random from their communities by Jafar's bureaucrats and shipped to the capital as part of the celebrations. In a few moments, I would have to walk out there and give a speech to them, which would be broadcast live all over the planet. In truth, I had barely prepared for it : by now, I felt like I could have given it in my sleep. For now, I treasured those few moments of relative calm and isolation.
Officially, the current planet-wide festivities were to celebrate both the one-local-year anniversary of the Uprising and the (more or less) successful claiming of Emeli's Gift. Of course, there were still entire city-sized sections of the Space Hulk left unexplored : four months was far from enough for the USA exploration teams to map the entire behemoth. But enough of it had been cleared that the borgs had been able to get to work and bring the monstrous amalgam of vessels closer to Slawkenberg, where it could serve as an overpowered if unconventional orbital defense station.
I felt a little bad for the troopers who had been done the job once I'd left, though certainly not enough to go back. At least they hadn't encountered anything sentient, and the beasts they did face had been less deadly than the ones I had managed to stumble on while they were still asleep. After the corpses of the chitinous monsters had been recovered, Tesilon-Kappa had assigned a small cadre of magi biologis to the task of dissecting them and learning as much as possible from them.
I had subtly inquired as to the nature of these studies, and been reassured that their only goal was to learn how best to kill them should more Tyranids show up in Slawkenberg. Given that it had taken the full might of the Ultramarines to defeat the Great Devourer when it had last struck in force, I wasn't holding high hopes, but maybe they'd figure something out that could buy me enough time to run should a splinter fleet arrive in the system.
As for the soldiers themselves, I had made sure they were all suitably rewarded, both in brand new medals I had personally handed to them and in promotions and monetary rewards. According to Jurgen, they were currently in the process of doing their best to spend their entire pay in the capital's bars, gambling houses and other establishments of pleasure – although I somehow doubted they were going to pay for any of their drinks, not with the stories they had to tell.
One thing I had noticed since the Uprising was that the locals were all too willing to seize any excuse to party, which after generations under the Giorba's rule I could hardly blame them for. Besides, organizing the festivities kept the Slaaneshi cults seconded to the Handmaidens busy (managing planet-wide celebrations, it turned out, was quite the logistical feat). Given that the last time a Slaaneshi organization on Slawkenberg had nothing to do, it had resulted in a new Daemon Princess ascending to the Realms of Chaos, I felt ensuring the followers of the Dark Prince spent their time cooking food, brewing alcohol and orchestrating parades was for the best.
Besides, I was forced to admit that they had plenty of reasons to celebrate. The Panacea had worked beyond my wildest imagining. When I had told Tesilon-Kappa to make the miracle substance available to the entire population, it had been with the unspoken goal of crippling the planet's economy and keeping the borgs busy for years to come trying to accomplish the impossible. After all, I knew the Imperium had access to healing technology that, while not on par with the Panacea STC, could eradicate most of the diseases ravaging the under-hives, but economic concerns prevented that from being feasible. Since the borgs couldn't exactly tell their glorious Liberator he was being a fool to his face, not after I had made sure the announcement was as public as I could make it, I had fully expected the borgs' efforts to implement my absurd suggestion to slow Slawkenberg's ongoing economic boom to a crawl.
Clearly I had underestimated the knowledge of the ancients who had designed the Panacea, because they had made sure producing the stuff was far easier than I had thought possible. With the cure for all diseases and injuries becoming freely available to everyone, productivity had increased again, according to the latest figures from Jafar's clerks. The USA troopers deployed on Emeli's Gift had also benefited from the stuff greatly : to hear General Mahlone talk about it, casualties would have been ten times higher if not for it. About the only thing it couldn't heal was missing limbs, but it did make grafting a vat-grown replacement limb much easier.
All in all, the Panacea was a wondrous piece of technology that, in the hands of the Imperium, could have saved the lives of uncounted billions of Guardsmen, let alone its impact on civilian lives. Which meant my decision to pass it off as the borgs' own discovery had been the correct one, because when (not if) word of its existence spread beyond Slawkenberg, only the fact that it had apparently been created by hereteks would keep us safe from an unstoppable legion of skitarii sent by tech-priests hell-bent on getting their grubby mecha-dendrites on the technology.
By comparison, the human-sized suits of power armor were almost disappointing in their mundanity. Not that they weren't incredible in their own right, of course : they were to carapace armor what it was to wet parchment. I had no idea how it compared to the suits worn by the Angels of Death, but I was reasonably certain they surpassed those of the Sisters of Battle in every way (though I wouldn't have bet on the USA's Khornate thirst for battle being greater than the bloodlust of the Sororitas).
Tesilon-Kappa had offered to build a prototype for my own personal use, but I had redirected their focus on equipping the troopers bravely risking their lives on the nightmarish labyrinth of ancient vessels sent to the system by a Daemon Princess instead. While the thought of better protection was a tempting one, it wasn't exactly something I could wear under my clothes like my carapace armor, and I had enough of a conscience left to want to give the poor bastards stuck with that duty the best chance of survival I could, even if they were Khornate heretics. The borg leader had accepted my stated reasoning without question, though they had still extracted a promise that I would let them build a suit for me at some point in the future, once the situation on the Space Hulk had stabilized. Which it had now, so I could expect a reminder from them soon.
As for the other schematics contained within the database, the borgs were very enthusiastic about starting work on them too, but I had put my foot down on it for now. Until the Panacea was completely integrated in Slawkenberg's society and the power armor assembly lines were complete, there wouldn't be anymore wild discoveries. Even after that, a reasonable amount of time would need to pass in order for our cover story that it was all the result of the borgs' own research to be even slightly plausible. That way, I had managed to buy myself some time before facing another headache. Of course, I had no idea what a 'quantum-entanglement based ansible system' or a 'multi-purpose automated worker-engine' were supposed to be, and Tesilon-Kappa's over-excited ramblings hadn't clarified things at all. But my guts told me neither of those were going to make the Mechanicus any less likely to kill us all in order to obtain them.
As I stepped out onto the stage, I reflected to myself that despite my misgivings and sabotage attempts, things were going well. Too well. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, bitterly certain that when it did, it would do so with devastating force. However, not even in my most paranoid imaginings could I have guessed what form it would eventually take, which was for the best : had I then known the depths of danger I would soon be forced to face, I would have run off the stage screaming in terror in full view of the pict-casters, which would hardly have suited my fraudulent reputation.
Ancient and priceless devices englobed the room in a field that prevented all recordings, psychic activity, remote scrying, energy weapons discharge, noospheric access, vox communication, and much more. An antique chandelier was the room's sole source of light, and paintings by masters from half a dozen Sectors hung on the walls, the artworks rendered disturbing by the flickering shadows dancing across their surface.
Seated in a circle of antique leather chairs were six of the most powerful men and women of the Segmentum, each of them the proud bearer of an Inquisitorial Seal, signifying their membership of His Divine Majesty's Holy Ordos. The air within the windowless room was thick with intrigue, and though none of those present appeared to be carrying weapons, only a fool would have thought this was truly the case – not that the worthies gathered here needed weapons to be among the top one percent of the most dangerous humans to have ever lived.
What in the Emperor's name am I doing here ?
Amberley knew the answer, of course. It didn't take an Inquisitor to figure it out, but such was the sheer ridiculousness of the situation that she was struggling to come to terms with it.
She had come to this world following the tracks of a cartel trafficking in forbidden alien artefacts, in her function as a member of the Ordo Xenos. The planet was far from the main Warp routes in the Sector, but close to enough semi-stable passages to make it valuable to local merchants.
Then, when she had pulled out her rosette to intimidate the merchant into telling her everything about his contacts in the black market, the man had instead acted like she was a guest late to the party, and politely ushered her into this room before going back to manning his shop. She had followed him out of cautious curiosity at first, but had barely been able to conceal her shock when she had recognized the people already present as Inquisitors themselves. And these were no ordinary Inquisitors either, if such a thing could even be said to exist.
Apart from her, the youngest Inquisitor in the room was at least three centuries old. She knew all of them by reputation and the names they chose to use (not their birth ones, of course), though this was the first time she had met any of these illustrious elders in person. They were some of the most powerful Inquisitors in this part of the Segmentum, each one a veteran of countless battles and intrigues against the multitude of forces that threatened the sanctity of His Imperial Majesty's dominion. Networks of operatives stretching across Sectors told them all that they learned, teams of Acolytes did their bidding, entire private armies moved at their command, Lord Sectors paid heed to their suggestions, and worlds burned at their decree.
They had all that power, and yet they spent their time bickering like children, playing paranoia-fuelled games of influence against one another and leaving heaps of broken lives in their wake. At least that way they kept each other in check, mused Amberley. Better these shadow wars of conspiracy and politics than the madness and mayhem of open warfare. She had only heard rumors of the latter, of course, for the Ordos kept their shames even better hidden than their secrets. But when the Inquisition went to war with itself, the results were as devastating for the greater Imperium as one might expect of a bunch of ancient fanatics with immense resources and unlimited authority battling it out.
Amberley, who was still very young by the standards of the Inquisition, felt very much out of place at such a gathering. Judging by the glances the other attendees were giving her, it was clear they thought the same. Likely, they had assumed she was here as a representative for someone else, the one who was supposed to take her seat but who had been delayed (and who, Emperor willing, wasn't going to barge into the room any second now and ask who was this upstart in their chair). After all, how else could she have learned the location of their secret meeting ground ?
She didn't know for sure she would be killed if the other Inquisitors realized she was here by accident. But she also didn't know for sure she wouldn't be, if only because of the sheer embarrassment her stumbling on this place represented for them. So she was going to do her best to play along with their expectations until she could get the frak out of this room, off this planet, and back to something sane and safe, like tracking down the traffic of xenos artefact across the Sector.
"If there are no more unexpected guests," said a tall, dusk-skinned woman Amberley was fairly certain was Inquisitor Lorquai, a veteran xenos-hunter and one of the prominent voices arguing for the importance of dealing with the Necron threat, "then let us begin. We are gathered here today to discuss the recent events in the Slawkenberg system, and the death of our colleague Fyodor Karamazov at the hands of the renegade Ciaphas Cain."
"How certain are we that is what happened ?" asked a man with two augmetic eyes glowing from within a face that was more scar tissue than not. This was Lord Inquisitor Morteshadow of the Ordo Malleus, who according to legend had plucked out his own two flesh eyes in order to face the Infernal Duchess on Nerkteniat III without losing his soul a hundred years ago. He was a fanatical Puritan, who regarded even the use of sanctioned, Throne-bound psykers with distaste.
"Before the flagship exploded, Karamazov's astropath sent out a message summing up what happened," explained Lorquai. "It didn't have a set destination, but was encrypted with standard Inquisitorial cyphers, and my astropath choir deciphered it. According to that last transmission, the ship's wards were breached by sorcery, and the leader of the heretics boarded alongside a bunch of elite soldiers who tore through the defenders. While the bulk of this force attacked the Exterminatus deployment bay in order to prevent the planet's destruction, the leader went straight for Karamazov himself and killed him in single combat … something which was broadcast to the entire planet, as Karamazov was ran-preaching live to them at the time."
Nobody missed her last-second word swap, though nobody commented on it either.
"For all of Karamazov's flaws, he was still a good fighter," said Lorcus Phrecht, frowning. Like Morteshadow, Phrecht was a member of the Ordo Malleus, but there the similarities between the two men ended. Phrecht was a psyker of considerable power, and dark rumors whispered accusations of Radicalism – though none of them had ever been proven to the satisfaction of any of the three Conclaves that had been called to stand in judgement of the thin, wiry, and innocuous-looking man who sat directly opposite Amberley. "Yet that leader was convinced he could defeat him alone ?"
Amberley had to keep herself from sneering, even as she agreed with the older man's point. 'Flaws' ? The man had been insane. Like a parody of an Inquisitor taken straight out of a heretic's nightmares and let loose upon the Imperium. He had killed far more innocent than guilty, and while the concept of 'acceptable losses' was a core tenet of the Holy Ordos, there was a point at which one had to wonder if just randomly killing people wouldn't be more effective than whatever method it was Karamazov had followed. The only reason he hadn't been killed long ago was because, for all his madness, Karamazov had been possessed of a certain cunning to go along with his ruthlessness, and had been a fierce fighter besides.
"Apparently so," replied Lorquai. "What do we know of this 'Ciaphas Cain' ?"
"Frustratingly little," replied a woman with porcelain-white skin and a nasty scar on her throat that explained her voice's rasp. This was Kaliad Shayn, a member of the Ordo Hereticus and famed Witch-Huntress, who had fought alongside members of the Adeptus Astartes on several occasions and was most often active on worlds that either stood on the verge of open warfare or were already fully in its grasp. "He's a recently graduated Commissar, and the Commissariat doesn't take kindly to anyone else trying to investigate its members, even fallen heretics like him. Given that he was assigned to Slawkenberg a mere handful of years before the planet rebelled, however, I have my suspicions."
"What 'suspicions' ?" growled Tannenburg, a famous Witch-Funder of the Ordo Hereticus, whose black leather cloak couldn't have announced his identity more loudly if he had a servo-skull flying around him loudly shouting 'Here is an Inquisitor' from a vox-speaker. "It's obvious what happened. This Cain was a heretic in disguise all this time, who slipped through the Schola's net. Why else would a new graduate be assigned to a PDF force on such a backwater ?"
"There were some irregularities in the assignment that my people uncovered," conceded Shayn. "Apparently, he bribed the adept in charge to obtain the post."
"Something no true Commissar would have done, as such assignments are for the weak, the old and the infirm," declared Tannenburg. "There, mystery solved."
Personally, Amberley felt there was likely more to the story, but she wasn't going to draw attention on herself by mentioning it out loud if she could avoid it.
"Now," continued Tannenburg, "what do we do about it ? Slawkenberg isn't that big of a loss, but what Karamazov did is another story. That fool has weakened the Imperium's position in the entire Sector with his actions. The Militarum is still reeling from the purges his Acolytes committed. We have already suffered the consequences of that on several fronts as the enemies of Mankind take advantage of the confusion to push back. We've already lost the Desolatia system to the Tyranids, and half a dozen uprisings that should've been crushed by now are still laying waste to infrastructure and the rule of His Holy Majesty because the officers supposed to lead the Guard against them were executed by Karamazov's goons. This cannot be allowed to continue."
"Agreed," nodded Shayn. "At least all the Acolytes in question died with their master in Slawkenberg, so we won't have to track them down in order to appease the Militarum. In the meantime, Lord General Zyvan is the highest-ranking survivor of the Imperial Guard in the region. Our best bet for stability is to ensure his ascension is as smooth as possible."
"Zyvan ?" snorted Phrecht. "The man is a brute. He is a good commander in the field, I will grant him that, but that doesn't mean he's qualified for the highest echelons. He has no experience with the calculations and compromises required at Sector level."
"I think you underestimate him," riposted Shayn. "He's capable of being pragmatic when needed, and doesn't throw away the lives of his troops like that inbred imbecile Chenkov."
The two Inquisitors quietly stared at one another. They were very good at it, Amberley had to give them that. She had met gang lords and xenos-lovers who would have started begging for mercy if subjected to such stares. She had practiced her own, of course, every Inquisitor had to be able to make someone sweat simply by looking at them and saying nothing, it was tradition, but she wasn't nearly at that level yet.
"And what does the young lady have to say ?" asked Lorquai, diplomatically cutting through the tension before things could escalate.
Thanks a lot, Amberley cursed inwardly, not appreciating being put into the spotlight just so that two high-ranking members of the Ordos didn't start calling each other names like children in a Schola playground.
"I am only here as an observer," she said out loud. Which wasn't even a lie, when you thought about it. "But supporting Zyvan seems to me like the best out of the options available to us. Even if he proves unequal to the task, he can always be replaced later. Right now, any course of action is better than doing nothing."
There was a moment of silence as the other five looked at one another, then nodded one by one.
"Then we're all in agreement," said Morteshadow. "What about Slawkenberg ?"
"What about it ?" said Shayn derisively. "You said it yourself : it's a backwater, and losing it is hardly a blow to the Imperium. Throne, maybe having their vacation spot lost to heretics will motivate the rest of the Sector's elite to properly do their job. The heretics got lucky in fighting off Karamazov, yes, but luck can only take them so far. No doubt somebody will have to get around to reclaiming it at some point, but we have far more pressing concerns."
"This is a mistake," warned Tannenburg. "Giving the corruption time to fester will only make it more difficult to expunge."
"It's only one world," dismissed Phrecht. "In the grand scheme of things, it hardly matters."
As she took in the others' reactions to the psyker's words, Amberley's blood ran cold as she realized they all agreed with the sentiment. To them, one world was nothing, unless it was somehow important to the rest of the Imperium – and from what she'd heard, Slawkenberg hardly qualified for that. Yet still, it was an Imperial planet, and its people were going to be left in the thrall of whatever foul powers the rebellion served.
Eventually, Tannenburg conceded the point with a nod, and stood up before walking out. One by one, the Inquisitors followed, until Lorquai departed, leaving Amberley alone. She immediately got up and calmly walked outside, nodded to the merchant, and exited the shop.
A quick look around told her that the other Inquisitors had already left. Good. Now Amberley could get off this world and forget this ever happened. There were other trails she could follow in her pursuit of the xenos artefact trafficking ring. It wasn't like her path was ever going to cross that of this Ciaphas Cain, after all. She was a member of the Ordo Xenos, and she was going to make damn sure not to get anywhere near Slawkenberg, lest the other members of this group – and most importantly of all, the Inquisitor she had accidentally replaced, whose representative's suggestion the other five had followed without question – catch on to her deception.
"Esteemed Archon, I have come in answer to your summons," intoned Hierarch Sarevok, kneeling before the shadowed throne of his liege.
Kneeling in this room was always uncomfortable, due to the carpet of stitched together infant canids that covered the floor making it quite irregular. The Haemonculus the Archon had commissioned it from had ensured the beasts were without vocal chords to avoid their constant yapping disturbing discussion, but they could still feel pain, and writhed under the sharp edges of Sarevok's armor, fruitlessly trying to get away from him.
The carpet was not the only example of the flesh-crafter's arts in the room. Vileheart's throne was composed of the bodies of defeated rivals, at least three of which were his kin to the Hierarch's knowledge. They were kept alive by various injectors and the constant, background agony of the room's other living furniture, as well as the dozen of pain-slaves hanging from the ceiling, their exposed flesh covered in weeping wounds where the Archon had struck them.
"I have received word from the galaxy beyond our dark realm, my servant," said the figure sat upon the throne. His ancient voice was an unpleasant rasp, dripping with cold malevolence and limitless cruelty. Such was the voice of Sheev Vileheart, who had risen to the rank of Archon over the broken and screaming bodies of his defeated rivals. "Do you remember Aurelia's triumph of some time ago ? The one where she took on our dear Supreme Overlord's challenge to poison the entire mon-keigh so-called empire ?"
The contempt in Vileheart's voice was thick enough to serve as armor against the claws of the Haemonculi's lesser creations. Of course, Sarevok's master would never have dared to make his feelings so clear in public, but here, in the heart of his Kabal's stronghold, he felt free to express his opinion of the Supreme Overlord and his former confidante obvious.
"Yes, my lord," the Hierarch replied obediently. "The tale of it spread across the entire Dark City, and reached even those as lowly as I was at the time."
"Oh, right. That was before I took pity on you, wasn't it ?" The Archon cackled, the sound of it making the pain slaves in the room flinch. Sarevok remained impassive at the unveiled barb. Suddenly, his master's amusement vanished as quickly as it had appeared : "It really annoys me, how much that bitch profited from it, you know. Even now, she keeps that little mon-keigh toy in her vault as a reminder to us all of her great deed."
In truth, Sarevok thought his master was exaggerating. It had been many years since the Lady Malys had orchestrated the destruction of a mon-keigh forge-world, claiming the Panacea, one of their precious technological relics, from the ashes in the process and denying the vermin its supposed ability to heal any kind of injury, sickness or poison. At the time, it had been quite the coup, but that was already old news. Malys had already fallen from grace, having been exiled from his court by Vect after he'd grown bored of her (or, perhaps, feared her potential as a rival for his position). Since then, however, she had clawed her way back to a position of power few Archons could equal – and, though Sarevok knew better than to say it out loud or even think it too often, Sheev Vileheart was not among them.
Which, come to think of it, was probably why the old monster was so obsessed. Envy was a powerful thing, and served as one of the primary motive forces of Commoragh, along with hate, spite, cruelty, and the ever-present need to inflict suffering on others in order to placate She-Who-Thirsts.
"But here is the thing, little Sarevok," continued the Archon, clearly savoring the moment. Aurelia was so proud of her achievement, but I have learned that another copy of this 'Panacea' has been found. More than that, it is already being used to heal the pathetic afflictions of millions of mon-keighs."
After so many cycles spent as Vileheart's right hand within the Kabal, Sarevok was well-versed in the ways of the Dark City, and he immediately understood the implications of his master's revelation.
"If Lady Malys were to learn of this …"
"She would be furious, wouldn't she ? But while it'd be amusing to watch, I have other, grander plans."
"If I may ask, my liege," Sarevok dared to say, betting on his master's good humor to avoid reprimand, "how did you learn of this ? I hadn't even heard a whisper of a rumor on that subject."
"A little clown came and sang for me," replied the Archon, and the Hierarch shivered despite himself. Even here, in the Dark City, the servants of Cegorach had a certain … reputation. By edict of the Supreme Overlord, they were to be left alone as they plied their strange craft in Commoragh, just as they were untouchable aboard the hated Craftworlds.
"I see. Then it won't have escaped someone of your towering wisdom that they told this to you in order to manipulate you into attacking this world." He didn't phrase it as a question, knowing better from long and painful experience.
Vileheart scoffed. "Obviously. But don't worry, my faithful servant. I don't intend to just go charging straight into things."
"Of course. May I ask how your great self intends to baffle the mon-keighs' feeble minds and overcome whatever scheme the Harlequins are weaving ?"
"You may not," the Archon snapped back, glaring at Sarevok with suspicion. "That is for me alone to know, and you will have plenty to keep you busy in the mean time. The Kabal of Murderous Death must be prepared for another hunt. Muster our warriors and assemble our fleet. Contact the Incubi and the Wyches of the Tainted Kiss and bargain for their services."
"As you will it, my lord." Sarevok replied, bowing deeply in contrition. He had to fight his every instinct to expose his neck to his master, but managed it thanks to years of practice.
"Get out of here," ordered the Archon with a wave of his left hand, the right closing in on the throat of the nearest pain-slave, eliciting a pitiful whine of anticipatory pain. "I need to refresh myself, and then I will get to work."
As Sarevok departed, he caught his master muttering to himself, before the screaming started :
"I will show them all. First that 'Liberator', then the whore, and finally … that loathsome upstart."
Notes:
AN : If you hate Sheev Vileheart and want him to die, then I have done my job. If you are wondering how the Harlequins learned of the Panacea and what game they are playing, well, you are going to have to wait quite some time, but I believe the joke will be worth it in the end. For now, be content to know that Cain is going to have new enemies to face, and of the kind that can absolutely be fought without any moral compulsion whatsoever.
I thought long and hard about what to name the Dark Eldar Kabal. I looked over the list of canon ones, I perused the codexes, and even checked the Dark Elves from The Old World for inspiration.
Then I remembered just what kind of story this is, and once I had stopped laughing, I knew what I had to do. Behold, the Kabal of Murderous Death ! Fear their immense cruelty and the terrible dark depths of darkness that lurk within their dark souls !
Yes, this Kabal's theme is : "what a thirteen-years old trying to be edgy thinks sounds cool". Unfortunately, I somehow don't think Cain will find the joke funny. Also, real fans of the Cain series will have recognized a certain name in that last scene : I look forward to seeing if anyone catches it and what it might imply for our dear Liberator's future.
The Space Hulk may seem to have been secured and repurposed quite quickly, but in Soul Drinkers, a handful of Techmarines (if not a single one, it's been a while since I read the series) manage it much more quickly.
Also, Amberley has finally shown up in this story ! I am sure that her final thought in her scene absolutely won't become something she will look back on with deep, deep regret in the years to come. Finding a way to get her in play was challenging, but I think I have figured it out. By the way, every single Inquisitor in her scene is a canon one, because I couldn't think of any funny names and so decided to use some of the one-note Inquisitors of canon (who have one mention in all the lore and then are never brought up again).
And just so we are clear, Slawkenberg being a utopia as a result of Cain trying to sabotage its defenses while staying alive is part of the story's joke. Anyone taking what's happening in this story as a political position will be met with the most devastating eye roll I can muster.
Zahariel out.
Chapter Text
As she ran, Amberley wanted to curse, but she dared not waste what little breath she'd left. Her lungs were burning, her legs felt like lead, and her heart was pummelling in her chest, but she forced herself to ignore her growing exhaustion and just. Keep. Moving.
At the same time, she had to remain focused on her surroundings : an abandoned manufactorum left to rust for just short of three centuries was the sort of place to punish missteps with crippling injuries and a list of infections as long as it was nauseating. And she had to do all that while keeping an eye out for her pursuers, who were undoubtedly far more adept at this sort of thing than she was.
This operation had been supposed to be easy, Throne damn it. Amberley and a handful of her operatives were going to bust an exchange between a local trader in forbidden artefacts and his off-world supplier, capture everyone involved and get the information they needed to dismantle the ring's activities in this entire region from them. It was the sort of thing she'd done dozens of time since she'd been chosen to join the Holy Ordos.
To her team's credit, the first part of the plan had gone like clockwork. They had hidden around the meeting place her tech-priest had extracted from the criminals' intercepted comms, and their targets had shown up with the goods right on time – clearly those were professionals, who had been doing such heretical work for years. She had watched as the traditional exchange of veiled threats and boasts took place, and then, once the packages had been exchanged and both sides had started to relax ever so slightly, Amberley had given the signal to move in.
Which was when the Eldar reavers had shown up, blasting through the building ceiling and falling upon the traffickers, the sound of their malevolent laughter mixing with the screams of the heretic scum. She and her team had been caught completely by surprise. Fortunately, the xenos had targeted the smugglers first and hadn't expected the Inquisition's presence either, although it hadn't taken them long to realize there were witnesses to what Amberley was fairly sure was a kidnapping operation.
At least the rest of her team had made it out, but that would be little consolation if she were caught. As a member of the Ordo Xenos, she knew far more about the habits of the Dark Eldars than she was comfortable with – enough that she was seriously considering turning her weapon on herself rather than let herself be taken alive.
But things weren't that desperate yet, she told herself firmly. If she could make it out of the manufactorum, there was an entire industrial sprawl outside she could disappear in, then vox the gunship to come pick her up –
The Inquisitor froze. There was a figure before her that hadn't been there a moment ago, and she had no idea when or how it had appeared.
The figure was clearly an Eldar, but its attire couldn't have been more different from the reavers'. It was a patchwork of bright colors and patterns completely at odds with their drab surroundings, and its face was covered by a smooth white mask with an exaggerated laughing face painted on it in silver and blue.
Amberley recognized the Eldar sub-species the xenos belonged to at once, though she'd counted herself fortunate enough never to have encountered its ilk before today. It was a Harlequin, known even among the mercurial Eldars for their unpredictability – one day stalwart allies of the Imperium against the forces of Chaos, the next merciless killers wiping out random human villages on backwater planets down to the last woman and child.
It was also holding something which was unmistakably a pistol, aimed directly at her. Her own weapon hung at her belt – she had holstered it early in her flight, needing both hands free to navigate the manufactorum. For all her training, Amberley knew that her chance of drawing it in time to make a difference were so low as to be effectively nil.
"I would tell you there is no need to worry," spoke the xenos in passable Gothic, "but you wouldn't believe me. I do apologize for the inconvenience, but we must all play the parts assigned to us. You may take solace in the knowledge that you alone are required for what is to come : your associates are already safe."
Before she could answer, it fired, the alien weapon shooting a dart that pierced right through her bodysuit and stabbed into her shoulder. Not for the first time today, Amberley wished she'd come down in her custom suit of power armor – but then, she would have been caught long ago in the more cumbersome suit. She tried to draw her own weapon to shoot back, out of sheer bloody-minded defiance if nothing else, but a cold numbness was spreading from where she'd been hit, and her bolt pistol slipped from her fingers and crashed onto the ground, soon followed by her own body.
To her own vague surprise, as the darkness took her, Amberley's last thought was a prayer that this wasn't the end, if only so that she wouldn't have to explain to the God-Emperor how she'd been killed by an alien clown of all things.
Eight standard months after the first anniversary of the Uprising, Slawkenberg came under threat from outside forces for the second time since it had claimed its freedom.
Using the new ansible technology designed by the Bringers of Renewed Greatness, the beacons at the system's edge immediately sent out their warning calls. Each the fruit of weeks of effort by some of the Bringers' greatest minds, they had been deployed mere weeks ago by one of the few starships available to the Liberation Council. By combining the records of space traffic pre-Uprising with the calculations of the scholars of the Immaterium who served the Liberation Council, the beacons had been deployed in those areas of space where ships were most likely to emerge from the Warp.
At the time, some had argued against the apparent waste of such incredible technology, but Cain himself had ordered it so, and the Liberator's foresight was demonstrated once more.
For all the incredible advantage that was the ansibles' instantaneous communication, and for all the promises it held of revolutionizing the way in which the isolated outposts of Humanity kept in touch with one another, its bandwidth was severely limited. As such, the beacons' machine-spirits struggled to send all the details they could perceive with their auspex suite. The new fleet numbered about a score of vessels of various sizes, and though there was a lack of hard data, it seemed obvious that they weren't of human design.
This alone was enough to know that the firepower and troop numbers of this new enemy were likely several times greater than the despicable Karamazov's ill-fated attempt at punishing Slawkenberg for its defiance. Yet despite this, and how close to annihilation the planet had come when last faced with off-world invaders, the people did not panic. Instead, they calmly followed the orders of the planet-wide announcements, moving to the shelters that had been erected in every settlement and ensuring that their neighbours and those citizens too old or frail to make it on their own were escorted to safety, even if they had to carry them on their back.
For as the Liberator often said, only by looking after one another could they hope to stand against their enemies. And while Slawkenberg had come to the brink of destruction the last time foreign ships had darkened its skies, now all lived under the protection of Emeli's Gift, the immense battle station said to have been sent to Slawkenberg by the departed spirit of Cain's lady love, who still watched over him from the afterlife (a story that continued to be told and retold in playhouses all across the planet).
Then, about three hours after the ansibles' first warning, the new arrivals' broadcasts reached the planet. They were unencrypted, and although understanding the foul speech of the alien was difficult, the accompanying images made the nature of the invaders obvious. Soon, all on Slawkenberg had heard the news :
The Orks had arrived.
Warboss Gargash Korbul looked through the cracked, patched together screen that was all separating the bridge of the Gork's Klaw from the void. The Mekboyz had done something to the screen so that it could make things on the other side look bigger (although nobody knew exactly what, because they'd been drunk on mushroom beer when doing it after the party during which the screen had gotten broken in the first place). Usually, it helped point the ship's dakka in the proper direction, but at the moment, every boy on the bridge was too busy staring to even think of firing.
"Dat's da most beautiful fing I ever seen, boss," whispered Korbul's chief Mekboy from where he stood next to the Warboss' throne.
Korbul grunted in approval. The Space Hulk that orbited the humie planet they'd come to attack was impressive, there was no denying it. Korbul had seen a few of the massive things himself in his time, but none as big as that. His mouth filled with drool at the thought of all the loot that must be lying inside it waiting to be claimed, of the dakka his Mekboyz could make with it. Already, it was beautiful; once the Mekboyz were done with it, it would be magnificent.
"Looks like dere are humies on it," said one of the boyz, frowning at a flickering display that, if Korbul remembered right, was linked up with the Klaw's sensor gizmos.
"We'z gonna take it," he declared. "Da humies is too stupid to use it proper."
That the humies had managed to get the Space Hulk close to their planet without it crashing was already impressive enough. When Gargash had first heard about it, he'd thought his Nob had taken one too many hit on the nogging, but when a bunch of his Weirdboyz had told him it was true, his curiosity (and greed) had been tickled, and he'd brought the bulk of his Waaagh there, while leaving the rest of his underbosses to attack three other humie planets he'd marked for conquest.
Looking at the view, it was clear he'd made the right choice. He muttered his thanks to Gork and Mork, before shouting :
"Oi ! Somebody put da big talkie-thingie on ! I want da humies to know who'z comin' to krump dem !"
There was a series of banging noises, grunts, muttered curses and one funny scream as the cable a gretchin was chewing on suddenly went live and incinerated the small creature (which made quite the appetizing smell), then one of the meks called out :
"It's on, boss !"
Gargash picked up the speakie-thingie, which was big and sturdy enough that he could hold it without breaking it by accident when he got excited (like what had happened to the last three).
"Alright, humies ! I iz Gargash Korbul, da Boss of dis here WAAAGH !" He paused, giving time for the rest of the bridge's crew to join him in shouting the holy word of Mork and Gork. Most of them didn't understand the humie-speech he was using, but they certainly recognized that word. After a moment, he got bored, fired his shoota at the ceiling, and everyone shut up sharpish. "We'z here to kill you and take all your loot !" He grinned, showing each and every one of his many sharp teeth to the lookie-thing, to make sure the humies were properly scared. "Starting wif dat big ship you got. So do your best to give us a good fight !"
He slammed the speakie-thingie down, and raised his klaw toward the Space Hulk while slamming his other hand on the big red button next he'd had installed next to his throne (causing the shoota it was still holding to fire and turning another gretchin to red mist). The Gork's Klaw shuddered as its engines were suddenly pushed to full power, and the bridge was filled with the sound of various things and people falling down from the sudden acceleration, as well as the Warboss' booming laughter.
"Dis iz gonna be fun !"
On the bridge of the Dark Tormentor, flagship of the Kabal of Murderous Death, Archon Vileheart leaned back in his seat and sipped his drink. The blend of crushed Kroot eyeball and Craftworld Eldar tears paired delightfully with the wine made from the grapes cultivated by his gardeners inside the still-living bodies of mon-keigh prisoners. He could taste the agony in every drop, and it wasn't just because the glass' sharp edges bit into his lips with every sip, adding a taste of his own vitae to the mix.
The Dark Tormentor and the handful of vessels that made up the Kabal's space assets were hanging in the black void, made invisible to the primitive sensors of the system's other denizens by technology that had been designed in the long-lost days of yore, when the Aeldari had stalked the galaxy as conquering kings and taken their pleasure wherever, whenever, and from whoever and in whatever fashion they wanted.
Sheev wasn't old enough to remember those days, but he had learned much about them, both from listening to tales from those who had survived the Fall, and later, once he had no more use for them, by devouring their memories using a delightful device built by one of his favoured Haemonculi. The process was far from perfect, but what he'd managed to absorb was enough to make him nearly weep with envy every time he recalled it.
Such power. Such glory. Such unrestrained magnificence. One day, he swore to himself for more than the thousandth time, he would know how it felt to directly make the very galaxy scream at his whim, just like his ancestors had.
But that was for later. Right now was the time to enjoy the spectacle of his latest scheme coming together. Around him, the rest of his court stood in silence as they watched the Ork fleet approach the mon-keigh planet.
"Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen," said Vileheart, with a smile that would have given a Haemonculus pause. "Once the greenskins have exhausted the strength of this world's defenders, and both sides are left reeling from the conflict, we shall move in and claim the choicest prizes for ourselves."
"Most cruel and cunning Archon," said one of the lieutenants in attendance, "forgive my ignorance, but is that not the same strategy Lady Malys employed when she hunted for the Panacea ?"
"You are forgiven," replied Sheev, which was perhaps the most unlikely sentence he had ever spoken in all his long years of life. "You see, there is a key difference between that whore's plan and mine."
"And what is that, my lord ?" asked the Hierarch, recognizing his cue and obediently playing along. Good – Sheev'd need Sarevok cognizant and able to function later, meaning torturing him as punishment for his incompetence would have been inconvenient at this juncture.
"She failed to get her hands on the planet's ruler," he answered with a sneer that he knew was only slightly more vicious than his usual expression. "She had to contend herself with the Panacea, despite her goal of claiming both. I won't make such an error. When we return to Commoragh, it will be with both the mon-keigh's precious relic, and their champion, so that all can see that I am better than the usurper's discarded concubine."
"Only the blind would fail to realize something so obvious," said Sarevok in an obsequious tone.
"Unfortunately, there are plenty of blind fools in Commoragh," replied Sheev. "But once this is over, not even they will be able to deny my glory."
This prompted another round of sycophantic praise from his underlings, which he basked in with a relish that was mostly due to the fact he knew perfectly well they didn't mean it, but were too afraid of him to stay silent. Nobody else on the bridge needed to know that the notion of using the Orks as the blunt instrument to break the mon-keigh defenses had been inspired by a random comment by the Harlequin emissary who had revealed the existence of another Panacea to him. Besides, the bulk of the plan had still been his own work, regardless of the spark of inspiration the servant of Cegorach had unwittingly provided him.
It had been at his instructions that his agents had plundered the resources of a mon-keigh criminal group that had, on occasion, done business with the Kabal of Murderous Death, and used those resources to bribe some of the Ork Warboss' advisors to plant the idea that Slawkenberg was a more interesting target than wherever the original target had been. The presence of the Space Hulk on which the Panacea had been discovered had made convincing the brutes laughably easy, and the indirect route had even yielded some interesting spoils that now rested with the Dark Tormentor's hold, waiting for the post-victory celebrations.
Of course, by then there would be more than enough victims to go around. Still, the Archon was looking forward to it : it wasn't every day that you got to torture a mon-keigh Inquisitor and rebel leader at the same time.
Notes:
AN : "YOU WAZ EXPEKTIN' DA SPIKY POINTY-EAR GITZ, BUT IT WAZ ME, KORBUL !"
Yes, Korbul is the Warboss who attacked Perlia in canon, before being heroically defeated by Cain in single combat during the events of the book Death or Glory. Karamazov's purge of the Astra Militarum's higher-ups, combined with Sheev's manipulations, led him to attack Slawkenberg instead of Perlia. You may now speculate freely as to what form the butterfly effect will take, especially considering what lies hidden within a certan Inquisitorial/Mechanicus research facility beneath a certain dam on that world.
I have a plan, and it is going to be GLORIOUS. And, more important, funny. Well, except for Cain, but I reckon he's getting used to it by now.
Speaking of our dear Liberator, this chapter doesn't have any Cain POV. That's because initially, this chapter and the next one were going to be just one chapter, but I decided that splitting them after the Dark Eldar scene made more sense narratively speaking (and also because I wanted to publish something in celebration of Vainglorious, the latest Cain novel, being published). Hence its relative shortness as well.
Don't worry, you shouldn't have to wait too long before seeing what happens next. I am going to use shorter chapters for the current arc, to make the pacing tighter and more in tune with the fact it's action-focused. Please tell me what you think of this change.
Also, I had to cut the Ork scene before running my autocorrect, out of fear it would become sentient out of sheer hatred of me and seek revenge.
Zahariel out.
Chapter Text
As I sat on the command throne that had been prepared for me in the war room of the Liberation Palace (which might not be the most imaginative of names to give the ex-gubernatorial palace, I admit, but had the advantage of being all-inclusive and inoffensive to every member of the Council), I did my best to look confident.
The truth was, I was so out of my depth I could probably find where Horus' soul had ended up after his tussle with the Emperor if I dug a little deeper.
My time in the Schola Progenium had naturally included some strategy lessons. A Commissar could hardly advise the officers under his purview if he didn't have a clue what they were talking about, after all. But there was a difference between knowing how to flank an enemy force or hold a defensive position and running an orbital engagement, especially since the latter was supposed the Navy's job.
Unfortunately, Slawkenberg didn't have a proper navy to speak of. The handful of crafts in our little flotilla would've barely even served as a speed bump to the Ork fleet, that much was obvious even to me, so they had moved to the other side of the planet. If it came to the worse, I was confident I could find a way aboard one of them and high-tail it out of the system, but given what the consequences of that would be in the long term, I would only do it in the very direst of circumstances.
At least we had gotten an early warning of the Orks' arrival, even if Emeli hadn't noticed me in advance this time (which I could hardly blame her for even if I'd dared to, considering how famously unpredictable the greenskins could be on occasion). The lunatics around me were already praising my foresight in deploying the warning beacons regardless of their cost in resources. Truth be told, I had given the order to place the beacons at the system's edge for several reasons. The first and most important one had been that knowing that an enemy had arrived as soon as possible gave me better odds of successfully running away, even if that wasn't the most optimal course of action at the moment. But after Tesilon-Kappa had finished explaining to me just what the ansibles were capable of, the strategic implications of such a device had hit me.
For thousands of years, the Imperium had been dependant on astropaths to keep itself together. Given the inconceivably vast distances between star systems, shouting through the Warp (although I was pretty sure the actual process was much more complicated than that) was the only semi-reliable way to keep in touch, but despite all the efforts of the Astra Telepathica, it was far from an exact science. Messages got lost or misinterpreted all the time, or arrived years after (or, in some cases, before) they had been sent, leading to catastrophic results. Even in the best case scenario, it could take weeks or months for an urgent message to reach its destination.
But the ansibles had no such weaknesses. According to the borgs, two paired ansibles (for reasons that made no sense to me whatsoever, one such device could only communicate with a single other one, and it couldn't be changed later) were able to exchange information instantly regardless of the distance between them. We hadn't been able to test them on any distance larger than a single star system, but the specs contained within the STC had been clear on that point. Such technology could revolutionize communication across the Imperium, and provide Mankind with a strategic advantage against its many foes I could scarcely begin to imagine.
By placing the ansibles on the system's edge, it was my hope that when the next Imperial retribution force inevitably arrived, they would capture the devices and, in the process of studying them to learn the rebellion's capabilities, uncover the technology for themselves. It was a long shot, yes, but if it worked, I was pretty confident I would be able to argue to the God-Emperor that the regrettable events of Slawkenberg were nothing compared to such a boon for the Imperium of Man, and as such I should be forgiven for my reluctant participation in the former and not thrown to the Realms of Chaos where Emeli was waiting for me, pretty please.
Such a course of action might seem to run contrary to my orders for the borgs to hide the source of their recent technological innovations by pretending to have come up with them on their own instead of using the equivalent of a Dark Age cheat sheet, but my reasoning was that, if there was an Imperial task force in the system, the Liberation Council was already done for anyway. I knew how the Imperium operated, and now that we had defeated the first military force sent to bring the planet back into the Emperor's arms (although given Karamazov and Chenkov had been in charge, that outcome had always been unlikely), the next one would be much, much larger … when it eventually came.
Which, thank the Throne, was most likely going to take a lot of time. Even with a dead Inquisitor to pin on us, Slawkenberg was unlikely to be a priority on anyone's to-do list. Hell, given that we'd killed Chenkov, I wouldn't be surprised if some Militarum officials secretly felt grateful to us, even if they would never admit it out loud, lest the Commissariat (or the Inquisition, come to that) take umbrage.
The rest of the room was bustling with activity. Jurgen was standing next to me, having refused my offer of a seat, eyes fixed on the large hololith showing the orbital situation. General Mahlone was also there along with an entourage of USA aides, as was Jafar, so that our military and civilian organizations could act smoothly if needed, while Tesilon-Kappa had flown to the Space Hulk to direct the crew of borgs stationed there in person, along with several hundreds USA troopers to help defend it from boarders. Of Krystabel, there was no sign : she had vanished soon after the xenos fleet's arrival, citing pressing matters demanding her attention among the Handmaidens. Usually, that would have worried me, but I had more urgent concerns, such as the thousands of greenskin monstrosities drawing closer to the planet I was on with every second.
I had been taught about the Orks, obviously : it was part of the standard curriculum in any proper Schola. Their kind had plagued Mankind for millennia, even longer than the Imperium itself had existed according to some legends that young pupils definitely shouldn't talk about within the abbot's earshot. The simple fact that they were still around was a testament to their resilience, if nothing else. But I was starting to suspect that, since I had been trained for a career of keeping soldiers from turning tail and running for their lives by any means necessary, a lot of the material had been based more in fanciful tales meant to help me bolster morale than cold, hard facts.
This Gargash Korbul (if I had understood his atrocious approximation of Low Gothic correctly) had been monstrously large, far beyond the preserved corpses I had been shown in my lessons. Tesilon-Kappa had assured me over the vox that the image of the hololithic projection accompanying the broadcast had been to scale, which hadn't been what I wanted to hear at the time, you can believe me. And while, now that their ships were closer, they did seem ramshackle and on the verge of breaking apart, the fact that several of them had clearly been Imperial vessels until recently meant that the many, many guns every Ork ship bristled with had to be functional.
According to Jurgen and the captured Valhallan officers, who as natives of that ice-world were the closest thing to experts on the Orks we had on hand, Korbul was unlikely to want to destroy Emeli's Gift. Orks loved using Space Hulks to travel the void, and given that their ships were on a straight course toward the one orbiting Slawkenberg, their intent must be to board it and take it for themselves. I would've been more than happy to let them have it, but there was the tiny issue that without it, there'd be nothing to keep them from making planetfall, and somehow I didn't think the xenos would be so considerate as to turn back and leave once they'd gotten their prize. The Warboss' message had made his bloodthirst clear : we weren't getting out of this without a fight.
The civilians were in the shelters, while the United Slawkenberg Army was in a state of maximal readiness. We were in the best condition to fight off an invading army that we were going to be. However, this time, we were unlikely to get lucky enough to have the enemy commander be as incompetent as Chenkov and Karamazov had been (which, given we were facing Orks, was quite the depressing thought). If the full complement of xenos these ships carried made it to the ground, we were frakked. The USA would give a good accounting of itself, of that I was grudgingly convinced, but sheer numbers would carry the day in the end.
Which meant that we really needed Emeli's Gift to cut down those numbers by doing as much damage to the Ork fleet as possible before they boarded it and made it useless. To avoid looking defeatist (and because any explosion powerful enough to disable the Space Hulk would rain fiery death upon the planet below, on which I was trapped), I hadn't suggested that some kind of self-destruct mechanism be installed to deny the greenskins their prize, but I was still confident it'd take time for the Orks to wrangle our improvised battle station under their control once they'd killed all the borgs, support personnel and USA troopers on board.
For now, all I could do was hope that the borgs' boasts about the capabilities of Emeli's Gift at least somewhat corresponded to reality. Of course, the fact that my life was in the hands of a gaggle of hereteks who had spent their entire lives prior to the Uprising doing maintenance on deep-sea power generators wasn't exactly reassuring, but after over a standard year and a half of technically running this circus of the damned we called the Liberation Council, I had gotten used to the constant stress and fear for my life.
"Recaf, sir ?" asked Jurgen, proffering a cup of the beverage.
Although most of the agricultural fields dedicated to luxury foodstuffs had been converted to more efficient crops since the Uprising, the plantations which produced the beans used to make recaf had been maintained (with a few changes to the cultivation process to remove some of the less efficient steps, which in my opinion had really only existed to make the visiting aristos feel superior to the plebs whose work produced their drinks). I had to admit that Slawkenberg recaf certainly was vastly superior to the one that had been served at the Schola, and Jurgen had prepared the drink to perfection, as usual. If only he weren't a potential living gateway to the Realms of Chaos, he would truly be the perfect aide.
"Thank you, Jurgen," I said, and took a reinvigorating sip, feeling the heat spread through my body. The tension in my body diminished somewhat, along with that of the room : the sight of their trusted, infallible Liberator casually drinking recaf on the cusp of a battle that would decide the fate of Slawkenberg reassuring everyone that things were under control.
Of course, had I known then just what was going to happen before this whole mess was dealt with, I would have found it far more difficult to maintain my facade of calm. As a matter of fact, I probably would've been running for the nearest spaceport to flee the planet by now. But I didn't know, and so I continued to sip my hot recaf in blissful half-ignorance of the peril I, and all of Slawkenberg, was in.
After a stretch of time that simultaneously seemed to last forever and pass in a flash, the Ork fleet reached the outer envelope of the Space Hulk's range, and the void battle began in earnest. Despite my lack of familiarity with such things, the borgs had made the hololithic display simple enough that even I could understand it, showing the positions of the various crafts relative to one another and Emeli's Gift. The Orks' formation, if you could call it that, had all the elegance and complexity of a punch to the teeth, and was led by the ship from which the transmission had come : a bulky thing with a cruiser's tonnage.
"Enemy fleet has entered maximum range," the artificial voice of Tesilon-Kappa came out of the vox-speakers, far crispier and cleaner than usual thanks to the use of the ansible for instant communication. "We await your command, Lord Liberator."
I suppressed a sigh. Really, they didn't need me at all, but I had to play along for the sake of morale and, more importantly, my reputation.
"You may fire when ready," I said.
And then, the entire arsenal of the Space Hulk opened fire as one, and my fears regarding the borgs' work were gone, replaced by utter astonishment.
As they stood at the metaphorical heart of Emeli's Gift, Tesilon-Kappa experienced what they could only describe as a feeling of theological completeness. Months of hard work, done by hundreds of people with the support of thousands more, all came together in this moment, where the fruits of their labor would shape the future of Slawkenberg. If not for the safety precautions the Bringers of Renewed Greatness followed as religiously as they ever had the precepts of the Cult of Mars, the Machine-God alone knew how many lives would have been lost in the process.
The command center of Emeli's Gift was located deep within the Space Hulk, requiring to walk through several kilometers of twisting corridors to reach from the nearest landing bay. The Bringers had established it inside what Tesilon-Kappa was reasonably sure had once been the cargo bay of a pre-Imperium human vessel, although the damages of time and the Warp made it difficult to be sure. The emblem of the Liberation Council had been engraved on a wall, with the emblem of the Bringers represented in exacting detail within their section of the quartered circle.
Dozens of tech-priests and trained acolytes stood at console stations, each one monitoring a particular aspect of the patchwork architecture of the battle station. The Liberator's ban on the use of servitors had pushed the Bringers to explore alternative solutions, which must surely have been part of his intent all along.
Hundreds of small Cyber-Altered Task units, more commonly referred to as CATs, ran all across the Space Hulk, performing simple tasks and carrying tools and spare parts from one location to another. The small automatas lacked any biological components, but their processing power was too limited for them to be classified as true Abominable Intelligences. There were only a few in the command center, each built by Tesilon-Kappa themself using materials scavenged from the Space Hulk itself. Truth be told (and Tesilon-Kappa tried to always tell the truth these days), they didn't really serve any purpose, but the Magos and their subordinates found their presence reassuring.
Meanwhile, at the center of it all, Tesilon-Kappa served as both the commanding officer and the nerve center of the whole operation. In time, they planned to install more standard interfaces so that the Space Hulk didn't require someone as augmented as them, but that was still in the future.
Everything was ready, and they could sense the approach of the Ork fleet through a hundred eyes and more. With the Liberator having given permission, there was no reason to wait any further.
+Establish target locks,+ Tesilon-Kappa sent over the noosphere. For the benefit of those acolytes who hadn't been fitted with vox-receiver augmetics (as the Bringers' numbers grew to match their responsibilities, not all candidates could or wanted to be blessed with the certainty of steel), their words were broadcast aloud by the vox-speakers at the same time. One by one, the weapons returned an affirmative, until the full arsenal of Emeli's Gift was ready to fire. +In the name of the Machine-God and the Liberator, open fire !+
Ancient generators roared to life, and power coursed through freshly-repaired conduits. Weapons that had been built using long-lost designs, and which had remained silent for thousands of years at the very least, sang their songs of destruction once more. Not all of them activated successfully, but of the forty-two the Bringers had connected to the command center, thirty-one fired, filling the auspex displays with static as the void was saturated with various kinds of energy weapons. Some had been forged by human hands, using technology now lost to Mankind; others were of a more modern design; and others still had been conceived by alien minds, and had required steps to repair and control that would have seen an orthodox tech-priest excommunicated and stripped of all their augmetics at once.
In a single moment, a third of the xenos fleet vanished from the display, their primitive shields overloaded and their hulls vaporised. The remaining Ork ships fired back at once, an uncoordinated volley that hit either the void shields protecting the vulnerable parts of Emeli's Gift or slammed into sections that hadn't been reclaimed yet. The sheer size of the Space Hulk made it so that it would take much, much more to threaten its structural integrity.
Reports flooded into Tesilon-Kappa's consciousness, giving them updates on the status of every weapon, generator, and the circuitry binding the two together. Normally, such a flow of data would have overwhelmed their mind, but linked as they were to several back-up cogitator units, they were able to grasp it all at once. From there, it was a simple matter of computing priorities and calculating the appropriate courses of action, something they had done for years as the lynchpin of the Mechanicus' lower echelons' efforts to keep the submarine power generators of Slawkenberg functioning against the ravages of entropy, bad leadership, and poor funding.
In less than a second, Tesilon-Kappa isolated which systems could be reliably fired again and sent the order to prepare to do so, while also dispatching repair crews to the half-dozen fires and other perils that had broken out in various areas. The second volley blasted another few xenos vessels to pieces, though another four weapons were put offline as a result. The pattern repeated itself several more times, until the last Ork ships were burning husks in the process of falling apart. A muted cheer rose in the command room at the realization of their victory.
And to think, this was far from all that the Space Hulk was capable of. By Tesilon-Kappa's estimations, despite the unceasing work of the Bringers of Renewed Greatness since the agglomerate's arrival in Slawkenberg, barely a tenth of the slumbering firepower had been reactivated and linked to the command center. Of course, they had started with the easiest jobs : unless the Liberator decided to dramatically increase the resources affected to the project, it would take decades to fully conquer all of the many wonders of Emeli's Gift.
"Lord Liberator, General Mahlone," they transmitted. "Victory is ours. However, we are detecting life signals within some of the debris making its way to the surface. Given the recorded resilience of the xenos, I believe it likely some of them will survive the landing. Transmitting the data now."
In fact, there were a lot of life signals. A veritable flock of transports and gunships had managed to escape the demise of the Ork fleet, carrying what had to be thousands of xenos to the planet below. Unfortunately, there was nothing Tesilon-Kappa could do about it : the remaining handful of weapons still functioning on Emeli's Gift were too high-calibre to be aimed at such small targets, especially when a miss would hit Slawkenberg instead.
"I see. Well, nobody can deny that you and your people did an incredible job, Magos," replied Cain, and his praise filled Tesilon-Kappa with pride. Unlike every superior they'd ever had in the Mechanicus, the Liberator never hesitated on congratulating people for task well done, which they had observed appeared to directly correlate with increased efficiency and productivity in the recipient. "The performance of Emeli's Gift far exceeded my expectations. We'll deal with the survivors on the ground, don't worry. They'll be easy pickings for the USA."
"Of course !" General Mahlone said, his own pride at the Liberator's confidence obvious. "Magos, will you continue monitoring the situation from orbit ?
"It seems the most efficient use of my time at this juncture," they confirmed. "While I doubt you will require orbital support, there are maintenance checks and evaluations to be done in the wake of this battle station's first combat operation."
"Then we'll see you at the victory celebration," said the General.
To their own faint surprise, Tesilon-Kappa found that they were looking forward to it. Few tech-priests could be described as social, and Tesilon-Kappa was self-aware enough to know they were not among them, but they did enjoy the company of Mahlone, whose focus on all things military had enough of an overlap with their own expertise to make conversation engaging. The General wasn't on the same level as the Liberator, obviously, but then no one on Slawkenberg (and probably few beyond) were.
"You will," they replied. "May the True Gods be with you," they added before cutting the link and getting back to work.
Given that the Ork leader had almost certainly been reduced to its component particles following the destruction of the enemy flagship, and based on the files Tesilon-Kappa had on what passed for the psychology of that particular xenos breed, the USA's triumph was assured. Without their leader, the greenskins would turn on each other in order to re-establish a hierarchy of dominance, and Slawkenberg's forces would wipe them out long before one had the time to emerge.
It was a shame about the Gork's Klaw, Gargash reflected as his gunship plummeted through the humie planet's atmosphere. He had liked that ship. But oh, well. He would get a new one, bigger, killier, and with more dakka. As long as you were still alive, you had to keep moving, keep searching for the next fight. That was what being an Ork was all about.
Bah. That was enough philosophical musings. He was alive, he had his shoota, his klaw and his armor. He even had a bunch of his Nobz, all cramped together in the back of the gunship they had requisitioned when it had become clear the Gork's Klaw wasn't going to make it.
"Oi, flyboy ! Where'z we going ?!" he bellowed over the shriek of the air running past them.
"Down, boss !" The pilot shouted back.
"I know dat, genius," Gargash snarled. "I'z asking WHERE down !"
"Oh ! Uh, uh, I'z taking us to da biggest humie city, boss ! Dat's where all da other boyz are going too !"
Gargash considered that for a moment, before nodding. The humie bosses must be there, along with all the best loot on the planet. Nothing like the Space Hulk for sure, but enough to get the WAAAGH ! back up and running after their mishap in orbit. The humies must have a way to get to the Space Hulk : once he'd taken that, he could get back up there and finish the job properly this time.
"Good ! Aim a bit outside and tell da other flyboyz to do the same."
"Why, boss ?"
"So dat we can regroup and do a proper WAAAGH ! And stop asking questions, or I'll pluck your head off and pilot this pile of bolts meself !"
You really couldn't get good help, these days.
"The Space Hulk is still operational. Although the Orks are making planetfall, they have failed to inflict any damage upon it whatsoever. Was this part of your plan, oh Arch-"
The words of Sheev's unruly subordinate were suddenly cut off by an agonized scream, as the master of the Kabal of Murderous Death unleashed a stream of lightning from his gauntlet. The device was a Vileheart heirloom, in the sense that Sheev had pulled it off the corpse of his sire after killing him with a dozen poisoned daggers to the back.
The Archon kept the flow of energy going until the screams had stopped. By that point, the uppity moron had been reduced to blackened charcoal within his armor, his melted muscles still twitching from the leftover current.
If he was reading the rest of the room correctly (and he was, such a skill being the absolute bare minimum to survive in Commoragh), half of those present were suppressing the urge to attack him here and now. Which, given that he had a solid circle of Incubi surrounding him, ready to defend him to the last thanks to the price he'd paid for their services until this raid was over, was only sensible. The other half, including the leader of the Wyches of the Tainted Kiss (who was quite the delightful little thing, he had to admit), were still savoring the brief flare of agony of his victim.
"As a matter of fact, it is, my dear," said Sheev, looking down at the smoking corpse with a big smile. "I never expected the greenskins from destroying the Space Hulk : even if they could, we would only have risked falling into the same trap that whore did when she tried her own inferior version of this plan."
"What trap, my lord ?" asked Sarevok. The Hierarch was utterly unfazed by the sudden murder of his liege, which only made sense given he'd seen Sheev do far, far worse.
"Letting the Orks get the prize instead," the Archon replied. "Now, however, the greenskins' numbers have been culled. They'll still cause some damage, but once the mon-keighs have defeated them – that is when we shall strike, and claim everything for myself."
It was all a lie, of course. He'd expected the Orks to take down that Space Hulk, or at least do enough damage by rampaging inside it to disable it temporarily. The Dark Tormentor and the Kabal's other vessels may be far more advanced than the mon-keigh sensors, but one never knew what kind of technology had been fused together in the Warp to create a Space Hulk : perhaps the mon-keighs had figured out a way to pierce their cloaking at short range.
How in the names of the Dark Muses had the mon-keighs managed to reactivate so many of the Space Hulk's weapon systems, he had no idea. The Harlequins had told him they'd only just gotten their grubby hands on it, and so little time had passed since then he'd expected the primitives to still be struggling to map the damn thing.
Of course, he suddenly realized, and had to suppress his own rising murderous impulses (not something he usually needed to do, but those were special circumstances). These accursed jesters had lied to him. The mon-keighs must've had the Space Hulk in the system for years, long enough for even their primitive technomancers to jury-rig something capable of standing up to the Orks. Given that fewer weapon systems had fired with each volley, it was clear that they hadn't done an especially good job of it either, but against the greenskins, that had proven good enough.
Why the servants of the Laughing God had done this, he had no idea, nor did he intend to waste his time and energy trying to figure it out. The motives of Cegorach's stooges were notoriously opaque, even by the intrigue-filled standards of the Dark City.
However, he couldn't admit any of that to his subordinates. Beyond the sheer humiliation such an admission would represent, it would also be more immediately dangerous. To an Archon, reputation was everything : any sign of weakness, and his inferiors would seize their perceived chance and try to overthrow him, so that they could replace him and enjoy the privileges of his position instead.
So he would keep pretending everything was going as planned. Besides, his caution about the Space Hulk being able to detect his ships was probably unwarranted.
"Prepare the Kabalites for a rapid deployment to the planet surface," Sheev commanded his Hierarch, "and monitor the mon-keighs' communications. We'll move on my order."
"As you command, my lord Archon," replied Sarevok with a bow before departing the bridge.
The twilight sky visible through the windows of the chamber was lit up by the descending trails of hundreds of blazing meteors, making it seem as if the whole horizon was aflame. Yet within the halls of Saint Trynia Academy for the Daughters of Gentlefolk, the war against the Orks was the last thing on anyone's mind.
Since the Uprising, the Academy had changed, openly becoming the headquarters of the Handmaidens on Slawkenberg. It still functioned as a school, but now it trained new Handmaidens in the ways of subterfuge and sorcery, that they might serve the cause of the Liberation Council.
Against an enemy like the Orks, the help the Handmaidens could provide was limited. The xenos brutes were notably resistant to the influence of the True Gods, their bestial minds utterly unable to comprehend the majesty of the Dark Prince or appreciate His gifts. This was a matter for Mahlone and his soldiers – with the guidance of the Liberator to make sure the Khornates didn't do anything stupid, of course. No, the Handmaidens had their own task to perform tonight.
The rite the Handmaidens had just performed was a repeat of the ceremonies the Lady had led herself, back when she had been the headmistress of the school, spreading the teachings of the Dark Prince to the young girls under her care. They had dispensed with the human sacrifice that had occasionally accompanied such occasions, though : the Liberator's edict on the matter was quite clear, and none of the factions of the Council would dare go against him on this.
However, the true reason behind such sacrifices had always been the height of sensation that accompanied the sacrifice's last moment before death, which was the real offering to the Dark Prince. Now that the Handmaidens didn't need to act in secrecy (even in the Academy, there had been a need for discretion prior to the Uprising), they could compensate by increasing the number of participants to the ritual from six to sixty-six.
Here, where Lady Emeli had transcended mortality and claimed daemonhood through her beloved's gift, the barrier between the Materium and the Immaterium was thinnest than anywhere else on Slawkenberg, thank to the scar the former headmistress' ascension had left on reality. The only other location where the veil between realms was as thin was the House of Remembrance, thank to all the times Lady Emeli had possessed Krystabel's body in order to commune with her beloved champion there. But, precisely due to that, it couldn't be used for this, since the Liberator was far too busy with the defense of the planet.
The reason for this ritual was the sudden and constant aching of the various and subtle alterations to Krystabel's body – each one a mark leftover from a time her mistress had infused her flesh with her essence. It had started when the Orks had arrived in the system, and compelled her to seek audience with the Lady Emeli.
As the ritual took effect, Krystabel's vision bloomed with colors that didn't exist anywhere in the galaxy, and the sight of her sisters and acolytes faded away. Her body thrummed with sensations she couldn't name, pain and pleasure and grief and joy all at once, swiftly obscured by a growing sense of adoration as her soul drew closer to the domain of her mistress in the Realm of Chaos.
And there she was. Even though this method only allowed Krystabel a mere glimpse of Lady Emeli's true magnificence, what she could perceive was enough to make her want to weep with admiration. She was beautiful, blazing with her unending love for the Liberator, her long black hair flowing like the deepest, purest night sky, her eyes gleaming with emerald fire. Yet Krystabel couldn't help but notice the shadows that marred her perfect form, reflecting the worry she felt.
"Krystabel," said the Daemon Princess of Slaanesh in a voice that was a purr and a caress all at once. "My faithful helper. Heed my words, and heed them well. A shadow looms in the Warp, obscuring my sight. I have tried to discern its source, but it has proven frustratingly elusive."
Judging by the anger Krystabel could feel simmering under her mistress' words, it hadn't been the good kind of frustration.
"It was this shadow that prevented me from seeing the approach of the Orks in time to warn my beloved. Of course, I trust in Ciaphas' martial prowess to see to the brutes. But I worry that something lurks within the shadow that might threaten him. You must warn him, Krystabel, so that he is not so focused upon the enemy in front of him he fails to notice the one hidden from him in time."
"Yes, my lady," Krystabel breathed out. "I will do so, I swear !"
The Daemon Princess' presence withdrew. For a moment, as her senses crashed down, Krystabel felt lost and confused, her surroundings seeming unbearably drab and boring compared to what she'd just experienced. Then, with an effort of will, she reasserted herself.
She should be able to contact the Liberator without too much issue : even with the battle against the Orks having moved to the planet's surface, she was a member of the Liberation Council, and her communications would have priority. Getting to his side, however, would be more of a challenge.
Debris from the orbital battle was still raining down on Slawkenberg, and all the blessings of Slaanesh wouldn't help her if a meteor slammed into her transport, nor did she fancy the chances of her and the other Handmaidens should they run into an Ork warband. They were far from helpless, true, but they had their limits (and, unlike the blockheads from the USA, they knew and accepted them).
With that in mind, Krystabel marched out of the ritual chamber, careful not to step on any of her exhausted sisters. Without wasting time changing her clothes since she wouldn't depart the Academy, she went searching for a communication unit to pass on her lady's warning to the Liberator.
Notes:
AN : Well, I told you it would be quick, but I didn't think it would be this quick. The Muse was really generous with this chapter, probably because I'm listening to the Vainglorious audiobook at the same time. Which, by the way, is another great addition to the Cain series so far, although I sometimes wish Sandy Mitchell used a bit more variety in Cain's inner monologue (there are only so many times you can hear him describe a tech-priest as having 'more metal than flesh in his face', or something like it, before it starts getting repetitive).
Yes, the ansibles are busted. Like, I can imagine Guilliman going "I will grant the Cainite Dominion full independance and a non-agression pact if you share this technology with us" without it being crack (and that would be a STARTING offer, the Avenging Beancounter would likely go much higher if needed). I mean, just imagine how different the Horus Heresy would have been if a pair of ansibles had existed between Macragge and Terra.
Of course, it's entirely possible than in canon 40K, the STC for these devices is in a shrine on a forge-world somewhere, but nobody is using it because that would be heresy/would remove some of the Astra Telepathica's influence/some other suitably grimdark reason. For now, their impact in this story is fairly limited, but once things start escalating beyond a single star system, oh boy ...
No Orks boarding the Space Hulk, sorry. I had planned for it to happen in the first draft, but Tesilon-Kappa decided to be better at their job than I thought. And yes, the ritual to contact Emeli involved exactly the kind of stuff you are thinking about, except more, because even on Slawkenberg, Slaanesh is the God of Excess, and there were only Handmaidens involved so they didn't need to hold anything back.
The next chapter will have more action, and if things go according to plan, Amberley's next appearance in this story. I hope you are all looking as forward to it as I am.
Oh, and I am sure the shadow blocking Emeli's sight is nothing to worry about. Probably just another of Cegorach's practical jokes, that's all.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 10
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Taking Krystabel's call in the middle of the command room had only seemed logical at the time : she wouldn't have contacted me in the middle of an Ork invasion if it wasn't important, and to her credit it was. But I couldn't help but wish I had done so in more privacy. The state of dress of her hololithic projection as she passed on Emeli's warning had been quite distracting to most of the command crew (apart from the borgs of course, who had too much metal where their flesh used to be to be interested in such things).
Even the members of the USA, who were supposed to follow the precepts of the God of War, rival to the Handmaidens' patron, hadn't been able to help themselves from sneaking glances before we'd finished our exchange. Come to think of it, I hadn't been immune to it myself, though the content of her message had soon doused any thoughts her looks might have caused.
"What do you think ?" I asked Mahlone, who had been standing at my side and listening in on the whole exchange.
"We'll be on our guard," he assured me. "And keep some units in reserve to react to any emergencies."
"Good man," I told him, which given he was a Khornate cultist might have been something of an exaggeration. "At this stage, it's really all we can do."
I really wanted to leave the war room, head for the nearest shelter, and let the USA sort things out. Unfortunately, as the Liberator, that option was unavailable to me. So I discarded that thought and focused on the hololithic display of the strategic situation. Whatever else threatened us, we still needed to deal with the Orks, before they laid waste to the planet with all the enthusiasm for wanton destruction they were known for. Thanks to the various auspex systems of Emeli's Gift (a few of which hadn't survived the engagement, but not enough to really matter), we had as clear an image of the enemy's positions as could be asked for as the survivors of the orbital battle reached the ground.
Most of the Ork crafts had landed around the capital with all the accuracy of a shotgun blast fired by a underhive ganger drunk on rotgut. Their occupants were converging on us at commendable speed, though given most of them were on foot we still had some time before the arrival of their vanguard. They were also lacking any of the discipline and coordination I would have expected from the USA, let alone a Guard unit (with some proper commanders, of course, I hastened to add to the thought). Not all, however, had come for Cainopolis : some had scattered all across the planet, and I didn't envy Mahlone the job of cleaning them all out once the main bulk had been dealt with. One such cluster of dots in particular drew my attention.
"These ones," I said, highlighting them for the rest of the crowd. "They are near the Valhallan detention camp, aren't they ?"
"Yes, lord," confirmed one of the General's aides after a quick check. "And they appear to be moving in the camp's direction as well."
Why exactly the greenskins were going up the mountains instead of moving toward the nearest villages I could only guess at. Perhaps they'd seen the camp from above during their descent, and, having mistaken it for some kind of fortification, thought it to be an important target. Of course, in reality the Valhallans were completely defenceless, apart from the digging tools we'd given them for the chores that occupied much of the troopers' time.
The thought of so many Guardsmen, whose only crime had been to be horribly unlucky with their commanding officer, being at the mercy of their people's ancestral enemy made my stomach curdle. I had also gone to some not inconsiderable effort to keep them alive and well, and I was damned if I was going to let a bunch of greenskin savages make it all for naught. Of course, I wasn't going to hop onto a transport and go there myself : apart from how dangerous such a course of action would be, I couldn't be seen fleeing Cainopolis just as it was about to come under attack by the bulk of the surviving Orks.
Then, by the grace of the Emperor, I remembered something I had read amidst the endless pile of paperwork and reports that continuously grew on my desk earlier that week.
"This weapon factory here," I said, marking one of the borgs' facilities on the other side of the mountain range. "It just completed its latest weapon shipment, didn't it ?"
"It did, lord Liberator," replied one of the borgs after brief pause as he accessed the relevant data. "But the shipment was grounded upon the arrival of the xenos."
"Of course it was," I nodded. "But now that the Ork fleet is down, air traffic should be safe again. Kindly inform the factory's management that I want them to send that shipment to the Valhallan camp, so that the Guardsmen can defend themselves."
If I remembered things correctly, that shipment had initially been earmarked for the USA's reserve gear stockpiles, and contained a mix of carapace armor, lasguns and power packs, along with a dozen other miscellaneous items. Not enough to completely equip a military force from scratch, but certainly better than nothing.
"My lord, are you sure this is wise ?" asked Jafar, in the closest he had ever come to questioning my judgment since Slawkenberg had decided it would rather take its chances with the Dark Gods than the Giorbas. Well, openly questioning it at least : as the leader of the cultists of Tzeentch on the planet, I had no doubt he had thought me crazy plenty of times, but thankfully the sheer volume of bureaucratic work that went with running a planet seemed to have kept him too busy to plot anything in response.
"Wise ? Probably not," I admitted with a shrug. "But it's certainly the only honorable choice, given that we can't divert any USA units to defend the camp at the moment." Seeing that he wasn't entirely convinced, I continued : "I gave these men my word that we would treat them right when they surrendered, Jafar. That included keeping them safe from the retribution of their own masters, meaning that they are under my protection. Making them fight our enemy for us is already stretching the spirit of that oath too thin for my liking, and I will not have them do so with nothing but shovels, rocks and harsh language."
"I see," he said, nodding sagaciously and no doubt already constructing an elaborate scheme in his head in an attempt to see through what he was certain my hidden, real motives must be. "Then I can only hope they will prove worthy of your generosity."
"Oh, I'm pretty sure they will," I replied, glancing at Jurgen. My aide was still as impassive as ever, but I thought I saw the hint of an approving smile on his lips. "If there's one thing you can trust the Valhallans with, it's killing Orks."
As for what would happen after the Orks were dead and the Guardsmen still had all that shiny new wargear, well, that was a problem for the future. Having a bunch of Imperial troopers waging a guerilla campaign against the Liberation Council would do some damage to my image, true, but I should be able to spin it as me being overly trusting and merciful, only to be taken advantage of by the Imperials. There was only so much damage the survivors of Karamazov's disastrous campaign could do to Slawkenberg (although I'd need to be careful of assassination attempts, given my position as the rebellion's figurehead), and the presence of such a resistance would hopefully make any future Imperial reclamation efforts smoother.
The order was transmitted at once. According to the borgs' estimates, the shipment should arrive around half an hour before the Ork warband reached the camp. The rest would be in the hands of the Valhallans themselves : in the meantime, I had problems to deal with closer at hand – up to three thousands of those, in fact, based on the latest data. At least Mahlone looked to be on top of things, moving the USA units mobilized to defend the capital to meet with the approaching horde.
"Lord Liberator," one of the borgs chirped in. "Your own custom suit of armor is ready."
I blinked in confusion. "My what ?"
"The suit of power armor you authorized Magos Tesilon-Kappa to construct for your personal use," the cyborg explained. "Tesilon-Kappa had it brought here to make the final adjustments."
"Well, that was nice of them," I said, meaning every word. I had no intention of getting anywhere near the shooting, of course, but the thought of an added layer of protection between my miserable hide and the Orks certainly sounded appealing. I turned to look at Mahlone : "I trust you can handle things in my absence, General ?"
"Of course, Lord Liberator !" He replied, snapping a brief salute before going back to doing his job. Jafar sent me short nod as well, before returning to the task of making sure every shelter in the capital was still secure and there wasn't any issue with the hundreds of thousands of people packed inside.
With that, I left the war room, following the tech-priest, Jurgen at my side. Soon, we arrived at a hangar, where a number of USA troopers were making final checks on their equipment before departing for the city's borders to face the Orks. And there, in the center of the room, was my 'armor'.
Tesilon-Kappa had promised me a custom suit of power armor, but this was nothing of the sort. Apart from its scarlet color, it had little in common with the suits worn by the elite of the USA in recent weeks. It was huge, standing higher than a Sentinel walker, though it was much bulkier, reminding me of nothing so much as the images of Astartes Dreadnought I had seen, if sleeker in design. A truly massive chainsword hung at its belt, and a heavy bolter was built into its left forearm, though there was still an articulated gauntlet at the end, presumably to wield the chainsword two-handed. The quartered circle of the Liberation Council had been engraved on its chestplate, which with a gesture from the tech-priest gently split open to reveal a padded cockpit.
"This is … not what I was expecting," I managed to say, more than a little taken aback.
"When Tesilon-Kappa designed this armor, they concluded that while deploying it in numbers was impractical due to the resources required for the construction of each suit, building one for your own use was only logical," said the tech-priest, sounding inordinately smug for someone using a vox-coder. At least he was keeping to the cover story for the STC database.
"And why wasn't I informed of this ?" I asked. "I was under the impression the Bringers were preparing a standard suit of power armor for me, with perhaps a few more bells and whistles, not … whatever this is."
"We are calling it the Liberator Armor," explained the borg. "It was calculated that you would reject any offer of having such a suit prepared for you, out of concern for the impact the project would have on our resources. However, after discussing the matter with the rest of the Liberation Council, Tesilon-Kappa chose to proceed with it while keeping you uninformed. I believe they wanted to surprise you with this gift, Lord Liberator."
… Well, out of all the things I could imagine the rest of the Council keeping hidden from me, this was probably the most harmless possible, though I'd rather they didn't make a habit of it. I sighed and shook my head theatrically.
"At this point, it would be childish of me to complain. But are you sure now is the time to test it ? I don't have the slightest clue how to pilot such a wondrous machine." Better throw in some praise, just to be safe.
"There is no need to worry about this," replied the borg. He briefly looked around to check there wasn't anybody in earshot and lowering his voice before continuing : "The ancients understood how to make their devices easy to use by the uninitiated far better than we do. A child could operate this armor."
Except for the small issue of not being big enough to fit the cockpit, but I took the borg's meaning. And, given there hadn't been any reports of USA troopers struggling to master the smaller power armor and that using the Panacea was as simple as injecting it as close to the problem as possible, I supposed he had a point.
"You might as well try it, sir," intervened Jurgen. "I sure would feel better if you had some protection stronger than carapace armor."
Well, I could hardly argue with that. The borg – whose name I never picked up – showed me how to get inside the Liberator Armor (Throne, I hoped I could get them to change the name, Cainopolis was bad enough), which was surprisingly comfortable.
The armor contained some kind of feedback mechanism to help me move its arms and legs as if they were my own, and once the suit was completely enclosed around me and the screens of the cockpit had flickered to life it really felt as if I had suddenly grown another couple meters. I don't mind admitting to feeling a brief rush of exaltation at the sheer sensation of power the whole thing gave me, before the coin suddenly dropped, alongside my stomach.
Now that I was inside this thing, I could think of no reasonable excuse not to join the fight against the Orks. Since the Uprising and my accidental confrontation with the fleeing Governor, I had developed a reputation for leading from the front, not helped by what had happened with the Giorba Cardinal and Commander Chenkov.
Through luck more than good judgment, I had managed to convince the USA that keeping me from throwing myself headlong into danger was their idea, but the kind of man they thought I was wouldn't let anything or anyone dissuade him from trying out his new shiny death machine in combat, especially when the city that bore my name was under attack by foul xenos trespassers.
It would be alright, I told myself. The one-sided victory of Emeli's Gift against the alien fleet was evidence that the borgs did good work, and I couldn't think of any reason why Tesilon-Kappa would want me dead and sabotage my new suit of armor. Meanwhile, the greenskins had landed in complete disorder, with nothing heavier than a handful of transports that had somehow survived their precipitous orbital entry.
I was, of course, completely wrong about that, but I had no way of knowing so at the time.
"Now dis iz fun !" Gargash bellowed as he tore another red humie in two with his klaw while firing at his friends with his big shoota, their return fire bouncing uselessly against his Mega Armor.
Unlike most humies he'd fought before, these red ones didn't hesitate to get into krumping distance. They were strong and tough, too, although not as much as a proper Ork, of course, and far from his own strength. And they had some good loot too, with some of them even wearing small Mega Armor the Mekboyz were salivating over the prospect of tearing to pieces for spare parts.
Since they had crashed on the planet, the Warboss had managed to rally a bunch of boyz, and the rest were also moving toward the humie city in any case. He'd even found a handful of Weirdboyz who had made it down, which was good given how much time and teeth he'd spent recruiting them into his warband.
The place was weirdly empty : in his experience, there were a lot more humies running around scared and getting in the way of a good krumpin', although it was always funny to see them run and scream in front of the Waaagh ! But while there weren't not-fighting humies (which was a concept it had taken the Warboss some time before understanding, so absurd was the very idea of someone not capable of fighting), there were plenty of fighting ones, and the battle had started as soon as they'd reached the city.
Since then, they had barely been able to advance at all. But as more and more boyz arrived from the surviving transports, eventually the tide would turn in their favor, Gargash was sure of it. Until then, he just had to have fun and keep krumpin' the red humies.
"Boss !" called out one of the boyz. "Look at dis !"
Gargash turned to look where the smaller Ork was pointing. There, tearing through a group of boyz, was another red humie, except that one was big, bigger than the beakies who sometimes fought alongside the smaller humie soldiers. In fact, it was around as tall as Gargash himself.
The Warboss smiled, showing every one of his many pointy teeth. Finally, a proper challenge.
"Dat one'z mine, boyz ! WAAAGH !"
As he charged, Gargash absent-mindedly noted all of his Weirdboyz suddenly exploding, but any annoyance he might have felt at their abrupt demise was washed away by a rush of excitement and fresh Waaagh ! energy suddenly coursing through his veins as the psychic energy the Weirdoyz had accumulated was unleashed.
"WAAAAGH !"
As the Ork Warboss charged in my direction, his war cry making the very ground tremble, I cursed inwardly, grateful that the armor hid my face from view so nobody could see the expression of panic on my face.
How was that brute still alive ?! I had seen his ship come apart under the firepower of Emeli's Gift. Nothing should've been able to survive that ! Yet here he was, unmistakable from the broadcast he'd sent announcing his arrival and intentions. Gargash Korbul himself, exactly as huge as he had looked and somehow far more threatening in person.
Up until this point, things had been going as well as I could have asked for. The suit of armor was as impenetrable to the Orks' firearms as I had hoped, allowing me to cut them down by the dozen with impunity. Despite the carnage I wrought, the xenos kept coming at me for some reason, leaving the rest of the USA forces free to flank them with overwhelming firepower. Jurgen was with the unit accompanying me, not using his psychic powers yet at my instruction (Ork psykers were rare, but they existed, and I felt better for the knowledge that we'd have a counter ready should we encounter one), limiting himself to the use of a lasgun, which he fired with an accuracy that was as remarkable as it was vengeful. And with every engagement, I had gotten more and more used to the way the armor responded to my every command.
And now, this. Judging by the pitiful sparks the handful of las-bolts that hit Korbul's armor produced, the Warboss was as threatened by my allies as I had been by his, which was yet another sign that the Emperor had a twisted sense of humor where I was concerned. In fact, the USA troopers were worse than useless in this scenario. With so many witnesses, my reputation would never survive if I just turned and ran. Although to be perfectly honest with myself I doubted I would either, given that Korbul was unlikely to just let me go, judging by the bloodthirsty expression twisting his already hideous face.
Jurgen might've been able to help, but he'd exhausted himself dealing with the xenos psykers and was currently being supported by a pair of troopers who were taking him to the back lines while their comrades provided covering fire. Which meant I was completely on my own.
Thankfully, the increased height of the armor helped keep the terror at bay. Had I been on foot, the sight of Korbul charging toward me would doubtlessly have caused me to freeze in place, leading to my quick and ignominious death. Instead, I moved on instinct, planting my feet and seizing my chainsword in a two-handed grip as I held it in a guard position.
Korbul crashed into me with what felt like the strength of a Baneblade, but I managed to hold my ground, and parried a blow from his powered claw with my chainsword, creating a fountain of sparks that did nothing to make the Warboss' features more appealing. We briefly struggled against one another, green muscle and primitive but effective servos pitted against the technology of the ancients, until I managed to disengage. He struck again, and I blocked before striking back, leaving a gouge across his shoulder armor.
For several panic-filled heartbeats, the two of us continued to exchange blows, damaging each other's armor but doing little real damage. To my not inconsiderable surprise, I was holding my own, the time I had spent sparring against USA troopers unexpectedly helping me deal with an opponent of around my size but with more muscle mass. Korbul was clearly used to fighting, but who knew how long it had been since he'd fought someone his own size – even had he encountered a Space Marine, they would've been tiny compared to his bulk.
In the end, though, for all my superior swordsmanship and the advantages provided by the armor I wore, Korbul had far more real battle experience than I did, and he hadn't risen to the command of an Ork army without acquiring a certain low, bestial cunning. He struck high with his powered claw, aiming at my head, and when I moved to parry shifted his posture to grab my right arm and twist it around. Given the nature of his melee weapon, I could easily free my whirring blade, but the manoeuvre had left me open for a precious few seconds.
Before I could react, he raised his other arm, which was holding some kind of bolter-looking firearm with a muzzle so large I could have put my arm inside it had I not been wearing Tesilon-Kappa's not-so-little surprise. Time slowed down to a crawl as the weapon filled my field of view, but there was nothing I could do but reflexively close my eyes as Korbul pulled the trigger with a triumphant grin as he shot me in the face at point-blank range.
This close, the noise was almost deafeningly loud. To my unspeakable astonishment and relief, however, I didn't reopen my eyes to find myself in front of a very ticked-off Emperor. Instead, I was treated to the far less dignified sight of Korbul blinking dumbly at my failing to be turned into a cloud of gore and metal scrap, before looking at his gun with furrowed eyebrows and shaking it around like a tech-priest performing the rites of maintenance on a recalcitrant piece of machinery. Somehow, the armor had held against the shot, though judging by the cracks on the view screen and the various icons flashing an urgent red I could tell it had been a close thing.
Not wanting to waste the miracle of engineering which had saved my miserable hide, I took advantage of my enemy's momentary distraction at once. Falling to one knee with a groan of protesting servos, I freed my chainsword and rammed it up into one of the weak spots my repeated battering had created in Korbul's armor. The energized field surrounding it sparked and shorted out, and the blade bit deep into his flesh before I ripped it out in a torrent of blood whose stench nearly overpowered my senses as it filtered in through the cracks in my own wargear.
And still, despite having been gutted, Korbul kept standing, though his sudden immobility made it clear it was an effort to do so.
"Dat waz … a good fight … humie," the beast managed to say through the blood pouring out of his mouth. It was hard to be sure, what with the blood and the fact that he was an Ork, but he appeared to be smiling, as if he'd truly enjoyed our duel, regardless of the outcome.
Madness. Even the Khornate lunatics would be angry in such a position, having been defeated in single combat after their entire fleet came apart around them. But then again, nobody had ever claimed that Orks were sane.
I swung my oversized chainsword, and the Warboss' head tumbled free of his shoulders. Aware of the watching crowd and the need to play up to my reputation, I caught the hideous thing in my left hand and held it aloft, before setting the volume of my armor's vox-speakers to maximum while also opening a general vox-channel :
"Korbul is dead !" I shouted, putting every bit of bravado I could fake into the words, a feat made easier by the adrenaline still coursing through my body. "Victory is is our reach ! Forward, warriors of Slawkenberg ! Forward into glory !"
A roar rose from the troopers around me, reminding me rather uncomfortably of the Orks' own bloodthirsty screams. The sight of their dead leaders appeared to break the greenskins' morale, and they started to flee, before being promptly run down or shot in the back by the USA.
I tossed Korbul's head away and considered giving chase, but my armor was too badly damaged for me to join the pursuit in any case, so it was a moot point. At this stage, it was nothing more than a big, slow target, so it was time for me to get out of it. Thankfully, the borg had taken the time to tell me how to activate the exit mechanism before sending me off to fight the xenos invaders with all the enthusiasm one would expect of the glorious Liberator.
I had just emerged from the armor and landed on solid ground where my palms suddenly started tingling, as I felt very exposed all of a sudden. If there really was a hidden enemy using the greenskins as a distraction, I could hardly think of a better moment for them to strike than when we thought we'd already won the day.
"General Mahlone," I said without preamble, opening a vox-link directly to the command center using the frequency reserved for the highest-ranking officers of the Liberation Council. "As you've probably already heard, Korbul is dead and the Orks are retreating. Any sign of our other visitors ?"
"Nothing as of yet – wait a moment. You, bring that into focus. Is that confirmed ? Get it on screen. Blood of the Gods, what is that thing ?!"
A cold sense of dread slithered down my spine as I heard Mahlone's exclamation. The other shoe, it seemed, had finally dropped.
The Dark Tormentor and its escorts had dropped their cloaking, right on the edge of the mon-keigh world's atmosphere. In the last few hours since the void engagement had gone so decisively in the defenders' favor, the Kabal's flotilla had moved to the other side of the planet from the Space Hulk, safe from its monstrous weaponry. The mon-keighs could see them now, but it didn't matter according to Archon Vileheart. Let them see the arrival of their betters, and feel the terror of prey before a predator. It would, still according to Vileheart, make their ultimate victory all the sweeter.
Based on the communications they were monitoring, the chieftain of the Ork warband Vileheart had manipulated into attacking this world had just been killed in single combat by the mon-keigh leader. Given what Sarevok knew of the greenskins, that actually was quite impressive if true, but that wasn't important at the moment. With the primitives convinced of their victory, now was the perfect time to crush their hope and reveal to them the true scope of their peril – such had been Vileheart's words when Sarevok had shared the news with him.
Sarevok wasn't sure he agreed with his liege's logic, but his job was to enact the Archon's will, not to question it. In fact, questioning it wasn't anybody's job, as the demonstration on the bridge had so eloquently shown all those present. Random executions were hardly uncommon among the Kabals, but Vileheart's ancient gauntlet was an especially painful way for those to go. It certainly had worked in motivating everyone, as the Kabal of Murderous Death prepared for the attack on the mon-keigh world (Slawkenberg, the Hierarch thought it was called) with renewed vigor.
Scores of Kabalite warriors were moving inside transports, ready for a swift deployment to their target. Meanwhile, the elites of the Kabal and those special forces recruited for the raid went into their own, private vehicles. The private barge of the Archon was also being readied, with the Incubi making the final checks before Vileheart himself embarked. They would, of course, find no sign of sabotage or any plot against the Archon : Sarevok had made sure of it.
The time to raid had come. They would fly across the surface of the world, and strike at the very heart of the mon-keighs' petty civilization, already thrown into disarray by the Orks' attack. They would extract the knowledge of the Panacea's location from the leaders, and take the rest as slaves. The locals had even been considerate enough to pack the non-combatants into shelters where, once their defenders were disposed of, they would be easy to harvest.
Soon, the Hierarch thought. Soon his opportunity would present itself. And when it did, he would seize it, along with everything he had dreamed of for so long. Vengeance and power would be his at long, long last.
Amberley moved through the corridors of the Drukhari ship carefully, aware that the slightest misstep would result in her being dragged back to her cell if she were lucky, and killed on the spot if she weren't … or perhaps it was the other way around. She wasn't sure. Her mind wasn't exactly at its sharpest at the moment, due to the several days she had spent in the custody of the Dark Eldars after waking from whatever tranquillizer the Harlequin had shot her with. The oppressive aura of pure, undiluted agony that suffused this entire ship didn't help either.
If she was perfectly honest with herself, she knew her escape could be attributed to her captors' stupidity rather than her own skills. Given how many prisoners the xenos raiders took back to their hellish homeland, she had expected them to know how to build cells. But the one in which she had woken up after the Harlequin's toxin faded had clearly been designed to facilitate the torture of the captive above all else.
Perhaps that was because such captives were expected to already be broken by the time they ended up there, or perhaps the Dark Eldars' addiction to sadism and cruelty had warped their minds beyond all common sense. Amberley might be a member of the Ordo Xenos, but she felt no desire to investigate that particular question, just as she would rather not know the details of the technology by which she had awakened without feeling any of the thirst and hunger she'd have expected after a prolonged bout of unconsciousness.
Regardless of the answer, she had made her bid for freedom after an overheard conversation between the guards. She could've escaped earlier, but that would have left her stranded on a Dark Eldar vessel in the middle of space. The snippets she'd been able to translate thank to her rudimentary knowledge of the Eldar language (well, not so rudimentary, but the dialect used by the dark kin of Commoragh had little in common with the Craftworld language she'd learned) indicated that they were in the process of raiding a human world. She had no idea which world it was, but this was likely her one and only chance of returning to the Imperium before her captors returned to the Dark City, at which point a quick death at her own hands would truly be her best option.
The xenos had deprived her of her equipment, but clearly they were more used to handling terrified civilians and traumatized Guardsmen who had just witnessed their comrades torn to shreds by agonizing weapons, rather than Inquisitors. They had missed the sub-dermal weaponry Amberley had arranged to have implanted in her body years before, precisely for a scenario such as this (most of the time, Inquisitors who were captured by those they investigated were just killed, but sometimes you got lucky and the heretic in question was stupid or arrogant enough to want to gloat to a captive audience).
With those devices, breaking her restraints and slitting the throat of the Dark Eldar standing watch had been almost insultingly simple. Now, of course, she needed to find a way off this accursed ship –
"Well, this is unexpected. I thought I would have to arrange your escape from your cell myself."
Amberley spun on her heels to find the very same Harlequin – or another one wearing the same ridiculous outfit – standing behind her. The pistol it had used to shoot her hung at its belt, and its hands were joined in front of it in a mocking clap.
Her finger hovered above the activation trigger for her sub-dermal weapon (without the advantage of surprise, it would be a long shot, but it was the only one she'd got), then the meaning of its words hit Amberley, and the Inquisitor hesitated.
"The Archon of the Kabal of Murderous Death is preparing to go to the planet in person," it continued. "I can help you sneak aboard his barge, if you like."
"What game are you playing, xenos ?" she asked, speaking plain Gothic. It probably knew she could speak its tongue, but she didn't want to embarrass herself with her faulty pronunciation – and besides, she refused to give it the satisfaction of making the effort.
"No game, I assure you, oh inquisitive lady," it declared, putting a hand on its heart. "I do only what I must, so that all can play the parts the audience expects of them."
That did fit with what Amberley knew of its breed, although what gain it could hope to achieve she had no idea. Regardless, given her situation, she didn't exactly have the luxury of choice.
"Very well," she said tersly. "But mark my word, xenos : I will make you pay for capturing me in the first place."
The Harlequin merely chuckled, which admittedly wasn't the reaction she'd hoped for, nor the one most people or aliens she had encountered had when she threatened them like that.
"I do believe that you will soon have far more pressing concerns, lady Vail. But in the meantime, please, follow me."
Notes:
AN : This early chapter is brought to you by the new Cain novel, Vainglorious, whose audiobook I've just finished at the time of publishing.
For those who missed my post on Spacebattles : the shadow in the Warp Emeli is talking about is not the Shadow in the Warp cast by the Tyranid hive-fleets. While I do plan to have Cain face off against the Great Devourer at some point in the story, it's a bit early for that. My apologies for not making it clearer in the text that it was something else.
The Liberator Armor is based on the Praetor Armor, from Doom Eternal : The Old Gods, except with a chainsword and storm bolter instead of an energy sword and shield. Oh, and the head piece doesn't have horns. If someone more talented with Photoshop (or just actual, genuine drawing) than I want to try to create an image of what that looks like, please do.
And yes, this means I gave Cain the armor of the Dark Lord of Hell. Why ? Because it's funny, that's why. And also yes, we can only dream of the day we design user interfaces as friendly and convenient as the engineers of the Dark Age of Technology.
Finally, once again my characters have forced me to alter my plans going forward. In this case, it's Amberley's entire arc which has left me scratching my head wondering how things are going to end.
I blame the Harlequins for that one. But don't worry, I'm sure something will come to me that seems obvious in retrospect.
I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. Don't expect the next update to be in two days, though.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 11
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
My nerves at the meeting of the Liberation Council that took place after the Ork Warboss' death were even more tense than the last one, which was something of an achievement. But at least I'd had several days to get used to the idea of the greenskins' approach, whereas these new invaders had caught us all completely by surprise when they had shown up right on our proverbial doorstep.
Tesilon-Kappa was attending through a hololithic projection, as was Krystabel, since the two of them were still in Emeli's Gift and the Academy respectively. After the death of Korbul at my hands had broken the morale of the Ork attack on the capital city, I had returned to the war room, accompanied by Jurgen, who still looked paler than usual from his efforts against the xenos psykers but stubbornly refused to leave my side, barely accepting the services of a medic while I worked.
There were some good news, I saw on the planetary map. Thanks to the weapons shipment I had sent their way, the Valhallans had successfully driven back the Ork warband which had attacked their camp with minimal casualties. There were still small pockets of the greenskins scattered about, and of course there was the question of what the Guardsmen were going to do now that they had guns again, but all those could wait. The armada of transports running through Slawkenberg's atmosphere on a direct course to my location could not.
"We don't have much time," I began without preamble. "For now, the Orks are handled. I would much rather we chase them down and wipe them out completely before they have time to go to ground in the countryside, but unfortunately, we have a new enemy to deal with."
I nodded to one of Mahlone's aides, and she pressed a rune on the console, and the image of the hololith shifted, showing what had caused the General to urgently call me back a few moments ago. The image didn't look like a ship so much as a collection of spines and edges hammered together by some demented sculptor who probably had too much black in their wardrobe and didn't spend enough time in the sun. Several smaller voidcrafts hung at its side, reminding me of lesser beasts around an apex predator, waiting for its scraps while also cautious not to draw its hungry gaze upon themselves.
"These vessels suddenly appeared on our auspexes twelve minutes ago," began the General, taking over the briefing now that I'd gotten everyone's attention. I was quietly impressed by how calm he managed to look, although given he was a Khorne worshipper maybe it was excitement at the prospect of a fresh enemy to face he was masking, not abject terror like myself. "Immediately after, they released a group of atmosphere-capable engines, which we believe to be a combination of troop transports and gunships. These are moving fast, and are on a straight trajectory to the capital. It is obvious that they are of xenos design, but the records the USA has access to don't contain anything even remotely like them."
"These are Drukhari," said Krystabel, with what I could only describe as hunger on her face.
"Pardon ?" I asked, the name meaning nothing to me. Judging by the looks on the faces of Mahlone and Jafar (Tesilon-Kappa's had too much metal in it for me to be able to read as easily, though they were surprisingly expressive for a cog-boy generally speaking), they were in the same boat.
"A sub-faction of the Eldar race," the leader of the Handmaidens explained. "Commonly called the Dark Eldars by the Imperium due to their many depredations." Which, coming from a cultist of Slaanesh, really was saying something. "They feed on the suffering of their victims, drawing the strength to deny the Dark Prince their own souls from the agony of others. Their entire society, if you can call it that, is based around capturing slaves to bring back to their hidden city and torture until they die, just so they can sustain their own miserable existences a bit longer … not that they don't enjoy it as well."
I blinked, as my mind processed the sheer absurdity of that statement. I wasn't stupid enough to think we lived in a fair galaxy, of course, but the existence of an entire race of xenos who literally existed solely to torture others to survive was a bit beyond the pale even by my standards. I tightened my grip on the table, to mask the trembling in my fingers.
"Then now more than ever, our first priority must be the safety of the civilians," I said, because that was what they were expecting me to say after such a revelation.
"If they are responsible for the shroud that kept Lady Emeli from warning us about them, then there must be witches in their ranks," buzzed Tesilon-Kappa.
Krystabel shook her head. "The Dark Eldars don't have psykers. It would take too long to explain why, but they don't make use of psychic abilities at all, relying on their technology instead. I don't know what blocked the Lady from detecting them, but it wasn't that."
"Worrying as this might be," and it was, you can believe me on that, "that is a question for latter," I cut in. "Judging by the speed of their transports, they will be here in less than an hour. Krystabel, if these xenos are enemies of the Dark Prince, can your Handmaidens call for aid from the Empyrean ?"
"They aren't 'enemies' of Slaanesh, my lord," she corrected me with a smile. "They are prey. The souls of all Eldars belong to Slaanesh, and they are no exception. Should we call upon the Dark Prince's help against them, I believe our calls would be answered promptly." Her smile faded. "Unfortunately, I don't think we will be able to make it in time to assist you."
"You are right, Krystabel," I said, switching my gaze to the planetary tactical map, which showed only a few scattering of red icons showing the last known positions of the remaining greenskins. "Still, given the situation with the Orks, the journey north should be safe. Make your way here in force, as fast you can, please. Even if you cannot arrive in time to help us, you might still be able to rescue our people should we fail."
And maybe, just maybe, rescue me along with it. If these Eldars sought to take prisoners to torture, then there was a chance, however small, that I would still be alive by the time Krystabel and her acolytes arrived. I wasn't going to bet my life on it, of course, but better to have that extra bit of insurance and never need it than the reverse.
"Of course, my lord," she replied with a solemn expression, although I could see a glint of worry in her eyes. No doubt she was afraid of Emeli's reaction should I die on her watch. She needn't be, of course, since by that point the truth of my nature would have been revealed and the Daemon Princess would be more interested in punishing me for my duplicity than her for her failure.
"If the Handmaidens aren't available, then perhaps my people and I can be of assistance," said Jafar. "We do have our own expertise in such matters."
To his credit, he didn't do anything as obvious as glance in Krystabel's direction or anything like that : if he was still playing the heretical equivalent of office politics, he was at least being subtle about it. But then, he was in the city along with me, so it made sense for him to do everything he could to ensure we won the second battle against invading xenos of the day.
"We aren't summoning the Neverborn to fight our battles for us," I replied swiftly, before anyone could get any ideas. That would be like jumping out of the flames and off a cliff, as far as I was concerned. I couldn't say that, though, since they might realize what I really thought about this whole 'blasphemy against Him on Earth' thing they all had going on. "Summoning them in sufficient numbers to make a difference would take too much time."
"Then we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way," said Mahlone. Which, much to my own reluctance, I was forced to agree with. Then I noticed Tesilon-Kappa not exactly fidgeting, but doing a good impression of it.
"Is there something else, Magos ?" I asked.
"There is," they admitted. "It isn't directly relevant to the defense of the capital, but I believe it might affect the greater tactical situation. When the Orks approached, we sent our ships to the other side of the planet so that they'd be safe. This led them to presently be not too far from the Dark Eldar flotilla."
"Yes, and if they even try to engage, they will be annihilated," I told them. "What is your point ?"
It shouldn't have been possible for someone as heavily augmented as Tesilon-Kappa to look sheepish, but somehow they managed it, or perhaps I was just imagining it.
"While Emeli's Gift provides a great deterrent against orbital engagement and shields the capital from orbital bombardment, even it cannot protect the whole planet at once," they began, clearly trying to buy time.
"Yes, we are all aware of that," I said. "That's why we have the shelters planet-wide, so that the really important thing, our people, can be safe while we deal with the threat in the void. It's not perfect, but it's the best option we've got."
It wasn't something any of us liked to think about, me least of all. But the simple fact was, a Space Hulk was simply too big to move around carelessly. Its sheer mass was capable of influencing the tides all on its own, and any mistake could result in the kind of catastrophe that left continents ablaze and the atmosphere choked with ash and dust.
"I've been recently informed that my brethren stationed aboard the ships we liberated from the Imperial oppressors have been working on some side projects during their personal time," Tesilon-Kappa continued. "Their posting made them especially sensible to this issue, and they sought a way to remedy it."
Something cold stirred in my stomach. I had a feeling I knew where this was going.
"Get to the point, Magos," said Mahlone. "We don't have much time before the enemy arrives."
"Yes, yes. Apologies. What I mean to say is that there is currently a prototype, untried weapon aboard the captured Imperial troopship renamed the Fist of the Liberator. Based on the data of its construction, I believe it could be of use in this situation."
I briefly considered it. This was twice now today that the borgs had unveiled a surprise like this on me, and while the suit of armor had ended up working out fine (while the USA might eventually have killed Korbul, that wasn't certain, and it wouldn't have come without a heavy price, given the suit itself was going to take weeks of work to repair), there was no telling whether this would work out just as well or not.
On the other hand, it would be just my luck to survive the raiders on the planet only for their ships to release some kind of toxin or other parting gift that killed us all anyway. Imperial Exterminatus took time to deploy, which was why I was still alive despite Karamazov's final tantrum, but the Eldars were well-known to possess technosorcery that worked in completely different way to the sacred machines of Mankind, and after Krystabel's description I wasn't putting anything past them (although I would soon come to learn how woefully inadequate my imagination was in that regard).
In the end, there were too many unknowns, so I chose to kick the can down the road for my future self to deal with. Seeing that I was going to do my damned best to keep his skin intact, that was the least he owed me.
"Make preparations to use this new weapon on my command," I ordered Tesilon-Kappa. "Once we've dealt with the situation on the ground, we'll see how these ships react, and I'll decide whether to use it or not then."
"As you command, Lord Liberator," they replied with a slight bow.
Of course, had I known then what would come from letting the borgs play with their latest toy, I would have ordered them to dismantle the thing at once and to the Warp with the risks of a Dark Eldar parting shot; or, at the very least, I would have asked for more details. But at the time, I was quite reasonably far more preoccupied with the raiders already planetside.
The meeting ended soon after, and those of us trapped in the middle of the Dark Eldars' target prepared as best we could for their arrival. Units that had been dispatched to the city's edge to stop the Orks from entering were recalled to the palace, but Cainopolis was huge and had been built for tourism and the Giorbas' ego, not to facilitate military redeployments. Which had served us well during the Uprising, but now meant that only part of the troopers made it to the palace by the time the xenos gunships became visible on the horizon.
They moved far too fast for our few anti-air defenses to lock onto : all firing would have accomplished was waste ammunition. Looking at the screen, I saw that the xenos crafts carried an array of vicious-looking weaponry, but to my relief their pilots hadn't decided to bathe the city in flames (or whatever unholy equivalent their cannons were capable of unleashing). Then I remembered Krystabel's explanation and realized the reason for that was probably so they could enjoy the agony of as many of us as possible in person, and my relief withered and died.
They finally opened fire once they were near the palace, tearing huge holes through the outer walls through which the transports could pass in order to disgorge their cargo of murderers and slavers. The pict-recorders in the landing areas went dead, either destroyed or shut down by the xenos' technosorcery, and leaving us with a map of the palace showing their entry points.
"Well then," I said, twirling my chainsword in a theatrical gesture and doing my best to look unconcerned. "Let us be about it."
Our strategy, such as it was, was rather simple : the troops already in the palace would do their best to harass and hold back the xenos from reaching the shelter entrances in the lower levels, hopefully using their knowledge of the terrain to gain the advantage, until the flow of reinforcements from the rest of the city overwhelmed the raiders and forced them to retreat, or the Handmaidens arrived and we could escalate through the use of sorcery. And while the clerks and adepts would remain in the war room, I had instead chosen to join one of the teams roaming the labyrinthine corridors of the palace for the enemy, with Jurgen insisting that he was fit to join me, although he still looked distinctly paler than usual.
Counter-intuitive as it sounded, my paranoia was telling me that staying in one place was a bad idea. These raiders had apparently spent thousands of years preying on human worlds : I had to assume they knew how to identify a priority target by now, meaning that the war room wasn't so much a safe zone as it was a big, juicy, immobile target. At least by going on the offensive, I could exert a measure of control over my own fate instead of just sitting in place and waiting for the inevitable assault, the troopers were determined to give their lives to save mine if need me so my efforts to hide behind them would be less noticeable and wouldn't hurt my heroic reputation, and there would be a lot less witnesses if I needed to make a run for it.
And if you think that sounds like a daft idea, well, looking back you would probably be right. But exhaustion was beginning to take its toll on my mental state, no matter how well I hid it from my supposed subordinates or how much excellent recaf Jurgen provided me. I had been awake for twenty hours by that point, and my sleep the previous night hadn't exactly been peaceful, haunted by images of green-skinned, red-eyed monstrosities. That the USA troopers were still fighting fit was a testament to the unexpected effectiveness of the brutal 'training' I'd designed for them with the intent of breaking their spirit.
In hindsight, my state of fatigue might also explain some of what happened later that day.
As Amberley crept through the corridors of a grand palace, she could hear the sounds of battle in the distance. The cruel laughter of the Dark Eldars was mixed with the sound of las-weapons and defiant battle-cries that were clearly of human origin, both echoing through the corridors of the unfamiliar building.
She'd only the vaguest idea of where she was going. That accursed Eldar clown had vanished moments after they'd left the transport, leaving her alone on an unknown world at war.
With the Drukhari having rushed out to hunt, leaving the barge had been relatively easy (well, as easy as sneaking around a bunch of murderous xenos hell-bent on pillage and torture could ever be). Judging by the opulence of her surroundings, it was clear she was in some Imperial-built center of governance, although there was an unusual lack of aquilae and other emblems of Imperial authority.
She was clad in simple clothes, which the Harlequin who had brought her to the transport had provided to replace the rags in which the Dark Eldars had dressed her unconscious form. It was the kind of habit that would go unremarked on thousands of worlds : combined with her training, she would be able to melt into any crowd, so long as she could find one. Which, given the messages warning all civilians to seek shelter that were still being broadcast on public announcement screens, was going to be difficult.
The Inquisitor was making her way through a room filled with desks covered with abandoned paperwork and clerk working stations when she heard a noise. She leapt underneath the closest desk, but she hadn't been quick enough. The squad of Dark Eldars who had just entered the room had seen her, and they promptly converged on her position, chuckling malevolently as they did so. One of them kicked over the desk she'd been hiding under, sending sheets of paper flying, and she scrambled to her feet and away from them – but there was nowhere to run.
"Hold on," said another of the dark-clad monsters. His words were translated by the device he wore around his throat : when raiding, the Drukhari wanted to be sure their prey could understand their taunts and vivid descriptions of their inevitable doom, but they didn't want to sully their tongues by speaking the language of their perceived inferiors. "Isn't that Vileheart's recent acquisition ? How did it get out ?"
"Does it matter ?" riposted another. "Let's drag it back to the barge. The Archon will be pleased with us … but not with it," he added with a sneer.
The one who'd spoken first advanced toward Amberley, raising a blade dripping with venom that burned holes in the carpet. She steeled herself. She could get out of this. It would be dangerous, but –
There was the familiar sound of a bolter firing, and the xenos' leering face vanished from its shoulders. Before she'd time to blink, its companions were turning toward the other side of the room, where a score of soldiers in crimson were advancing.
The firefight that followed was short, but brutal. The xenos' rifles fired monomolecular projectiles coated in poison that pierced right through the troopers' armor (which, she noted, was of a far better quality than was typical of most Planetary Defense Forces), sending a handful convulsing to the ground, but the rest kept coming on regardless, and soon the Drukhari had been reduced to twitching piles of steaming gore.
The soldiers double-tapped them with gratifying thoroughness, then immediately attended to their wounded comrades. To Amberley's amazement whatever was in the injectors they were using appeared to do the trick. Knowing what kind of venoms the Dark Eldars tended to use, she'd already written off the wounded as lost, but within moments they were tentatively rising to their feet – except for one, whose skull had been perforated cleanly and who remained on the ground, clearly beyond anybody's help but the Emperor Himself.
The leader of her unexpected saviors approached her, and she prepared to flash her Inquisitorial electoo, which was embedded in the palm of her hand. Given her state of dress, it would probably take some time for the locals to realize that yes, she really was an Inquisitor, but fortunately this wasn't the first time she needed to pull off something like that.
"Are you all right, miss ?" he asked in a soothing tone, no doubt taking her for a traumatized civilian.
Amberley got a closer look at him, and froze in recognition, all thoughts of activating her electoo vanishing like snow in a Tallarn desert. Somehow, she could hear that accursed Harlequin laughing at his own jest. For there, clad in ornate crimson carapace armor and holding a gilded bolt pistol in one hand and a chainsword in the other, looking like he'd just stepped out of a painting of a heroic warrior, was Ciaphas Cain, the renegade Commissar who had spearheaded a rebellion against the Imperium and killed one of her fellow Inquisitors in single combat.
Well. At least that answered the question of which planet she had ended up on, if nothing else.
The young lady looked frozen in place, which was only to be expected given the situation she'd just been into (and, though it had saved her life, the sight of her attackers being put down probably hadn't helped either). I didn't know how she hadn't gotten to the shelters in time, but with millions of people in the capital, I supposed it was inevitable some would slip through the cracks, no matter how efficient the planetary bureaucracy had become since its forceful restructuring.
Slowly, she unfurled from her crouching position against the wall, her height nearly matching mine (which was rare even among people who, unlike the majority of Slawkenberg's population, hadn't grown up with some degree of malnutrition or another). She was beautiful, with shoulder-length blond air and eyes of a most arresting blue set in a face that, even with the stress of the current situation, managed to still be lovely.
"It's alright," I told her as gently as I could while still holding my weapons. "You're safe now. Can you tell me your name ?"
"I … I am Amberley, lord Cain," she managed to say. "Amberley Vail."
"Miss Vail, you really shouldn't be out here right now," I said as gently as I could while my blood was still pumping from the engagement, however brief it'd been. The ease with which the xenos' weapons had punched through the troopers' armor hadn't exactly been reassuring, and I was all too aware that but for random chance (I would've said the grace of the Emperor, but I doubted He was willing to intervene in my favor at the moment) it very well could've been me laying dead on the ground. "Why didn't you go to the shelters ? Are there other people out there in need of help ?"
She shook her head. "No, just … just me. I wanted to check on someone, and I missed the shelters closing, and then … and then …"
She wrenched out a sob, trembling with mixed terror and relief, and I gently patted her shoulder after holstering my chainsword.
"There, there," I told her. "You are safe now, I give you my word."
Which wasn't worth much, but nobody here knew that except me. She didn't seem entirely reassured, which given that there were still more xenos around showed fear hadn't completely addled her, but she did nod shyly. Without making it obvious, I escorted her to the middle of our formation as we continued our sweep of the palace. That way, I could make it look like I was staying close to her out of concern for the civilian lost in a war zone, while conveniently letting the troopers take point without making it obvious or damaging my reputation for leading from the front.
We'd been lucky so far : apart from the group of warriors who'd cornered Miss Vail, we hadn't encountered any of the raiders. Judging by what I was hearing in my vox-bead, the rest of the defenders weren't nearly so fortunate, with reports of all manners of horrors being unleashed, from difformed mutants possessed of hideous strength to packs of beasts that were only partially material and, in one particularly vicious skirmish, what the sergeant in charge swore was a mobile torture engine.
We were making our way out of the administrative chamber when the sounds of battle suddenly rose from another room further ahead. Before I could say anything, the troopers were charging toward the noise, and I was left with the choice of joining them or staying behind and being left all alone. Reluctantly, I picked the least bad option and followed, making it look like my hesitation had been for Miss Vail's sake. To my slight surprise, she kept up with us easily, fear no doubt granting her vigor far beyond what her day-to-day life required of her.
The sight that greeted us was as grim as I had expected, but that was just about the only thing about it that didn't surprise me.
Sarevok breathed deeply, revelling in the high of battle as he stabbed his blade down into the heart of a downed Incubus of the Shrine of Sharpened Spite, finishing the warrior off. The battle had been short and brutal, the Incubi reacting to the betrayal with commendable alacrity (defending their employers against treachery was, after all, quite literally written in their job description) but ultimately proving no match for the Hierarch's careful preparations.
While betrayal was a way of life in Commoragh, to strike during a realspace raid was anathema to the principles of the Dark City, for the Drukhari depended on a constant flow of new victims, and without it their entire civilization would collapse. But if there was one lesson Sarevok had learned in all his years serving Vileheart, it was that only the weak clung to principles. The strong took what they desired and did as they wished, and if they couldn't deal with the consequences of doing so, then they had never been strong in the first place.
Looking around, the Hierarch saw that he was surrounded by the dead, with only two other souls in the room yet eluding the embrace of She-Who-Thirsts. Incubi and Hekatarii laid on the ground amidst pools of Eldar blood, its thick and rich scent almost intoxicating all on its own.
The Hekatarii's assistance had been easy to buy, given that Vileheart had relied on him to hire the Wych Cult of the Tainted Kiss in the first place. It certainly hadn't been cheap, however : in addition to several favors to be discussed at a later date and quantities of resources and slaves, the Succubus who had been chosen to lead the circles assigned to the raid had also bartered for the lives of two of Vileheart's top prizes : the Inquisitor his agents had captured by random chance while setting up the raid's preparations, and the mon-keigh leader of this world. How she had even known of the former's existence, Sarevok had no idea : it was a weakness in the Kabal's security he'd have to close once he ascended as its new Archon.
Letting go of such valuable prizes was painful, but well worth it in Sarevok's opinion, as his chances of turning the Kabal's own warriors to his cause had always been shaky at best. If there was one thing Vileheart excelled at besides murdering those who possessed what he wanted for himself, it was instilling fear into the hearts of his subordinates.
And besides, there had always been the chance the Succubus wouldn't survive to claim her reward, even if he wasn't stupid enough to sabotage his own usurpation attempt by scheming against her anymore than was expected (not plotting anything at all, even if only as a precaution, would rightly be seen as a mortal insult).
Given that Malicia was crumpled and bleeding against a wall, her chest rising and falling unsteadily, he might not even need to use any of these plots after all. If she did live, Sarevok still intended to pay the promised reward : he would need allies to cement his control over the Kabal of Murderous Death, after all. But he wasn't going to help her. If she died from her injuries, well, then she was too weak to be of any use to him anyway.
For now, though, it was time for Sarevok to claim the one prize he'd been pursuing for centuries. With a wide smile on his lips, he approached the downed form of Sheev Vileheart, who glared at him.
"Sarevok, you despicable piece of effluent," snarled Vileheart, still managing to talk despite the hole in his chest and sounding as prideful as ever. That would soon change, Sarevok promised himself. "What do you think you are doing ?"
"Replacing you as leader of the Kabal, of course," replied the Hierarch (soon-to-be Archon), savoring the look of hatred in his former master's eyes. "Is that not our way ?"
"Do you think you've won ?" Sheev spat, every word accompanied by a mouthful of blood. "Even if you strike me down, I will return, and my vengeance –"
"No," said Sarevok, revelling in Vileheart's look of outrage at being interrupted. After so many years of playing the obedient servant, the feeling was exhilarating. "You won't. I know all about the safeguards you set to avoid the maw of She-Who-Thirsts, Sheev, and I have found an appropriate counter."
He brandished the weapon he'd kept hidden for months, moving it from his private quarters aboard the Dark Tormentor to the barge just before the raid, and Sheev's eyes widened in recognition.
In Commoragh, where the mighty could cheat death thanks to the Haemonculi's services, the quest for ways to make sure your enemies stayed dead when you killed them was never-ending. The arm race between killers and necromancers had gone on for thousands of years, and both sides had produced some truly fascinating wonders and horrors during that time. What Sarevok held was one such wonder : an Anima Devourer, forged by the now-extinct Coven of Extinguished Hope.
To the naked eye, the Anima Devourer didn't look like much, though there was an undeniable artistry to the way its myriad blades clicked and whirred together around Sarevok's fist. But he could feel the weapon's raw malice, its hunger for the soul of its wielder.
Anyone killed by the Anima Devourer would have their essence wrenched from their flesh and, instead of being cast into the Sea of Souls where it would become the playthings of the Adversary until the Haemonculi could pull it back into a new body, it would be utterly consumed by the Warp-born entity shackled at the device's core using technology that had long been lost to all of the Aeldari Empire's fragmented remnants. Such had been the terror the Coven of Extinguished Hope had inspired when its ability to create the Anima Devourers had been revealed, they had been utterly wiped out by a coalition of various Kabals, Shrines, Cults and rival Covens.
The mere possession of one of the devices was enough to earn death in the eyes of the other Kabals, out of fear it would be used against them. Which, of course, meant most major Kabals had one hidden away in their most secret vault, while Vect flaunted his collection openly, secure in the knowledge nobody could do anything against him. But even the Supreme Overlord was cautious of actually using the accursed things.
Obtaining one had taken Sarevok decades, and more blood and pain than he cared to admit. But it had all been worth it for this moment, when he could see the fear dawning in Vileheart's eyes.
"You would go that far ?" croaked the Archon.
"Of course I would !" Sarevok sneered. "I know, Sheev. I know it was you who orchestrated the downfall of my family while I was only a child, leaving me in the streets. I know you only took me within the Kabal of Murderous Death because it amused you to have the scion of your old enemies as your servant. I have known for centuries, but I kept my peace, climbing through the ranks until I stood at your right hand, waiting for the right moment to strike ! And now … now it ends."
As he moved to strike, all of Sarevok's attention was focused on the downed Archon. Despite everything, Sarevok refused to underestimate Vileheart, and was wary of any last trick the Archon might possess. He also wanted to savor the kill, and fix it in his memory for all eternity.
So focused was he that he only heard the noise of new arrivals when it was too late. At the last moment before his blow landed, Sarevok turned aside, just in time to see a score of mon-keigh in crimson armor bursting into the room. Before Sarevok could do anything, they pointed their weapons straight at him and opened fire. The strength of their focused fire drove him back, away from Vileheart.
No. No, it couldn't end like this ! He wouldn't accept it ! He hadn't even claimed his vengeance yet !
He was going to be the Archon of the Kabal of Murderous Death ! He was –
The armor around his neck cracked and broke. There was pain, hot and crude, and then, briefly, darkness. All sensation fled, leaving only the memory of existence and, for the shortest of eternities, the horrifying thought that this endless silence might be all that awaited.
Then, a voice.
"Hello, little Sarevok."
Oh. Oh no. No no no no no no no …
"Oh, yes."
Notes:
AN : This chapter is another case of my original draft being split into two, with this chapter being the first half. The other half is already at around 4k words, though, so you can expect the resolution of this arc to be published promptly.
I initially planned to have another epic duel between Cain and Sarevok. Then I realized having him unceremoniously gunned down mid-monologue was funnier, and also meant I didn't have to contrive a reason for him to be on his own. Speaking of Sarevok, it turns out that 'Hierarch' is both a title used by the right-hand man of an Archon and that of the Incubi leaders (like Succubi are for the Wyches). I'm almost certain that is the result of someone at GW messing up in the last few decades : from my own research, the title of Hierarch is mentioned first in the 3rd Edition DE Codex. There, it is used in the right-hand fashion. Given that this story hearkens back to 40K ancient, parodic roots, I feel the coincidence appropriate.
Also, Tesilon-Kappa was the one to mention the prototype weapon their people had been working on. By which I mean, I hadn't planned it at all, but someone on SB pointed out that the Dark Eldars had gone on the other side of the planet from the Space Hulk, which was the same thing the Council's ships had done, and things escalated from there. Combined with last chapter's armor, this might give Cain paranoia over the borgs keeping things hidden from him to surprise him, but a good rule of thumb for this story seems to be "Does this make the great Liberator suffer ? If yes, then go ahead."
I hope you enjoyed this chapter and look forward to your comments and ideas.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 12
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
When Malicia had chosen to take Sarevok's offer of helping him kill his Kabal's Archon despite the obvious risks it entailed, she had done so only after careful consideration. At the time, it had seemed a well-calculated gambit, with the potential to not only propel her to rulership of the Tainted Kiss but also to secure the Coven's advancement along with her own. And while the Tainted Kiss' association with the Kabal of Murderous Death had benefited the Coven, there was no denying the simple fact that Vileheart was a very easy creature to hate.
It had been a mistake. Not just going along with Sarevok's ploy, but joining this raid in the first place. Everything had gone wrong, despite Vileheart's attempts to claim it was all part of his plan, and now here she was, lying bleeding on the floor of some mon-keigh hovel, having just watched her employer blasted apart right before her eyes.
Well, at least the mon-keighs hadn't noticed she was still alive. Vileheart had proven himself useful for once, drawing their attention by loudly laughing at the sight of his would-be usurper's demise. Every gun was aimed at him, not that he looked afraid of them in the least.
"I have some questions for you, xenos, and I advise you to talk and not waste either of our times," said the one who seemed to be their leader, based on how the rest moved around him and how different (yet still primitive) the pistol he held looked. "What happened here ?"
Vileheart stopped laughing, and sneered.
"I recognize you, he said. You are the leader of this world's vermin, aren't you ?"
"Indeed. I am Ciaphas Cain, the Liberator, and I have the honor of leading the Liberation Council. Now, since I have introduced myself, don't you think you should return the favor ? Not that I expect much in the ways of manners from uninvited guests, of course."
"Foolish mon-keigh," the Archon spat. "You have doomed yourselves and you don't even know it. But I suppose I should tell you, just so that you can despair at your own folly. I am Sheev Vileheart, Archon of the Kabal of Murderous Death, and it is by my will that your pitiful world was attacked by the greenskins."
"From where I am standing, your plan doesn't seem to be working that well," Cain pointed out. "Unless it somehow involved you bleeding to death surrounded by your dead allies, in which case I think even the Tzeentchians would laugh at you."
"That vermin," he pointed at Sarevok's corpse with his chin, "attempted to kill me and claim my power as his own … but you stopped him."
"An easily corrected oversight," retorted the mon-keigh, lifting his weapons threateningly. "Or do you think you can do anything but die in your state ?"
"Die ? I am beyond death, worm ! You may kill this flesh, but I will live again," ranted Vileheart. "And when I do, I will return to this miserable world, and wipe it clean of your miserable kind."
"Will you now ?" said Cain, his voice suddenly much lower. Around him, Malicia saw that the troopers' grip on their weapons was tightening. "Even after it ended so well the first time ?"
"Yes," declared Vileheart, more blood pouring from his mouth as his agitation aggravated his injuries. "I will return with far more forces, and this time we will not stop until nothing is left of this world but a poisoned wasteland over which the screams of the dying shall echo forevermore ! I will make slaves of your people, and boots of your children's skin. And you, Cain; you I will make watch as I throw your brutes into the arenas of the Dark City, to be cut apart for the entertainment of their betters. You will see each and every one of your companions die, and then and only then will I give you the mercy of death !"
"No, you won't" said Cain, his voice cold as the grave. He took a deep breath, and softly spoke one word :
"Emeli."
Malicia's pained breath caught in her throat. That simple name was sending shivers down her spine, and the shadows in the room suddenly seemed to have grown longer, while the temperature had plummeted. The blood pooling on the ground frosted, and a spiking headache added to her list of agonies. Even the mon-keigh soldiers looked around uneasily, and the one unarmed female who was with them for some reason stared at Cain with wide eyes.
"I call upon you, beloved," he continued, face taught with an emotion Malicia couldn't identify as he slowly walked toward the Archon. "In the name of the Dark Prince and the bond we share, I offer you this wretch, and asks that you ensure his shade never returns to haunt the living."
"What are you doing ?" asked Vileheart, and for the first time since the Hierarch's death there was fear in his voice.
"Ensuring you don't escape your rightful punishment," replied the mon-keigh warlord, and rammed his chainsword through the hole in the Archon's chest before triggering the blade. Vileheart screamed, briefly, then fell silent, his body continuing to twitch for a few more seconds before going still.
The unnatural pressure didn't abide with his demise : if anything, it grew worse. The mon-keigh soldiers looked around warily while clutching their weapons. One of them glanced in her direction, and she froze as his rifle immediately snapped up toward her and he called out :
"There is one still alive over there !"
"Then finish them off," replied the leader dismissively. "We still have -"
"Wait."
Before the horrified eyes of every soul in the room, the gutted corpse of Sheev Vileheart rose to its feet. Its flesh was running like molten wax, and within a few of Malicia's pained heartbeats nothing remained of the Archon's features. The ruined armor he'd worn into battle fell away like a discarded shell, revealing a humanoid figure of flowing purple biological matter, in whose skull a pair of blazing green eyes opened.
After a brief moment of shock, the mon-keigh troopers made to aim their weapons at the horror, but Cain dissuaded them with a single gesture, his sharp gaze fixed on the monstrosity.
"Hold. Emeli ? Is that you ?"
"Ah, beloved," said the voice coming out of the Archon's corpse. "I should've known you would recognize me."
"Well, it is still disturbing to see you like this, I must admit. I'm afraid that I much prefer your usual look."
It laughed, a melodious sound that was entirely at odds with the vessel it was puppeteering. "Dear, sweet Ciaphas. Always so honest. There was no need for such solemnity between us, you know."
"It felt more appropriate," he replied, sounding nervous, like a Kabalite unsure whether the Wych he fancied really enjoyed his courting gift or was just toying with him before eviscerating him. "Asking you for a favor like this …"
"Oh, beloved," it crooned. "That was no favor at all. I promise you, that fool will never come back to threaten our people. But now," its burning gaze suddenly turned to Malicia, pinning her in place under its infernal weight, "let's talk about you, hmmm ?"
Malicia didn't quail under that gaze, but her reaction wasn't far from it.
"Malicia Mortalyss," Emeli purred, and the Succubus twitched as she heard the entity speak her name. "Third Succubus of the Tainted Kiss Wych Cult."
"Do be afraid," the Daemon Princess continued, her enjoyment of Malicia's terror obvious. "Your former employer has made me very, very angry by going after what is mine. But rejoice : he is the one who will suffer my displeasure. So I won't drag what passes for your soul out of your body and take it back with me to the Realms of Chaos to add it to my growing collection of fools who dared threaten my beloved Ciaphas."
"You-you won't ?" asked Malicia.
"Recent events have shown that I cannot protect my beloved as much as he deserves from the Realms of Chaos, and my Handmaidens have other duties they must perform for him. You will serve him as his bloodward. You will protect him with your life, knowing that if anything happens to him, the worst torments of your Dark City will pale compared to what I shall inflict upon you. Admittedly, an Incubus would be more used to such a task, but you proved yourself stronger than them, if nothing else," the being gestured at the corpses strewn across the room, where her sisters had fought alongside Sarevok to defeat Vileheart's guards. "And in return for your loyal and faithful devotion, you will be spared from the Thirst."
"You can't do that," said the Succubus before she could stop herself. It was one of the very pillars of Drukhari existence, an unchangeable fact that, no matter how much they pretended otherwise, was the very foundation of their entire society.
"I am one of Slaanesh's favored," replied Emeli, her voice smooth as polished bone. "I can do whatever I want in the name of my love."
Love ? Love ?! Briefly, Malicia's gaze turned away from the daemonhost to stare at the mon-keigh leader in shock. What manner of depravity was this man capable of, to make a creature of She-Who-Thirsts refer to him with such affection ? What unspeakable horrors had he performed to earn the favor of such a being ?
And why, in the name of all the Dark Muses, had Vileheart thought it was a good idea to raid the planet he was on ?! No, even that bastard would have balked at such a prospect, even for a chance to show up Aurelia Malys. He couldn't have known about this, meaning he was incompetent, not suicidally arrogant. Not that it made much of a difference in the end.
Emeli was still looking at her, waiting. There was no choice, not if she wanted to avoid sharing Vileheart's fate – and while the Archon might still be able to return to Commoragh, as this was hardly the first time the Haemonculi had to resurrect a noble lost to creatures of She-Who-Thirsts, the Succubus had no such arrangement in place.
Swallowing her pride, Malicia bowed her head.
"I will do as you command," she said.
"Of course you will," said the creature, before laying its right hand at the base of her throat, moving too fast for Malicia to have time to react. "This will hurt."
The contact burned Malicia's skin, but it was nothing compared to the flare of agony that followed, engulfing her entire being and blacking out her vision for a moment. Despite having endured terrible injuries in the arena without every crying out, she screamed then. When the daemonhost pulled its hand back and her consciousness returned, a purple mark was left branded on her pale skin. It was a symbol she recognized with horror : the Chaos Mark of Slaanesh, the Doom of the Aeldari and Devourer of Souls.
Such was her fear at the sight, it took a moment for Malicia to realize that the Thirst was gone. For the first time in her centuries of life, she felt satiated, without the edge of anticipated starvation that always remained, even after the most intense feeding session. The relief was so intense that it took her a moment to notice that her injuries were gone as well, her skin smooth and unmarked where it had been torn and bleeding moments before.
She looked up at the being that had saved her life and damned her forever in the eyes of her kin, and saw that the possessed body of Sheev Vileheart was falling apart, cracks spreading across it as it failed to contain the power of the entity puppeteering it.
"It seems I am out of time," mused the creature, turning its burning gaze back to the mon-keigh leader. "Take care, beloved. I still know not what the shadow that hid these wretches from my sight was."
"I will," Cain replied, showing absolutely no fear in the face of a being which could end him with a thought. "Thank you, Emeli."
With one final giggle, the daemonhost fell apart, ash spreading on the ground. Malicia heard the relieved breaths of the soldiers as the psychic pressure vanished.
"Well," said their leader, turning his gaze on her after looking at the ashes for a few moments, an unreadable expression on his face. "I cannot say I saw that coming. I suppose I'll be relying on you, then."
Slowly, aware of the fact she was being watched by a score of very nervous troopers, Malicia stood up. Pushing down every instinct alongside the rage and humiliation she felt at the motion, she bowed deeply before her new employer.
"I cannot say I expected this either," she said truthfully enough. "But I shall do my best to prove worthy of this … honor bestowed upon me."
The slight twitch of Cain's lips told her that he knew exactly what she really thought of that 'honor', and was enjoying her discomfort and humiliation immensely – as expected from someone who'd earned such favor from the Hungering Goddess. For now, Malicia would play along, because she simply had no choice.
But she would keep an eye out for any way out of her predicament, and on the day she found one, Cain would pay for this outrage. She'd keep him alive, if only so that she could kill him herself if – no, when she broke free.
She swore this to herself, trying to ignore the voice at the back of her mind mockingly saying she was only trying to make herself feel better.
The Envenomed Dagger was a small frigate, its hull marked with the emblem of the Kabal of Murderous Death. Like the rest of the Kabal's fleet, it hung in the void above the mon-keigh world, having disgorged its cargo of warriors to the planet below. Unlike most of the fleet, however, no one was returning to it from the surface.
The frigate's two pilots were completely alone aboard the spaceship, having been chosen to stay behind as part of the endless dance of threats and favors that kept the society of the Dark Eldars turning. There weren't even any slaves they could amuse themselves with : at the Archon's insistence, the holds of the entire fleet had been emptied before their departure, so that there would be more space for fresh captives. It had made the journey here difficult, as the grip of She-Who-Thirsts grew stronger and stronger the longer they remained in the Materium, but Vileheart had a way of teaching his subordinates not to defy his orders, however stupid they thought them to be.
What was happening on the planet wasn't clear, but it was obvious something had gone very wrong. Judging by the panicked messages from the retreating raiders, the mon-keighs had used some kind of sorcery to call forth a powerful servant of She-Who-Thirsts, which had devoured Vileheart's soul, or Sarevok's, or those of his entire Incubi retinue. Or there had been an attempted coup by the Hierarch, or a purge of the Kabal by the Archon …
The point was, something had happened, and now what was left of the entire raiding force was running back to the ships. In a way, they were fortunate to be left with only each other, since the round of promotion-seeking murders had already started on the Dark Tormentor. The Kabalites who had made the trip aboard the Envenomed Dagger were either dead or had decided to go aboard the Dark Tormentor to try their hand at murdering their way up what remained of the Kabal's hierarchy.
"One of the local ships is moving toward our position," said one of the two pilots. "And the mon-keigh on the planet are trying to talk to us."
"We might as well listen," suggested the other with a sneer of disgust at the thought. "It might explain just what in the Depths just happened."
A moment later, a mon-keigh voice echoed from the speakers, proud and confident – not a tone of voice the Drukhari were used to hear coming from mon-keigh :
"This is Ciaphas Cain, leader of Slawkenberg's Liberation Council, addressing the Drukhari vessels in orbit. Your leader is dead. I sent his soul to the Realm of Slaanesh myself. The rest of your troops are either dead or fleeing.
Leave this system, and never return. Tell your brethren, in whatever dark place your kin calls home, that Slawkenberg is protected, and that such will be the fate of all trespassers.
I know you won't listen to my words, despite the defeat we've dealt your kind on the surface. You think yourselves safe in your ships, away from the stronghold. So I shall demonstrate that no, you aren't safe from Slawkenberg's wrath."
The pilots snickered. What did that mon-keigh think that small vessel could do against their fleet ? It didn't even look to have any weapon bigger than an anti-asteroid laser cannon –
There was a flash of light, and the screams of a billion voices shaking the very darkling souls of the pilots. When their vision returned, the Dark Tormentor was split in two pieces rapidly falling down into the planet's atmosphere, and a crack in the fabric of the cosmos shone where the flagship had been but a heartbeat ago. A quick look at the sensors confirmed that, whatever that weapon had been it hadn't left any of the crew alive either, and the two pilots had a feeling they knew exactly where the souls of their Kabal peers had ended up.
The two pilots exchanged glances.
"So, back to Commoragh ?" asked the first.
"Back to Commoragh," confirmed the second.
Working together better than they ever had before, the two pilots began to turn the Envenomed Dagger around, back toward the Webway Portal the Archon had opened within this system for the duration of the raid. Mercifully, the dark gateway was still there, meaning that at least one part of this entire operation was going as planned (the portal had been opened at great cost and effort, and was supposed to remain open for an entire fortnight before shutting down).
The rest of the raiding fleet did the same, staying well clear of the Dark Tormentor's wreckage as they left. Their return to the Dark City would be far from the triumph they had been promised : with all of its leadership gone, the days of the Kabal of Murderous Death were numbered. The moment the news spread, its rivals would come to tear its holdings apart and plunder its resources for themselves. Their chances of surviving there were slim, and depended heavily on how much of the Kabal's treasure they managed to steal ahead of the rest to buy a place into another Kabal.
But at least in the Dark City, they could only get murdered by things that made sense, like poisoned knives, splinter shots, dark matter, or, if they got someone really angry at them, the occasional miniature black hole. Not whatever doomsday weapon these crazy mon-keigh had built.
Victory was theirs, and though it was a glorious thing, there was much aftermath left for Jafar and his people to deal with. Thousands had been displaced from their homes on the capital's outskirts, their habs laid waste by the rampaging Orks : the duty of caring for them while the reconstruction was ongoing fell on the bureaucracy's shoulders.
The damage the Dark Eldars had inflicted upon the palace was the perfect opportunity to remove the last traces of its old aesthetics (which, as was typical of anything constructed at the Giorbas' command, had tended rather to the gaudy and the over-ornamented) too. There was also talk of trying to figure out a way to get the USA fitted with a proper air force, as the handful of transports and converted civilian aircrafts that made up its air fleet at the moment would have been completely useless had they tried to engage the xenos gunships in combat.
Still, the Chief Clerk had managed to steal a moment of peace amidst his many duties, which he was now using to center his thoughts and consider all that had happened with a clear head.
He had sensed Emeli's brief manifestation all the way in the command center, recognizing it at once from the hour of her ascension, which had briefly bathed the whole planet in daemonic energies. The psychic pressure of the Daemon Princess had also been felt by every Dark Eldar still fighting in the palace, their shock allowing the defenders to gain the upper hand in a score of engagements. Combined with the flow of reinforcements pouring from the rest of Cainopolis and their fear of sharing their leader's doom, that had been enough to break the foe, who had fled back to their transports and left the city long before the Handmaidens' arrival.
When he'd introduced his new bloodward, Cain had made it clear that he hadn't seen the Dark Eldar's enslavement (for that was what it was, however ironic) by Lady Emeli coming. Jafar believed him, but the swiftness with which the Liberator had adapted to this unforeseen development was yet another display of his mastery of intrigue, for a true mastermind needed to be able to adapt to the unexpected.
By contrast, Jafar was much more sceptic of Cain's claims that he hadn't been aware of the weapon the Bringers had built aboard the Fist of the Liberator. No matter how good his act of being completely taken aback by the weapon's destructive power had been, it was obvious the Liberator had known all along. The idea that the borgs could build something as devastating as the weapon had proved to be without either Jafar or Cain knowing about it was ridiculous. Which, of course, begged the question of why Cain would act as if he'd been surprised by the reveal.
The only reasonable explanation Jafar could think of was that the Liberator didn't want the Bringers of Renewed Greatness to be aware of how much he knew about their operations. Which only made sense, of course, now that the Chief Clerk thought about it. Cain was playing a long and delicate game of balance between the Council's various factions, and keeping them in the dark as to the full extent of his knowledge and abilities was undoubtedly part of that.
It was the same with the Valhallans. Jafar had been surprised when Cain had ordered the captive Guardsmen be armed so that they could fight off the Ork warband advancing on their prison camp, but to his surprise they hadn't immediately escaped once the greenskins had retreated. Instead, they had offered their expertise in rooting out the Orks before they could dig in and become much more difficult to fully purge. Their officers had presented their proposal as coming from the deep hatred their people felt for that particular xenos breed, but Jafar could see the machinations of the Liberator at work, drawing the Imperials ever closer to joining their cause.
Once again, the Chief Clerk was left in awe of the Liberator's schemes, like a child who has only just learned the basic rules of regicide watching a master play. The feeling only reinforced his determination to increase his own skills until he finally reached the distant stage on which Cain played. By now, his old desire of turning the Liberator into a puppet ruler had mostly faded, although if the opportunity presented itself, it would only be right for him to do so, as Slawkenberg must be ruled by the most cunning mind possible if it were to survive.
Until then, he needed to sharpen his wits and increase his mastery of Tzeentch's arts, so that he could avoid losing standing compared to the other members of the Liberation Council.
On the day following our unexpectedly easy victory against two separate xenos incursions, I awoke with a pounding headache, the consequences of having only managed to fall asleep after getting blackout drunk in my quarters. I was only able to get up to tackle the aftermath thanks to what could only be described as frivolous use of life-saving medicine. While I couldn't claim to understand the minds of the Dark Age of Technology men and women, I was fairly certain curing hangovers hadn't been the Panacea's intended use.
I had managed to get more or less used to Emeli using Krystabel as a vessel during our little render-vous (which was a horrifying enough thought in itself, and didn't bode well for the fate of my immortal soul). But the sight of that Eldar's corpse being reanimated like this had been disturbing in an entirely new way. I hadn't even known she could do something like that – but then, I hadn't really known whether she could do what I'd asked her to do either.
Fear, exhaustion, and, to my own vague surprise, genuine fury at that wretch Vileheart's threats had pushed me to do something I had never considered before. Calling upon Emeli like this had been a gamble, especially given the mysterious shadow Krystabel had talked about and Emeli had mentioned herself. I had half-expected for nothing to happen when I had called her name, thinking that at the very least making it look like I had a plan to prevent Vileheart's resurrection (because of course the race of pain-fuelled predators would be able to come back from the dead, why not) would keep people from panicking long enough for me to figure something out.
Instead, not only had the soul of the Dark Eldar lord ended straight into Emeli's claws, but I had ended up with a brand-new bodyguard. Much as my every instinct rebelled at the prospect of letting a xenos stay close to me, let alone one whose entire species depended on the torment of others to survive, I couldn't reject a gift from Emeli, not without drawing her ire, and this latest demonstration of her power had been a clear reminder of how much of a bad idea that would be.
Malicia was terrifying, though there was admittedly a certain degree of dark amusement to be had from the fact that, however scared of her I was, she appeared to be even more afraid of me due to how close I'd looked to be with a Daemon Princess dedicated to her race's nemesis. Still, her fear of Emeli was understandably greater still, so she looked very determined to keep me from harm, which I could hardly argue against.
And her knowledge of the Dark Eldar society could potentially be useful, in case some other faction decided to try their hand at attacking Slawkenberg. Given what had happened to the leader of the last attempt, I couldn't see why anyone would risk it, but knew better than to take anything for granted. There hadn't been time for her to tell me much, but what little I'd learned already made me a lot more understanding of the reasons why the Inquisition kept such things from the general public. If nothing else, it certainly must cut on the use of sleeping aids and soothing medicines.
Jurgen and Malicia weren't exactly going along well, but the Valhallan had reluctantly conceded to her presence eventually, making it clear that their respective duties didn't intersect : he was my aide, and she was my bloodward. Given that I could hardly imagine Malicia helping me with paperwork or bringing me recaf while I worked, that was probably best for all involved. I'd given Malicia a suite next to mine in the Liberation Palace, convincing her to leave me alone after letting her do a sweep of the ex-Governor's quarters to check for traps, poisons, and other threats.
Of course, there was the matter of the rest of Slawkenberg's reaction to Malicia's presence to consider. Only the soldiers who had participated in the battle of the Liberation Palace had actually faced the Dark Eldar, but she was hardly the most reassuring-looking creature in the galaxy. Krystabel had suggested I assign her to do some public work, like assisting with the delivery of emergency supplies to those displaced by the damage the Orks had inflicted upon the capital.
I was almost certain she'd been joking, though judging by the look on Malicia's face at the suggestion it would apparently have been torture for her. Which, given what I knew of Drukhari 'civilization', I supposed made sense.
To address that problem, I had made up some groxshit for the masses in my victory speech, in between spouting platitudes about how, through the bravery of the USA and the ingenuity of the borgs, we had triumphed over two of the great evils the Imperium used to threaten its enslaved worlds into compliance. In what was possibly the single biggest lie I had ever told since landing on this miserable planet, I claimed that upon witnessing the returned spirit of the Lady Emeli, Malicia had seen the error of her kin's dark ways and pledged herself to the cause of the Liberation Council, receiving Emeli's blessing to stand at my side and protect me from all who sought me harm.
Somehow, it had worked, according to Jurgen's report of the rumors' mill. The Succubus wasn't going to feel welcome anytime soon, but at least that should prevent name-calling and stone-throwing. Not that I really cared about her being subjected to either, but I did care about needing to clean up the bloodshed that would inevitably ensue, as she'd already demonstrated her martial prowess against a cluster of greenskins who had gone to ground within the city's outer perimeter, much to the amazement of the troopers.
Meanwhile, the borgs had already sent naval ships to recover the pieces of the Drukhari flagship that had fallen into the ocean. Combined with the various prizes taken from the xenos' corpses, Tesilon-Kappa's people were very enthusiastic about their future studies. I had reminded them to be very careful, as there was no telling what kind of booby-trap the Dark Eldars had placed inside their gear, and was almost sure they had heard me over their own greed for precious xenotech.
I had personally congratulated the borgs who had worked on the Fist of the Liberator's weapon, giving them medals along with the rest of the ship's crew for their heroic action. I had also made it clear that if they or anybody else tried to run that kind of weapons program without proper authorization again, I would have them stripped of their augmetics and dumped in the uncharted depths of Emeli's Gift. Which might seem a bit of an over-reaction, except for the fact that the weapon in question had left a scar on the very fabric of reality, one that showed no sign of healing (if such a word was appropriate) any time soon, and that the weapon itself had been built around a salvaged Warp Core from one of the destroyed ships of Karamazov's retribution fleet.
As far as our auspexes could tell, there was now an unstable portal leading to some other, unknowable realm of existence (it wasn't the Warp, the borgs were almost certain of that) where the Drukhari flagship had been. It blazed with light like some kind of false-sun, bright enough to make close inspection difficult. Thankfully, the anomaly appeared to be immobile relative to Slawkenberg's sun (a tidbit of knowledge which had caused me to suffer a lesson about the movement of stars relative to the greater galaxy, which if nothing else had filled me with a renewed sense of my own insignificance in the face of the immensity of the cosmos), so it would be one local year before the planet got close to it again.
In the meantime, the local astronomers were going to have to deal with the fact that there was a new star in the night sky. There was a fierce debate raging among them as to what to classify and call it, and I wasn't convinced Jafar had been entirely pulling my leg when he'd told me his people had needed to get involved to keep the discussions from turning bloody.
I had to admit I was impressed by the way the USA had handled themselves during the crisis. Defeating the Imperial expedition had been laughably easy due to the incompetence of its leadership, and I had expected things to go very differently against a real enemy. Instead, the troopers had held their ground against the Orks, and chased off the Dark Eldar raiders with minimal casualties. Most of the credit for that went to the Panacea, which could heal any injury short of mutilation including the cocktail of toxins the Dark Eldar employed, but there was no denying the USA had demonstrated discipline and martial prowess that wouldn't have shamed any Imperial Guard Regiment I could think of.
While that was good news, since it meant I hadn't been carted off to Commoragh in chains to serve as Vileheart's plaything until he got bored, it was worrying in the long term. Instead of being terrified by their first taste of real combat like any sensible person (or a coward like myself) would be, the Khornate lunatics were revelling in what they saw as a glorious battle, and hungered for more. For now, the hunt for the fleeing greenskins would keep the troopers busy, and there was always the purging of the unmapped sections of Emeli's Gift to keep the most bloodthirsty occupied, but eventually they would get bored, and if there was one thing from my Commissariat training that applied in my present circumstances it was that a bored trooper was a danger to himself and everyone around him.
At least I could console myself with the thought that none of those recent events had negatively affected the Imperium in any way. If anything, our defeat of the xenos had made this corner of the galaxy safer for Humanity as a whole, by removing two separate alien threats. It probably didn't make up for the Guard forces lost to Karamazov's mad crusade, but it was a start, and hopefully by the time my luck finally ran out and I had to explain myself to the God-Emperor I'd have some additional arguments to justify not being thrown into the Realms of Chaos for Emeli to find.
And while I had been surprised when the Valhallans had asked for permission to leave their compound, I'd soon realized it was merely a con to buy as much time as possible to disappear before we started hunting for them. Eventually the charade would be revealed, at which point I would make a grand speech about how disappointed I was in the lack of honor of the Imperium's lackeys, who had taken advantage of the second chance I had so generously offered to them. It would damage my reputation for infallibility a little, but I was confident I could handle it.
All in all, I decided, things could have gone a great deal worse, and I should be able to relax ever-so-slightly for the foreseeable future, confident that all urgent issues had been dealt with.
I was, of course, completely wrong, but in this case ignorance was probably a blessing, as it kept me from screaming and banging my head against the nearest wall until I cracked my own skull open.
So. It seemed the Holy Ordos had underestimated the threat posed by Ciaphas Cain, and rather severely at that. He was no common heretic, that was for sure : Amberley could only take the fact that her identity as an Inquisitor had stayed secret despite being so close to him as a miracle from the Emperor. She'd departed the Liberation Palace once the emergency had passed and the shelters had opened, claiming to want to reunite with her family.
Cain'd let her go without any issue, wishing her all the best and promising that the Liberation Council would look after the people of Cainopolis (how he'd managed to say the name of the capital city with a straight face, she'd no idea). She had thought it a trap at first, but after several days of carefully looking over her shoulder for trails and finding none, she had to accept that either Cain had bought her acting, or he was playing a long game of some kind. The fact that the Succubus hadn't recognized her as Vileheart's prize captive had been nothing short of a miracle, given that even the raiders had done so earlier. Amberley had some skill in making herself look like someone else, but she didn't think that would have been enough to trick a Dark Eldar.
Obtaining supplies had been easy : the government was handing food, water and other basic necessities to anyone who asked in the aftermath of the destruction the Orks had visited on the city's outskirts before their defeat. By pretending that her own home had been among the destroyed buildings, she'd been able to get access to the temporary housing set up for the displaced. After sleeping in the sparse but clean accommodations provided, she had begun her investigation of what was going on here.
She'd even found a small temple to the God-Emperor operating in the capital's suburb, entirely in plain sight and run by a genuine priest of the Ecclesiarchy. Admittedly, the congregation wasn't especially numerous, but the fact it was clearly allowed to continue its activities was shocking to say the least.
She had entered one of the public libraries, a concept that had honestly baffled her at first, until she'd realized the cults ran all the libraries and thus controlled access to knowledge. Except, as far from the tomes she had read, the knowledge inside hadn't been altered in any way to subtly guide readers down the path of Chaos, reinforcing the hold of heresy upon the planetary population.
And really, that hold didn't seem particularly strong at the present, despite the fanatical loyalty the people showed to their glorious Liberator. Admittedly, Amberley hadn't visited any other world which had fallen from the Emperor's Light, but she was ready to bet none of them resembled Slawkenberg.
Not only were the texts made available to the population as accurate as such things tended to be on backwater Imperial worlds, the open public lessons of the Bringers Of Renewed Greatness didn't contain any tech-heresy she could discern (apart from the mere fact that they shared knowledge the tech-priests of Mars considered sacred and reserved to the initiated, which Amberley had always seen as more of a ploy to protect their technological monopoly than a genuine article of faith).
All the stories of people being snatched off the street, never to be seen again, dated from before the rebellion, when the despised Governors had let their thugs roam free, hunting down anyone who dared even utter a whisper of disapproval for the appalling way the planet had been run. There were no tales of 'spirits' being called forth, no mass conversions to the worship of the Ruinous Powers,
And yet, she couldn't forget the sight of the Archon's corpse rising, possessed by what had to be a powerful daemon of Slaanesh, which had called Cain 'beloved' (although if Cain genuinely believed a daemon was capable of love, he was much more foolish than he looked) and bound a Dark Eldar fighter to serving him under pain of eternal damnation.
Cain had the favor of a newly ascended Daemon Princess of Slaanesh, while at the same time enjoying the complete loyalty of the local armed forces, which were clearly under the influence of Khorne (although they were much more disciplined and less kill-crazy than the minions of the Blood God she had encountered before). And unless she missed her guess, the whole planetary administration was slowly being turned into a Tzeentchian cult from the top down.
Only the followers of the Plague God were denied a seat at the table, instead being the target of vehement denunciations in the sermons of every creed she had encountered. In the slowly coalescing faith of the local heretics, Nurgle was the god of despair and acceptance, whereas the Liberation Council preached Mankind's ability to forge its own future, one where each day was brighter than the last.
She needed to continue her investigation. This was far more important than the trafficking ring she had been tracking down before her capture. Cain had all the markings of a Warmaster of Chaos in the making, and while it had been centuries since the most infamous holder of that title had stirred from his exile in the Eye of Terror, the Imperium had more than enough other problems to deal with at the moment. Because, although the Liberator might not have a fraction of the sheer power of the Despoiler at his disposal, he had something arguably even more dangerous.
As an Inquisitor, Amberley was well aware of how subtle the corruption of the enemies of Humanity could be, but while Chaos cults weren't her expertise she had encountered enough of them during her career to realize how abnormal the situation on Slawkenberg was. When a cult (or, as was the case here, a coalition of several) managed to overthrow the rightful rulers of an Imperial world, things always descended into anarchy, backstabbings, and unspeakable horrors unleashed upon the population through Warpcraft. Yet there were none of these on Slawkenberg : instead, cults of opposing Powers were cooperating, sharing spheres of influence with what looked like less in-fighting and politicking than on a typical Imperial world.
The followers of Khorne ran the army, the cultists of Tzeentch the bureaucracy, and the worshippers of Slaanesh were doing charity work, organizing parties, and working to increase the standard of living. Meanwhile, the renegade tech-priests maintained the planetary infrastructure, helped develop industry, and had developed a miracle cure for all diseases which had been made freely available. There was no denying that the people of Slawkenberg weren't just happier now that they had been under Imperial rule : they were also more productive, and the planet as a whole had become much more valuable under Cain's leadership than the vacation world it had previously been. And as far as Amberley could tell, this so-called 'Liberation Council' had accomplished all of this without summoning hordes of daemons or using any kind of infernal sorcery whatsoever.
The implications of it all were very disturbing. While the Despoiler and the Traitor Legions he commanded could compel people into joining Chaos through fear (and, in the most depraved cases, sorcery), this gentle heresy had the potential to spread like wildfire across the worlds of the Imperium. And though the elder Inquisitors whose meeting she'd accidentally stumbled into months ago had been confident Slawkenberg's rebellion was confined to a single star system, Amberley knew the renegades had seized several Warp-capable transports thanks to Karamazov's catastrophic crusade. For now, their efforts were focused on Slawkenberg, but how long would it be before their ambitions extended beyond their borders ?
Something had to be done, and fast. Killing Cain seemed like the most obvious course of action : it was clear that the Liberator was the pillar on which the entire alliance of Chaos cultists rested. Without him, the entire thing would come crashing down, hopefully in a succession crisis that would cripple the threat the system posed to the rest of the Imperium.
Usually, that would be a job for the Officio Assassinorum. Technically speaking, they could only be dispatched by a vote of the High Lords, but the Inquisition had its ways, especially when heretics and xenos were concerned (it was only when the target was still part of the Imperium that the vote was politically important). Unfortunately, Amberley had no mean of contacting them : if there were still astropaths on the planet, the Liberation Council was keeping them safely locked away.
So, in the end, she would have to do it herself, which considering how close she'd been to him, was quite infuriating. At the time, she'd been afraid of turning him into a martyr, but now that she understood more of Slawkenberg's unique brand of blasphemy against the Golden Throne, she realized he was much more dangerous to the Imperium of Man alive than dead.
It wouldn't be easy, especially now that he had a Dark Eldar Succubus soul-bound to ensure his continued existence. And even if she succeeded, her own survival was very unlikely. But it was her duty to the Emperor, and Amberley Vail would not shy from it. It would take time and preparations, but in the end, Ciaphas Cain would die by her hand.
For now, though, she needed to find a job. She couldn't remain dependant on the Liberation Council's generosity forever, if only out of pride. More to the point, it would help build her cover to approach her target. Fortunately, Amberley was a woman of many talents, and she'd played many roles during her career as an Inquisitor. Maybe something like a professional singer ?
Lord Rotkiv of the Endless Agony Coven whistled a joyful tune as he worked. The melody was nicely accompanied by the collection of groans, moans, and quiet pleas for mercy from his caged gallery of test subjects (although really, after the time they had spent in his care the only mercy they could hope for was death, not that he was ever going to give it to any of them).
On his operation table, the Haemonculus' latest subject (a pile of bleeding meat that, at some point, had been a musician of Craftworld … Biel-Tan ? Alaitoc ? He didn't remember) twitched feebly. Rotkiv tutted in disapproval : he'd expected a much greater reaction from the symphony he was playing on the subject's nerves at the moment.
A sudden noise from his collection drew his attention away from his squirming plaything. With a frown, he walked through the labyrinth of his possessions, arranged according to a system that made sense to him alone. The closer he got to the source of the sound, the clearer it became : it was a repeated, insistent tapping of bone against glass. His hands moved to one of the many devices hanging at his belt which could be used as a weapon in a pinch – one such as he wouldn't bother carrying anything so crass as to be only useful in combat, after all.
Soon, Rotkiv reached the source of the noise, which was amidst the pieces of those lesser Drukhari who had begged him for immortality. Had some vermin slipped past his many, many defenses, and was now vainly trying to get access to the frozen treats in their lockers ? If so, he looked forward to cutting it open, as no ordinary beast could have made it through the traps and defenses surrounding his laboratory.
He strode on, his eyes piercing through the gloom with ease – every Haemonculus worth the name had experimented on themselves, and perfect dark vision was among the most basic of enhancements their august brotherhood was capable of. This was where he stored the body parts of the members of the Kabal of Murderous Death who had made accord with him.
Despite the number of different Kabals whose members had hired his services, Rotkiv remembered that particular contract well, for there was a dark creativity within Vileheart's soul that had impressed even him. The dread glory of the old bloodlines truly manifested within Sheev, and Rotkiv had taken great pleasure in the artwork the Archon had commissioned from him – like the living carpet of his throneroom.
Come to think of it, hadn't he heard that the Kabal of Murderous Death was going out to raid –
The Haemonculus' thoughts were interrupted by a sudden noise from his left. The sound was something between a shriek and a sigh, and felt like a pair of rusted daggers being stabbed into his ears. He recoiled from it on instinct, raising a staff that could rip all the blood out of someone's body with the same technology it also used to take biological samples from subjects.
The exsanguination field did nothing to the creature which rushed toward him, slapping the device out of his hand and breaking his wrist in the process, before lifting him up and smashing him against the opposite wall. Pain blossomed into Rotkiv's chest as razor-sharp claws punched through his bloody lab coat and into his guts, but the agony was something the Haemonculus easily ignored, made distant as it was by millennia of life and self-experimentation.
Instead of wasting time screaming, he took a good look at his attacker. It was huge, but lithe, and appeared made of stitched body parts and flowing shadows. Two emerald eyes blazed within its skull, which was covered in what Rotkiv's experienced eyes took only a moment to recognize as the stretched, flayed skin of Sheev Vileheart's face.
Behind the monster, he could see the shattered remnants of the containers which had held the flesh of the Kabal of Murderous Death's leadership, ruined beyond any hope of recovery.
"Hello, Rotkiv," it said through a pair of lips that were entirely too voluptuous compared to the rest of its body. "The Dark Prince has been waiting for you for a long, long time."
"This is not possible," he protested weakly, as black blood poured out of his wounds and mouth. "You cannot be here."
And it was impossible. If daemons had been capable of entering Commoragh, the whole of the Dark City would have been lost thousands of years ago. The entire pocket reality in which the capital of the Drukhari existed was warded beyond anything the lesser races could even conceive of, and no amount of effort was ever spared in maintaining and reinforcing these protections, for every Dark Eldar knew the doom that awaited them all should they fail.
"All things are possible through the power of love, little Haemonculus," purred the daemon. "And it is in the name of my love that I've come to end you and all your works."
"I don't understand," gasped Rotkiv, as its claws buried deeper into his chest.
All around him, he could see his precious laboratory being destroyed as rampant Warp energies caused complex, priceless equipment (some of which predated the Fall and had been acquired at the cost of entire worlds' worth of suffering) to malfunction. In their cages, things that had been denied the release of death for longer than some of the galaxy's sentient races had existed sighed in relief as oblivion beckoned.
"I know," said the daemon. "But you will, though it will not help you."
Then there was pain, darkness, and greater pain still – and this time, Rotkiv of the Endless Agony did scream, just as his uncounted victims had screamed over the ages.
Notes:
AN : And so the Palpatine expy falls, and so does the creator of the carpet of living puppies. You may now play the galaxy's smallest violin to express your grief at their passing; party hats and balloons are also appropriate.
Malicia Mortalyss, Third Succubus of the Tainted Kiss, is a character from the Caiphas Cain audio drama The Devil You Know. I couldn't find an official transcript of the audio drama, so I wrote her name using the edgiest spelling I could think of.
Fun fact : in the first draft of this arc, I considered replacing Malicia by Maless Darkblade, who is a character of a short comic from issue 63 of Warhammer Monthly. And yes, that character is a genderbent version of Malus Darkblade from Warhammer Fantasy as a Dark Eldar. I recommend you check the comic out yourselves, if only for a laugh.
Fun fact number 2 : while finishing this chapter, I realized that by all rights, Malicia should recognize Amberley as Vileheart's captured Inquisitor, and tell Cain as much. But I didn't want to throw away my plans for Amberley and start over, so I adjusted things so she didn't see her during the journey instead (which, since the Tainted Kiss wouldn't lower themselves to guarding prisoners, I feel makes sense).
That being said, feel free to write what would've happened if the Succubus had recognized the Inquisitor. I know people have been looking forward to more Cain/Amberley interactions. I promise there will be more in the next chapter, now that the pesky issue of two xenos invasion forces has been dealt with.
Speaking of something else absolutely unrelated to the next chapter, I am looking for suggestions for an Harlequin name. For some reason. If you have a funny (but not "universe-breaking" funny) suggestion, please leave it in the comments/reviews.
As always, I look forward to your thoughts and suggestions on this chapter.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 13
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The vast plains of Slawkenberg were covered in snow as the winter season rolled across the hemisphere. In the months since the double xenos attack, life had returned to normal, the people of Slawkenberg continuing to work toward building a better future.
To the surprise of many, the Valhallan captives had honored their promise, and returned the weapons which had been given to them in order to defend themselves from the Orks, in yet another demonstration of how much of an excellent judge of character the Liberator was. The Guardsmen had even volunteered their expertise in tracking down the remaining greenskins, who had fled into the wilderness like cowards while the USA was responding to the Dark Eldar raid on the Liberation Palace.
There had been some reluctance on the part of the USA at first, which had promptly vanished once the Liberator had expressed his complete support of the idea. The resulting purge of the greenskins had directly led to the Bringers’ discovery of the xenos’ strange biology and reproductive mechanism, leading to the cleansing of the affected areas with fire to ensure none of the beasts’ spores were able to take root.
The fact that the Valhallans themselves had no idea about why their traditions demanded all Ork corpses be burned was, in the eyes of many, yet another sign of the Imperium’s decrepitude. How many worlds, having successfully repelled an Orkish invasion, had then been plagued by resurgent greenskin tribes generations later, all because their distant masters either didn’t know something the borgs had figured out in weeks, or simply didn’t bother informing the rest of the Imperium of ? Mankind had faced the Orks since it had first left Holy Terra : the idea that nobody had ever discovered this before was patently absurd.
New wonders continued to emerge from the Bringers’ research facilities. As Slawkenberg’s available manpower dwindled as the planet’s economy grew, the new factories were more and more automated, using automation to greater and greater effects. It was to the point that a plant that, before the Uprising (there hadn’t been many of these prior to the Giorbas’ overthrow, but there had still been some), would have required hundreds of unskilled laborers and servitors, now needed only a few scores of maintenance personnel and techno-overseers, with the use of servitors completely abandoned.
Salvage teams had been sent to search the ocean for pieces of the Dark Eldar flagship which had survived atmospheric re-entry. Very few had, but rumor had it that a small handful of interesting artefacts had been recovered by the ongoing efforts, sent to the Bringers’ facilities for study. Speculation was rife as to what secrets the Liberated tech-priests would manage to pry from this xenotech, as wild stories of the Drukhari’s technological capabilities had spread throughout the world.
The outer districts of the planetary capital, which had long suffered from neglect under the Giorbas’ cruel and incompetent rule, had been badly damaged during the ground battle against the Orks, however brief it had ended up being. Reconstruction was proceeding apace, and the Liberation Council had decided to use the opportunity to redesign the ravaged areas completely, following architectural designs much more comfortable and elegant than what had existed before.
Yet though all these events were worth celebrating in their own right, it was not them which were honored today, as a great celebration was being prepared in the city of Cainopolis. Instead, the party taking place within the Liberation Palace, and emulated in a score of other locations throughout the capital, was being thrown in honor of the Liberator himself. According to the story that had spread across the planet like wildfire, a week ago, Cain had off-handedly congratulated one of the many aides to the Council for the eighth nameday of his son. Later that same day, the aide had realized he didn’t know the Liberator’s own nameday, and upon investigating, discovered that nobody else did.
Immediately, the clerk had shared this disturbing information with his peers, and word had spread like wildfire, triggering a great outcry that this injustice be corrected. As was typical of his modest, self-effacing manner, the Liberator had protested : he’d claimed that his own birth was nothing worth celebrating, and the exact date was long lost to Imperial record-keeping and the vagaries of Warp travel anyway. But, faced with the enthusiasm and devotion of the people, he’d relented, and the rest of the Liberation Council had decreed that the day of his arrival, according to the local calendar (which, for various administrative reasons, was used alongside the standard Imperial one in most official documents), would henceforth be treated as Ciaphas Cain’s nameday, and celebrated accordingly.
Great feasts and thanksgiving would take place, with the new faiths in particular holding ceremonies where they gave thanks to the various powers they worshipped for bringing the Liberator to Slawkenberg. The Handmaidens of Emeli organized many of these, coordinating with local authorities worldwide, but none of the celebrations matched the one taking place in the Liberation Palace, which would be attended by Cain himself.
As the sun reached its zenith, the parties began, set to run throughout the entire afternoon and night.
In her years as an Inquisitor, Amberley had attended many parties thrown by the rich and powerful of the Imperium. She could say with confidence that none of them had been quite like this one, and it wasn’t only because the one being celebrated was a heretic leader and all those taking part traitors to the Throne.
The party was lavish, but not to the point of being ostentatious. There was a buffet covered in food and drink, but no servants walking around with platters : you had to actually walk over there and serve yourself. Knowing Cain, this was probably some subtle metaphor for Slawkenberg’s ideals (something about how the Liberation Council provided opportunities for all, but you still needed to seize them yourself in order for the whole thing to work, or something like that).
Or perhaps she was reading too much into it and it was just a random decision that had nothing to do with the Liberator. That was possible too, especially since this party was taking place in his honor, so it was unlikely he’d participated in the preparations.
Looking around at the other guests, it was obvious that Cain had a level of popularity no Imperial Governor could ever dream of. The joy, respect and love these people felt for the Liberator weren’t faked, but genuine, just like those of every citizen she’d encountered in the last few months. The Inquisitor had suspected some kind of sorcerous mind control was in play at first, but had found no evidence of such : Cain was just that charismatic and competent a ruler.
In one room, thousands of letters written by children who had only been able to start learning their letters after the Uprising had been placed on the walls, each one thanking the Liberator for how he had improved their lives and those of their families. And unlike what she’d have bet on had this all taken place on an Imperial world, Amberley knew no one had been compelled into writing these earnest, oft-mispelled letters.
Despite her best efforts, Amberley couldn’t stop herself from comparing the love, devotion, and simple happiness of Slawkenberg’s people with what she’d encountered on so many Imperial worlds. Of course, her own experience was biased, since an Inquisitor was rarely needed on happy, prosperous worlds – but wasn’t that the a problem as well, that such places existed that needed her kind in the first place ?
She forced herself to turn away from such thoughts. She couldn’t afford to get distracted, not here, in the very heart of the gentle heresy that had caught Slawkenberg in its embrace. She had a mission, and she would carry it out, regardless of the costs.
Getting into the Liberation Palace had been surprisingly easy. Amberley hadn’t even had to steal one or scheme her way in as someone else’s plus-one : she’d been formally invited to perform on stage, and join the party afterwards.
She was still vaguely surprised that her attempt to get by using the singing skills she’d trained as a hobby over the years had worked so well. Perhaps that made sense : before the Uprising, Slawkenberg’s art scene had been limited to the decadence of the Giorbas and whatever pet artists were brought along by off-world nobles. The cults of Slaanesh were working hard to develop the art scene, true, but her experience still gave her an advantage.
Taking a deep breath, Amberley emerged from the backstage and into the small scene which had been prepared for her. A spotlight fell down on her from above while the rest of the room darkened slightly. The noise of many conversations died down, and Amberley began to sing.
It was, in her own opinion, her best performance ever. The knowledge of her own (most likely, for though her odds of success were rather good for something she’d arranged on her own without backup, her odds of survival were significantly less so) imminent death lent a depth of emotion to her voice she couldn’t ever have faked. Judging by the thunderous applause as she finished her rendition of The Love We Share, the audience shared her opinion.
As she came down the stage, Cain himself approached, his psyker aide and xenos bloodward close at hand. The Wych was the object of many glances, varying from the fearful and the wary to the curious and hateful, but nobody appeared to openly object to her presence.
“Miss Vail,” he greeted her with a smile. “What a pleasant surprise. I didn’t know you were a professional singer.”
“Lord Cain,” she replied with an elegant curtsy. “It is a recent change in career, but I’ve found I enjoy it greatly.”
“And you are very talented,” he complimented her. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a beautiful rendition of that old song. I could really hear the feelings you put into those lyrics.”
“Surely you know more of love than I ever could,” she said, bashful. “After all, yours transcend even the boundary between life and death, does it not ?”
“My relationship with Emeli is … complicated,” he said with a wistful look on his face, before shaking his head and turning to his aide : “Jurgen, could you please fetch us some drinks ?”
“Of course, sir.”
Amberley counted the seconds as the psyker departed, all while continuing making small talk with Cain about her singing career. When, by her estimation, he’d reached the bar and was as far away as he was going to get, she crossed her hands behind her back, and pressed a remote she had sewn into her sleeve.
Immediately, the bomb she had hidden in the Palace’s outskirts three days ago detonated. It wasn’t going to do much damage, but then that wasn’t its purpose : instead, she had assembled it to make as much noise and create as much smoke as possible.
Immediately, the party stopped, voices raising in panic and alarm. Cain turned sharply in the direction of the sound.
“Malicia ?” He said, his voice the very picture of calm.
“I’m on it,” replied the Wych, before dashing off toward the explosion – and leaving her principal alone with Amberley.
A true bodyguard wouldn’t have made such a mistake, but for all her lethality, the Drukhari was still new to her role. Her instincts were pulling her toward the threat, which was what Amberley had been counting on. No matter how well-trained the Inquisitor was, she didn’t fancy pitting her own human reflexes against the Wych's alien ones.
“Don’t worry, miss Vail,” Cain told her with a smile. “I promise I’ll keep you safe.”
“I-I know,” she replied, faking the slight trembling of someone not quite managing to hide their fear. Cain nodded, before gently pulling her away from the ballroom and unto a small balcony. There, he put himself between her and the rest of the room, hands moving toward the weapons at his belt, not drawing them but ready to do so at a moment’s notice.
This was even better than she’d hoped for. With the Succubus gone, both of Cain’s companions were out of the way, while in the ballroom, everyone was focused on the source of the noise. That wouldn’t last long : soon, they’d start looking for their beloved Liberator. But right now, she had a small window of opportunity, the results of months of building up her cover.
Amberley activated her sub-dermal implants, and a thin blade emerged from between the knuckles of her closed fist, the synthetic skin parting to let it pass. However small and fragile it might look, it was still monomolecular-edged, capable of cutting through anything, be it the lock of a Drukhari cage or the necks of the Drukhari themselves. Dressed in an ornate ceremonial uniform as he was, Cain didn’t stand a chance.
She struck, aiming for the base of the Liberator’s neck. Given how effective Slawkenberg’s healthcare was, she would need to be thorough to ensure he didn’t recover –
Suddenly, Cain turned back to face her, his hand snaking up to catch her wrist, stopping her blade mere milimeters from his throat. Amberley had trained her body to the peak of human capabilities, but Cain’s grip was like adamantium. He stared down at her, his face a mask of stone.
Snarling, Amberley brought up her free hand. That one didn’t have an implanted weapon, but she had sharpened her nails to a razor’s edge, just in case. It was going to be messy, but maybe she could still tear his throat out. Yet before she could reach him, her hand stopped in mid-air, caught in an invisible grip no less strong than Cain’s.
“Sir ?” Amberley heard the voice of the Liberator’s aide, sounding only mildly concerned, and her heart sank. “What’s going on ?”
“It appears there is more to Miss Vail than meets the eye,” said Cain, still looking down at her. “I don’t suppose you would be willing to just tell me who sent you ?”
Amberley quickly made a decision, and activated her Inquisitorial electoo, flaring the sigil of the Holy Ordos in her palm.
“I am Inquisitor Amberley Vail of the Ordos Xenos,” she declared defiantly, staring the arch-heretic dead in the eyes. “And I came here to kill you, Ciaphas Cain, for your betrayal of your oaths and heresy against the Golden Throne.”
She was hoping to shake the pair of heretics enough that she could slip either of their grasp and finish the job before the psyker tore her apart. Yet to her surprise, Cain merely raised an eyebrow at the sight of the Holy Ordos’ emblem, and Jurgen didn’t relax his psychic hold in the slightest.
“Ah,” the Liberator simply said. “I see. That does make things a tad more complicated. Jurgen, if you would ?”
Something squeezed Amberley’s mind, and then there was only darkness, with her last thought being shame that, once again, she’d failed in her Emperor-given task.
Too close.
That had been far too close !
If I hadn’t decided to use the pretext of getting Miss Vail further away from the ballroom and whatever scheme had caused the explosion, causing me to turn just in time to catch her assassination attempt, I would be explaining myself to the Emperor by now. And given that it was credits to carrots that the female Inquisitor would have promptly been sent there as well by Jurgen, Malicia, or any of the Palace guards seeking to avenge the death of their beloved Liberator, my chances of getting Him to see things from my perspective would have been slim to say the least.
And had Jurgen not come back with the drinks I had sent him away to get in the foolish belief that I was safe in the heart of the Liberation Council’s power during a celebration of my own nameday, it was a coin toss whether I would’ve blocked her second blow or not. She was fast, and while I was no slouch myself thanks to my regular training, our respective positions had made reaching for her left hand difficult.
Now that the spike of adrenaline which had let me project a mask of calm through the event was gone, the sheer terror of how near I had come to death was hitting me with full force. It was an hour or so after Jurgen had rendered Miss Vail unconscious, and I sat in one of the Liberation Palace’s many side-rooms, nursing a glass of amasec and looking at the data-slate containing the report of the borgs I had tasked with disabling her implants (which, while nowhere near as comprehensive as those of even the lowest-ranking tech-priest, were apparently of a much higher quality, which was only to be expected if her claims of being an Inquisitor were to be believed).
Outside this room and across the city, the celebrations were continuing : I had given the order to announce the explosion to be the result of an entirely innocent accident. As for my own absence from the festivities, I had sent word to the rest of the Council as to what had happened, but told them to keep quiet about it for now. I didn’t doubt for a moment that the rest of the guests would see me and the beautiful singer missing after I had taken her aside and draw conclusions themselves. Which might do some harm to my image as someone entirely dedicated to the memory of his supposedly dead beloved lady, but at the moment that thought was rather low on my list of concerns.
The galling thing was, I hadn’t even considered such an outcome when I had started talking with her. I had genuinely enjoyed her singing and wanted to congratulate her, while discreetly trying to keep her away from being recruited by the Handmaidens or one of their subordinate cults. I had no idea how Emeli would react to me gallivanting with women whose bodies she wasn’t using as vessels for her essence, and I didn’t want to find out the hard way. Thankfully Krystabel knew the truth, so I needn’t worry about the Daemon Princess of Slaanesh getting jealous like we were in some demented comedy play.
“You know,” Malicia said suddenly from where she stood in the room, “I think I know how that Inquisitor came to this world.”
I blinked. That had been one of the questions on my mind. “Elaborate, please.”
“I learned Vileheart had a captive Inquisitor on his ship. That must’ve been her.”
“And you didn’t tell me ?” I asked, forcing my voice to remain calm with practiced ease.
She shrugged, mimicking the human gesture passingly well, but I could detect a current of unease in her. She was afraid of me, however she hid it. Her job, which had been given to her by a creature capable of devouring her soul, was to keep me safe, yet she hadn’t been there when I had faced the first threat to my life since her forceful recruitment.
I could see why she might be worried, and I might have felt sorry for her if she wasn’t a cruel, vicious xenos who quite literally fed on the pain of her victims, and had taken part in Emperor knew how many successful raids before. As it was, I had to admit to feeling a certain dark amusement at seeing her squirm.
I wasn’t actually going to do anything to her as punishment, of course. All it would take was one moment of her hatred for me overriding her self-preservation, and she could kill me before I had time to blink. Emeli might drag her soul to the Warp for an eternity of damnation as punishment, but I would still be dead.
“I never saw her on the Dark Tormentor,” she pointed out. “I just assumed she’d died when you destroyed it.”
Oh, so by giving the order to fire the borg weapon, I’d almost killed a second Inquisitor without even knowing it. Brilliant. You might think that it wasn’t as if the Inquisition could want me dead anymore than it already did, but I was still clinging to the hope that Karamazov hadn’t exactly been the most popular member of that exclusive club.
Then another thought struck me, and I frowned.
“If she was on Vileheart’s flagship, then how did she escape ? I’m assuming your folk are good at keeping prisoners locked up, especially valuable ones.”
“I would’ve thought it impossible,” she agreed, “but I’ve recently been forced to reconsider everything I thought I knew about your people, and she clearly is resourceful.”
Which was probably as close to a compliment as she was capable of giving to a lowly human being like myself.
“Well, she’d have to be, as an Inquisitor,” I muttered to myself.
“What are you going to do with her ?” asked Malicia.
That was the question, wasn’t it ? Even if she had tried to kill me, I didn’t want her dead. For one thing, I could hardly blame her for trying to kill someone who had not only killed one of her peers after (allegedly) led a planet into rebellion, but who’d also performed a daemonic summoning right in front of her eyes.
As a Commissar, it would’ve been my job to shoot any sanctioned psyker doing the same on the spot (not that I’d ever had any intention to be so close to so dangerous an occurrence, which given how my life was going was yet another sign that the Emperor had it out for me), and as an Inquisitor, she likely considered it her Emperor-given duty. I had to respect that level of commitment, even if I had never even remotely approached it myself.
On the other hand, I couldn’t just let her go. Well, I could : I was confident nobody would stop me so long as I claimed to have some kind of nefarious, long-term, secret scheme in mind. But that would hardly be helpful to my health, since she was all but certain to try again, and I refused to go down as some kind of idiot who encouraged others to try to kill him just to keep myself and my entourage sharp.
I supposed I could keep her imprisoned indefinitely, and claim to be working to turn her against the Imperium so nobody questioned why I hadn’t executed her or tortured her for information. Of course, the latter would never have worked anyway : it was well-known that Inquisitors were masters of interrogation, and anything my little bands of madmen and heretics could’ve conjured would’ve been laughable in comparison. Unless we involved Emeli, but my soul wasn’t so far lost that I would consider such a thing.
The best scenario would’ve been to convince her that I was still loyal to the Emperor before escaping this madhouse together, with my assistance in surviving this mess serving as proof of my loyalty. Unfortunately, her witnessing the whole thing with Emeli and Vileheart had probably put any chance of that happening to rest, unless Inquisitors were much more flexible on theological matters than I had been led to believe.
I was still pondering my options, and failing miserably to find a satisfying one, when there was the sound of a knock. It didn’t come from the door, behind which Jurgen was still keeping watch, but from a closet on the other side of the room (I say closet, but this was still a Governor’s palace : there was enough space in there for a family of four underhivers).
Malicia reacted at once, drawing her weapons and leaping across the room to position herself between me and the wooden panel.
The closet opened, and a figure dressed in what I could only describe as a clown outfit from the festivals I had managed to sneak out of the Schola to attend emerged.
“Harlequin,” Malicia hissed at the sight. Oh, so the intruder was a xenos (the clothes made it impossible to tell, though as it walked out, its motions betrayed the same kind of fluid, inhuman grace Malicia herself possessed). Absolutely brilliant.
I put down my glass of amasec and moved my hands to the weapons at my belt. The intruder hadn’t made any hostile move yet, but it had somehow passed through the security of the entire Palace and hid inside that closet for Emperor knew how long. It would be just my luck to survive an Imperial assassination attempt only to get done in by a xenos killer sent by the survivors of the Dark Eldar raiding force.
“Who are you, and what are you doing here ?” I asked.
The Harlequin bowed deeply, and I sensed the surprise in Malicia’s body language, though her caution didn’t diminish.
“Lord Liberator, I am Leirahaz of the Masque of the Veiled Path, and I have come to bargain.”
Amberley was mildly surprised that she awoke at all, part of her having expected Cain’s Dark Eldar bodyguard to rip her to shreds while she was unconscious for daring to threaten the being whose continued existence was the only thing keeping her from being devoured by a Daemon Princess of Slaanesh.
Her surprise doubled when she realized all her wounds were gone, and doubled again when she looked around and saw that she wasn’t in some dark and foreboding cell, but instead laying in a comfortable bed in a small, windowless room. She immediately noticed that her implants were gone, yet there was no pain, not even a scar where they had been removed.
So, whatever game Cain was playing, it most likely didn’t involve torturing her in the immediate future. Unless this was a ruse to make her lower her guard, but the Liberator struck her as too cunning a manipulator to attempt such crude tactics on an Inquisitor. Until the very moment she’d made her move, she’d been convinced he’d completely bought her cover story; but instead, he’d been on his guard all along, waiting for her to act and confirm his suspicions.
“You are awake. Good.”
Amberley barely suppressed a jump as the voice surprised her. Cain’s aide was standing next to the door, looking at her with a neutral expression that nonetheless exuded an air of menace the likes of which Amberley had rarely encountered.
Jurgen (she had learned his name during her investigation) was famous on Slawkenberg as a powerful psyker whose loyalty to the Liberator was beyond question. Back during the Drukhari incursion, he’d apparently been too tired from fighting off a bunch of Ork psykers to assist, but now he was at full strength. In her present state, Amberley didn’t doubt for a moment that he could neutralize or kill her with a thought.
Fortunately, he didn’t seem inclined to do so at the moment, despite the fact Amberley had just tried to kill the man he’d sworn himself to. Instead, he inclined his head toward a door on the other side of the room.
“Please refresh and dress yourself, miss. The Liberator has invited you to join him for dinner.”
Knowing better than to argue at this stage, Amberley got up and went into the small, windowless bathroom. There was another dress there waiting for her, of the same quality as the one she’d worn earlier today (and it had been today, she wasn’t thirsty or hungry enough for it to have been more than a few hours and Jurgen had mentioned dinner).
Once she was ready, Jurgen escorted her (politely but firmly) outside the chamber and across a series of empty corridors, eventually bringing her to a well-appointed dining room. Cain sat at the other end of the table, his Wych bloodward standing next to him, glaring daggers at Amberley. And there, seated to the Liberator’s right, was the accursed Harlequin who’d captured the Inquisitor, handed her to the Drukhari, then aided her escape from their ship for some unknowable reasons. Her blood ran cold at the sight of the xenos’ colourful outfit.
“Inquisitor Vail,” Cain greeted her with a smile. “How good of you to join us.”
“Aren’t you missing your own nameday celebration ?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about that,” he waved off her concerns. “I spent time with everyone while you were unconscious. Things have calmed down a little for now, as everyone is preparing for the nocturnal festivities. This little diversion will be dealt with by the time I’m expected to return, although it is a shame you will have to miss on it all.”
Amberley internally shivered at the implied threat.
“Ah, but where are my manners. I haven’t even introduced you. This is Ser Leirahaz of the Veiled Path. I believe the two of you are already acquainted ?”
“We are,” she replied, glaring at the Harlequin, whose mask revealed nothing of his thoughts.
“I understand that your previous encounters have been far from pleasant, but you should know that it was Ser Leirahaz who bargained not just for your continued life, but for your freedom as well,” said Cain. “When we are done here, he will take you away with him, the same way he presumably used to get here in the first place.”
“And what price did that xenos pay for this ?” asked Amberley warily.
“One worthy of a soul such as yours,” replied the Harlequin with an inclination of the head. “And one that would, in other times and places, have caused wars to erupt.”
“You heard him,” said Cain, amused. “If you want more details, you should ask him later. For now, please have a seat. The cooks have really outdone themselves today.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Amberley decided the food was unlikely to be poisoned. If Cain wanted her dead or drugged, he’d plenty of opportunities to do it while she was unconscious.
Once she was seated, Jurgen brought in the food, serving all three of them – even the Harlequin, who eat with the manners of a spire-born noble, his fork passing right through his mask and into his mouth.
Cain was right : it was very good.
“You have been on our fair planet for several months now,” said the Liberator as they finished the dessert. “Tell me, what do you think of it ?”
“It is quite nice,” she admitted, before taking a drink of amasec, putting her glass down, and deciding she might as well be completely honest and see where it led her. “A shame about the daemon-worshipping scum running the place, though.”
Instead of turning purple with rage at the insult, Cain merely chuckled. “Yes, that is about the response I expected. Nor do I blame you for it. I know full well how deeply Imperial conditioning runs. If nothing else, I admire your courage in speaking so freely in front of me.”
“I suppose not many do these days ?” she asked with a caustic smile.
“Oh, nothing of the sort,” he replied with a dismissive wave. “I’ve made sure the Liberation Council know to speak honestly to me. People telling those in power only what they want to hear because they’re afraid of being punished for telling the truth is how you end up with the Giorbas.”
“Fair point,” Amberley admitted. “I admit I’m surprised, though. From what I heard, the last Inquisitor to come to Slawkenberg wasn’t given such pleasant treatment.”
“Well, not only are you much more pleasing to the eye than Karamazov was, you also haven’t threatened to burn this world and everyone on it like a petulant child throwing a tantrum,” replied Cain.
“I tried to kill you,” she pointed out.
“I was trained by the Commissariat,” he said with a small smile. “I expected people to try to kill me while I am doing my job.”
“Doing your job ? Is that what you call of this ?”
“Wouldn’t you ?” He challenged her. “Look me in the eye and tell me I wasn’t doing the Imperium a favor when I shot Caesariovi Giorba and stabbed Karamazov.”
Despite knowing the man sitting in front of her was the most dangerous heretic she’d ever met, Amberley couldn’t bring herself to argue the point. She’d dug into Slawkenberg’s history enough to know that where it came to the former Planetary Governor, the propaganda of the Liberation Council didn’t need to exaggerate anything. And she knew about how much damage to Imperial efforts in the Sector Karamazov had caused with his stupidity before his forces had even reached Slawkenberg.
At the same time, however, she wouldn’t be an Inquisitor if something like this was enough to shake her faith in the Imperium.
“I won’t argue that these two men deserved to die, but that doesn’t make you any better,” she said. “You follow the Ruinous Powers, the Dark Gods of Chaos – the Archenemy of Humanity. Everything you have built on Slawkenberg is at best a lure to deceive others into following your example and turning against the God-Emperor, or, far more likely, merely the prelude to the unleashing of such horror as to make the Giorbas’ depredations pale in comparison.”
“Is that how you justify it ? The Imperium is bad, but everything else would be worse ? What kind of reasoning is that ? Where is the line between the atrocities of the Imperium and those it ascribes to its enemies, then ?”
“Wherever the Emperor wills it,” she replied on reflex. Cain sighed theatrically.
“A perfect answer, exactly like what the Abbot at the Schola would expect,” he said mockingly. “But let me tell you something else, Inquisitor. You have, of course, heard about the Panacea ?”
She nodded. It was pointless to deny it : everyone on Slawkenberg knew about the hereteks’ incredible invention, capable of healing any wound, curing any ill. It was used in every public hospital, and in such quantities that all but the most banal of ailments were treated with it. So far, Amberley had managed to keep herself safe from anything that would’ve required her to be injected with it, as she was deeply suspicious of such a miracle cure.
Wait. Her implants were gone, and she had no scars, despite the surgery that’d removed them taking place only a handful of hours earlier. Did that mean …
“Yes, Inquisitor, we did use the Panacea on you while you were unconscious. Otherwise, I’ve been told it would be several weeks before you could handle your own cutlery, and I didn’t feel like waiting that long to have dinner with you. Don’t worry,” he smiled, “it isn’t rooted in sorcery, nor does it have any hidden side-effects.”
“How do you know that ?” she countered. “It is the work of your hereteks, is it not ?”
“No, Inquisitor. It isn’t surprising you didn’t know, but despite what was told to the public, the Bringers Of Renewed Greatness didn’t actually invent the Panacea. Instead, it was discovered aboard Emeli’s Gift, when I led our very first expedition aboard the Space Hulk.”
Amberley’s breath caught in her throat. No. He couldn’t be implying what she thought he was. Surely not.
“I see you’ve realized,” the bastard continued with a knowing smile. “Yes, Inquisitor. The Panacea is based on a Standard Template Construct. A full, intact and uncorrupted STC from the Dark Age of Technology, containing everything needed to create the serum which has banished sickness from this world and lets us heal any injury.”
Throne of Terra. To think that such a wonder had ended up in the hands of a small rebellion in the back-end of nowhere …
“When the Uprising happened, Slawkenberg wasn’t a well-developed world,” Cain continued. “Even now, despite the work of the Bringers and the common folk, our industrial base remains but a tiny fraction of a hive-world’s, let alone a forge-world’s. Yet we still manage to produce enough Panacea to distribute it to the population freely, while building up our stores for military and emergency use. And if we can do that much here, then, well. Can you imagine it, Inquisitor ? You saw for yourself how effective the Panacea is when we fought the Drukhari, and have tasted its boons for yourself now. How many Imperial citizens would be saved from plague in crowded hive-worlds ? How many Guardsmen who die every year who might survive if they had access to it ? How many worlds which fell might be saved by these same soldiers ?”
She could. It was a heady vision, of a reinvigorated Mankind, free of disease and injury. She lacked the proper training to calculate the full impact of a galaxy-scale integration of the technology, but she didn’t need it to realize how much it would change the Imperium.
Then Cain slammed his fist onto the table, shaking the plates and cracking the wood under the table cloth.
“All of this, the Imperium could’ve had centuries ago,” he hissed. “Because guess what ? The Panacea STC we found aboard Emeli’s Gift wasn’t the first Mankind rediscovered. Which, given how useful such technology is, only makes sense. It was Malicia who told me about it : apparently, it is a well-known tale in Commoragh.”
Which meant no one who wasn’t a Drukhari would enjoy it, Amberley knew.
“The Panacea STC was discovered on a forge-world centuries ago. But because the High Fabricator of Verdigris IX was more interested in keeping the STC in a temple for worship, in ensuring the supremacy of his forge-world and his own fame, he didn’t do the obvious thing and send copies to every Imperial world he could reach. And so, when the Dark Eldars came to steal it, its secrets were lost.”
He sat back into his chair, suddenly sounding exhausted, defeated almost.
“Humanity’s salvation, slipping from between our fingers just like that. And I cannot help but wonder : how many times has such a thing happened in the last ten thousand years ? How often does the Imperium’s blindness and stubborn dogma make it turn away from another, better path ? And now, here we are, ten thousand years later, beset on all fronts, ever growing weaker and more ignorant, looking up to our forebears as legends while forgetting that they were only human beings too, and that anything they could achieve is also within our power. Mankind cannot continue as it has, Inquisitor. Ignorance and tyranny may be sufficient to maintaining the status quo, but survival is not enough, and even that won’t be guaranteed much longer.”
“And your solution is to turn to daemons for aid ?” Amberley forced herself to say. “To auction your soul to the denizens of the Warp in some kind of infernal bidding war ?”
“I can’t say I’ve heard it described like that before,” the Liberator mused. “But no, that isn’t my solution. I am merely looking for a way out of the trap, Miss Vail. Jurgen, please bring it in.”
The psyker brought up another silver platter, covered in a white cloth, which he removed to reveal a circular device of human make. Despite not being trained in the ways of the Mechanicus, Amberley could tell, just by looking at it, that this was archeotech of the highest calibre.
“This, Inquisitor Vail, is the Panacea STC,” declared Cain. “Uncorrupted, untainted, and undamaged. And I want you to take it with you when you leave.”
“Why ?” Amberley managed to ask. “Why would you do such a thing ?”
“Two reasons,” he explained. “The first is that, bluntly speaking, we don’t need it anymore. We have copied the full contents of the Panacea STC many times over, with countless backups. Nothing save for the complete destruction of Slawkenberg and every ship in the system will deprive us from that knowledge. However, I know full well how far the Mechanicus will go to reclaim it when they learn of its existence. So far, our isolation has served us well, and masking the Panacea as the Bringers’ creation added another layer of obfuscation, but Vileheart knew about it when he attacked, so the secret is already out. Inevitably, the Martians will learn of it too. Having the original STC out of our hands will take the heat off us.”
“And what’s the second reason ?” she asked.
Cain laughed sadly.
“Is it really that difficult to guess ? You have lived among us for some time. You are an Inquisitor : you must have spent all that time studying us, learning everything you could about us. Use that information, miss Vail. Make a guess.”
“… Nurgle. The other three Dark Gods have cultists on this world, but not the fourth.”
“Exactly,” nodded Cain. “The Lord of Decay feeds on the misery and suffering of the Imperium. He grows strong on the plagues that ravage entire underhives, on the despair that afflicts uncounted trillions who never saw natural sunlight, and whose bodies slowly break down as a result of their misery. His gifts do not bring hope or strength, only a bitter, pathetic acceptance of one’s suffering, and a desire to inflict it on all others.”
“Nurgle has no place on Slawkenberg,” the Liberator declared, eyes aflame with zeal. For the first time since she had met him, Amberley saw what his Schola tutors must have seen in him, when they had assigned him to the path of a Commissar. “He has no place on any human world, in any human soul. Since before the Uprising, I have fought against his dupes, but it is not enough. There can be no hope for Mankind while Nurgle remains in the Great Game, poisoning all efforts to drag the species out of the mire of despair and stasis in which we’ve been trapped since the Emperor last walked among us. And the Panacea is possibly the single greatest weapon in existence against the Plague God. With it, we have eradicated all but the meanest remnant of his influence on our world. By giving it to you, it is my fervent hope that you will do the same on countless other worlds.”
Madness, Amberley thought. She was no member of the Ordo Hereticus or Malleus, but she knew of the Dark Gods, and only the Emperor Himself had the strength to fight them. Mere mortals such as them could only hope to fight back against their mortal thralls and daemons, and the latter came at a terrible risk and cost. And yet, looking at Ciaphas Cain in that moment, she found to her own shock that she almost believed him when he declared war against the Lord of Decay. No, worse than that : she wanted to believe him, to think that Humanity could hope for more than a bloody, unending stalemate against the hosts of the Outer Dark.
“Or perhaps I’ve misjudged you, and you will do the same as that long-dead archmagos, and keep the STC for yourself, using it for your own advancement in the Imperium’s self-destructive politics,” Cain sighed. “It would be deeply disappointing, but at least Slawkenberg would be safe from the Mechanicus’ selfish greed.”
Standing up, the last of the food forgotten in her plate, Amberley picked up the device. It was surprisingly light, for all the promise it contained.
“I believe it’s time for you two to leave,” said Cain, as he and Leirahaz rose to their feet, the Harlequin all but dancing to Amberley’s side. “I wish you good luck in your future endeavours, Miss Vail. May the Emperor watch over you.”
“I would wish you the same, but I fear your infernal patrons would be offended,” she riposted. Again, Cain merely continued to smile, as if to a joke only he was getting.
Leirahaz made a strange, arcane gesture as some of the jewels embroidered in his clothing shone with eldritch light, and a circular hole in space appeared in the room. This, Amberley recognized, was a Webway Portal, although she had only read about such things, and was pretty sure very few Eldars had the means of opening them so casually instead of relying on the remaining infrastructure from their long-dead empire.
Leirahaz turned to look at her, and she knew that he too was smiling under his mask.
“After you, Lady Vail,” he told her. “Mind the gap, and don’t go off running without me. I would find you, of course, but whether I’d manage to do so before you were found by something else less friendly is far from certain.”
Amberley glanced at Cain, who raised his glass in a toast to her, still with that infuriating smirk on his face. Refusing to show any weakness by hesitating, she straightened her back and walked right through the portal without looking back.
I breathed a sigh of relief as Leirahaz followed after Amberley with one last elaborate bow in my direction, and the Webway portal closed with a sound between the whisper of the wind and a distant thunderclap.
I still had no idea what game the Harlequin was playing. From what I’d pieced together, he’d arranged for the Inquisitor to be captured by Vileheart in the first place, then helped her get to the Palace during the raid, only to show up now to exchange the Panacea STC (apparently, there had been some kind of disturbance in Commoragh recently, and the Harlequins had used the distraction to infiltrate the vault containing the STC) for her life and freedom.
Well, her freedom to go with him, which might not be quite the same thing. He had to have some kind of plan in all this, but try as I might I couldn’t figure out what it was. From where I was standing, he could just’ve handed her the Panacea STC directly. According to Malicia, the Harlequins were well-known among her people for their seemingly nonsensical actions, whose purpose only became clear much, much later, when it ever did.
It was unfortunate that I hadn’t been able to hand the ansibles’ schematics to the Inquisitor along with the Panacea STC. Based on my admittedly limited perspective and (clearly very flawed) judgement, the Imperium stood even more to gain from their widespread use than it did the Panacea’s. But while I could justify giving away the latter’s as a long-term move against Nurgle, there was no such convenient explanation for the FTL-communicators.
I didn’t exactly enjoy the thought that the Harlequin had, in all likelihood, known exactly how I would react to his present, but the opportunity to do something undeniably beneficial to the Imperium while reducing my chances of being turned into a servitor by a Mechanicus crusade, all in a way that I was confident I could sell to the lunatics around me, had been too good to pass up.
Of course, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows (an expression I had never heard before being taken out of the underhive and into the Schola, but which I felt fitted the present circumstances). Amberley’s suggestion that the Dark Gods were using me and Slawkenberg in general as some kind of bait, a pretty mask to draw others away from the God-Emperor’s Light and into their embrace, had hit closer to home than I had let it appear. It was an idea that I’d already had myself, during the sleepless nights that had become all-too-frequent since my arrival on the miserable planet.
Most of the time, I managed to tell myself the Dark Gods weren’t capable of such long-term cooperation for so little gain : the only times the fractious servants of the Ruinous Powers collaborated was during the infamous Black Crusades, and the Uprising was nothing compared to Abaddon’s tantrums. The idea that three of the Four would cooperate on something like this was absurd : it had only been through pure blind luck that the cults on Slawkenberg hadn’t ravaged the planet as they fought to decide who would inherit it.
As for the times when I didn’t manage to convince myself, well, there was a reason I’d made a small but not insignificant dent into the cellar I’d inherited from the former Governor since the Uprising. Speaking of, I had a party to get back to.
I opened the door to leave the dinner room, Malicia and Jurgen on my heels, only to freeze. All the other members of the Liberation Council were there in the corridor, staring at me. Somehow, in the excitement of finally doing something which wouldn’t damn my soul, I had completely forgotten they were there. They were all dressed to the nines : Mahlone was in full military uniform, Jafar wore ornate robes of blue and gold, Tesilon-Kappa had changed their usual working red vestments for brand new ones, and Krystabel wore a silver and purple dress that didn’t so much walk the line between decency and indecency as twirl and dance back and forth around it.
I prepared myself for another round of deceit and manipulation. I had told the rest of the Liberation Council about Vail in advance of having dinner with her (I had needed an excuse to not be present at the celebrations for that long, and keeping this secret from them would have backfired sooner or later), but I hadn’t told them the details of the deal I’d made with Leirahaz. They might have argued against giving her the Panacea STC, and though it was a lesson I’d been too cunning to ever need to use myself, I knew from my days at the Schola it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Still, for a moment, I felt panic rise, threatening to consume me whole. Throne, what if this was the moment they finally saw through my deceptions and realized I had done what I did simply to get some kudos with the God-Emperor ? Even if that was going too far, what if they objected to my actions, and were about to make their displeasure known in a violent manner ? I thought I could rely on Jurgen to stay by my side, but Malicia was bound by Emeli, and if Krystabel told her I had turned –
“Lord Liberator !” Mahlone bellowed, and to my utter shock I realized that the General was crying. “What a great speech that was ! We should have known your vision reached so much further than Slawkenberg !”
“Indeed,” said Jafar, who at least was calmer than the General, even if seeing him with a wide smile on his face was mildly disturbing. “To turn an Inquisitor into the instrument by which you declare war against the Lord of Decay … Truly awe-inspiring.”
“It was a rare treat to hear you so passionate,” said Krystabel, while taking hold of my arm and pressing herself against me, which did very interesting things to her figure. “You are usually so calm and collected, it was a pleasant change of pace.”
I smiled, and thankfully she mistook my relief that they had all bought it as embarrassment for such a public display.
“Thank you all for your kind words. Magos,” I asked Tesilon-Kappa, making it seem as if I were trying to change the subject, “did your people get anything useful from our guests’ exit ?”
The thought of the xenos being capable of bypassing all our security and materializing inside my quarters at any time was a disturbing one, given I’d no idea what Leirahaz’s motivations were. So, before the dinner room had been set, the borgs had installed as many auspexes and scanners as could be hidden under the decorations. All of these devices had transmitted their findings to another room, but I had little doubt Tesilon-Kappa had been monitoring the results remotely.
“Our instruments have detected some strange readings,” they confirmed with an enthusiastic nod, buying my false display of modesty wholesale. “Making sense of them will take some time, but we will crack that mystery eventually !”
“I see. Well, I have full confidence you will figure it out,” I told them, lying through my teeth (although given the kind of things the borgs had already achieved, perhaps I was being unfair to them). Behind me, I heard Malicia’s quiet scoff at the notion that primitive mon-keigh could decipher the mysteries of her kind, but I let it pass. “In the meantime, let us go back to the party, shall we ?”
“Oh, yes,” purred Krystabel. “There is much I don’t want you to miss, Ciaphas.”
All in all, I felt remarkably happy about how the day had gone, given how close to death I had come. Of course, had I then known just how much trouble that rant I’d taken straight out of third-rate mummer’s play would end up causing me, I would have jumped through the Webway portal behind Leirahaz and taken my chances with the Inquisition.
On the bridge of the Lucre Foedis, the Rogue Trader Orelius sighed as he took in the list of damage his vessel had suffered during the latest stretch of their tormented journey.
Truthfully, it wasn’t that bad. The ship had suffered much worse on much shorter trips. A couple of auspex arrays had been knocked out of alignment, the lights on deck forty-two had gone dark, and half a dozen crewmen had lost their minds and started ranting about some vast and terrible shadowy hand reaching out to seize the ship. Given that they had been working on entirely separate sections of the kilometers-long vessel, it was something to keep an eye on.
Since they had lost Inquisitor Vail to that xenos ambush, things had kept going wrong. The rest of the Inquisitor’s team had managed to make it off-world, but the loss of their leader had hit them pretty hard. They’d remained in their quarters as the ship made the return trip to more civilized space in order to report the Inquisitor’s disappearance. Losing the Inquisitor would’ve been bad in any circumstances, but the fact she’d been taken by the Dark Eldars was even worse. Orpheus hadn’t faced the Chaos-tainted xenos himself, thank the Throne, but he’d heard plenty from those who had, and each story was more horrifying than the last.
The journey itself had been exhausting all on its own. From the moment they’d entered the Warp they had been beset by what the Navigator claimed weren’t exactly storms, but instead opposing and shifting currents in the Immaterium. In addition to rendering astropathic communication impossible, preventing them from sending word of the Inquisitor’s capture ahead, it also made progress very difficult and forced them to drop out of the Warp at regular intervals in order to check the engines, calculate their position, and establish a new heading.
Between this and the usual time dilation of Warp travel, the Master of Auspex told him that nearly one standard year had passed in the Materium according to his instruments, though it had been less than half that for (most) of the Lucre Foedis’ crew. And they were still only halfway to their destination. They had enough supplies to last the trip, of course : Orelius was a Rogue Trader, after all, and before coming under Inquisitor Vail’s influence he’d spent years away from friendly ports, exploring the wild frontier in the name of Emperor, Dynasty and profit (perhaps not always in that order, but nobody living had any proof otherwise and he would swear to the contrary until his dying breath).
If things continued like this, they should still have a comfortable margin by the time they reached a port where they could resupply. But not knowing why this was happening at all was getting on his nerves, and that of the rest of his crew as well.
He was about to vox the Navigator to ask how long they would need before re-entering the Warp when the air on the deck twisted. That was the only word he could think of to describe it, before a tear opened in reality through which Orelius caught a brief glimpse of a vast tunnel before it spat out a humanoid figure and closed with a sighing sound of displaced air.
“Intruder on deck !” He barked, hands moving to the weapons at his belt – before freezing in place as the figure stood up and, to his absolute bewilderment, he recognized her. Instead of the combat uniform she’d worn when he’d last seen her, she was covered in something more appropriate for the halls of the spire-born, and she carried no weapons, only a strange device he didn’t recognize but was clearly of human design, but it was still impossible for him to mistake the intruder’s identity.
“Lady Vail ?” He asked, not believing the evidence of his senses.
“Orelius,” she sighed, sounding both relieved and deeply exhausted. “Throne, I am glad to see you. You would not believe the day I have had. Right now, though, I need you to escort me to your most secure safe so I can store this inside it until we can get it analysed by a reliable tech-priest. Then I need your medicae to give me a full check-up, and then, I want to debrief my team about what happened. I assume they are on board ?”
“Yes, Inquisitor,” the Rogue Trader managed to say. He glanced back at his console terminal : the scans of the individual in front of him he had discreetly started were returning a fully positive identification. However impossible it might seem, this truly was Amberley Vail. “But, well, sorry about this, but could you explain how you came here ? We are in the middle of nowhere. The Warp journey from where we lost you has been … difficult.”
A strange expression flashed across Amberley’s face. “Difficult. Of course, that makes sense.” It did ? The Navigator and astropaths had no idea why their passage through the Warp had been both slow and relatively tranquil. “To answer your question, I was brought here through the Webway by an Eldar Harlequin, who bought my life and freedom from the Chaos warlord I failed to assassinate after escaping from the Dark Eldars during their raid of his palace, which took place after he’d killed an Ork Warboss which was in the process of becoming a Sector-level threat in single combat.”
Orelius’ mouth moved for several seconds, but no sound came out. Eventually, he said : “What ?”
“As I said, you would not believe the day I have had.”
Notes:
AN : This chapter's release was delayed by me learning about Realm Grinder, the successor to the (in)famous Cookie Clicker, and losing my entire week-end to it before finally succeeding on my Will saving throw and breaking free from the grip of that devious time-vampire of a game.
Yes, Leirahaz is Zahariel backward. Someone suggested it on SB and, once I had stopped laughing, I decided I just had to go with it. I'm not quite sure whether the ability to open Webway Portals like he does in this chapter is actually possible in canon, but this is a crack fic. If you need an explanation, the clown used some pre-Fall unique artefact to circumvent the Webway's usual limitations.
While writing this chapter, I hit a block concerning what Leirahaz could give Cain to justify his release of Amberley. Then, it hit me : the original Panacea STC, gathering dust in the vault of Lady Malys. It was the perfect gift, and it made perfect sense for the story. It also inspired Cain's anti-Nurgle rant (to those readers who theorized the Grandfather would get a seat at the table at some point, sorry but that's not the way this story is going), with a pinch of anti-Imperial rant added in for flavor.
We will see more of Amberley in the future, don't worry. She's going to have her own entire character arc, and it is going to be a thing of beauty. Nor will this be the last time the faithful servant of the Emperor and the cunning instrument of the Ruinous Powers meet.
There is probably going to be a timeskip before the next chapter, or at the very least before the next main arc. This story is planned to cover Cain's entire life, meaning we're going all the way to 999.M41. Which I have realized means that relatively soon, I'll have to think about how the people who were born on Slawkenberg post-Uprising think of Cain (and think in general). That will be fun.
As always, I look forward to your thoughts and suggestions regarding this chapter.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 14: Chapter 14
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
To the uninitiated, Jafar's office looked like a complete mess. His desk was all but covered in piles of paper and data-slates, the keys of his personal cogitator were worn down with use, and an empty pot of recaf was gathering dust from its precarious perch atop a pile of tax reports from the southern hemisphere.
In truth, however, there was a secret pattern to the seemingly random disorder, one that the Chief Clerk had carefully arranged since the Uprising, all in order to consecrate his office as a sacred space to the Change of Ways. He knew exactly where every piece of information was, and could process paperwork with far greater efficiency than when he'd been constrained by the Administratum's procedures and standards.
This, the ability to find patterns within what seemed like randomness, was Jafar's gift as a servant of Tzeentch, and one he'd used in everything from his office's organization to the new road networks stretching across Slawkenberg to cope with the planet's growing industrial base.
In his own opinion, the Chief Clerk was effectively the most influential member of the Liberation Council (except for the Liberator, of course). Yes, he might not command the legions of trained soldiers Mahlone did, wield the technological lore Tesilon-Kappa did, or enjoy the daemonic patronage of the Liberator's own consort like Krystabel, but while his power base was less flashy than his cohorts', it was far more expansive. Running a planet took a lot of work, and while Jafar didn't doubt Cain could have managed it, the Liberator was too busy with greater concerns to worry about the minutia of government.
Since the Uprising, Jafar had carefully expanded the ranks of the cults of Tzeentch under his command, inducting key members of the many local councils and politics which made up Slawkenberg's social fabric. The approach to conversion Cain had suggested what felt like a lifetime ago had proven very effective : while the cults of Tzeentch didn't count as many members they could have, those who had joined were far more dedicated and useful to the cause. Jafar had been able to almost completely delegate the work of spreading the teachings of the Architect of Fate to others, while focusing on his work in the Council and his own inner circle of acolytes.
Almost, however, wasn't the same thing as 'completely', which was why he was currently glaring at the pair of individuals before him, both of whom were looking sheepishly down and sweating profusely.
"Alright," he said at last, once enough time had passed with him silently glaring at them. "Let's go over this together again. Because I could swear we had already gotten over this the last time I had to summon the two of you here. No," he raised his hand, cutting the two off before they could give voice to their protests, "you will only speak when I ask you to speak, not before."
They nodded jerkily, clearly afraid of the Chief Clerk's wrath. Good. Jafar didn't intend to kill either of them – their transgressions didn't warrant it, and the Liberator didn't approve of lethally punishing underlings for their failures, as this was a waste of resources that Slawkenberg couldn't afford – but they didn't need to know that.
"Yesterday," he began, "I received an urgent report from my circle of acolytes that, if nothing was done, there would be a violent Empyric disturbance in the capital before the end of the week, which had the potential to escalate into a full-scale daemonic incursion. While I doubt things would've actually gotten this bad, the fact that they pointed the two of you as responsible was very … distressing. I was forced to turn aside from my very important work to perform a scrying ritual myself in order to figure out what was going on."
One of the many advantages of the Liberator's wise edict prohibiting human sacrifices and daemon summoning was that it had forced Jafar and his acolytes to explore less obvious avenues to grow their sorcerous knowledge. The followers of the Changer of Ways had focused their efforts on divination rituals and other 'utility' thaumaturgical workings, which, while less destructive, were also far less dangerous and more useful in day-to-day life.
Of course, such divination spells had their limits : none of Slawkenberg's magi could peer beyond the limits of the system, and even within it Cain's own fate was completely obscured. When Jafar had led one such attempt (purely to see if there was any danger lurking in the Liberator's future, of course), they'd failed to pierce through the shadows covering his destiny – yet another clear sign of the Architect's favor for Slawkenberg's champion.
But the two sitting in front of him weren't even close to the Liberator's level, and Jafar's rituals had revealed the truth.
"Iago," Jafar said, and the older man sat to his right twitched. "You were preparing to cast an entropic curse on Nicolash. And you, Nicolash. You were going to summon a daemon and bind it to kill Iago. Either of those would have been dangerous enough, but according to my calculations, the interaction between the two workings would result in precisely the calamity my acolytes foresaw."
Iago and Nicolash were both leaders of their own branches of the Tzeentchian alliance Jafar led, having brought them all together (with the Liberator's invaluable assistance) in the days leading to the Uprising. Both of them were astromancers : they sought the truth in the pattern of the stars, for though the Empyrean was a reflection of all mortal souls, its interactions with the Materium could be influenced by the motion of celestial bodies.
Before the Uprising, Nicolash had worked in the capital's planetarium, forced to repeat the same basic spiel over and over again to uninterested tourists until he'd snapped and embraced Tzeentch so he'd be able to interact with people who actually shared his interests and were his intellectual equals. Iago was newer to the scene, having risen from the bottom through the ranks of a cult of street rats who longed for the distant stars as a means of escaping their terrible lives. Catching on his intelligence, Jafar had personally ensured Iago's education, into which he'd thrown himself whole-heartedly.
When the Fist of the Liberator had destroyed the Drukhari flagship, the hole in reality its experimental weapon had created had left both star-gazing cults confused as to how to incorporate it into their respective models of the universe. The exact details of their interpretations were too complex to get into without several years of studies and a few days to get through the explanations, but at the core of the dispute laid the fact that Iago's group had wanted to call it the 'Localized Material-Aetheric Overlap', while Nicolash's had named it the 'Empyreal Stellar Phenomenon'.
Within days of the xenos invasion's defeat, the argument between the cults had escalated to the points where members had been punching each other in the halls of the Liberation Palace, and both sides were starting to bring knives to work. Jafar had been forced to intervene to settle the issue before things came to bloodshed : the anomaly had been called the 'Liberator's Fire', and study into its nature was a subject shared by the Tzeentchian star cults and the Bringers Of Renewed Greatness.
The Chief Clerk had though that was the matter handled. Clearly, he'd been mistaken, and Jafar didn't enjoy being mistaken.
Yet however much he wanted to tear Iago and Nicolash apart, he had to stay calm. The Liberator never showed any of his burning, ceaseless rage at the Imperium's uncounted crimes against Humanity slip from his control, for mastery of the self was the first step to mastering the rest of the universe. In this, as in many other things, Jafar was determined to follow in the glorious leader's footsteps.
"Even without taking into account the blatant violation of the Liberator's proscription on daemonic summoning from you, Nicolash – and trust me, we will discuss it later, such behavior is a disgrace to the Liberation's ideals," he told the two cult leaders coldly. "We of Slawkenberg stand alone, surrounded by enemies. We cannot afford to fight each other. Having disagreements is fine, healthy even, for to follow one path blindly and without question leads to the same stagnation and dogmatism that have calcified the Imperium, but for things to escalate to violence is intolerable. Do you understand ?"
Iago and Nicolash nodded meekly.
"That the two of you felt you had to escalate things to this degree is, in part, a failure on my own part as your leader," Jafar admitted, making the two of them glance up at him in surprise. "I really thought you were both smarter and wiser than this. The Liberator trusts us, the followers of the Changing God, to perform the vital role of keeping the gears of society turning and making sure the whole machinery gets better and better over time. To paraphrase a saying from the borgs, we cannot do that if the cogs are trying to kill each other, be it with knives or thaumaturgy."
Admittedly, Iago and Nicolash didn't exactly have crucial parts to play outside of their respective cults. They were part of Slawkenberg's growing academic culture now that education was freely available to those who sought to expand their minds instead of being treated as a path to heresy and rebellion like it was in the Imperium. But Cain himself had insisted on the importance of such things, going so far as to ensure substantial resources were invested into various academic domains.
It hadn't taken long for Jafar to realize that the Liberator was playing the long game here. While new universities and public libraries might not provide the immediate gains of, say, raising a new regiment of USA troops, an educated population was one where every one of their limited number of citizens was much more capable. While this was far from Cain's shrewdest gambit, it was still one that went straight against Imperial attitudes toward education, and yet more evidence of how completely the Imperium had failed in bending the Liberator to its self-defeating dogma.
"There'll be no more attempts at killing each other from the two of you," Jafar declared. "And this foolish feud between your factions is at an end, too. No, I don't care who you think started it in the first place. By now, it doesn't matter. You almost destroyed this world with your stupidity – or worse, led us to a situation where we'd have to beg the Handmaidens to disturb the Lady Emeli for assistance. Do either of you want her to think we're incapable of doing our jobs ?"
While most people on Slawkenberg regarded the Liberator's paramour as having transcended the limitations of flesh upon her martyrdom thanks to her devotion to Cain, all three magi present in the room knew this was only partially true. And while Emeli's love for the Liberator was undeniable (at least not until you were not just suicidal, but terminally stupid), Jafar'd known her when she was still mortal and doubted daemonhood had diminished her viciousness.
The two shivered in terror at the thought of the Handmaiden's mistress' displeasure. Good. This lecture was going to last much, much longer before Jafar was satisfied. For some reason, when he'd dedicated himself to the Changer of Ways, he hadn't thought so much of his job would be like herding felids or running a kindergarten.
Sitting in her quarters aboard the Lucre Foedis, Amberley contemplated the events of the last months.
Since her 'escape' from Slawkenberg and return to Imperial space, the Inquisitor had been busier than ever. One of the first things she'd done had been to replace the implants she'd lost on Slawkenberg with new, identical ones, and the scars from the surgery had faded away completely – and thank to Cain's not-so-little gift, it had all happened in record time.
The Panacea STC was still stored in Orelius' most secure vault. When the Rogue Trader had realized just what the Inquisitor had brought back, he had almost passed out in shock, before immediately ordering his tech-priests to check it for any sign of tempering or foul play. They hadn't found anything, though Orelius had needed to threaten them of shooting them in order to keep them from spreading the word of such a holy relic's discovery the first time the ship docked somewhere with other members of the Machine Cult.
From the moment Cain had let her take the STC, she had known she needed to be very, very careful about how she handled this. One wrong move, and the entire Segmentum could end up tearing itself apart in a bloody struggle for ownership of the STC (and that wasn't even the worst case scenario, but she refused to think too hard on that lest she be completely paralysed by fear). Part of her had been tempted to simply chuck it into the nearest sun once its contents were safely duplicated onto the Lucre Foedis' cogitators, but she'd abandoned that course of action. Regardless of the danger it posed to the stability of the Imperium, the STC was still an incredible relic from Mankind's golden age. More pragmatically, the Mechanicus would absolutely try to kill her if she did that.
Prior to her abduction by the Drukhari, she had always been one of the more wandering type of Inquisitors, making a lot of contacts as she pursued various xenos threats within and without the Imperium but not building up a proper power base to speak of. She'd been fine with it, but if she wanted to make use of Cain's gift in a way that truly benefited the Imperium, that had to change.
In the end, she'd decided to bring Lord General Zyvan in on the whole affair. The gruff officer had risen to command of the Sector's Militarum more or less without issue once the hidden conclave she'd stumbled upon had thrown its support behind him, and from what she'd heard he was doing an admirable job of cleaning up the unholy mess he'd inherited because of Karamazov's stupidity.
Zyvan's nervousness at being asked for a meeting by an Inquisitor (Amberley had been polite about it, but it had always been clear to both of them it was an order, not a request) had faded away quickly once she'd explained what she needed from him, replaced by doubt, then awed wonder. The Lord General had immediately grasped what an advantage the Panacea could represent for the troops under his command once it was widely distributed. The fact that it only worked on humans meant that the risk of it falling into enemy hands (which was one of the main reasons beyond Mechanicus dogma such knowledge was restricted) was negligible.
With Zyvan's support, Amberley's efforts had really started to take off. The Lord General had plenty of contacts whom he believed could be trusted with matters of such import, and Amberley had spent the time since then journeying across the Sector to meet them, assess their character in person, and hand them copies of the Panacea STC. She had also done the same with her own loose network of acquaintances, and even asked Orelius whether he knew other bearers of a Warrant of Trade who could be reasonably relied upon.
She had done her best to impress upon them all the importance of discretion in this matter, but she wasn't a fool : word had probably already gotten out somehow. But she hoped that, by the time the wider Imperium learned of her 'discovery', there would be enough facilities producing the Panacea that any attempt to restrict its use would be pointless.
Amberley knew that, while navigating the politics of the Imperium and the Mechanicus was going to be dangerous, it wasn't the only threat she'd face : the followers of Nurgle, at the very least, would stop at nothing to stop her. The Panacea was so useful that surely it must have been spread far and wide during the Dark Age of Technology, yet only two copies had been recovered by Mankind so far. To her, this reeked of deliberate action, and she could think of no better suspect than the Plague God, working ever since the Age of Strife to destroy every copy of it in existence.
If she was right, then it gave Cain's seemingly suicidal declaration of war against a Dark Power suddenly seem a lot more … well, not reasonable, but perhaps understandable. Orelius' Navigator had reported several attempts by daemonic swarms to breach through the ship's Geller field since her return, but some unidentified other power had kept them at bay. The crew believed it to be the hand of the God-Emperor protecting them as they carried out His will, but Amberley wasn't so sure. She was ready to accept that the Master of Mankind might take a direct interest in something as momentous as the Panacea STC being returned to Humanity, but it was all too possible they were being protected by the other Dark Gods for their own reasons. Beyond weakening one of their rivals, the potential for things to go horribly wrong in ways that ultimately benefited Chaos was also there.
Soldiers no longer dying from their injuries could return to the fight and die in battle instead. People who knew anything short of death could be cured might indulge in pleasures that would otherwise cause long-term harm. And of course, there was no need to explain how the introduction of the Panacea could cause schemes, intrigue and betrayal.
It was a brilliant gambit by Cain. No matter what she did, no matter what happened, giving her the Panacea STC would benefit him, even if it also ended up benefiting the Imperium. Against her own judgement, Amberley couldn't help herself but be awed at the genius of it all.
She couldn't have conceived of such a scheme herself, despite all her training and experience as an Inquisitor. The fact that Cain had done it while only being a few years out of the Schola was a clear sign of his genius, and she was terrified of what he might achieve if given time to grow even further.
Yet even still, she would carry on. She still remembered the shrines of the God-Emperor she had seen on Slawkenberg : small, yes, especially compared to the monuments the Liberation Council had erected in the place of the destroyed Cathedrals, but there had been no denying the honesty of the faith of those attending them. She wanted to believe that this was all part of His plan, though she couldn't help but wonder whether Cain himself realized the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he was indirectly doing the work of the God-Emperor and not that of his infernal masters.
No. Surely that was impossible. No matter how reasonable and charismatic a mask he'd projected during their meetings, no matter how sincere he might have been in his impassioned speech about the failings of the Imperium, Amberley had seen him call upon a Daemon Princess of Slaanesh merely by uttering her name, and had heard all sorts of rumors about his relationship with the cult of the Handmaidens who served her. Such matters might not be her speciality (though she was going to have to change that if she were to hope to ever be Cain's match), but she knew enough to know the Liberator's soul was irredeemably damned.
Which was a shame. She still had no idea how exactly Ciaphas Cain had been set upon his dark path, but clearly he would have been a great asset to the Imperium had he stayed true to the Throne.
Inquisitor Kaliad Shayn frowned as she looked at the latest reports from her agents. The casualties her forces had taken in eliminating the mercenaries sent by someone she was almost certain was a relative of the neighbouring Lord Sector (if not a cat's-paw for the Lord Sector himself) to 'acquire' the original Panacea STC had been slightly higher than she'd expected. At least the bribes to convince the administrators of the void station where the engagement had taken place to stay silent about it had remained within her expectations.
Young Vail really was causing quite the stir, Kaliad reflected. That mercenary troupe was only the first such attempt : by the end of the year, Kaliad fully expected entire wars to be declared in order to seize the STC. Whether Vail would be ready for them or not was still up in the air, but in the end, Kaliad thought it didn't matter. As an Isstvanian (not that she made her adherence to the creed known, for the blind and foolish would have made her activities much more difficult), Kaliad knew that such strife would make the Imperium stronger, one way or another.
Either Vail's growing faction endured and managed to grow into something that would shake the very foundations of the Imperium, or they would fail, and the secrets of the Panacea would pass into the hands of those who'd managed to defeat them.
Regardless, the Imperium would gain the benefits of the STC, and deny Cain the opportunity to use access to its miracles to sway other worlds to his cause. Vail had truly done the Imperium a great service when she'd managed to steal the Panacea with the help of her Harlequin contacts. As a member of the Ordo Hereticus, Kaliad had little experience with the elusive xenos, but she knew forging such an alliance couldn't have been easy. And now, the young Inquisitor was spreading her influence, forging a coalition of like-minded souls with impressive alacrity.
Then again, Kaliad reflected, she should have expected nothing else from the one chosen to act as his representative. It had been many years since the Rosea Panthera had last been sighted, and Kaliad had half-thought the ship's master to have perished until the young Inquisitor had shown up at their regular meeting and taken the seat the rest of them had left empty more out of habit than any real expectation of needing it.
Now that he might be back in the game at long last, however indirectly, Kaliad would much rather stay on his good side, which was why she was providing Vail some hidden support, giving her faction time to grow properly before it faced the backlash from the rest of the Imperium. She had seen what happened to those who earned his displeasure, and had no desire to join them. Strife might make the Imperium as a whole stronger, but dead was still dead, and she had far too much left to do to die.
Notes:
AN : This chapter was much shorter than usual, due to not much actually happening there. Thanks to everyone on SB for suggestions for names for Tzeentchian cultists : I now have a list of those I didn't use for later.
People have long been asking for an elaboration on what Jafar's role and day-to-day activities are like. Well, here you have it : it turns out managing a planet-wide alliance of Tzeentchian cults is a lot like running a kindergarten, except all the 'kids' have access to deadly weapons.
What could Cain's immunity to scrying possibly mean, I wonder. I look forward to your wild theories (though somehow I doubt anyone will manage to figure out the truth before the Big Reveal, much, muuuuuch further down the line).
Amberley's plan is working ... for now. It's only been a few months, and information travels slowly in the Imperium. And Kaliad's POV contains a pretty big hint : I wonder how many of you will manage to catch it.
As always, I look forward to your thoughts, comments and ideas.
Zahariel out.
PS : keep an eye out on this story, I've a little surprise waiting that should come up right after this chapter.
Chapter 15: Halloween Special : The Nightmare of Cain
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Macragge, the jewel of the Ultima Segmentum, had fallen. The walls of its fortresses broken, its pristine cities were aflame, its people screaming as hordes of grinning heretics offered them up as sacrifices to Khorne, Tzeentch and Slaanesh. Unholy monuments were being erected, and dark rites performed to call upon the favor of the Gods whose laughter echoed in the souls of all present. Mechanized horrors stalked the ruins for Imperial survivors, dragging them out of their hiding places and adding them to the sacrificial pyres.
The broken corpses of Ultramarines were scattered on the ground where the Chapter had made its last stand, surrounded by a veritable sea of mortal bodies. Their mingled blood spread in a pool in which the faces of the damned were reflected, distorted in silent, endless agony. Above, the skies were blazing with Warp-fire, and swarms of cackling Neverborn dense enough to blot out the sun flew, occasionally leaving the atmosphere to gnaw on the carcasses of what had once been the proud fleet of a First Founding Chapter.
On a throne made of the defiled bones of Primarch Guilliman and his sons, the one responsible for all this devastation sat clad in an immense suit of crimson armor, the transhuman blood that covered it almost completely masking the fell sigils emblazoned upon the metal which proclaimed its wearer's allegiance to Chaos. The armor's helmet was off, revealing a face hideously warped by the boons of the Dark Gods yet unmistakable all the same. A pair of wicked horns grew from its forehead, casting a shadow on its face that was pierced by the hellish glow of its eyes - two where they should be, and a third on the forehead, right between the horns. The air around it shimmered, showing brief glimpses of a figure that was equally beautiful and terrible holding it in a lascivious embrace, while hundreds of lesser heretics prostrated themselves before the throne of bones' occupant, voices raised in praise and supplication.
The Chaos warlord smiled at me, and I quivered at the sight of its pointed teeth, each carved with a Chaos rune, before it bit into the heart of Marneus Calgar, tearing out a chunk of meat before swallowing, the blood of the legendary Chapter Master pouring down its chin.
"I am inevitable," said the Liberator with my voice.
I awoke, shaking and covered in sweat. With trembling fingers, I reached for the bottle of amasec on my nightstand. Without wasting time pouring myself a glass, I uncorked it and drank straight from the bottle, letting the burning sensation in my throat distract me from the nightmare.
And it had only been a nightmare, I told myself. A wild conjuration of my over-stressed mind, nothing more. I had never been on Macragge, had only heard stories about it at the Schola. Chances were, the real place was completely different from what my brain had made up – not that I was ever going to have the opportunity to check.
"Just a nightmare," I repeated to myself, putting the now empty bottle down and hugging myself, alone in my bed, surrounded by the luxurious fineries of a man I'd killed to save my own hide. "Just a nightmare."
It wasn't the first time I had that nightmare or another like it, and unfortunately, it probably wouldn't be the last. Sometimes it was Macragge; sometimes it was Baal, the home of the Blood Angels; sometimes it was Valhalla; and once, in a particularly horrible one, it had even been Holy Terra itself.
But always, always the dream would end the same way : with that awful thing looking at me through the dream, and speaking those same words. Threat, promise of prophecy, I did not know and was terrified to find out. I wanted to kneel, to pray to the God-Emperor for forgiveness, but I knew that it would not come – that I didn't deserve it, and perhaps never would.
"Just a nightmare …"
Notes:
AN : Happy Halloween, everyone !
I know this short somewhat clashes with the tone of the rest of the story, but I didn't have any idea for what to write for the occasion, until inspiration struck last night (because of course it did instead of coming during the week-end when I actually had free time, why wouldn't it) and I wrote this today. As a result, it is of questionable canonicity to the rest of the story, but it should serve as an exemple of why Cain is drinking quite so heavily.
Fun fact : according to WordCounter, this little omake is exactly 666 words long. Make of that what you will.
I'm going to focus on AYGWM for the immediate future, in order to fulfill my goal of finishing that story by the end of the year. Expect that fic's next chapter to come out relatively soon.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 16: Chapter 15
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Jenit Sulla screamed in defiance and righteous hatred as she smashed in the head of the grotesque, monstrous thing that had managed to reach the defensive line with the butt of her las-gun. It burst with a sickening crunch, and the stench of its brain fluids nearly made her gag inside her rebreather, despite the freezing temperature which permeated the entire coldside.
Like all of the enemy on Adumbria, it was a grotesque thing of flayed muscles and elongated bone, dripping with disgusting fluids and moving in ways that it shouldn't be able to. Knowing that, at some point, it had been a human being – before the fell contagion which had spread across this world had taken hold of its flesh – only made it more abhorrent.
Around her, her comrades – the women of the 296th Valhallan Infantry and the militia raised from the planet's surviving PDF, law enforcers, and anybody who could hold a las-rifle – continued to fire at the latest bunch of monstrosities which had made their way through the freezing, perpetual night of Adumbria's coldside laid dead on the ground.
As the Regiment's quartermaster, Sulla wasn't normally expected to get into the thick of the fray herself, but this Throne-damned situation didn't allow any Guardswoman of the 296th the luxury of staying away from the fighting to defend Glacier Peak.
When the 296th had arrived on Adumbria, it had been to help maintain public order on an important trade world after a handful of escalating incidents. But, a week after their arrival, the hand behind those incidents had revealed itself. They had lost the capital in less than a day, as swarms of Infected that had been kept hidden in the undercity rose in a series of coordinated attacks that decapitated every branch of Adumbria's government and turned the city's entire population into more Infected.
Glacier Peak's location, near the geographical center of Adumbria's coldside, made it ideally suited for a smaller force to hold on against a seemingly numberless host. The freezing climate, which reminded Sulla and her sisters of their homeworld, meant that over half of the Infected hordes had already frozen to death by the time they reached the settlement, and it was testament to the unholy strength of their monstrous forms that any survived the perilous trek at all. Not even the Valhallans would have survived such a trek : before the collapse of Imperial order on Adumbria, the only ways to reach Glacier Peak had been through train, or by hitching a ride on one of the vast crawlers which kept the scattered handful of settlements of the coldside linked together.
The vast tunnels of the mining complex had been converted into makeshift shelters for the waves of refugees pouring in from across the Shadow Belt (that thin band of land running from one pole of the rotationally locked planet to the other, where temperatures were more suitable for human inhabitation) as they fled from the Infected hordes.
Earlier during the conflict, a system had been put into place to use the large crawlers and other engines meant to carry the product of the coldside mines to the spaceport in order to bring these innocent folk to safety, which had been a nightmarish logistical challenge, but one that Sulla and her team had managed to overcome with the assistance of the local Administratum. Eventually, they had been forced to detonate the train lines which had run straight from Glacier Peak to the planetary capital Skitterfall after they had been overwhelmed with the Infected, an entire company of the 296th (including their previous Colonel) bravely laying down their lives in a rear guard action to buy enough time for the demolition teams.
Regardless, Glacier Peak had only been home to some thirty thousand souls before this, and was now packed with over two hundred thousand refugees at the last count. They had been forced to set up draconian food rationing in order to keep everyone from starving, and if not for the strength-sapping cold and the constant threat of the Infected there might already have been rioting among the desperate civilians. A handful of daring sorties had managed to secure more foodstuffs, but Sulla was bitterly aware that this was merely delaying the inevitable : if they didn't get help from off-world, then sooner or later they would all starve.
Of course, there was always the chance that the Infected would kill them all long before that became a problem, Sulla reflected grimly as she took aim and opened fire at another wave of the living blasphemies. For all the advantages of their defensive position, they still took casualties with every assault, and the Infection and the endless night took their own toll on the defenders. No matter what their commanding officers said to prevent panic, everyone in Glacier Peak knew they were all living on borrowed time, and sooner or later they would –
Great fireballs bloomed amidst the ranks of the Infected, obliterating dozens of them at a time. The snow-covered ground beneath Sulla's feet shook under the impact, but she managed to keep her balance. Raising her head to the forever black sky, she saw planes flying overhead, underlit by the radiance of their own ordinance. Or at least she guessed those were planes : in all her years in the Imperial Guard, she had never seen anything with that kind of silhouette.
Within moments, the entire hundreds-strong horde had been reduced to a few stragglers, which continued to advance toward the barricade, heedless of the carnage around them. Shaking herself, Sulla barked an order, and they were promptly finished off by focused fire.
Sulla knew that the few surviving aircrafts of the 296th had long since been grounded for lack of fuel, and the PDF's own engines had either suffered the same fate or been ingloriously lost before even taking off when their airfields had been overwhelmed by Infected swarms. And even if that hadn't been the case, and the Colonel had decided to deploy some previously unknown reserve, she would've heard about it on the vox.
Which meant there was only one explanation for this miracle, one which was further confirmed as reports began to come in of troop transports landing further afield and disgorging hundreds of soldiers in red armor.
Sulla could have wept. Help. By the God-Emperor's mercy, help had finally come.
Regina forced herself to remain stoic as the envoy approached her. He was clad in the uniform of a Valhallan Imperial Guard, with the thick fur coat which was assigned to every soldier raised from her homeworld.
"I am Acting Colonel Regina Kasteen of the Valhallan 296th," she said, doing her best not to show how utterly relieved she felt, nor the doubt from the fact that she held that rank only by virtue of being the most senior officer to have survived the disastrous retreat from Skitterfall. "To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking ?"
"I am Vaslo Kruld, Captain of the Valhallan 18th. Pleasure to meet you, Colonel."
Regina blinked. She recognized the Regiment, obviously – there probably wasn't a single Valhallan who wouldn't.
"I heard the Tundra Wolves had been lost, Captain," she said cautiously. "Destroyed to the last in battle against the heretics Inquisitor Karamazov waged his last crusade against."
"Lost, yes," confirmed Kruld. "Destroyed ? Well, almost, but not quite. Chenkov didn't manage to get us all killed before he got what was coming to him."
Realisation battled with disbelief within Regina. "You surrendered," she breathed out, the words sounding like the accusation they were. He blushed.
"We did, yeah. It was either that, die pointlessly in a suicide charge, or wait until we starved to death." He sighed. "Anyway, the boss thought you would like seeing someone from the homeworld – don't ask me how he knew you were here, because I've no idea – so he brought me along and asked me to make contact first. We are here to help you, Colonel, and from what I see you need all the help you can get."
"The boss. He's here, then ?" she asked.
"He is," confirmed Kruld. "And he wants to talk with you directly."
The Captain pulled out a small device from his pocket and held it in front of him, before pressing a rune to turn it on. Regina raised an eyebrow as she realized what it was : she'd never seen such a small hololithic projector before, and when it turned on, the life-sized image was far crisper and the sound clearer than she was used to.
Ciaphas Cain had come to Adumbria ready for war, and his attire showed it. He wore a suit of armor like that of the crimson troopers deployed around Glacier Peak (but with many more decorations), and a chainsword and bolt pistol hung from his belt. His face showed no sign of his corruption : had Regina not known who he was, she'd have found him the very image of an Imperial hero.
"Colonel Kasteen," said the heretic who'd successfully overthrown an Imperial Governor, and then gone on to defeat an Inquisitor and one of Valhalla's most infamous sons. "I am Ciaphas Cain."
"I know who you are," she replied. "The Militarum made sure we all knew you after what happened."
"Really ?" He raised an eyebrow. "I would've thought … Nevermind, that isn't important. What is important is the offer I wish to make to you, your troops, and the people under your protection."
Regina's hand tightened around the service weapon at her waist, hearing the unspoken threat hiding behind the words.
"And what 'offer' is that ?"
"Do not attempt to fight us," he replied bluntly. "There is little you could do anyway, and we have no hostile intentions toward you. Our only enemy here is the source of the plague which has beset this world. Regardless of our allegiances, we are all members of the human race, and share a common enemy here."
"If you accept this, not only will we not do you harm, we will also share with you our supplies, including our medical expertise. From what our auspex readings are telling regarding how many people are packed in your city, you can use all the help you can get. We have food, water, and medical supplies – enough to keep everyone alive, and even help rebuild civilization once the infection has been cleansed."
It sounded too good to be true, which immediately made Regina even more suspicious. She pointed out the most obvious issue :
"If we accept your offer, there will be no returning to the Imperium for us. Consorting with rebels is a capital offence."
He looked at her, with what she felt was genuine sadness and compassion in his gaze. "Oh, Colonel. I'm afraid it's already too late for that. Why do you think no reinforcements have been sent from the Imperium to relieve you ?"
Regina frowned, then scowled. "Because defenses across the entire Sector were thrown into chaos by Karamazov's failed attempt to bring your lot to justice, and High Command has more pressing concerns than this world ?"
"Well, partly because of that, yes," he admitted, "although I would argue we are not to blame for Karamazov's stupidity. But it's not just that there are other fronts needing resources. No one is coming here, ever. Adumbria has been declared Perditia due to the Warp-born plague that erupted here. You and your Regiment, along with everyone on this planet and aboard the ships in the system, have already been declared dead."
For a moment, Regina stood, stunned. She wanted to reject the heretic's words, denounce them as nothing but lies, but she couldn't. It had been months since the fall of Skitterfall, and she knew the astropaths had managed to get out one last call for help before the tower housing them had self-destructed to keep them from the Infected. Someone should have come by now, if only to burn the planet to ash with orbital bombardment or, Emperor forbid, the fires of Exterminatus.
"If you still had astropaths, you would have received the proclamation," he continued, not unkindly. "It was spread across the Sector to ensure everyone knew what to do in case any ship known to have been in the system arrived seeking asylum. It was us receiving it that made us decide to come here to your aid."
"Why ?" Regina managed to say. "Why did you come here ? What do you want ?"
"First and foremost, to assist our fellow human beings where it is in our power to do so." Regina made no attempt to keep what she thought of that from showing on her face, and Cain sighed. "But I understand that such altruistic motives are difficult to accept coming from me, so I will give you a more pragmatic reason. What do you know of the Warp, and the Powers that dwell within it ?"
"I have no desire to listen to your heresies –"
"Yes, yes, I know," he waved her off. "I promise I'm not going to try to convert you away from the God-Emperor. But you're an officer of the Imperial Guard. Surely you already know about the rivalry between the Chaos Gods ?"
He looked at her, and her lack of understanding must have shown on her face.
"Oh, brilliant. You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you ? To put it very, very briefly then : the forces of Chaos are far from united, and constantly struggle against each other for supremacy. On Slawkenberg, we have achieved a rare balance between three of the four Dark Gods. This, as you might imagine, hasn't especially endeared us with the fourth, which is the very same Power behind the corruption that has taken root on this world."
That … made sense. Regina might not know much about the Ruinous Powers (nor had she any desire to do so), but their disunity was legendary, and featured prominently in Imperial works of propaganda. Not even the Despoiler, that ancient monster that dwelled in the Eye of Terror beyond the Cadian Gate, could keep the hordes of Chaos united under his command for long.
"Ten years ago, I all but declared war on Nurgle," Cain spat the name, and Regina felt a shiver down her spine at the foul word. "Ever since then, we have been on the lookout for any response. When we heard what was happening here, we knew we had found it."
"So you are here to protect yourselves, knowing that if Adumbria falls to this plague, you will be next in its sights."
"Feel free to think of it that way, yes. But regardless of why we've come, we are the only help you are going to get."
"… You spoke of rivalry between the servants of the Ruinous Powers. Would that be why the Ravagers attacked the capital ?"
"I'm sorry ? The Ravagers ?"
"You don't know ? You aren't the first heretics to come to Adumbria. Around a month ago, a handful of starships arrived and crushed the SDF. We thought they were here to break the quarantine and spread the Infection, but their flagship was destroyed by some kind of unholy weapon at Skitterfall and the survivors made a suicide attack on the capital."
"I see," he mused. "Interesting. I didn't know about this, but you are probably correct : the Ravagers must have come to stop the source of the plague. They were just, shall we say, less diplomatic about it."
That was certainly one way to put it, thought Regina.
"I will let you consider your options," said Cain. "When you make your decision, tell Captain Kruld. Oh, and please don't kill him or try to take him prisoner. It wouldn't end well for anyone."
The hololithic projector turned off, leaving Regina face to face with Kruld. The renegade Captain looked at her hesitantly for a moment, before saying :
"I know it's a lot to take in, but Cain can be trusted. He promised to treat us well if we surrendered, and he did. And when the Orks attacked Slawkenberg ten years back, he gave us guns so we could defend ourselves, even though we could've used them on him and his folks. And they haven't forbidden us to pray to the God-Emperor either. There are still temples to Him on Slawkenberg : smaller than they used to be, sure, but a lot less gaudy too, and the priests in them sound a hell of a lot more sincere and trustworthy than Karamazov's sermons ever did."
"You want me to take his offer ?" Regina asked disbelievingly. "To betray my oaths to the Golden Throne and drag the women under my command along with me into damnation ?"
He shrugged, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "I wouldn't put it like that. The way I see it, you and your girls are frakked, through no fault of your own. And I don't doubt that you are ready to die fighting if that's what it comes to. But your lives aren't the only ones at stake here. Do you really think the Emperor wants you to die for nothing ? To condemn the civilians you've been protecting to a slow, miserable death ?"
"The Emperor expects us to fight His enemies no matter the cost," Regina replied by reflex.
"Who said anything about Cain being His enemy ? He's against the Imperium, sure, but I've never heard him say anything against the Emperor."
"The Emperor and the Imperium are one."
"And who decided that ?" Kruld sighed. "Anyway, I'm not a philosopher. Facts are, Cain is going to fight the monsters here regardless of what you decide. Us coming here was really more about him recognizing your efforts in holding up until now and wanting to help you for protecting the civilians. He's very particular about that, a lot more than frakking Chenkov ever was for sure."
Much as it galled Regina to admit, Kruld had a point. The few hundred women under her command had proven themselves capable warriors, but Cain had brought thousands of power-armored troopers along with mechanized and air support. It was one thing to hold Glacier Peak against hordes of uncoordinated monsters, and another to do so against a proper army with experience fighting the Imperial Guard.
"At the very least," continued the Captain, "I'm hoping you won't do anything stupid and throw your lives away trying to take down the USA. I've no doubt you're a better tactician than Chenkov, but that's not going to amount to much. Cain is frakking terrifying in a fight. He killed Chenkov and Karamazov by himself, the latter after boarding his ship while he was preparing to unleash Exterminatus. He fought an Ork Warboss in that fancy armor of his, then climbed out of the wrecked suit and dealt with an Eldar raid while he was at it."
Regina thought back on the tall, confident warlord she had met, and found that she could believe he had done all these things, however impossible they sounded.
"Beyond that, though, he really isn't a bad ruler. I don't know what you've heard about what happened on Slawkenberg, but I've talked with a lot of people who lived there, and it wasn't pretty. There's a reason almost nobody resisted his takeover, and he's genuinely made things better for everyone. I've been on a handful of planets in my time, and none of them were as … happy, I suppose is the best word for it."
Regina had never given any thought to what life might be like on worlds lost to the Imperium. If she had, though, she would probably have imagined some hellish realm with endless blood sacrifices and suffering, with monsters preying on a terrified population while a handful of powerful heretics lived in debauchery within their twisted citadels.
From Kruld's description, it seemed she'd been mistaken. Of course, he could be lying, but Regina thought she was quite good at reading people, and she didn't think he was. Biased, certainly, since the 296th following in the 12th's footsteps would confirm he and his comrades had done the right thing ten years ago, but not lying.
She thought of the millions who had already died on Adumbria, and of the thousands who yet remained, looking to her for safety on a world gone mad. She thought of their ever-dwindling supplies, of the sickness that was spreading among the refugees even beyond the Infection. She'd sworn an oath to protect them, no matter the cost to her.
Regina Kasteen made her decision.
It was with mixed feelings that I received the news that Colonel Kasteen had accepted my offer of a truce and cooperation against our common foe. On the one hand, I was relieved that I wouldn't have to order the USA to slaughter loyal Imperial soldiers who had performed admirably well in an impossible situation. On the other, I might just have started another Regiment of the Guard down the path of heresy, and that ran quite literally against everything I'd been taught to believe. I'd no doubt that, had her Regiment's assigned Commissar not perished alongside most of the command staff during the disastrous flight from the capital, things would've been much more complicated.
While it was perfectly understandable for the daughters of Valhalla to be furious at the world being callously abandoned by the Imperium, in truth it was more complicated than that. Adumbria stood at the crossroads of several Warp routes, and as such was far more important to the Sector's strategic interests than Slawkenberg ever had been. High Command wouldn't have given up on it so easily, and from the various divinations performed by the more intellectually-inclined madmen under my command, I knew the situation was dire.
In the decade since Karamazov's disastrous crusade, the Sector had taken blow after blow, leaving its military forces stretched perilously thin. The mining world of Desolation IV had been lost to a Tyranid splinter fleet, which had taken a lot of resources and the intervention of a couple of Astartes Chapters to eventually dispatch in a large-scale battle that had left the world of Keffia a desolate husk. And no sooner had that remnant of the Great Devourer been put to rest that the cold war with the Tau Empire had suddenly turned hot over some insignificant mudball at the border.
While all that meant I could rest easy in the knowledge the Imperium had bigger concerns than Slawkenberg's little rebellion, it also meant that worlds such as Adumbria were left perilously undefended from internal threats like the Infected.
At the very least, I might be able to get some kudos from the Emperor by cleaning up this mess and preventing His people from being wiped out on this world. That hope was, of course, somewhat diminished by the circumstances which had led to our presence in the system in the first place.
It turned out the Slaaneshi cult which Emeli had led had existed on Slawkenberg for longer than I'd suspected. Graduates of Saint Trynia Academy for the Daughters of Gentlefolk had been secretly inducted into worshipping the Dark Prince for years before my arrival, and with how many wealthy individuals had come to enjoy the pleasures of the vacation world, several had managed to leave Slawkenberg behind and spread their heresy to other planets by seducing the right tourist.
The late Kyria Sejwek had been one such individual. From what I understood, she'd been the head of her very own small Slaaneshi cult among the local nobility, though she'd mostly contented herself with running a discreet, high-class brothel catering to the appetites of the rich and powerful.
She had died when the planetary capital had fallen to the Infected, but not before using her psychic abilities to send a message to her old friends on Slawkenberg. Given she'd no astropathic training (according to the records Krystabel had inherited from Emeli, her gifts had run toward creating illusions instead), I was fairly certain Emeli had intervened to make sure the message was received.
Between Madame Sejwek's dying message and the Imperial decree of quarantine being picked up by Slawkenberg's witches, I'd been forced to ask the Tzeentchian acolytes to use their divination rituals to figure out what was happening, and (more importantly) whether or not it threatened Slawkenberg itself.
As it turned out, it very much did. Like I had told Colonel Kasteen, letting the situation alone would result in Nurgle gaining a foothold in our corner of the galaxy. Given the reasons I had given the Plague God to be pissed off at Slawkenberg in general and me in particular, I had reluctantly accepted the fact that acting pre-emptively was the best move available to me, much as it ran contrary to my base instincts.
And now, here I was. With every building in Glacier Peak overcrowded with refugees, we had set up shop outside the settlement, in a prefabricated fort the borgs had hastily assembled. I hadn't expected Colonel Kasteen to insist on joining our war council in person, but she'd come back with Captain Kruld, after spending a good hour arguing with her subordinates and setting things up so that we could start sharing our supplies with Glacier Peak.
I had thought she'd be warier of placing herself in the middle of a bunch of heretics, but supposed she wanted to keep an eye on us to make sure we didn't have any nefarious intent for her soldiers and the civilians they protected – or perhaps she thought that, by handing herself as a potential hostage, she would prevent us from taking someone else. Whichever was true, it was an admirable course of action, and not one I would've ever willingly taken myself.
In addition to Kasteen and myself, Colonel Ygdal was also present, serving as the high commander of the USA forces (second only to my own authority, because of course he was). General Mahlone had initially wanted to come with the expedition himself, but had taken my attempt to get out of participating in this whole mess by insinuating that some members of the Council needed to stay behind in case the worst happened as an order for him to hold the fort in my absence while I went out gallantly saving the day and spread the ideals of Liberation.
Mahlone had looked so despondent that he couldn't come with us when he had wished me good fortune as we departed, I had almost strangled him.
Aside from Ygdal, Krystabel was also present at the meeting, along with Jafar's subordinate Iago and the borgs' own representative, Basileus-Zeta. Unlike most others of his order who had been members of the Mechanicus before the Uprising, he showed very little mechanical augmentation : from what I'd been told, he'd personally regrown most of the bits he'd replaced with metal equivalents and grafted them back on. He was Slawkenberg's pre-eminent Magos Biologis, and had worked on building the Panacea production facilities both on the planet and aboard the Grace of Emeli.
Jurgen was already serving recaf to everyone, which even Kasteen accepted. Not only did she look exhausted, the Imperials' own supplies of the stuff had doubtlessly been stretched thin by the siege. I took my own mug with a nod of thanks, grateful for the beverage's warmth as much as its invigorating taste. Malicia was also here, stalking the command center like a great hunting felid. Her armor covered her body completely, which protected her from the cold and also kept Kasteen from realizing I was consorting with foul xenos as well.
We were all sitting around an hololithic projector, attended by another borg and currently showing a slowly rotating image of Adumbria.
There were a lot of things in orbit, as one might expect from even a minor trading world, even if most of it was debris now. Prior to its last stand, Adumbria's SDF couldn't possibly have enforced the quarantine, not with hundreds of merchant ships constantly passing through the system. The moment the plague had become worrying, the merchants had immediately booked it, though I doubted they would be welcome at any Imperial port that had received the same astropathic message we had inadvertently received.
On our way to Adumbria Prime from the system's Mandeville Point, we had passed the hulks of merchantmen who hadn't been fast enough and ended up blasted to pieces by the SDF, or which simply hung in the void in ominous silence, their crew having been forced to abandon ship and seek refuge planetside at gunpoint once the situation had become untenable.
Naturally, I had already received several requests from the expedition's borg contingent to board the derelicts and convert them to the use of the newfangled Slawkenberg Navy. I had firmly rejected them : until the source of the plague was dealt with, we didn't have the resources to spare. Not that I didn't understand where the borgs were coming from : even after ten years of build-up, our flotilla was pitifully small. Its icons showed in orbit around the planet, straight above our heads.
To my unspoken relief that were was some limit to their ridiculous competence, not even the borgs could build the infrastructure required to construct entirely new starships in a mere decade. They had given it their best shot though, and the Emeli's Gift now sported a fully-functional dockyard adapted from some pre-Imperium human megastructure which had been fused to it at some point in its history.
Within that shipyard, the Fist of the Liberator, which served as Slawkenberg's flagship, had been refitted into a carrier vessel. In addition to the superweapon which had destroyed the Dark Eldar flagship (and which had been maintained and overhauled even though it had never been fired since at my express order), it hosted several squadrons of Slawkenberg's new fighters, the Cainwing (and Throne, how I wished the design committee had been able to agree on literally any other name).
To the best of my admittedly limited knowledge (the Navy had its own Commissars, and I had been trained for the Militarum from the start), the Aeronautica Imperialis relied on a handful of designs, which were cheap, reliable, easy to use, and churned out by the thousands in order to wipe out any enemy air support before the Guard went in to deal with the ground forces.
With Slawkenberg's limited industrial base, that option obviously hadn't been available, meaning that any clash between the Liberation Council's air forces and the Imperium's was certain to end in the former's inevitable defeat (well, as long as the Imperial commander wasn't another idiot of Chenkov's and Karamazov's calibre and somehow forgot to bring air support along with their Guardsmen).
But I hadn't wanted the rest of the Council to realize that, as they might decide to do something stupid in response, like trying to summon daemons and bind them within the frames of aircraft or Emperor knew what else. Instead, I had claimed that, by focusing on quality over quantity, the USA air force would be able to take on any number of inferior Imperial aircrafts, and commissioned the borgs to design the most elite, expensive, and complex fighter they could come up with.
The Cainwing was the result of over two years of vigorous debate, prototype building, simulations and more than one fistfight between the experts involved. It used a combination of jet engines and anti-gravity technology to fly in space as well as within a planet's atmosphere at speeds that the human brain simply wasn't designed to comprehend, and was equipped with a pair of high-intensity lascannons by default (though its armament could be changed depending on the mission).
I had nearly fainted when I had seen the price tag on the final product, but by then it was too late to turn back, and I had decided I might as well double down on the idea and ordered the mass-production of the thing in the vague hope that any resources spent on this wouldn't be spent on anything else which might make the USA more dangerous.
To my carefully concealed surprise, the test flights back on Slawkenberg had gone admirably well, with the first crop of pilots going through the extensive training process with admirable speed – despite the selection process the candidates had gone through being as painfully stringent as I could imagine, the importance I'd apparently put on the project had meant there'd been no shortage of volunteers.
Their first combat sortie had also been a success, insofar that they hadn't all fallen apart as soon as they had left the decks of the Fist and hadn't crashed into anything. But it wasn't as if the Infected swarms they had helped bomb into oblivion had been much of a threat to them. I expected the next stages of our campaign would be much more of a challenge for them.
Apart from the Fist of the Liberator, our expedition flotilla was comprised of a pair of captured troop transports, which were filled to the brim with USA troops and equipment, and the support ship Grace of Emeli. The Grace, which had been a merchant ship at some point, had been peeled off Emeli's Gift with great care and refitted to carry all the medical supplies and other sundries which our expedition to Adumbria was likely to need. This included a Panacea production facility, and the schematics and resources to build new ones (which, given the spread of the infection on Adumbria, was going to be very needed).
Since we didn't have Navigators, every ship housed a coven of of Tzeentchian adepts who were linked together by sorcery. When we'd first entered the Warp at Slawkenberg, I'd been terrified we were all going to die, but whether because of the magi's competence, Emeli's protection, or sheer blind luck, our journey to Adumbria had been incredibly smooth. Every ship had made it through more or less in one piece, despite it being the first time travelling through the Warp for almost every single crew member.
With our transport capacity so severely limited, I had made sure every soldier between me and the enemy was as tough as possible. Thus, almost our entire contingent was made up of USA troopers clad in the most advanced power armor the borgs were capable of crafting – and while it wasn't Astartes war-plate, I must admit that Tesilon-Kappa's hereteks had made something really impressive. Along with our new tanks and air support, I was reasonably confident we could handle whatever foulness Nurgle was getting up to here – though I would have much preferred it if I hadn't been the one expected to lead the charge.
"Alright," I began, drawing everyone's attention. "Let us begin this war council. Colonel Ygdal, you have the floor."
"Thank you, my lord. At the moment, based on our auspex scans and the intel we've received from our new allies," Ygdal nodded in Kasteen's direction, "swarms of Infected are moving across the planet in what appear to be patrol patterns. Any settlement unfortunate enough to be in their path are destroyed, and in the case where the inhabitants manage to repel the initial onslaught, more swarms will converge on the location until they are overwhelmed and wiped out."
"Which means," cut in Basileus-Zeta, "that there is a central intelligence directing the Infected."
"Yes," Ygdal nodded patiently. "We're still moving our assets from orbit, including the Panacea reserves for the local population's use -"
"Excuse me," Kasteen cut in, "but what's this 'Panacea' ?"
The Slawkenberg natives glanced at each other for several awkward seconds, before I valiantly charged into the breach :
"The Panacea is a healing substance based on a STC the Liberation Council recovered years ago, and which has completely eradicated disease from Slawkenberg. With it, any ailment and almost any injury can be healed." Then a sudden sense of dread came over me. "Wait, are you telling me you have never heard of it before ?"
"No, why ? Should I have ?"
I felt my mouth move, but no words came out. Fortunately, Krystabel came to my rescue :
"Lord Cain handed over the original STC to an Imperial Inquisitor years ago, after she tried and failed to kill him. We thought the technology would've been spread across the entire Sector by now."
"We hoped that would be the case," I hastily interjected. "I'm sure there is a reason why that isn't the case yet."
I could tell they weren't convinced, so I promptly changed the subject :
"What about the Infected, Magos ? I know you haven't had much time to research them, but do you have anything relevant to share with us ?"
"We do, yes," the borg began. "Unfortunately, the Panacea has proven unable to undo the transformation inflicted upon the victims of the plague. From our ongoing analysis, it appears that the contagion is only partially based within the Materium, and its Immaterial component is what causes the bodily transformation, as well as sustains the resulting creatures, which by all biological laws should simply not live."
"What happens when you inject them with Panacea anyway ?" I asked, morbidly curious.
"The Infected struggle for a varying period of time as the plague battles the injection, but in all test cases, the plague eventually wins out. Only when the subject is still in the early stage of the infection, such as the defenders of Glacier Peak which were bitten or otherwise exposed to the plague, can the Panacea deal enough damage to the Material component to win this confrontation."
"So all the Infected on this planet are as good as dead already ?" I asked, seeking confirmation of what I already knew.
"I'm afraid so, my lord." Well, at least he seemed genuinely sorry about that.
Damn it all. I had already known that, of course, but … after seeing the Panacea perform so many miracles, a small part of me had dared to hope. Though I supposed it would have make things awkward for the 296th and my own forces, who had already slain thousands of Infected.
I took a deep breath. I couldn't save everyone. Not even the Emperor could do that, and telling myself otherwise would only lead to madness.
"There is another point I think I should mention," said Basileus-Zeta. "While its Empyric component is clearly rooted in the Rotting One's influence, its Material elements show extensive signs of genetic engineering. Without going too deep into details," which certainly was one of the major differences between the borgs and the rest of the Mechanicus, "it appears to be capable of self-alteration on an incredible level, changing both itself and its host body in dramatic ways."
"We noticed," said Kasteen drily. "Almost no two of the Infected look exactly the same, though they're all just as ugly."
"Indeed. However, this implies that the base of the Infection was artificially created, yet there is no record of any facility on Adumbria with the capacity to produce such a biological weapon."
"You think this was brought from off-world ?" I guessed.
"It is possible," he agreed. "Another possibility is that such a facility does in fact exist, but was kept off the available records and concealed from our scans. Given the percentage of Adumbria's surface in which conditions hostile to most forms of life are prevalent, building an isolated laboratory would be practical."
Kasteen looked horrified at the idea, and I could understand why. The thought that all the horror that had befallen Adumbria might be the result of an Imperial research program gone wrong before being twisted to the purposes of a cult of Nurgle was the stuff of nightmares.
(It was also, as I'd learn later, both close and very far from what had actually happened.)
"We've no time to spend on such theories," I cut in vigorously. "Colonel Ygdal, what is your suggested course of action ?"
"We need to cut off the head of the beast," declared Colonel Ygdal. "Cleansing the planet of the Infected would take years, and while I don't doubt the skills of our troops I fear we would run out of ammo before we were done. As Magos Basileus-Zeta pointed out, the movements of the Infected indicate the existence of a guiding intelligence, and we know exactly where that intelligence is located."
"Skitterfall," I said gravelly, to show I was paying attention. Everyone nodded.
"Exactly," confirmed Ygdal. He gestured to the borg tending the projector, and the image zoomed in on the planetary capital, which stood where the Shadow Belt met the equator.
"Captain Horatio Bugler managed to cripple the entire Ravagers fleet except for their flagship," explained Kasteen with barely-concealed satisfaction. "Our auspex arrays detected it moving in position above Skitterfall, and then …" She shrugged. "Something happened, that's for sure, but we don't know what. It did a number on the flagship, though : pieces of it landed all over the region."
"Skitterfall didn't have any anti-orbital weaponry capable of taking out a battleship like that," said Ygdal, before turning toward Krystabel and Iago. "I'm guessing sorcery was involved ?"
"It seems the most likely answer, yes," said Harold. Like most of the higher-ranking Tzeentchian cultists on Slawkenberg, he looked deceptively ordinary if you ignored the sorcerous runes discreetly woven into his clerical robes : with thick reading glasses and a messy hairline, he was the kind of man you would expect to find working behind a desk in some out-of-the-way office, shuffling data-slates and being content with never having to actually talk with people in person.
But I knew better than most how deceiving looks could be, and Jafar's subordinates were experts of being underestimated. Harold had worked as the personal assistant to one of the most powerful men on Slawkenberg (who, unsurprisingly, had been a distant cousin of the Governor) before the Uprising, effectively running the man's affairs in his stead while the inbred fop indulged in whatever debauchery had most recently caught his fancy. The aristo hadn't suspected a thing about Harold's true feelings and shifting allegiances until the day of the Uprising, when the innocuous-looking bean counter had let a kill-team of insurgents into his estate and personally rammed an auto-quill into his throat.
"The Warp currents are particularly powerful in this system, owing to its position at the crossing of several Warp routes," continued the acolyte of the God of Change. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Kasteen looked about as uncomfortable with this talk as I, though I was doing a much better job of hiding it. "And they are converging on Skitterfall, drawn there by the spiritual weight of the horrors that have taken place there. When the Ravagers moved to attack it, that energy must have been used to launch an entropic curse of incredible potency at their remaining ships."
"Resulting in them falling apart in the void and raining down upon the planet in pieces," I finished, my guts knotting like Sanguinala garlands at the thought of such destructive power.
"Precisely," replied Harold.
"Could the enemy use this weapon against us in a ground assault ?" asked Ygdal, showing the practical turn of mind that had led to his high-ranking position.
Harold glanced at Krystabel, the two occult experts exchanging a silent conversation before turning back to the rest of us :
"I don't think so," said Harold. "There are restrictions to bringing such power into the Materium. My guess is that the sorcerous attack used the city's existing anti-orbital defences as a base, and those cannot be brought to bear on the surface, right ?"
"Not if Skitterfall followed standard construction schematics, yes," confirmed Basileus-Zeta.
"Then a massed assault on Skitterfall remains our best move," concluded Ygdal. "Colonel Kasteen, what can you tell us of the conditions in the capital ?"
"It's hell," she replied without hesitation. "The capital had over a million inhabitants before the plague hit, and most of them are still there. By the time we were forced to abandon it, the Infected looked even less human than the ones which attacked Glacier Peak."
Oh, brilliant, I thought, my imagination already starting to provide all manners of horrific imagery that I had no doubt would pale in comparison to the real thing.
"Then we can expect a difficult battle, but I am confident we shall be victorious nonetheless," I half-lied. "Where in the capital would the center of the Infection be located ?"
"The Governor's Palace," replied Krystabel. "There are other lesser sites of power, but that is where the bulk of the Warp energy is gathering. There is also the symbolism of it to consider : the Palace is the center of Imperial authority on this world, and defiling it will grant whatever pawn of the Rotting One is behind all this great favor with his foul god."
"There is no doubt that great challenges await," said Harold. "The amount of Warp energy that has accumulated within the capital is incredible. But with you leading the charge, Lord Liberator, then those responsible for this atrocity have no chance."
I chuckled self-effacingly. "Well, I suppose I do have some experience in storming gubernatorial palaces in order to expel vile filth from power. Though I would argue even the Giorbas were not quite as ugly as our current opposition."
That got a round of sycophantic laughter, during which I desperately searched for a way to get out of this and predictably failed. Technically, I supposed I could just tell them I wouldn't take part in the assault and they would have to follow my orders, but that would absolutely destroy my reputation, and no matter how afraid I was of the Nurglites, I was more afraid of my so-called subordinates.
Of course, I had no idea just what awaited me within the fallen city at the time. Had I known the depths of the horror which had taken over Skitterfall, I would have taken the first transport back to the Fist of the Liberator and ran all the way back to Slawkenberg without hesitation.
Adrien de Floures van Harbieter Ventrious, once a scion of House Ventrious and now undisputed master of Adumbria in the name of the God of Decay, frowned slightly as he shared the final sights of his faithful as they died in the dark and the cold. Many of the lesser blessed perished every not-day, even as more were inducted into the fold, but this had been different. The heretics had come to stop the Great Work, led by the Defiler his dreams had warned him about.
And that meant that he had work to do. With a long-suffering sigh, he pulled himself out of his chair, chuckling as he felt several fleshy growths linking him to it pop free as he did so.
He walked slowly out of his chambers, his body swollen by the Grandfather's blessings, but that didn't concern him. He had never needed to rush anywhere on foot before in his entire life, and that wasn't going to change now. Besides, it gave him time to enjoy the sights of the Governor's Palace.
Since he'd killed its previous occupant and claimed it for himself, the building had changed to reflect the allegiance of its new master. The walls were covered in living flesh, writhing with still-growing muscles and nerve clusters. The same was true of the floor and ceiling, giving the impression of walking through the intestines of some vast and fecund beast.
Through the open windows, he saw the perpetual twilight of Skitterfall, tinted through the Warp-infused clouds that covered the city. This, he knew, was what had first drawn the attention of the Grandfather on his world : the locked position of the planet, the constant light level which kept the only liveable region forever trapped between light and dark, day and night – life and death.
Faces, human and not, leered from all directions, weeping tears of pus and tainted blood. Sacs filled with amniotic fluid and incubating beasts grew in the old gardens, and the galleries of portraits of Adumbria's past Governors had become exhibitions of the many, many ways in which Nurgle's displeasure could manifest, as Adrien had taken great pleasure in punishing those of the planet's elite who'd wronged him in the past.
The servants he passed on his way prostrated themselves before him. Unlike the common plebeians, who were fit only to be used as vectors to spread the Grandfather's gifts, these servants had once been part of Adumbria's noble families. As such, they had been allowed to retain part of their intellectual faculties in order to better serve him – though Adrien had disposed of their inconvenient free will once he had grown tired of hearing them beg him for the release of death. Their bodies, though still altered in reflection of the Garden's glory, were still capable of using things like weapons, tools, and doorknobs.
Slowly, he made his way to the former throneroom, where Adumbria's Governors had held court for thousands of years. After personally strangling his predecessor there, Adrien had turned the place into Nurgle's pre-eminent temple on Adumbria. If he was the brain of the Great Work, then the temple and what laid within was its beating heart.
The entrance was guarded by a pair of towering creatures which, at his silent command, pushed the heavy doors open, revealing the temple.
Like every time he saw it, Adrien's breath caught in his throat – and not just because of the phlegm that filled it. Hundreds of host bodies filled the chamber, safe for a single passage leading further in. All of them were linked to each other and the living palace through thick fleshy tendrils, their moans a symphony of despair and suffering which was music to his ears and those of Nurgle.
And there, atop the altar which stood at the back of the room, was the Blessed Spawn, Nurgle's gift to Adrien and the source of the holy sacrament which had spread through Adumbria. Large tendrils ran down the walls and plunged into it, pulsating with various ichors that were injected into and extracted from the Blessed Spawn, before being circulated throughout the entire palace and beyond.
Though Adrien was the chosen apostle of Nurgle on this world, it was through the holy gifts that brewed within the Blessed Spawn that all of Adumbria was one. It served as a living cauldron, its unique biology turned to the service of the Grandfather, made to help his bountiful gifts pass from the Garden into drab reality.
As Adrien approached the altar, he saw that within its shell of hardened, translucent biological matter, the Blessed Spawn had changed form again. Gone were the many scarlet eyes and fanged maw : it now appeared to be an ordinary infant, in the last stages of its growth before it was birthed unto the world.
"Oh, child," Adrien chuckled as he patted the egg gently, before kneeling before the altar in preparation for the rites he needed to perform. "Still you resist, still you refuse the Grandfather's embrace."
It was understandable, of course. The Blessed Spawn was exactly that : a child, with no knowledge of the universe and its many wonders. Its biology was fighting the gifts of Nurgle even as they grew, multiplied and changed within it.
Adrien didn't know what exactly the Blessed Spawn was. For all the gifts he'd received from his patron, his understanding was still limited, though it grew with every passing moment. Still, he had received an answer of sorts, the last time he'd beseeched Nurgle for knowledge :
The Blessed Spawn, the Grandfather had whispered to him, was the last child of Legienstrasse.
Notes:
AN : I know this chapter was heavy on exposition, but I promise we'll get back to (hopefully) hilarious shenanigans in the next one.
Adrien de Floures van Harbieter Ventrious is a canon character from The Traitor's Hand, although I changed which Dark God owns his miserable soul for what I hope are obvious reasons. I based his characterization, and the whole Nurgle Plague thing, on Resident Evil 4's Saddler and Plaga respectively - except, you know, worse because 1) Chaos and 2) inbred aristocrat.
Fun writing fact : it's always the details you least expect that end up taking the most time. For instance, in this chapter, I had to ask for help to name the USA's new aircraft (thanks sneakylurker for the Cainwing), and I spent entirely too long deciding what Adumbria's population would be like.
(If you are curious, I ended up using the off-handed mention that the planet might have received as much as a billion off-world visitors in the last two centuries and compared that to how many foreign tourists Paris gets per year to decide that Skitterfall had around a million and a half inhabitants, before extrapolating to the rest of the planet. Does that even remotely make sense from a demographic perspective ? Probably not, but I don't care.)
The Cainwing are based on the Mark VI Supremacy fighters of the Sith Empire from Star Wars : The Old Republic (you can look up the design online if you want), except they can be refitted with a variety of equipment depending on the mission they're about to be deployed on. Don't think too hard about whether this makes sense from a strategic/logistic/technological perspective, because I certainly didn't.
Finally, if you recognized Legienstrasse's name without needing to look it up, congratulations. For those of you who didn't, don't worry : I'm planning to explain it in-story, if only because Cain's reaction to the whole affair is going to be hilarious.
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter and look forward to your thoughts on it.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 17: Chapter 16
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
On Slawkenberg, print-sheets and vox-casts, which had grown in numbers ever since the Uprising and the Liberation of speech, had reported on the Adumbrian expedition in detail. There wasn't a soul on Slawkenberg who didn't know about it, and all paid close attention to the news coming from the distant Adumbria system.
Through the use of the ansibles, the people knew exactly what was happening in the Adumbria system in real time. They knew that the expedition fleet had arrived in Adumbria, and that contact had been made with the survivors, those pitiful few who had been abandoned to their deaths by the callous Imperium. They knew of the horror that had befallen that distant world, though few images were made public to avoid traumatizing the children who had never known the Giorbas' oppression. And they knew, too, that the forces of the USA were mustering for an attack on the heart of this evil, led by the glorious Liberator himself.
In the last few years, the various faiths which had blossomed after the Ecclesiarchy's violent purge had grown in numbers and influence. The creeds of Battle, Change, and Joy had taken many guises, while the cult of the God-Emperor had quietly continued, in a more gentle and merciful form than the Ecclesiarchy's tyrants had ever allowed. Even the Bringers of Renewed Greatness had expanded their ranks, welcoming all those who thirsted for knowledge and wanted to put it to the service of the people. For such was the will of the Liberator that all be allowed to pray as they desired, so long as they obeyed the law and didn't try to sow discord on Slawkenberg.
These faiths had many differences, but there were traits they all shared. Slawkenberg must stand united to survive and prosper, and none other than the Liberator were fit for the task of leading them into the future. The Imperium was a rotting, shambling parody of the noble institution it had once been, its purpose long since eroded away. And the Power of Decay, the Lord of Plagues and Despair, was the Archenemy of Humanity, spreading misery and suffering to break the species' spirit in order to feed off their despairing acceptance.
Some creeds believed these last two were linked, that Nurgle had poisoned the Emperor and through Him the Imperium. Others thought the Emperor had been the greatest human to have ever lived, but had died long ago, and the High Lords of Terra were keeping up the charade that He still lived in order to keep their positions of power. For some of those who saw Change as the cardinal virtue, the Imperial treatment of psykers was considered a ploy of Decay seeking to keep Humanity from evolving into a species capable of fighting it on more equal grounds. Others believed that the three Powers which had lent their support to the Uprising had, once upon a time, been servants or even part of the God-Emperor Himself, which struggled against Decay in the Immaterium in order to bring the Imperium back to its original self, even as their own champions were cursed by Decay and transformed into hollow parodies of themselves.
All in all, Slawkenberg's religious landscape was a complex and patchwork thing, but also a pragmatic one, helping keep the peace which the Liberator cherished above all else. And now, regardless of their personal beliefs, all prayed for the victory of the USA and the Liberator against the hosts of Decay which had seized Adumbria.
The Nails pound, pound, pound into his skull.
He hurts. All four of his limbs are broken in several places. His body is awash with various infections which even his transhuman physiology are struggling to contain. The fever he is running alone would already have killed a mortal man, boiling his brain inside his skull. Several of his organs, already withered by centuries of life in the Eye of Terror, have been torn out of his open guts.
Yet these pains are nothing compared to the one inside his head.
For the Nails pound, pound, pound into his skull.
He does not know how long it has been. His helmet's internal display broke down centuries ago, and there is no day or night on this accursed rock.
He knows, in some small corner of his mind that hasn't yet been broken by pain, that he should be dead already. He wants to be dead. But he isn't. Something is keeping him alive. Perhaps it is the Nails, unwilling to release him from his slavery to their hunger for violence. Perhaps it is the very sicknesses running through his flesh, prolonging his agony for the amusement of the Lord of Decay.
He does not know. And the Nails pound, pound, pound into his skull.
He wants to fight, to kill, to die. Anything so long as their pounding finally, finally stops.
"This one is still alive !"
A voice. Human. He does not wonder who they are or what they are doing here. All he can think of, in the haze of red-blood agony, is that he must kill them, spill their blood and take their skulls, so that the Nails will grant him blessed release.
But he cannot move. He groans, more blood pouring out from his mouth, and twitches weakly like a fish drowning on land. He hates his weakness, though not as much as he hates the Nails.
Still the Nails pound, pound, pound into his skull.
"Gods, are those his guts ? How long has he been out here ?"
"Weeks ! How the frak is he still alive ?! Medic ! Give him a Panacea injection, now ! Maximum dosage !"
"Do we know what it does to Space Marines ?"
"No, but it's not like we have a choice ! Hurry !"
Something pricks at the exposed flesh of his neck. It takes several attempts before piercing through the leathery skin. He hears the hissing of something being injected into his bloodstream, and then –
The pounding stops.
There is no blood, no killing, but the pounding has stopped. The pain of the Nails is gone, not just held at bay by slaughter.
For the first time in a hundred centuries, Hektor of the Twelfth Legion falls unconscious with a tranquil smile on his scarred mess of a face.
The Lord of War was different from every tank Regina had ever been in during her time in the Imperial Guard. It was far larger than the other tanks of the United Slawkenberg Army, and combined the function of an artillery piece with that of a mobile command center.
Colonel Ygdal (in full armor himself, with a power mace hanging on his back) was focused on the four screens covering one side of the command vehicle, which were showing the pict-feed of the flock of servo-skulls flying above the battlefield.
Unlike the ones Regina was used to, the USA's servo-skulls were made of metal rather than bone. The USA's tech-priests (or borgs, as they were apparently called) didn't use normal ones, just like the entire USA didn't use servitors. As someone who had always been uneasy in the presence of the Mechanicus' ministers (due to the horror stories she'd heard as a child of entire Guard Regiments being turned into battle-servitors after seeking refuge on Mechanicus' forge-worlds), Regina was forced to admit that she found both of these changes to be welcome ones. The fact that their leader, Basileus-Zeta, didn't have any visible augmetics, had also helped take off the edge of the constant fear she'd felt since willingly putting herself in the heretics' midst.
Her decision to do so hadn't exactly been popular among her subordinates, but she had to do it. Someone from the 296th had to be involved in this : the Regiment's honor demanded no less. It had taken a lot of arguing, but eventually even Sulla had seen reason, or at least had grudgingly bowed to her superior rank. And after some more arguing, they had even accepted Regina's choice not to bring an escort with her because, well, they would hardly have been able to protect her from the USA, so she might as well not risk anyone else's lives.
Not that the heretics had shown any sign of intending her harm so far. In fact, they had been remarkably accommodating, and even the common troopers were treating her with the respect they seemed to feel was owed to someone who'd held the line without support for so long. It was certainly different from the other Guard Regiments she'd met before, who'd treated the 296th as second-class soldiers – either because their primary duties were garrisoning Imperial worlds, or, less acceptably, because they were women.
Regina forced herself away from this train of thought, and back to the present. With Skitterfall's airspace compromised by Warp sorcery, the USA had advanced straight from Glacier Peak aboard a fleet of transports recovered from where the 296th had left them after the evacuation efforts had ended. They had been refuelled with promethium stocks brought from orbit along with the supplies for the civilian population, given a quick look-over by the borgs, and within one day of the USA's arrival they had marched out.
Within a day, they'd reached Skitterfall. Adumbria's planetary capital had been about as well fortified as that of most Imperial worlds when the Infection had struck : a large wall had been built around the original settlement, before the city had inevitably grown beyond it. Obviously, the gubernatorial palace was located within the walls, but fortunately, the perimeter had already been breached during the Ravagers' ill-fated assault on Skitterfall. The Infected had tried to close the breach, but whoever was controlling them clearly had no idea how to build fortifications, and the whole thing had come apart again within a few moments of the USA's artillery bombardment.
Of course, the Infected had immediately come pouring out of the breach, just like they'd most likely done during the Ravagers' attempt. But so far, the USA was acquitting itself much better against the horde than the warband whose rotting corpses they were forced to trample as they advanced.
Despite the horrific appearance of the foe, it was an awe-inspiring spectacle. The Slawkenberg troopers were far from being the equals of the Space Marines, of course, but Regina imagined this must be not too different from what a massed deployment of Sisters of Battle looked like, if they were willing to follow proper tactics and not rush at the enemy with the God-Emperor's name on their lips. The vanguard troopers were armed with heavy boarding shields and chainswords, pushing against the Infected horde while their comrades opened fire from behind the shield wall.
Once the breach into Skitterfall proper was secured, the advance slowed down considerably as the USA forces were funnelled into the city's streets. Regina grimaced : she knew from experience that city-fighting was a nightmare, though at least there weren't any civilians left in Skitterfall to worry about.
The Lord of War remained near the breach, at the forward operation base which had swiftly been constructed there. Given what the servo-skulls were seeing, Regina had no intention of getting out of the tank and its recycled air. The city looked nothing like she remembered it, as the corruption which had seized its population seemed to have spread to the very buildings. Skitterfall looked like it had been pulled out of the fever dream of some terminally ill madman.
The Infected were also not only far more numerous, but stronger as well. According to the witches, who were monitoring the battle from orbit, they were drawing strength from the very corruption afflicting the city. Regina wouldn't have thought anyone but a Space Marine task force could have punched its way through the city like the USA was doing, and yet she could see it happening with her own eyes.
At the forefront of the USA host was Cain himself. The heretic leader was piloting a Dreadnought-sized suit of armor, with a heavy bolter mounted in its left forearm and a shard of pure blackness shaped into a sword in its right hand. Regina had no idea what the sword was made of, but it cut through the Infected like a plasma cannon through a snowfield.
At Cain's side was his bodyguard, or 'bloodward' as she was apparently called. Why Cain needed a bodyguard while inside that terrifying warmachine Regina didn't know, but given the curves of Malicia's body armor she suspected she'd an idea.
They were making good progress through the city when she suddenly noticed something.
"There," she said, pointing at a screen. "These Infected are going to catch these soldiers," she gestured at another screen, showing a squad of USA troopers currently engaged with a pack of bestial things which walked on four limbs and had entirely too large jaws, "from behind."
"Blood and ashes, you are right," replied the other Colonel after a couple of seconds, before immediately shifting his voice to a clip, no-nonsense command tone : "Squad 97, fall back two intersections and stop the Infected swarm coming from the west."
They watched tensely as the troopers fell back and held their ground, preventing this section of the USA advance from becoming bogged down.
"Thank you, Colonel Kasteen," Ygdal sighed. "I'm afraid I'm still somewhat inexperienced when it comes to large-scale battles like this. Training exercises can only do so much, but that's no excuse."
"You're welcome," she said reflexively, before suddenly realizing that she'd just provided assistance to enemies of the Golden Throne. Until now, she'd only refrained from attacking them and shared information about the other heretics present on Adumbria, but now she'd directly acted to help them.
She doubted any Inquisitor would've seen much of a difference, but how easily she'd done so still troubled her. Was this how it started ? One small, perfectly reasonable footstep after the other, until you turned you back on Him On Earth and start worshipping daemons ?
And yet, try as she might, she couldn't think of anything else she could've done. The only question, she thought, was whether or not this had all been part of Cain's plan all along.
It was fortunate that, between the Liberator Armor and the suit of power armor I wore inside it (because after what had happened during Korbul's attack, I'd made damn sure I wouldn't be left defenceless if I was forced to abandon the larger suit), no one could see my face. I didn't know what expression exactly I was making now, after the utter terror of the last … however long it had been since the battle had started, but I doubted it'd fit the image of Cain the Liberator.
I would really have preferred to be in the command vehicle with Ygdal, but the very existence of the Liberator Armor meant I couldn't do it without tanking my ill-gotten reputation for heroically leading from the front. Which would be perfectly fine by me, if not for the fact that reputation was part of what kept the rest of the Liberation Council in line. And so here I was once again, throwing myself into mortal peril in order to avoid greater peril later.
I was beginning to worry this would be a theme for the rest of my entire miserable life, though I was of course still blissfully ignorant of how worse than even my most pessimistic thoughts the future would be.
At least the new and improved battlesuit was proving itself worth the exorbitant price tag thus far. The claws, fangs, and occasional biological projectile weapon the Infected were using had done nothing more than scratch the paint and slightly dent the outermost layer of armor so far, while my weapons were cutting them down in droves. With how many enemies we faced, I had discarded the use of the wrist-mounted bolter, which would run out of ammo long before making any significant dent into the enemy numbers, and was instead wielding my new sword two-handed, although what I was doing with it was really more akin to butchery than any real swordsmanship.
The sword had been another 'surprise' from the borgs, constructed using some of the tech recovered from the few fragments of the Drukhari flagship which had been fished out of Slawkenberg's ocean. As Tesilon-Kappa had told me with disturbing enthusiasm, they still had no idea how it worked, but they'd still managed to make something useful out of it.
According to Malicia, the blade was made of something her people called 'dark matter', which was so non-indicative as to be completely useless. Granted, the Succubus wasn't whatever nightmarish equivalent of a tech-priest her kin used, but I had a growing suspicion the name of the stuff had been chosen purely for intimidation value.
In what I could only think of as a sign that the God-Emperor hadn't completely given up on me yet, I'd been able to convince the borgs not to name the weapon the Cainblade or something equally asinine. Admittedly, Liberation's Edge wasn't much better, but at least my name wasn't in it. And from a purely martial perspective, I couldn't deny its efficiency. It seemed there was nothing it couldn't cut through, and I didn't feel any resistance through the armor's feedback mechanism.
Meanwhile, Jurgen was carrying a multi-barrelled lascannon with an ease made possible only by his own standard suit of power armor, and swept entire streets clean with overwhelming firepower while keeping his psychic faculties in reserve for later. Despite being far smaller than the Liberator Armor, he was keeping up without issue, as were the other vanguard troopers which followed in my wake.
As for Malicia, she was clearly having the time of her life butchering a wide variety of enemies who couldn't so much as scratch her. It was fortunate her laughter could only be heard over the private vox-link between her, Jurgen and I, because even the most battle-hardened troopers would've been disturbed by the sheer cruel delight the xenos killer was taking in the whole thing. Her new suit of armor had been assembled from pieces taken from the corpses of her dead allies (I hadn't needed to be a mind-reader to know what her response to being offered a suit of armor built by human hands would be), although the frankly ridiculously impractical spikes and unnecessary edges had been smoothed off.
Most of the troopers around me had trained in the claustrophobic labyrinth of Emeli's Gift as part of the cleansing operations. While none of them had encountered anything as dangerous as the Genestealers I'd stumbled upon during my first and only expedition on that giant deathtrap, there had been plenty of warped, misshapen things left aboard for them to sharpen their skills on. These lessons served them well now, in the brutal butchery that was battle against the Infected hordes in the streets of Skitterfall.
Of course, I thought bitterly, if the Infected had possessed half the tactical sense of a gretchin we would all be dead already. Skitterfall's twisted streets made it the perfect ground to stage an ambush-intensive defense in depth, and my paranoid mind kept screaming at me about threats in the shadows that thankfully never materialized. Instead, the Infected were apparently content to simply hurl themselves at our ranks in slavering swarms to be cut down by our concentrated firepower.
Not that we were getting it all our way, of course. As every Imperial Guard commander well knows, quantity has a quality all its own, and the Infected present in the capital outnumbered us massively. Yet even so, USA casualties were low : the presence of medicae in power armor carrying Panacea injectors meant that, even when a trooper fell, they survived more often than not to be carried back to the FOB. I had even been forced to make it clear that no, the wounded weren't allowed to return to the fray once they'd recovered, as with their armored suits broken they would be liabilities.
Here I was, desperately looking for a way out, and these morons wanted nothing more than to get back to fighting the Infected hordes.
"Onward, my comrades !" I bellowed over my armor's vox-speakers, raising Liberation's Edge high. "Let us bring dawn to this city of eternal twilight !"
Throne, I couldn't believe I had just said that. I sounded like a character in a two-credits novel. The troopers around me lapped it up, though, too high on bloodlust to care about the losses they had already suffered or the fact that we still faced an entire city full of more monsters like the ones we had faced, and roared their approval with enough strength to shake the poisoned sky. As far as I could tell, despite all the horrors we'd faced, not a single trooper had so much as taken a backward step without being ordered to.
Frakking Khornates.
Still, we were making good progress. Of course, every meter of advance meant we were closer to the gubernatorial palace and the not-so-fresh horrors awaiting us within, and try as I might I couldn't think of a way to avoid leading the charge into the den of the beast.
My plan, if it could be called such, was to have Jurgen engage the sorcerous leader of the Infected in psychic combat. I was well aware that for all his psychic might, my aide wasn't nearly as powerful as whatever was responsible for Adumbria's woes, but I didn't expect him to win, merely to draw its attention for an instant. Then, me and every trooper I could bring with me would shoot the sorcerer while it was distracted, and hopefully our combined firepower would be enough to overwhelm whatever defenses it could maintain while engaged with Jurgen.
It wouldn't be the epic, one-on-one duel between myself and the source of all of Adumbria's evils I'd no doubt the rest of the USA fondly imagined was going to happen, but it should work, and more importantly it should keep me alive. I was confident I could spin it as me not wanting to give the wretched Nurglite the honor of fighting me directly afterwards.
I had half-managed to convince myself this all would work out when our advance suddenly stopped.
"What the frak is this ?" I asked eloquently, looking at the barrier which blocked our progress.
It was to an energy shield as the rest of Skitterfall was to a normal city. It looked like a giant bubble of pus that covered a good quarter of the city, including our destination, and absorbed all of our fire without any sign of damage. I had ordered one of the servo-skulls to fly through, and after seeing what had happened to the unfortunate device I wasn't going to let anyone try to get through themselves.
"This appears to be a sorcerous barrier," cut in Harold after some time. The Tzeentchian magus was back aboard the Fist of the Liberator alongside Krystabel, neither of them being suited for this kind of operation. "Fortunately, I believe we have managed to track down its source. Sending the coordinates now."
The map on my display updated itself to show the location Harold was talking about, and a sudden thought intruded upon me.
"Wait," I asked. "Are you telling me that the source of this barrier is outside the barrier itself ?"
"Yes, lord."
I waited, but he didn't elaborate further, pushing me to eventually ask :
"Is there any reason for that ? It strikes me as very poor design. Usually, shield generators are located inside the shields themselves."
"I, huh." Harold genuinely sounded taken aback, having clearly been too caught up in locating the source of the obstacle to think about this. "I don't know. Maybe the source of the barrier can't be moved ? There might be some ritual component to the ritual maintaining it which is fixed in place."
"Maybe," I said, not believing it was that simple for a moment. "But we are going to treat this as a trap regardless."
Which predictably turned out to be the correct course of action, although frankly speaking the trap in question wasn't much to worry about, which was a pleasant surprise for once.
According to the old maps provided by the 296th, our target had at one point been a monastery of the Order of the Imperial Light, a local offshoot of the Ecclesiarchy. If the maps were still accurate (which, given how saturated the city was with Warp energy, was far from guaranteed), then the temple had been thoroughly desecrated.
Statues which I assumed had depicted saints and famous Adumbrian religious figures had been disfigured, and were covered by the same fleshy growth that spread throughout Skitterfall like unholy ivy. Fist-sized insects swarmed on the ground, forming a shifting carpet of nauseating colors and forcing even my power-armored companions to check their footing (the Liberator Armor, of course, crushed them without slowing down).
The temple was defended by larger Infected than we'd encountered previously, including a towering brute the size of an Imperial Knight, which nonetheless went down remarkably easily once two hundred USA troopers focused their fire on its ridiculously small head. Inside the temple itself, we found the source of the barrier atop what must have been the main altar where the monks had gathered for their daily prayers.
It was, or had been, a man, laying on the altar, with numerous tendrils plunging into his flesh and linking him to the rest of this place's foulness. Despite the utter ruination of his flesh, his eyes were still intact, and he stared at us with agonizing clarity.
A quick look was enough to know there was nothing we could do for him. His suffering was fuelling the sorcerous barrier : according to Krystabel and Harold, he'd likely been one of the Ecclesiarchy's representatives on Adumbria, chosen for this awful fate because of this. And while the Ecclesiarchy was far from popular among the troopers of the USA, nobody deserved such a gruesome fate.
I struck the killing blow myself, before ordering the troopers carrying flamers to burn the remains to ashes. To my own surprise, I caught myself muttering a prayer for the poor bastard's soul, though I doubted he'd have appreciated it, given who was likely to listen to me these days.
I was about to give the order to move out when I heard a voice calling out my name.
"Ciaphas Cain," it said. "We meet at last."
The voice was at once whiny and filled to the brim with arrogance, and I found myself unpleasantly reminded of Caesariovi Giorba's rantings before I had shot him with his own bolt pistol. I turned toward the source of the sound, and found that the large mirror hanging on the wall behind the broken altar had become a window into another, even more awful place. The fleshy growths were even more prevalent wherever this was, but I didn't have time to inspect the other room in detail, as my attention was immediately drawn to the speaker, who stood right in front of whatever fell pict-taker equivalent he was using for this sorcerous communication.
The man (at least I assumed it was a man) was morbidly obese, to a point that made the Giorbas look like paragons of fitness and health. It was difficult to judge heights from within the Liberator Armor, but I was confident he was of rather small stature, and wearing what looked like a nobleman's robes, except far too small to properly cover his repugnant bulk.
Every trooper in the room aimed their weapon at the mirror, but I stopped them with a gesture. If this was what I thought it was, then this may be an opportunity to gain some useful intelligence.
"You have me at a disadvantage, sieur," I said, to break the awkward silence that had descended on the room.
I felt a slight headache start to bloom inside my skull, and reflexively blink-clicked a rune on my armor's internal display, which triggered the injection of a slow trickle of Panacea into my bloodstream. The headache receded at once, leaving me free to focus on the conversation.
"I am Adrien de Floures van Harbieter Ventrious," he pompously announced.
"Never heard of you," I replied truthfully, and under its many layers of fat, his face looked like he'd swallowed a lemon.
"Of course you haven't, you foul heretic," he spat. "Your ignorance is made clear by your choice of patrons."
"Is this what this is about ?" My stomach plummeted in my boots at the sheer hatred dripping from his every word, but, conscious of the many eyes watching me, I forced myself to keep up the Liberator persona. "Shouting at me for refusing to let the literal lord of decay and sickness torment my people ?"
"I wanted to see you for myself," he replied. "To see the fool who dared to deny the Grandfather's gifts, and scream his pitiful defiance into the Aether for all to hear."
I spread out the Liberator Armor's arms. "Well, you've seen me now. And I have seen you, too. I must say," I continued, layering my next words with all the mockery I could muster, "I'm not impressed either."
"Your flesh will rot on your bones," he spat the words along with a wad of phlegm that would've made any cleaner weep. "Your armor and weapons will rust into nothing, and as your mind breaks under the realization of your own stupidity, you will beg for the Grandfather's forgiveness !"
"No," I said, and for once I wasn't lying. "I will never beg Nurgle for anything."
At last, the entropic energies of the windbag's communication spell became too much for the mirror's fixings, and it crashed onto the floor with a sound between breaking glass and the shrieking of damned souls, sending razor-sharp shards flying, none of which managed to penetrate my armor.
"Well, that was an unpleasant conversation," I said, turning to my companions, who were all staring at me. Right, they'd just seen me waste time talking with the madman apparently responsible for all the horror surrounding us. "But at least now we know the name of our enemy. Let's get back to killing him, shall we ?"
How ?! How had he done this ?!
The entire time they'd been talking, Adrien had been casting a curse on Cain through the mirror, one that should have had his body shrivel and die under the strain of a hundred different plagues. The curse's power had been diminished by the wards placed on his armor by the disciples of the Changing God, yes, but what remained should've been more than enough to kill him !
And yet, he hadn't even appeared to notice. Clearly Adrien had underestimated him, despite the warnings he had received. One of the other Dark Gods must have protected him somehow, either by strengthening his body or simply blocking the curse completely, he didn't know.
No. No, he wouldn't fail. Not now, not when Adumbria was so close to being fully within his grasp.
He still had one last card to play. Grandfather Nurgle wouldn't abandon him. He wanted Cain dead, Adrien knew this. And if the thralls couldn't do the job, then he just had to ask for something which could !
As he slowly waddled his way back to the chamber of the Blessed Spawn, he ran through the formulas and un-words that had been revealed to him since his illumination into the entropic ways of the universe. Perhaps, if he could break through the Blessed Spawn's resistance … no. That wouldn't work. Oh, the Spawn would be more than able to defeat Cain and his minions, but breaking its defiance would take too long.
Then … then he would call for one of Grandfather's strongest children. The entire city had been made as close to the Garden as possible; the barrier between realms was thin enough for one of them to cross the gap and join him in defense of all he'd built.
Cain was strong, and so were his allies, but they were still only mortals, even the disgusting xenos scum he'd welcomed in his court. Let them try to use their pretty guns against one of Grandfather's greatest servants : all of their weapons and armor would turn to dust, along with their foolish hopes.
Notes:
AN : Happy Holidays, everyone !
Thanks you all for your kind words on the last chapter, and for the various Omakes which have been written on SpaceBattles showing Cain in various other situations (such as a Rogue Trader and a Crime Lord, among others). If you're reading this on another site, I really recommend checking the SB thread.
Like several other characters in this fic, Hektor is from another story of mine, Warband of the Forsaken Sons. And yes, the panacea stopped the Nails from affecting him (more details will be revealed later). You might now begin to imagine how Cain is going to react when he learns his bunch of lunatics rescued a corrupted Astartes dedicated to Khorne.
Here is a hint : it's going to be hilarious.
The next chapter of A Young Girl's Weaponization of the Mythos is almost complete. I expect it to be published sometime tomorrow, which will be fitting considering it's quite possibly the most wholesome piece of fiction I've ever written (despite being a crossover between the Cthulhu Mythos and Youjo Senki of all things).
As always, I look forward to your thoughts, suggestions and Omakes.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 18: Chapter 17
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The screens were going dark.
One by one, the feeds from the servo-skulls monitoring the USA troops across Skitterfall were dying. First, they would start to flicker, the quality would drop, and then there would be nothing but static on the screen for a few seconds before it shut down.
"It's coming from the palace," said Regina. "The servo-skulls closest to it were the first to fail, and it's spreading from there."
"You are right," said Ygdal. "Something has to be happening, but what ?"
Recognizing a rhetorical question when she heard one, Regina didn't answer. Five minutes later, not a single screen was still on; two minutes after that, the vox was completely dead. They couldn't even call the troopers right outside the command vehicle, whose last report before the comms had gone out had been of a sudden attack on the Forward Operation Base.
Cursing, Ygdal got off his seat and moved toward the embarkation ramp, pulling his power mace off his back and lighting it up.
"Stay inside," said the heretic colonel as he pressed the rune to open the ramp. "You don't have armor, and I won't have you get torn apart on my watch."
Much as it galled her to stay safe while others fought, Regina had to agree. Without the sealed power armor that every fighter of the USA was wearing, she couldn't risk going outside of the Lord of War's filtered air. She had a gas mask on her, of course, just in case the vehicle was breached, but that was a last-ditch measure.
Regina was left alone in the command center, with the rest of the Lord of War's crew busy firing its mighty guns into the horde besieging the FOB. After a few moments spent struggling with the Lord of War's controls, she managed to switch the screens to show the feeds from the war-machine's auspex. If she were to die here, she wanted to see her death coming rather than be taken by surprise when the hull around her was ripped apart by the claws of the monsters who'd taken this world from the Imperium.
She watched as the USA troopers held their ground against ever-greater numbers of the Infected. She watched as squads fell back from the city streets. Some made it back to the dubious safety of the defense lines, while others were overrun and torn to pieces in salvation's sight.
It was a hideous spectacle, monsters killing heretics. It was a beautiful sight, Mankind standing in defiance of the Outer Dark's horrors. Regina was transfixed by the sight, wanting to look away from the screens but unable to do so.
Then a new sound rang within the command chamber. She jumped, taken by surprise, and saw that, despite the vox still being down, one of the comms was beeping with an incoming call. She tentatively reached out and pressed the rune, acknowledging the link.
"Hello ?" She asked, forcing her voice to remain steady with an effort of will.
"This is Cain. Lord of War, do you hear me ?"
Briefly, Regina considered hanging up, but she promptly dropped that line of thought. There was too much at stake for her to risk it all by being petty.
"This is Colonel Kasteen," she replied. "I hear you, Cain."
"Good, I was worried this wouldn't work either." The relief he felt was audible in his voice, which only made Regina more tense. "Where is Ygdal ?"
"He went out to lead the defense of the FOB," she explained quickly. "The Infected are attacking in large numbers, and there are daemons among them now. How did you manage to reach us ? Every vox-link is dead."
"Ansible," he said as if she was supposed to know what that meant. "The borgs built one into my armor; I thought it was overkill, but clearly it wasn't. Can you get me in touch with the Fist ? There's another ansible pair between the Lord of War and the flagship, and I need to ask Krystabel and Harold about something."
"I …" Regina looked around. "I will see what I can do."
Most of the Lord of War's systems followed the standard Imperial templates with which she was familiar, but there were elements she'd never seen before, which she assumed were those 'ansibles' Cain was talking about. Fortunately, they were labelled clearly, with Low Gothic labels stamped under a series of communication runes. She saw that the one she'd already pressed said 'Liberator'. Next to it was another marked 'Flagship', and next to that one another simply labelled 'Slawkenberg'.
For one second, Regina simply stood there, her mouth open as she was struck by the implications of that one, innocuous name.
"Lord Cain," she heard her own voice asking, "why is there an ansible, which I assume is some kind of communication device, connected to Slawkenberg in this tank ?"
"Oh, that ?" replied the arch-heretic in a distracted tone. "The borgs added one when coming up with the design. A bit overboard, I know, but they thought it might be useful for the field commanders to be able to ask questions to the experts back home and get answers in real-time."
"How is that possible ?" Regina asked, aware of the slight hysteria that was slipping into her voice. She didn't know exactly how far Slawkenberg was from Adumbria, but she'd to imagine it was measured in light-years. And wait, had he just said 'in real-time' ?!
"I have no idea," Cain admitted, "but it works. It's based on a STC we found years ago. The bandwidth is a bit limited, but it's still a lot faster and more reliable than astropaths, and it can't be intercepted at all."
Colonel Kasteen swayed on her feet. Instant communication, regardless of the distance. This … this was even bigger than the Panacea, if true – and she couldn't think of a reason for Cain to lie. Even she, lowly officer though she may be in the grand scheme of things, could see that. The military applications alone could completely change how the Imperium responded to the many threats it faced.
Instead of needing to wait months, sometimes years for a reply, beleaguered worlds calling for aid could be told immediately when a relief force had been sent, which would happen a lot sooner without the time it took for an astropathic message to reach its destination, if it ever did. Then there were the logistic applications –
"Apologies, Colonel," Cain said, "but could you please hurry ?"
"Right," she snapped out of her awed fugue and pressed the rune marked 'Flagship'.
"This is Harold speaking," said the voice of the data-pusher she'd met at the war council immediately. "Where is Cain ?!"
"I am here, Harold," replied the Liberator. "We've lost the vox across the entire city, and Jurgen is telling me there's something going on in the palace. We're moving toward it to stop it; what can you tell me ?"
"Praise the Gods," murmured Harold with transparent relief. "Right, we are detecting a summoning of some kind taking place – a huge one. Whatever the Nurglites are calling, it's messing with the Materium, changing the laws of physics as it approaches."
"That's why the vox isn't working," guessed Cain, echoing Regina's own thoughts. "Any idea why the ansibles aren't affected ?"
"The ansibles work on completely different principles than the vox," promptly answered Harold. "You'd need to ask a borg for the details, but my best assumption is that those principles rely on a deeper level of reality, so to speak."
"So if the ansibles stop working, it will be a very bad sign," said Regina.
"… Yes." Harold sounded somewhat surprised she'd spoken up, but clearly realized this wasn't the time to argue about protocol. "Again, you'd need to ask an expert, but I'm fairly certain it would mean we've stopped being in the Materium completely."
"Is that possible ?" asked Cain.
"Given how much Warp energy is being pulled in at Skitterfall ? I am afraid so, lord."
"Wonderful. Well, I don't think we're quite ready to face Nurgle in his own realm yet, so we'll have to hurry and make sure that doesn't happen."
From anyone else, Regina would have taken that as a joke, an attempt by the speaker to calm his own nerves by making light of the situation. Yet hearing Cain speak them, somehow she couldn't stop herself from thinking he was being entirely serious.
Hektor woke up to a pleasant lack of stabbing, homicide-inducing pain in his skull. In the last hundred centuries (by the Imperium's reckoning : his own chronology had long since become muddled to the point of meaninglessness), the only sleep he'd known had been short bursts of unconsciousness, which had always ended with the Nails dragging him back to wakefulness long before he'd been able to get any real rest.
He was laying down on a hard surface, and could feel cold air on his skin. How long had it been since he had removed his armor ? Years ? Decades ? Like most of his memories since the Siege of Terra, it was all a jumbled mess. Truthfully, he hadn't even known whether it could even be removed anymore, or if it had fused with his flesh like was the case for so many other renegade Astartes.
There was a collar around his neck. The sudden realization filled him with all-too natural anger, and his hand closed around the offensive item –
"Please don't break that," said a calm, authoritative voice from the side of his bed. "I had to build it in a hurry, and it's really not as tough as I would like."
The man smelled of machine and medical supplies, and wore robes similar to those of the tech-priests, but he didn't have any visible metal on him, which only made Hektor more cautious. He'd met numerous members of the Dark Mechanicum in the Eye of Terror, and those who looked the most human were often the most dangerous under the surface.
"Greetings," he said. "I am Basileus-Zeta of the Bringers of Renewed Greatness."
"You seek to collar me, little man ?" grunted Hektor. Naked and weaponless he might be, but he was still a World Eater, Nails or not, and there were some indignities he wouldn't tolerate.
"That collar is the only thing keeping those grotesque cortical implants of yours from starting killing you again," revealed the magos, sounding only slightly perturbed by the threat implicit in Hektor's words. "I know it doesn't look good, but again, I had little time and this place isn't exactly furbished with the equipment I'd need for a more permanent solution."
"What exactly happened to me ?" he asked. "I remember laying on the ground, dying. Then someone injected me with something, and I passed out."
"You are currently in the forward medical outpost of the United Slawkenberg Army, part of our operation to purge the city of Skitterfall of the Nurglite infestation that has taken root here," replied Basileus-Zeta. "You'll be glad to know that we were able to put all your guts back inside and sew you back closed. The Panacea, that's what you were injected with, seems to have healed the damage from your injuries, though we don't have enough knowledge of Space Marine biology to know whether or not it worked correctly."
"What – what about the Nails ?" Hektor asked hesitantly.
"I assume you refer to the implants in your skull ?" The magos waited for Hektor's nod of confirmation, then continued : "they are still there, I'm afraid. The Panacea is neutralizing them, but it can't push them out completely – they are buried too deeply into your brain matter. It might be possible to remove them with surgery, as long as you're kept dosed with Panacea during the procedure, but that'd be risky, and not something we can do here in any case."
Hektor reached out with his left hand and gently touched the back of his skull, feeling the familiar, hated shape of the Butcher's Nails. Of course. It couldn't possibly be that easy. Still, even such a brief reprieve was already more than Hektor had ever dared hope for.
"We didn't know how long one dose of Panacea can keep the implants quiescent," Basileus-Zeta continued. "I built the collar to monitor how much of it is left in your system and inject you new doses when needed. Judging by the rate at which you needed new ones while unconscious, the collar should have enough for the next ten hours, as long as you don't get injured. And we have plenty more here, so don't worry about running out. Your collar will start beeping when it is on its last dose, so you'll need to come back here to get it refilled. I can show you how to reload it manually in the field if you want -"
"Why ?" Hektor cut him off. "Why are you doing this ? Why not just leave me to die and strip me of my weapons and armor ?"
The tech-priest blinked, as if he genuinely didn't understand what the Legionary was saying.
"You came to this world to battle the servants of Nurgle, didn't you ? That makes us allies in our crusade against the Entropic One. Leaving you to die would have been a waste, and letting these implants continue affecting you would have been the very height of foolishness. As for what we want from you in exchange, I expect the Liberator will want to talk with you about that himself -"
Suddenly, the side of the tent was ripped apart, and a large things with buzzing insect wings and several mouths with far too many teeth hurled itself inside the medical station. Hektor's instincts kicked in before conscious thought, and he grabbed the creature before it could reach Basileus-Zeta or any of his scampering aides.
He smashed it to the ground, before punching and kicking it until it burst and stopped moving. The sudden rush of action flowed his body with adrenalin and other hormones, but the lack of blissful relief from the Nails nearly threw him off-balance, and he stumbled for a second before turning back to Basileus-Zeta. His understanding of human emotions had eroded somewhat over the millennia, but he was fairly sure the tech-priest was feeling nauseous at the gory display.
"I need weapons," the World Eater said bluntly.
"I think that can be arranged," replied the tech-priest.
Five minutes later, Hektor was outside the medicae tent with a human-sized chain-glaive in each hand. The weapons' handles had been shortened with a plasma cutter to make them the size of combat blades. He was wearing his Panacea collar and a set of patient robes which had been hastily sewed to fit his transhuman frame, and nothing else. There had been ranged weapons in the infirmary, but none of them would've fit in his grip.
It wasn't a great way to go to war, but Hektor would have faced all the hordes of Nurgle naked and with one hand tied behind his back in exchange for relief from the Butcher's Nails.
The base, which had been built in the shadow of Skitterfall's walls, was under attack by a horde of Nurglite creatures. The mortals (the United Slawkenberg Army, Basileus-Zeta had called them) were fighting back with commendable skill. Hektor hadn't seen a mortal army so well equipped in a long time : only the most elite Regiments of the Solar Auxilia had been fully kitted with power armor like those were.
To his mild surprise, the troopers didn't seem affected by transhuman dread at his admittedly somewhat diminished presence. Instead of recoiling from him as he engaged the closest group of Nurglite monstrosities in melee, they shouted their own war-cries and joined in.
"Greetings, Ravager !" one of them, who wielded a power mace two-handed and whose armor bore the marks of a high rank, called out to Hektor. "Glad to see you already up and about. I am Colonel Ygdal. May I have your name ?"
"I am Hektor of the World Eaters," the Chaos Marine replied. "You serve the Blood God too, don't you ?"
"I serve the Liberator, and the people of Slawkenberg," corrected the mortal. "But I do follow the creed of the God of War, yes."
Hektor didn't know what to make of that, but fortunately there were more immediate problems to deal with. More Infected were hurling themselves over the barricades surrounding the outpost, accompanied by shambling Plaguebearers and other lesser daemons of Decay.
"Then let us make war together, Ygdal of Slawkenberg, for Khorne and the Liberator !"
"FOR KHORNE AND THE LIBERATOR !" roared back the soldiers around him, and Hektor couldn't suppress a smile that would've made lesser men run away in terror.
Truly, Nails or not, some things never changed.
They would be here soon.
Even as he sang the long and complex incantation, Adrien could feel the deaths of every slave the heretics were butchering on their way up the city and into his palace. Even the lesser children of the Grandfather, who slipped through the door his spell was slowly pulling open, couldn't slow them down for long.
The room containing the Blessed Spawn had been emptied of pews and worshippers to make room for the ritual circle he had directed his slaves to draw with blood and bile. Seven times seven times seven sacrifices had been offered, their souls ripped from their bodies and their flesh slowly melting to fill the basin at the center of the circle.
The remaining bodies had been pushed to the side, where the walls had promptly swallowed them whole, before spitting them back out transformed into new warrior-forms which Adrien had absent-mindedly commanded to get out and join the fight.
He couldn't spare the time to direct the defense of the palace : the ritual required his absolute focus, lest the great and wondrous energies he was commanding slip his grasp and destroy him utterly. All he could do was order every one of Nurgle's servants to come to his aid and put themselves between the ritual chamber and the intruders.
As the ritual reached its climax, the liquid biomass from the pool rose into the air, forming a vast, opaque sphere that glowed with greenish light. Adrien felt in his very soul the passage of some vast and terrible entity from the Empyrean to the Materium, and he gasped, falling to his knees, his gut bouncing against the floor.
The surface of the sphere hardened, then broke apart like an eggshell, revealing the towering figure of a Great Unclean One, who smiled down benevolently at Adrien.
He had done it, the prophet of Nurgle thought with delirious joy, even as he felt the last of his guards fall and the doors of the chamber burst apart under a single blow of Cain's black blade. He had called forth one of Grandfather's mightiest children, something only the greatest of Nurgle's chosen could do. Now, their victory was assured. They would crush the heretics, bring Adumbria into the Garden, and from there spread Nurgle's bounty across the stars, with Adrien as its herald, honored above all others –
Then the Great Unclean One landed on the ground, and crushed Adrien under his foot like an ant.
"Oops," said the monster in a voice that was like the slurping of entire rivers of filth as it looked down at the miserable stain that was all that remained of the sorcerer who had summoned it. "That was unlucky. Oh well," it shrugged. "Dear Adrien served his purpose well enough."
Such callousness, thought Jurgen. One more proof (as if one were needed) of the evil of Nurgle. For all that his cultists liked to talk about their patron's so-called 'love', they were never more than slaves, tools used to spread misery and despair across the galaxy in order to feed their foul god's power.
Before anyone, even the Liberator, could respond, the fiend turned its baleful gaze upon them all.
"I am Gurug'ath, Baron of the 6th Pestilential Circle," it said, and Jurgen felt blood run from his eyes as he heard it say its name, his mind filling with images of endless rot, decay and hideous fecundity. "Long have you defied the Grandfather, but this ceases now. Behold the truth of despair !"
Too fast for Jurgen to react, a psychic pulse erupted from the Greater Daemon, catching everyone in the room.
And Jurgen –
– he was back in the pit, with the chains around his body and mind, the reek of rotting corpses, the filth everywhere on his skin, and no light, no hope, nothing –
– was retching in his armor, muscles twitching, his gun slipping from nerveless fingers. The suit had detected his distress and triggered the automatic injection of Panacea into his bloodstream, but even the wondrous archeotech couldn't keep the psychic aura of despair at bay.
Around him, the rest of the troopers were also falling down, moaning in pain and terror, clawing at their armor with trembling hands. Not even that wench Mortalyss was unaffected, although Jurgen saw her still trying and failing to get to her feet. Through the haze that blurred his second sight, he could sense the brand on her chest blazing with power as Lady Emeli tried to force her to get up.
And yet, she couldn't do anything, and neither could Jurgen, as Gurug'ath slowly wobbled its way toward the Liberator Armor and pressed one disgusting hand against it in a vile caress that made the paint crumble and the wards engraved into the metal glow.
"Everything you have done means nothing in the end," the daemon gurgled. "All you've built, all you have achieved, will turn to dust and rot eventually. Your precious Panacea will be revealed as the impotent lie it truly is. Embrace this truth, Cain, and through it you will know Grandfather's forgiveness. It is time to stop hiding from the inevitable."
"… liar."
Liberation's Edge rose, and cut through layers of cancerous fat and rot-black bone. The left hand of the Great Unclean One fell to the ground with a revolting *plop*, and its owner recoiled, its grotesque features distended in an expression of shock.
"What ?!"
The Liberator's Armor moved like it was possessed, hacking at the Greater Daemon with bestial savagery. Wordless snarls of pure, undiluted rage emerged from its vox-speakers as Cain duelled the abomination. Jurgen watched in awe as Gurug'ath was forced to defend itself with its own blade, barely able to keep itself from being cut to pieces as it gave ground before Cain's berserk onslaught.
If the Liberator could fight through the daemon's spell, then by all the Gods, so could Jurgen. He pushed himself to his feet, grabbed his gun, aimed at Gurug'ath (using his psychic powers struck him as an incredibly stupid thing to do at the moment), and pulled the trigger. Thankfully, his armor compensated for the trembling flesh within, and the flurry of las-bolts hit more or less on target, burning chunks of putrid flesh off the daemon's ankle.
The wound was small compared to the bulk of the monstrosity, but it still threw it off-balance for just a second. To a swordsman like the Liberator, however, that second may as well have been an eternity, and he seized the opportunity by striking a diagonal blow that cut the Greater Daemon open from shoulder to waist. Rotten blood, entrails and other liquids with which Jurgen had become all too familiar during his captivity erupted from the wound in a foul geyser that bathed the front of the Liberator Armor, causing the metal to bubble and melt.
Again, the daemon stumbled backward, its three eyes wide open in shock as it pawed at its injury with its still-regenerating left hand. The aura of supernatural despair it had been projecting flickered and failed, and a roar of fury rose from the other troopers, mixed with the shame of how easily they'd been neutralized. They scrambled for their weapons and opened fire on Gurug'ath as well, their weapons set to full-burst. Individually, each las-bolt was little more than an insect's bite (though after some of the things they had killed on the way here, perhaps that comparison no longer applied), but there were a lot of them.
With a growl, Gurug'ath raised its remaining hand, brandishing its cleaver to strike at the Liberator Armor, which had gone worryingly still after being drenched in its daemonic guts. Terror that had nothing to do with the daemon's aura grasped Jurgen's heart, but before the Nurglite fiend could strike, its entire arm seemed to come apart into chunks that fell to the floor in a putrid rain.
The sound of Mortalyss' inhuman laughter echoed across the room as the Dark Eldar landed softly on the Liberator Armor's shoulder, her blades dripping with infernal gore. Right, she was there too.
"So be it," bellowed Gurug'ath. "I need no weapon to kill you all !"
Its third eye started to glow with eldritch light, and Jurgen felt Warp energy gather at that point as the Greater Daemon prepared to unleash some kind of fell sorcery.
Using his powers was still stupid, but Jurgen didn't have a choice. With a quick prayer, the Valhallan psyker threw the gates of his mind open, muffling a scream as the corruption saturating the Empyrean tried to flow into his soul. He would not give in, he would not succumb. He poured all of his rage into the counter-spell, all of his hate at the monster and what it represented, all of his determination not to fail the man who had saved him from a living hell all these years ago.
Jurgen screamed, and the energy Gurug'ath had been gathering burst into its face like a plasma grenade, Mortalyss leaping out of the way at the last moment. Darkness swayed at the edge of Jurgen's sight : the effort had taken a lot out of him. He raised his barriers back up again, knowing that pushing himself further would only put everyone else at risk now.
He couldn't see clearly, but Gurug'ath was still here. Was this it ? Did all their efforts amount to nothing in the end ?
Then the Liberator Armor hissed open, and Jurgen knew they were going to be okay.
Gurug'ath fell, the ground shaking under his tremendous weight. His hold of his incarnation was slipping from his grasp, the body poor Adrien had provided him pushed beyond its limits. If only he'd had more time to adjust to it, to draw upon the bountiful energies of rot and decay which saturated this city. Then things would've gone, much, much different, but Cain and his acolytes had rushed straight to this chamber without any hesitation instead of falling back to help defend their compatriots. Someone must have intervened, must have warned Cain despite the blocked communications.
Had it been that whore Emeli ? Or one of Gurug'ath's own enemies in the Great Game ? Whoever it had been, they would pay, Gurug'ath would make sure of it –
The damaged suit of armor cracked open, and the pilot stepped down, striding toward Gurug'ath like a hunter approaching prey which, while downed, could still be dangerous. The Great Unclean One glared at Cain, opening his infernal senses as much as he could. The mortal had made himself into a nuisance, and any knowledge Gurug'ath brought back with him to the Garden would lessen the shame of his defeat.
But, to the daemon's shock, while he could see Cain's soul-fire burning bright and strong (stronger than most mortals Gurug'ath had ever seen, though far from the strongest) he couldn't make out any details. His thoughts and emotions were obscured from the Greater Daemon's sight, blocked by a shadow that he couldn't identify.
For the first time in his existence, Gurug'ath felt something a mortal might have called fear. In the course of the Great Game, Gurug'ath had faced champions of the other Dark Gods enough times that there were Plaguebearers in the Garden whose sole duty was to keep track of them all. Yet never before had he encountered anything like this. This wasn't a ward or other mental barrier : Gurug'ath had seen plenty of those before, especially whilst battling the champions of despised Tzeentch.
This was something new, and to the children of Decay, there was little more terrifying than the new and unexpected.
"What are you ?" the Baron asked Cain as he stood before him. Even laying down as he was, Gurug'ath was so large that he was still eye-level with the man.
Cain didn't answer. The mortal warlord raised his chainsword above his head in a two-handed grip, then plunged it into Gurug'ath's third eye. Gurug'ath screeched in pain, before Cain pulled his reeving weapon up and down, adamantine teeth chewing Gurug'ath's skull in two.
"Tell Nurgle his time will come as well," hissed Cain, in a voice cold as the death of stars.
Before Gurug'ath could reply to that hubristic proclamation, his incarnation finally broke down completely, and his essence was dragged back into the Warp. As he fell away from the Materium, he felt the entire budding Warp Storm his puppet had cultivated over Adumbria fade, its energies pouring down into the metaphysical hole of his defeat.
The last thought to pass through the Greater Daemon's semblance of a mind was the knowledge of how completely he had failed his patron – then he felt the egg of the Blessed Spawn start hatching.
Slowly, as the veil of blind panic lifted from my senses, I became aware of myself and my surroundings once more. My memory of what had just happened was disjointed : last thing I knew, I had been in the Liberator Armor facing the Greater Daemon that stupid Nurglite cultist had summoned. It had been saying something, some nonsense about despair, and then …
Oh, Throne. I had snapped, hadn't I. As part of my training for the Commissariat, I had been taught that such things happened occasionally on the battlefield, as the human mind failed to process what was happening around it and reverted to its animal, fight-or-flight reflexes. As my instructors had put it, it was the job of a Commissar to make sure that when it happened, the soldier in question went for the 'fight' response, by providing his mind with something scarier than the enemy behind him.
Faced with one of the Warp's greatest horrors and the abject certainty that trying to run would only result in me being killed from behind, I had gone on the offensive instead, and somehow – somehow – managed to eke out a victory. Of course, I was under no illusion that, if not for the fact that my brief stint of madness had apparently disturbed the daemon's spell and allowed my companions to assist, things would have ended very differently.
The realization of how close I'd come to death nearly sent me back into a fugue, but I forced myself to remain, if not calm, then at least somewhat in control of myself. The troopers were watching, as were Jurgen and Malicia, and I couldn't afford to let either of those two realize what I was feeling.
"The vox is back on, Lord," reported Sergeant Karalet, one of the troopers. "We're getting reports that the storm overhead is dissipating, and the Infected are collapsing everywhere."
Of course. As Basileus-Zeta had explained, the Infected's biology didn't make any sense. Without the Warp to compensate, their shambling parody of life simply couldn't continue. It wouldn't do anything for the mundane diseases that were sure to infest the capital, but at the very least it should make our withdrawal to orbit a lot easier.
"Good," I replied, masking the relief I felt as exhaustion.
I was thinking about how long of a hot shower I would need before ever feeling clean again when I heard a noise, so unlikely in that den of foulness that it took me several seconds to recognize it as an infant's cry.
There was a baby laying on the altar, naked and squirming. Its skin was far too pale, its body temperature too low and getting lower according to my helmet's display. Its tiny hands ended in claws, and its eyes, which stared in my direction but didn't seem to actually see me, were slit like those of a felid. Around it were the shards of something which must have been shaped like an egg, and countless withered tendrils like those which had run on the walls, ceiling and floor of this blighted building.
"That doesn't look like a normal baby," said Jurgen cautiously from his position next to me. "A mutant, do you reckon, sir ? Some kind of super-soldier the Nurglites were working on ?"
"No, it isn't," said Malicia. "It isn't human at all. We should kill it right now, while it is still weak from whatever the slave of the Rotting One did to it."
"The frak ?" It was rare for Jurgen to swear, but he was clearly infuriated by Malicia's suggestion. "I knew your kind were ice-blooded, but this –"
"It has nothing to do with 'my kind', you fool !" she cut him off. She sounded genuinely disturbed, and I wondered what her xenos senses were picking up that mine weren't. "I … I don't know what that creature is exactly, but every instinct I possess is telling me it is dangerous !"
"We are all of us here dangerous," I said before the two of them could come to blows. "That in itself is no cause for condemnation, Malicia."
My gaze was still fixed on the squirming child as I thought on Malicia's words. This was obviously a trap, but I didn't know in which way. Was that child some last-ditch biological weapon, a carrier for Nurgle's plagues that would release death if we brought it with us ? Or would killing it as Malicia suggested be the trigger for precisely that, or even something worse ? The influence of the Warp on Adumbria was weakening, but I knew enough about such things to know that such large-scale undertakings left metaphysical scars on reality, and it wouldn't take much for the Immaterium to return here.
I did not know. But what I did know for certain was that I would be damned, quite literally, if I ever killed a baby on an altar, no matter which god it was dedicated to.
"I won't play your sick games, Nurgle," I declared defiantly for the benefit of my audience, before holding out my hand. "Jurgen, a dose of Panacea, please. I'm afraid mine were left in the other armor."
"Of course, sir," my faithful aide replied, and placed an injector into my hand.
Softly, I picked the child and held it in the crook of my arm. Then, as gently as I could, I placed it against the infant's neck I activated it. It (she, I realized now) cried out, and shook in my arms. For a terrible moment, I thought I had killed her after all, but then the greenish stains on her skin receded along with her obvious mutations, and I was left holding what looked like a perfectly ordinary and healthy baby girl, who was looking up at me with large, teary eyes.
Remembering how cold she was, I removed the cape hanging from my shoulders – an unnecessary addition I'd only agreed to because I'd had no intention of fighting outside the Liberator Armor if I could help it – and wrapped it around her as gently as I could. She gurgled happily, and closed her eyes, appearing to fall asleep.
"This is a bad idea," hissed Malicia. "I am supposed to protect you, and how can I do that if you –"
I cut her off with a gesture. She may very well be right, and in fact she was : had I known at the time what the infant I was holding really was, I wouldn't have been nearly as willing to carry her myself. But I had made my decision, for better or worse, and was in no mood to have her argue.
"We are leaving," I told the room of troopers. I looked up at the ceiling, realized that it was unlikely the building would last much longer without sorcery to prop it up, and continued : "And on the double."
As it turned out, I had been correct : as we made our way out of the palace, the sound of entire sections falling apart echoed through the corridors, and we'd only just emerged from the main entrance when the entire thing finally collapsed on itself. I was among the last to get out, still holding the girl, while Jurgen trotted alongside me, carrying the hilt of the deactivated Liberation's Edge under one arm and his rifle under the other (the Liberator Armor may be lost, but my aide had refused to leave the weapon behind, even though that would have been perfectly fine by me).
Outside, I was greeted by my first sight of a proper sky since we'd arrived at Skitterfall. As I gazed up at the perpetual twilight we had returned to the ruined city, noting the swift approach of a servo-skull in the corner of my eye, a noise from the child drew my attention downward. I saw her reach out to the heavens with one tiny hand, her eyes wide with delight – and now, I noted, the same purple hue as the sky.
And while I couldn't remember what color they'd been before, I was certain that hadn't been it.
Well.
That certainly meant something.
Notes:
AN : Happy new year, everyone !
Gurug'ath : "Now, mortals, feel the crushing weight of all-consuming despair !"
Cain, who has been battling depression through alcohol and participating in the Handmaidens' 'activities' since the Uprising : "YOU KNOW NOTHING OF DESPAIR, PATHETIC WRETCH."
Warhammer fiction contains more scenes of mortals being terrified of daemons than I care to count, for good reason. As such, I find it is always delightful to see this reverted. Especially when the mortal doing the terrorizing isn't a living not!god like the Emperor, or even a Primarch - hell, not even a Space Marine.
Hopefully Hektor's POV clarified some things about what exactly the Panacea does to the Nails. It doesn't neutralize them entirely : without a steady flow of Panacea, Hektor's implants will start biting again. Which, yes, does mean that the Borgs are basically his drug dealers now, though I would argue the whole thing is more like someone needing medication to function than addiction (think insulin rather than heroin).
(Also, I tried to imagine what Hektor must feel when he even imagine the idea of the Nails starting to bite again after being freed of them for the first time in ages, and it was NOT a pleasant exercise.)
As has been pointed out several times on the SB thread, this unfortunately means it wouldn't work for Angron, since he is a Daemon Primarch and the Nails are, quite literally, part of him now, and the Panacea wouldn't work on daemons anyway, since they don't really have bodies for it to fix.
That being said, never say never, and you never know what might happen later on in Cain's career, once we get into the really over-the-top stuff I have planned. I could certainly come up with a way to free Angron from his perpetual torment in this story, so long as I found a way to make it funny. Which, in this fic, means a way to make Cain suffer for it.
One or two chapters are left of the Adumbria arc. As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts, suggestions, and even omakes and fanart.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 19: Chapter 18
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Victory.
To the USA troopers defending their foothold in Skitterfall against the hordes of the Infected and the daemons, victory came when the plague-ridden flesh of the city's inhabitants faltered and failed, crumbling down on the ground. As the vox-network returned to functionality, they heard of the Liberator's triumph in the palace, and roared their praises of Cain to the clearing skies. Among them, the Ravager Hektor, covered from head to toe in Infected guts, lowered his weapons, and laughed with delirious joy as the realization fully hit him that the battle was over, and the Nails still weren't biting.
To the daughters of Valhalla who had held the line at Glacier Peak against the Infected hordes for months, victory came when Colonel Kasteen voxed them and, after a series of code words were exchanged to confirm her identity and that she wasn't under duress, told them the source of the evil besetting Adumbria had been destroyed. Within minutes, the news spread to the civilians, who wept and gave prayers of thanks to the God-Emperor for their deliverance. Those who were more aware of where their salvation had truly come were more circumspect, worrying about the future even as they too cheered for the source of the Infection's defeat.
To the people of Slawkenberg, victory came when the image of the Liberator emerging from the crumbling lair of his foes, holding in his arms the child he'd rescued from that den of evil, reached them through the ansible. Within hours, that image was put on every screen and print-sheet on the planet, along with numerous stories of the USA's brave efforts in Skitterfall. Celebrations of thanksgiving to the Powers took place across the planet, and preparations immediately began for a proper triumph upon the Liberator's return.
And within the halls of the Liberation Palace, work continued apace to make sure the wheels of government continued to turn smoothly, while Tesilon-Kappa gave the order to begin building a new Liberator Armor to replace the one lost in battle at once. This was the first off-world victory of the Liberation Council, and all vowed that it would not be the last.
For under the leadership of Cain, the banner of Liberation would spread across the stars.
As she slowly returned to consciousness, the first thing Regina became aware of was the pounding headache in her skull. The second was the feeling of the silky sheets around her body, and the comfy mattress underneath it.
She blinked, trying to force herself awake, and took stock of her surroundings. She was laying on a large bed, in a room whose lavish furnishing couldn't completely hide the metal walls, ceiling and floor, nor could the thick carpet mute the distant sounds of an engine, which Regina recognized as signs that she was on a ship.
Now she remembered. After their victory at Skitterfall, the USA had begun their withdrawal back to orbit, so that the Slawkenberg fleet could bombard the city to destroy any lingering traces of the plague. Regina had accompanied them, then she had joined in the celebrations taking place all across the ships …
A door opened, revealing Krystabel walking in with a glass of water in one hand and a Panacea injector in the other, while wearing far less than would have been socially acceptable if there'd been anyone else present.
Ah, now Regina remembered. Well, if she hadn't already been damned in the eyes of the Imperium before, she definitely was now. And the worst part was, she wasn't sure she'd do anything differently if she had the chance to go back. After months of increasingly desperate battles to keep the survivors of Adumbria alive against the Infected hordes, she had really needed to de-stress, and couldn't help but feel she'd deserved to enjoy the celebrations of the last evening and the night that had followed.
She drank the proffered water gratefully, before looking at the syringe with an eyebrow raised. She recognized its contents, having seen it used plenty yesterday, but she couldn't think of why Krystabel was handing her a Panacea injector right now.
"Really ?" she asked. "For a hangover ? Isn't that overkill ?"
Krystabel shrugged. "Rank does have its privileges, but in this instance it has nothing to do with it. You were in a Nurglite-infected zone just yesterday, and we've enough of the stuff to spare that every soldier who was deployed there is getting a shot today on Cain's orders. Better safe than sorry when it comes to Nurgle's vile tricks, he said."
With a grimace, Regina conceded the Handmaiden's point and picked up the injector. The design wasn't that different from the stimms she'd been taught to use in the Guard, and within moments her headache faded away. Despite herself, she couldn't stop a little groan of relief, which made Krystabel's smile grow fractionally wider.
"Thanks, I needed that. Speaking of Cain, where is he ?" With the fog of alcohol clearing, Regina's memories from the previous night returned, and she fought down a blush. "I, huh, I didn't imagine him being here last night, right ?"
Krystabel laughed at her embarrassment. "No, you didn't, though I definitely see why you'd think he couldn't possibly have been real." She sighed dreamily, before becoming serious again : "He left us to rest in peace once we were done. Really, that man. He needs to learn to relax more instead of being so focused on his duty."
That wasn't how Regina would've described Cain, but she guessed it made sense that Krystabel would see him like this. The Handmaiden was clearly enamoured with the Liberator, and Regina could see why.
"So, what happens now ?" she asked.
"First, we're eating breakfast and cleaning up," replied Krystabel matter-of-factly. "Then we're returning planetside : from what I hear, your Regiment is eager to get you back."
"I was more talking about … everything," Regina said weakly. Somehow, her Astra Militarum training hadn't covered this exact scenario. "What will happen to Adumbria now ?"
"I think that's one of the things Ciaphas wants to talk about with you today. Even with the Infected gone, Adumbria cannot return to the Imperium, and neither can you. You do realize that, right ?"
"I do," sighed Regina. "I thought about it, of course, but it wouldn't work. Assuming we managed to even get word to the Imperium, which would be a challenge in itself, they wouldn't believe us. They'd think it a trick to spread the plague, and I can't say I'd blame them, since that's definitely something that bastard Adrien would've done."
The thought of that despicable wretch, who had betrayed his entire world to the Plague God in exchange for power despite already enjoying the comfy life of an aristocrat, filled Regina with anger and disgust. She'd known that Imperial nobles rarely lived up to the standards the God-Emperor expected of them, but this was a new low. By all accounts, Adumbria's last Governor had been more or less competent at his job, or at least had known to leave actually running the planet to the people who were trained for this sort of things while enjoying the perks of his privileged position : when the filth-worshipping heretic had made his move, the Governor had been among the first to die.
"And if, by some miracle, we managed to convince someone important that no, we aren't infected," she continued, "then how are we supposed to explain it ? Hiding your intervention wouldn't hold up to the slightest amount of scrutiny. And once our collusion with you is revealed, it'll all be over."
Part of her wanted to blame Cain for cornering her like this, but the simple truth was, they'd all have been walking dead without Slawkenberg's intervention anyway. At least now her Regiment and the survivors of Adumbria actually had a future to worry about, which was more than they'd before the USA flotilla had arrived in-system.
"Exactly," nodded Krystabel. "But you don't need to worry, Regina. Much as we of the Liberation Council don't like the way the Imperium is run, we recognize that there is strength in numbers. And even in its current diminished state, there is much Adumbria can offer us in return for our assistance in recovering."
"And what's to stop you from taking everything you want and leaving Adumbria to its fate ?"
"Other than the strategic importance of this system's position at a Warp crossroads ?" smiled Krystabel. "Come on, now. You know the Liberator wouldn't allow it. The ideals of the Liberation do not allow for slavery, and that is what such a thing would be."
Emperor help her, but Regina believed her. After seeing Cain emerge from the collapsing building as the skies cleared of corruption and the Infected and their daemonic allies fell apart all around them, it was difficult to see him as anything other than a righteous champion of the people.
My office aboard the Fist of the Liberator was smaller than the one back on Slawkenberg, but still large enough for my needs, especially when considering how much of a premium space was at on a starship. I had taken refuge there as soon as my alcohol levels had lowered enough for my survival instincts to kick back into action and scream at me that remaining in the same room as an Imperial Colonel might not be the best move for my long-term prospects. After a quick nap, a strong cup of recaf and a dose of Panacea, I'd thrown myself into work so that I'd have an excuse if Krystabel or Regina came by.
I blamed Krystabel for the whole thing, but at least her involvement should mean Emeli wouldn't be angry about it. As for myself, I could hardly complain : Regina was a fierce red-headed beauty in her own right, in a different way than the Handmaidens of Emeli. The time we'd spent together had been very pleasant indeed – and not something I'd ever have considered while sober.
Fortunately, the after-action reports of the USA deployment at Skitterfall had provided me with plenty of reading material. I had also taken the time to look at the recording of my confrontation with Gurug'ath, which had been witnessed and recorded by multiple troopers and was already being compiled into an appropriate video for diffusion back on Slawkenberg.
Unlike the Imperium, the Liberation Council didn't believe in keeping the existence of daemons secret from the population (at least those which weren't aligned with any of the Powers currently worshipped on the planet, since seeing a Daemonette would probably put some of the civvies off joining the Handmaidens' latest party). But I'd still put my foot down and demanded that the final product be thoroughly checked for any lingering spiritual influence before public broadcast. I did not want some poor soul to be enslaved by Nurgle as a result of seeing something they weren't meant to and starting a cult to the God of Decay right in the middle of Slawkenberg, since such a group would see my gruesome death as the best way to please their malevolent deity.
In the meantime, the recording had helped me clarify just what had happened during the gap in my memories. Gurug'ath's voice was full of static on the recording, which made sense given its unnatural source, but the words were still understandable.
'Inevitable', the bloated thing had said before my freak-out. Merely listening to the word sent a shiver of dread down my spine. How violently I had reacted made sense now. That word had haunted my nightmares for years on and off, accompanied by visions of what I feared the path I was forced to walk would lead to, sooner or later. Except whenever that happened, whenever I woke up in a cold sweat with the sound of my own demented laughter echoing in my skull, I always had to swallow it down along with a bottle or two of amasec. This time, however, I'd had the perfect outlet for my frustrations in front of me.
The whole thing about me threatening Nurgle directly was admittedly a tad more worrying. I could only attribute this utterly uncharacteristic proclamation to my subconscious keeping up the act for the audience of troopers, Jurgen and Malicia, but it was still a bad sign for my mental health. It had worked out this time, but it all too easily could have ended in my grisly demise. I had to get this under control, but it wasn't as if I could go to a chaplain for help … Huh.
There were still followers of the God-Emperor on Slawkenberg, weren't there ? And maybe being visited by the Liberator to ensure that their freedom of worship wasn't being infringed upon could lead to me speaking with a priest in private. I couldn't really confess the full truth, of course, but maybe talking about the nightmares would help. And the only priests of the Imperial Creed left on Slawkenberg by now were the ones with both an ironclad faith in the Throne and enough good sense and kindness to avoid being purged along with the bulk of the Ecclesiarchy, so they wouldn't spread what I told them in confidence.
It would be risky, but going crazy wouldn't help my survival prospects either. In any case, it was something to consider at length, before making any real decision.
"Sir," Jurgen called out from outside my office, pulling me out of my musings. "There's someone here to see you."
"Send them in, Jurgen," I replied, knowing that anyone my aide hadn't politely turned away was someone I really ought to meet.
Then the door opened, and a two-meters giant covered in scars and a simple white robe entered my office and stopped before my desk.
Ah. Yes. Somehow, in all of yesterday's excitement, I had completely forgotten about that report I had received while fighting my way through Skitterfall that a surviving Ravager had been found.
And due to that lapse, I was now in a room with a Khornate transhuman killing machine whose warband had called themselves the Ravagers. Jurgen and Malicia were right here, of course, neither of them having indulged in the celebrations, but I didn't want to bet my life on them being able to react faster than the Ravager could tear my head off. There was a reason Space Marines were the Imperium's greatest warriors, and somehow I doubted falling from the Emperor's Grace and embracing Khorne had caused the giant's martial prowess to diminish.
Which meant that it was time to bluff, and pray that for once my fraudulent reputation would actually be worth the trouble it brought. Plastering the best smile I could fake on my face, I stood up and extended my hand to the Chaos Marine.
"Hello, sir Hektor. How nice to meet you !" I lied shamelessly.
It was rare for Space Marines to feel awkward when meeting someone, rarer still when meeting mere mortals. However, having seen the recording of the Liberator facing off against a Greater Daemon of Nurgle, Hektor was certain there was nothing 'mere' about that particular mortal.
Unlike the many, many human rebel warlords Hektor had encountered before, Cain hadn't succumbed to the madness that affected far too many devotees of the Pantheon. In fact, if he hadn't seen the recording with his own eyes, he'd have thought him an utterly ordinary if comparatively tall male human. The only source of active witchery in the room came from the Liberator's aide, though thankfully the Nails were still kept quiescent by his injector collar, and didn't bite at a psyker's proximity as they usually would.
Hektor could also, through senses cultivated by an eternity spent in the Eye of Terror, sense the touch of the Dark Prince on the Drukhari bloodward who stood next to the desk, her alien eyes focused on him, her hands casually resting on her weapons. He had fought her kind before, and knew to be wary of her. Part of him wondered if the reason he'd survived so long with his injuries was so that Khorne could put him near Cain as a counter to the Slaaneshi-branded xenos : it would explain why the Lord of Skulls hadn't punished him for escaping the Nails so far.
Alright. He could do this. All he needed to do was navigate a conversation without offending his host and benefactor. It should be simple enough. It wasn't as if the last time he'd had a peaceful talk with someone had been thousands of years ago – oh wait.
Khorne, grant me strength.
"Lord Cain," Hektor greeted the human warlord with a bow, taking his proffered hand into his own and shaking it carefully – if he accidentally broke it, then he would be lucky to walk out of the room alive, and he refused to die in such a stupid way – before releasing it. "I am Hektor of the Twelfth Legion. It is an honor to meet you."
"The honor is mine, I assure you. I must confess I always wanted to meet a Space Marine, though this is hardly the way I thought about it happening when I was younger," said Cain with a small but sincere smile.
Right, the soldiers he'd spent the last evening socializing with (and hadn't that been a strange experience in its own right) had told him Cain had been raised in one of the Imperium's Schola, to be a Commissar of all things. Given that Hektor's only knowledge of the red-sashed officers was seeing them shoot their own men trying to run away from him, he still found it difficult to believe the Liberator had ever been one.
"You belong to the Ravagers Chapter, right ?" asked Cain.
"Not exactly," explained Hektor. "I am a member of the World Eaters Legion; the Ravagers are – were, now – merely the warband to which me and my brothers attached ourselves. It's quite common among the Traitor Legions : after the Heresy, our chain of command … fragmented."
'Fragmented' certainly was a word to describe the utter madness of Skalathrax and the decades of carnage that had followed as the Legion Wars raged in the Eye of Terror. Even the rise of Abaddon at the head of the Black Legion hadn't really ended the internecine slaughter of the Traitor Legions : it had merely reminded them that they shared a common enemy in the Imperium.
"Legion ?" asked Cain, frowning. "I was under the impression that Space Marines groups were called Chapters."
"Right, I forget how much the Imperium hides from its own people. Basically …" Hektor then launched into an explanation of the breaking of the loyalist Space Marine Legions into Chapters at Guilliman's orders following the Heresy.
When he was done, both Cain and his aide were hanging on his every word, clearly fascinated by what, to Hektor, was merely ancient history, but to them was something straight out of myth. The xenos, on the other hand, appeared supremely uninterested in the old squabbles of primates.
"It seems a bit of an overreaction on Guilliman's part," mused Cain, "but I suppose I can see where he was coming from. Thank you for explaining, sir Hektor. By the way you speak of it, can I assume you were actually alive during these events ?"
"Well, I didn't learn about the Legions' breaking until much later," admitted Hektor. "But I was alive during the Great Crusade and the Heresy, yes. There aren't that many of us left these days, especially among the World Eaters, and of course even those remaining aren't exactly great at record-keeping, what with the Nails driving us crazy," he gestured to the cables growing out of his skull.
"Is that what those are called ?" commented Cain. "Apologies, I haven't had the time to read Basileus-Zeta's report yet. I thought those were simply decorative."
Hektor chuckled.
"No offence taken. I understand you must have been busy. I'm not sure what their technical name even is, you'd have to ask an Apothecary," not that there were many of those left in the World Eaters' ranks either, "but we always called them the Butcher's Nails. Right now, this collar your tech-priests put together for me is injecting me with Panacea to keep them quiescent, but without it, they inflict constant, ever-growing pain, and the only way to stop it is through violence. After enough time, they also make it so that violence is the only thing we can enjoy anymore." He breathed in deeply, enjoying the fact that the act wasn't immediately followed by a pang of agony demanding he put the oxygen to use by killing something. "It is a relief beyond words to be freed of them, and I am in your debt for this."
Hektor bowed his head in a show of gratitude. When several seconds passed without acknowledgement, he glanced back up, only to see Cain staring at him with his mouth wide open and a horrified expression on his face. Looking around, he saw Jurgen had the same look.
"I – this." Cain took a deep breath. "Alright. I am calm. Were these things forced upon you by your enemies, or Gods forbid, the Emperor ?"
Ah. Now Hektor understood. He had spent so long enduring the Nails that somehow, he had forgotten there was a very good reason the World Eaters hadn't been the most celebrated of Legions even before the rebellion.
"No, we did it to ourselves," he hastily explained. "Our Primarch, Angron, had these implanted in his skull when he was a child, before the Emperor found him and reunited him with us. When we saw how they had changed him, we sought to emulate him."
"But why ?!" Cain nearly shouted, aghast. "Why would you do such a thing to yourselves – wait. I remember hearing that Space Marines are made from the children of death-worlds. Was that already true in your time ?"
"Yes, it was. The process of creating an Astartes requires the subject to be young enough to withstand the physical alterations. I am no Apothecary, so my knowledge of such things are limited, but I know that attempts to turn adults … didn't work out well for anyone involved." They either died horribly, or far worse, they became Kor Phaeron.
"Oh, well that explains everything then," sighed Cain, collapsing into his chair. "Of course a bunch of juvies given superhuman strength and made to slaughter the enemies of Mankind without adult supervision would make stupid decisions."
Hektor opened his mouth to protest, then remembered that his entire Legion had basically jammed inferior copies of an archeotech pain-engine into their skulls in the hope that it would make their broken father figure like them, and promptly closed it. Maybe Cain had a point here.
"How did you even manage between battles ?" asked Cain. "The Ravagers were always on the move from one star system to another; that must have involved months of transit without anyone to fight but each other … oh."
"It was first blood duels in the fighting pits, mostly," replied Hektor. Then, because he had a feeling lying to Cain, even by omission, wasn't a good idea, he added : "But even these only helped so much. There was a lot of, let's say, friendly fire accidents, both with the human members of the Ravagers and among ourselves. You can resist the Nails for some time, but sooner or later, the urge becomes too much."
There was another moment of awkward silence.
"Well," Cain rallied, "I am glad you are freed from that. And while I hope it doesn't need to be said, if you kill someone working for me, I will very cross with you. Understood ?"
"Understood. I promise you that so long as this," Hektor tapped his collar, "continues to work, there won't be any accidents."
And he meant it, too. Being freed from the Nails wasn't a dream come true, because the Nails had taken his dreams from him long ago, but there was precious little he wouldn't do to keep that freedom. He was fortunate that so far, Cain appeared to be more pleasant to work for than the Chaos Lords he was used to dealing with : not once in the entire conversation had he threatened to cut off the Panacea Hektor's collar needed, even indirectly.
"I came here today to express my thanks for your intervention and that of your tech-priests." Slowly, Hektor knelt, lowering his head in submission. "Now that the Ravagers are no more, I would pledge my loyalty to you, if you would have me."
"I … well. This is unexpected, but not unwelcome. I accept your offer in the spirit in which it is given. I'm sure we'll have plenty to discuss in the future : I'm very interested to learn more about the Imperium's distant past. For now, however, please report to the borgs for a new suit of armor and a set of proper weapons. I doubt it'll be as good as what you're used to, but it's got to be better than nothing."
Right, that was another change from his time in the Ravagers, or most of his time with the Legion to be completely honest, that he'd have to get used to. Having a proper logistical branch organization to support the troops, instead of packs raiding for supplies and forced to scavenge their own dead for replacement armor pieces and weapons. The thought of how long it'd been since Hektor had been part of a warband with a proper Apothecary or Techmarine was frankly depressing.
"As you will, lord," said Hektor, before standing up and departing, relieved that this had gone well.
Five days after the Cleansing of Skitterfall, the deal between Adumbria and Slawkenberg was formally signed in Glacier Peak, the new planetary capital. I had been there as the Slawkenberg signatory, of course, while Regina Kasteen was acting as the Governor of Adumbria, mostly by virtue of being in command of the largest military force on the planet. To my surprise, she didn't seem angry at me for the events that had happened on the Fist of the Liberator, although I didn't believe Krystabel's claims that she was looking forward to a reoccurrence.
The population had been all too happy to acclaim Regina as Vice-Queen of Adumbria (Harold had been the one to suggest the title, both to mark the separation from the old aristocracy and to imply a degree of subservience to Slawkenberg). In a way, the Imperial Colonel had effectively achieved the dream of countless Guard commanders before her : being made Governor of a planet they'd conquered, with their Regiment retired from active service to act as their honor guard and enforcers.
Sure, Regina didn't have any experience with running a civilian government, but neither had I when the Uprising had happened. As I had told her when she'd confessed her doubts to me, her new duties would start relatively small due to how few Adumbrian civilians were left, and scale up from there as the planet recovered. And in the meantime, the Liberation Council's bureaucracy would be all too happy to provide assistance.
And anyway, she couldn't possibly do a worst job than the Giorbas.
The ceremony had been small in scale, due to the fact the planet was still recovering from a Nurglite apocalypse, but based on what I'd seen and what Krystabel had reported to me (because of course she'd already managed to set up networks of informants, I didn't know why I was surprised), the people of Adumbria were genuinely supporting of the accords.
Looking back at the general terms (we had kept things simple to avoid wasting time in pointless minutiae, which would probably come back to haunt us at some point), I could well understand why. Especially since the civvies had no idea they had been rescued from certain doom by a bunch of heretics : the public announcements had been remarkably vague as to our origins, merely naming the Slawkenberg task force as envoys from a non-Imperial world, which this far to the galactic east could mean any number of things. The truth would inevitably come out as more people interacted : I knew for a fact Krystabel was planning to start a branch of the Slaaneshi cult on Adumbria, and the Tzeentchians and borgs would inevitably establish their own local enclaves as part of the treaty.
Essentially, Slawkenberg would continue to provide supplies to Adumbria while the planet built back its infrastructure. Fortunately, while its value to the Imperium had laid mostly in its position at a crossing of Warp routes, Adumbria could produce its own food, and its rotationally locked nature meant that agriculture didn't depend on seasons (though the locals had obviously needed to adapt their practices to this unique environment).
A set of ansibles would be given to allow communication between the two planets. The technology to produce Panacea had already been shared with the locals, with their few remaining tech-priests all too willing to pledge themselves to the Bringers of Renewed Greatness if it meant having access to such incredible technology (which, given what their world had just survived, was understandable).
Then there was the meat of the deal, the greatest boon for the Liberation Council and something I could already tell was going to cause me no end of headaches in the future. The hundreds of merchant vessels abandoned in orbit were given unto the Liberation Council, to be repaired and refitted as both cargo transport for the future trade between the two systems and much-needed reinforcements for the Slawkenberg fleet.
The borgs were already drawing up plans for orbital shipyards, as well as training centers for the workforce they'd need to recruit from Adumbria itself (by now, there was almost no available manpower left on Slawkenberg itself). That meant that once Adumbria's population recovered, there'd be plenty of work for everyone who might otherwise have been left destitute, since Adumbria's status as a trade world was well and truly frakked.
It also meant, to my quiet and unspoken horror, that the Liberation Council would have the means to spread its ideology to other star systems far sooner than the decades I had expected it to take to build up the required shipyards and star-faring vessels. And with our first expedition being a resounding success, I dreaded to think of how I could convince the Council that no, defeating the rest of the Imperium in the Damocles Gulf wasn't going to be as easy as taking over a world they'd already given up on. Anyone with any sense would've understood that, but then if the rest of the Council had any sense they wouldn't be heretics in the first place.
The existence of the ansibles meant that the Liberation Council would keep in touch with Adumbria's new government in a way the Administratum could only dream of, but the planet would be officially independent – which, given how much its population needed our support, was nothing more than a polite fiction everyone involved had agreed upon. Apparently, the whole thing was already being called the Cainite Protectorate back home, and by that point I'd given up on even trying to change it. My only way out of this mess would involve changing my name, face, and most likely genetic code if I could manage it anyway.
The only argument I could think of that might convince the Council to wait before trying to expand this Protectorate further was that, if the Administratum had done its job, then every ship in Adumbria was blacklisted from every civilized port in the Sector as a potential carrier for the plague which had caused the system to be declared Perditia in the first place. So unless we were sailing to rescue of a star system in as dire straits as Adumbria had been, any efforts to subvert faithful Imperial worlds was doomed to fail. And really, what were the odds of that happening ?
No sooner had I had that thought that I remembered how dire the Imperium's position in the Damocles Gulf had been made by Karamazov's incompetence. Throne knew how many other worlds were in desperate straits, and willing to accept any aid, even if it came from heretics like ourselves. And, having branded this expedition at least partly as an effort to help our beleaguered fellow humans, I had very effectively trapped myself if we ever received word of another star system calling for assistance we were at least theoretically capable of providing.
I consoled myself with the knowledge that at least I had prevented the creation of a Nurglite stronghold in the Sector, which had been the reason I'd gone on that insanely dangerous expedition in the first place. Regardless of how much trouble this Cainite Protectorate idea ended up being, not doing anything and allowing Gurug'ath to claim the planet as a daemon world from which to spread the Infection to the rest of the Damocles Gulf would undoubtedly have been far worse.
Besides, the repairs and retrofits of the merchant ships would keep the borgs happy and occupied for years to come with work that was unlikely to result in reality being sundered by untried technology. And maybe, just maybe, I would get really lucky and one of those expeditions would provide me the opportunity to fake my death and run away from all this madness. The more Warp-capable ships were around, the better my odds, after all.
All in all, I told myself, this whole Adumbria affair had gone about as well as I could reasonably have expected. To my great relief, Hektor had spent most of the last few days talking with Ygdal and training with the USA. Apparently, he needed to re-learn how to fight properly, without merely following his instincts and forsaking all defense in order to get to the kill (and the associated release from his never-ending pain) faster.
I was perfectly fine with him having fun with the USA, since that would keep him far away from me. He'd been far more polite and calm than I'd expected when we'd met, but I couldn't get the fact that he and his entire Legion had volunteered to get these awful implants into their skulls out of my mind. Seriously, how had anyone ever thought this was a good idea ?! I could only hope that the Emperor had only learned about this too late to stop it, and that the Heresy had erupted before He could do anything about it.
As for the girl I'd rescued from Nurgle's altar, she was doing well. We were keeping her in isolation just in case, but Basileus-Zeta assured me her vital signs were all good. I'd contacted Jafar back on Slawkenberg using the ansible and told him to see what his magi's divination rituals could figure out about her.
By the time those of us not staying in Adumbria to help with the reconstruction made it back home, hopefully he'd have some answers. I didn't know much about infant care, but I knew such isolation wasn't a long-term solution for ordinary children. Of course, the girl was obviously not ordinary (though I had no idea just how extraordinary she was at the time, and a good thing too, or the added stress would have made managing the whole diplomatic shindig even more of a nightmare), but the same principle probably applied.
The entity that called itself Gurug'ath slowly pieced itself back together in the Sea of Souls, the disjointed fragments of Warp energy that made up the Baron's infernal consciousness weaving themselves into something that resembled a mortal soul in the way a virus resembles a healthy cell.
Then the mind became aware that it was being restrained. All at once, the patterns mortal minds forced upon the formless entities of the Warp snapped into place, and Gurug'ath found himself wrapped in silver chains, their thorns digging into his essence, making him bleed into a bowl of black stone laid beneath his suspended body.
Around him were gilded walls covered in sensuous iconography, and the air reeked of perfumes, drugs, and other substances meant to conceal the frailty of flesh and the inevitability of decay. He could hear screams of pain and pleasure, and moans that were not of despair.
This was not the Garden, where he should have arrived following his banishment. This wasn't even the Formless Wastes, where he would've expected his essence to reform had Grandfather Nurgle decided he needed to be punished for his failure by making the humiliating trek back to the Manse. Which he would've fully deserved : not only had he failed to kill the faithless Cain, he had also lost the last egg of Legienstrasse, which had taken so much effort to recover from the Cacophonous Tower's destruction on Opis.
Yes, for losing the last remnant of the Assassinorum's greatest folly, Gurug'ath deserved to spend seven centuries making penance before being allowed back into Grandfather's good graces. But this was not the Formless Wastes. This was the Realm of Slaanesh, and he should not be here.
"Hello, Gurug'ath," purred a feminine voice that dripped with threat (and in the Sea of Souls, that was no metaphor : he could see the holes in the floor of calcified Aeldari souls the drops were creating).
He knew the voice's owner before she stepped into view, disgustingly pristine and radiant. The newest Daemon Princess of Slaanesh, the upstart who had led the Legions of Excess in capturing the Space Hulk she'd delivered to her mortal servant, returning the seventh-cursed Panacea to the galactic board.
"Emeli," Gurug'ath spat. "I should have known."
"Yes, you really should have. You tried to hurt my beloved," she hissed. "You tried to kill him. Worse, you tried to break that which makes him so beautiful, and drag him to your level. You are going to pay for that."
By all the pustules of Nurgle, she was serious, Gurug'ath realized. This wasn't a game she was playing, nor a long-term scheme to increase her influence in the Materium. She actually, genuinely loved that mortal.
The Baron'd always known the Slaaneshi were obsessed beyond reason, but never like this. It was one thing to have affection for one's mortal slaves, in the same way a mortal might regard a cherished pet, but this ?
This was madness. Unnatural, foul, abhorrent madness. For all of Cain's insults to Decay, this was a blasphemy against the whole of Chaos. That none of the other Powers seemed to realize that was yet more evidence that Nurgle was the greatest of them all.
"I will let you go soon," promised Emeli with a smile that revealed her disgustingly perfect white teeth. "My beloved gave you a message for your master, and I don't want to stop you from delivering it."
"This should not relieve you, however," she whispered. It had not, for Gurug'ath was no fool. "Because it means I will have to work on you intensively, to make sure you understand the depths of your folly before I have my servants throw what's left of you into that rotting Garden."
"With Grandfather's blessing, I am beyond torment," replied Gurug'ath defiantly. "Do your worst."
Emeli smiled, and for the second time the Great Unclean One felt fear.
"Oh, I will."
Notes:
AN : You can thank the OST of Pathfinder : Wrath of the Righteous for the speed at which this chapter was written, along with Youtuber HSHAZAM OST for compiling a playlist of that game's music. For some reason, listening to it really helped getting the creative juices flowing.
That being said, don't expect me to keep this up. This chapter was mostly cleaning up the threads left hanging from the stuff that happened in the previous chapters, so it was easier to write than usual.
Having Hektor explain what the Nails are to Cain reminded me of how incredibly frakked-up the backstory of the Twelfth Legion is. And now Cain's suggestion that it was the grimdark transhuman equivalent of a bunch of teenagers doing piercings in unsafe conditions is stuck in my head (ouch, bad metaphor).
I considered going with Cainite Dominion for the name of Cain's burgeoning stellar empire, but thought he would rather avoid the tyranical implications. 'Protectorate' sounds much nicer, doesn't it ? And after all, the Glorious Liberator fights for the good of the people, not for his own self-aggrandizement !
And yes, the word 'Cainite' comes straight from Vampire The Masquerade, though I like to think it's obvious enough I'd have come up with it on my own.
Big thank you to everyone who wrote sidestories for this fic on the SpaceBattles thread. With that being said :
OMAKES FOR THE OMAKE GOD ! FANART FOR THE FANART THRONE ! OFFERINGS FOR THE MUSE !
Next chapter : Cain's triumphant return to Slawkenberg, him learning what the child he rescued exactly is and gives her a name (which I have already decided on), and we check in on what Amberley has been doing for the last ten years.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 20: Chapter 19
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Cainopolis rejoiced, for the Liberator had returned in triumph.
The entire city, it seemed, had come out to meet its victorious heroes. The side-walks were packed with thousands of civilians, who cheered the troopers of the United Slawkenberg Army as they marched past, walking in perfect parade formation.
Atop the Lord of War, greatest of the warmachines crafted by the Bringers of Renewed Greatness, sat Cain himself, smiling and waving to the adoring masses. Seeing the Liberator hale and hearty was a relief to all, for though none doubted his martial prowess, the mere idea of losing the one who had delivered them from the Imperium's tyranny was more than they could bear.
Next to him, clad in crimson armor and holding a great chainaxe, was a veritable giant of a man. According to the rumors which were already spreading through the crowds, he had been found on the doorstep of the evil which had sought to devour Adumbria, wounded to the very edge of death after trying to stop it with his slain comrades. The Bringers' ministrations and the wonders of the Panacea had then restored him to health just in time for him to fight alongside the USA against the Infected. Footage of his prowess had been sent ahead of the fleet which had carried the victorious heroes home, and its popularity was second only to that of the Liberator's own exploits.
There had long been stories of the Angels of Death on Slawkenberg : the previous regime hadn't shied from using them as threats, claiming that their fury would descend upon all who dared rebel against the Giorbas' divinely appointed rule. In the years since the Uprising, however, new legends had begun to circulate, speaking of how some of these Angels had turned against the Imperium after seeing its corruption.
Now the Liberator had returned from a just and righteous war against the forces of rot and decay with one such angel at his side. Those who followed the warrior creed prevalent in the Unified Slawkenberg Army recognized the icons of the War God painted on the warrior's armor, and rejoiced that such a champion of their patron now stood at the Liberator's side.
Today had been declared a public holiday by the Liberation Council, so that all but the most vital of workers could go out and celebrate. Over the next few days, the fallen would be buried with all due honors, in ceremonies attended by the entire Liberation Council and led by preachers of each of Slawkenberg's major creeds, to ensure that their spirits found the peace they deserved.
Yes, tomorrow there would be time to mourn. But today, Slawkenberg rejoiced.
As the sun set over the day of the expedition's triumphant return, Jafar met the Liberator on a small balcony with an unimpeded view of the capital. Cain's aide had already poured a cup of recaf for the Chief Clerk when he arrived, with precisely the dosage of cream and sugar he preferred, and Malicia was also present, of course. But apart from these two, they were alone : while the knowledge Jafar was to deliver would no doubt end up being shared to the rest of the Council, for now only those present would know the full picture he'd uncovered.
And by all the hidden names of Tzeentch, what a wondrous and terrible picture it was.
"So, Jafar," asked Cain. "What did you find out ?"
"It took a lot of effort, and the interrogation of multiple daemons, but we have managed to uncover the child's origins. They are … fascinating, to say the least. I honestly believe you should be sitting down for this, Lord Liberator."
The Liberator raised an eyebrow, but still sat on one of the comfortable chairs which had been dragged on the balcony. In the great scheme of things, it was a minor thing, but Jafar still appreciated the simple fact that Cain was willing to follow small advice like that. Even after more than a decade, it was a pleasant contrast from the people he'd worked for prior to the Uprising.
"What do you know about the Imperium's Assassins ?" Jafar asked once the Liberator was sat.
"Oh, I already don't like where this is going," groaned the Liberator. "To answer your question, not much. I was taught that they exist, are deployed against those who really tick off the High Lords, and supposedly never fail. Of course, even back then, I already found that last bit doubtful."
"An accurate summary," allowed Jafar. There had been no reason for the Imperium's slave trainers of the Schola Progenia to teach him anything more, after all. "In truth, even our divinations didn't reveal a lot : the whole organization's past and present are protected by anti-scrying wards of incredible potency."
Which couldn't possibly have been created without the efforts of numerous and powerful psykers with extensive training in the arcane arts and access to the kind of occult lore Jafar and his brethren could only dream of. Once again, the Imperium's hypocrisy was all too obvious.
"That's to be expected," remarked Cain. "They wouldn't be able to do their jobs if anyone having access to divination could predict their actions."
"Indeed. Still, while the organization itself is protected, the echoes of its deeds aren't. We did manage to find out that there are different branches of the order, called Temples, each specializing in a particular method of elimination, ranging from the undetectable to the very obvious, depending on what best serves the High Lords' interests. These Temples have existed since the organization's founding, and have killed untold numbers of people in their blind service to the High Lords."
Given that the Assassins were supposedly bound to the will of the High Lords of Terra, and that presumably those tyrannical monsters had lots of demands on their time, one might have thought the Officio would be deployed only rarely. And yet, the sheer amount of bloodshed Jafar's auguries had revealed indicated that either the High Lords were very, very liberal with the use of their hired knives, or the Imperium's ultimate slavemasters were far from being the only ones who could afford the Officio's services.
Jafar wasn't sure which option was worse.
"That's all very interesting, especially since there's the possibility the Imperium will use them against us at some point. But how does this all relate to the girl ?" asked the Liberator.
"Patience, my lord," Jafar jokingly chided. "I am getting to it. Over a thousand years ago, a faction within the Assassins sought to create a more efficient method of eliminating their targets. In essence, they sought to create a brand new Temple, one whose Assassins would be able to kill not just a single individual, but entire groups, despite the fact that any successive kills become more difficult as the targets are now aware of the Assassin's existence."
"That's not an assassination, that's a purge," Cain pointed out. "Don't the High Lords have Space Marines for that ?"
Jafar shrugged. "I am fairly certain there was a certain degree of inter-branches rivalry involved in the whole thing. And I am absolutely certain that Assassins were deployed against Space Marine commanders in the past."
"Of course there were," muttered the Liberator, rightfully disgusted by the Imperium's murderous infighting. "Continue, please."
"They called this the Maerorus Temple, and poured an obscene amount of resources into making it a reality. They recruited some of the finest genetors of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and provided them with genetic material from a variety of species, including obscure xenos breeds, in order to create a hybrid that would function as a literal living weapon," explained Jafar. "The Maerorus Assassins were meant to be deployed without any equipment, because their own bodies were all the weaponry they needed, and they could assimilate the biomass of their victims to grow more dangerous with every kill."
"That … that sounds remarkably like the Tyranids' ability to endlessly adapt and create new bioforms from the biomass they devour," Cain frowned. "Except you said the Temple was created a thousand years ago, and the Hive-Fleets were only discovered in the 700s."
"I think in this case, the superficial resemblance might genuinely be a coincidence," said Jafar. "After all, Legienstrasse's abilities worked on herself, and were nigh-instantaneous, which was what made her such a deadly fighter. But I cannot be certain. The Assassinorum was extremely thorough in covering their tracks : no one outside of their order knew of the project's existence until their first success, a being called Legienstrasse, escaped her conditioning and broke free."
"Of course she did," groaned the Liberator. "Really, what did these morons think was going to happen ? Their hypno-training machines would all have been calibrated for purely human brains, not whatever it was they ended up creating."
"I imagine that fear of reprisal played a big part in the whole disaster," suggested Jafar. "Until Legienstrasse herself, their tech-priests wouldn't have had any way of testing whether their undoubtedly customized hypno-training devices could work on the still-theoretical Maerorus Assassins. But they might have felt it unsafe to tell that to the Officio."
"You're probably right," sighed Cain. "Go on, tell me what happened once Legienstrasse broke free – though I think I can guess."
Indeed, it didn't take someone of the Liberator's intellect to predict how that particular tale ended.
"She slaughtered her creators and escaped, setting off a chase across the stars that lasted for decades until she was cornered on a remote world named Opis. There, she bound the local aristocracy into her service, along with numerous powerful servants of the Gods, to the point that when the Assassins found her again they had to engineer a full war just to get her exposed."
And what a war it had been. The powers that had been leashed by the Officio and usurped by Legienstrasse had been such that Jafar could only compare them to the Lady Emeli herself, vessels of the Gods' blessings whose deeds had shaken the foundations of entire worlds.
The fact that they still hadn't been enough was a sobering reminder of the terrifying potency that the Imperium, for all its crippling flaws, yet possessed.
"In the end, Legienstrasse was killed by the Imperial Fists, though not without exacting a fearsome tally. All the daemons with which we communed believed that her progeny had perished with her, but when you defeated Gurug'ath and freed the child from Nurgle, she was revealed to them as being the last of them, salvaged from her mother's defeat at the last moment and kept hidden from all until she was brought back to the Materium on Adumbria."
"Where her unique biology was used by that thrice-damned bastard Adrien to create the plague," finished Cain. "That explains what Basileus-Zeta found when studying it."
"Exactly. The plague could endlessly adapt and reshape the flesh of its host, just like Legienstrasse could reshape her own biomass in whatever way she desired. Of course, like everything touched by Decay, that ability was only a pitiful shadow of the original."
There was a moment of silence as the Liberator considered what Jafar had just revealed to him. The follower of Tzeentch couldn't help but feel excited, wondering what decision Cain would make. It was always a joy to see such a master schemer at work.
"You will not spread this information to anyone," Cain said at last. "The Protectorate cannot handle the Assassinorum coming after us to hide their past mistakes at this time. I trust you to use whatever means required to ensure the silence of your people, without taking it too far."
"As you wish." It made perfect sense : given what Jafar had learned of the Opis Campaign, it was obvious the Assassins had no sense of restraint whatsoever when it came to keeping their failures from being revealed. "And what of the child herself ?"
"The Assassins made the same mistake with Legienstrasse the Schola made with me," mused Cain. "They assumed that their brainwashing methods would be enough to control her, because those methods worked on them. It is really quite horrifying, don't you think ? Brainwashed agents taking orders from brainwashed superiors, and taking murderers to be brainwashed into more effective murderers, all following precepts that were written ten thousand years ago, with Gods know what mistakes and glitches slipped in over the centuries."
Jafar shivered at hearing it put so plainly. The Liberator, as always, was correct. The Officio Assassinorum was a grotesque instrument of tyranny, made up and maintained by slaves too broken to even realize they were slaves. Without free will, without the ability to think for themselves and argue with one another, it was all too easy to imagine how the Maerorus project had been allowed to proceed despite the many, many flaws in its very premise.
In any sane organization, the idea would never have made it past the drawing board, if even that. But in the Officio, there had been nothing to hold it back, nobody with the wit to stand up to their superiors and point out how monumentally stupid and dangerous the whole thing was.
"However, the girl is innocent of any of that," continued Cain. "And I will not blame her for the sins of her mother, or those of her mother's creators."
"Even so, she is no ordinary child," Jafar pointed out. "I do not know how much of Legienstrasse's abilities she inherited, or how her time in Nurgle's captivity and subsequent exposure to the Panacea affected what she did inherit, but that much is obvious."
"Then it is fortunate there are so many extraordinary people on Slawkenberg who can help her grow up as a stable and happy individual," replied the Liberator with a small smile, before turning away to look at the sunset. "Legienstrasse turned on her makers because she wanted to be free, instead of being used as a weapon. We will give her daughter that freedom, just as we give it to all those under the banner of Liberation."
"And she will make a powerful ally once she grows up," mused Jafar, before freezing where he stood.
The Liberator was glaring at him. His face was pale with fury, and his eyes cold as death. Not since the days of the Uprising, when Cain had emerged from the transport bringing him back from his confrontation with Caesariovi Giorba, had Jafar seen the Liberator like this.
"She will be whatever she wishes to be," Cain growled between gritted teeth, "and nothing else. There will be no pressuring her, no manipulating her, no indoctrinating her into thinking her powers, whatever they are, are the only thing of value about her. Am I understood, Jafar ?"
"Yes," Jafar squeaked, painfully aware of Jurgen and Malicia staring at him too, and of how none of his sorcerous protections would protect him from either of them for long. "Yes, my lord. A thousand apologies, I spoke without thinking –"
"Yes, you did," the Liberator cut him off. "We will not speak of this again. Now go. I will see you tomorrow at the funeral."
His heart pummelling in his chest, Jafar bowed and beat a hasty retreat, only realizing he had brought his recaf cup with him once he was halfway across the palace. Deciding it might help calm his nerves, he raised it with trembling fingers and drank slowly.
He knew where he'd misstepped, of course. Looking back, it was obvious. Of course Cain wouldn't agree with anything that even remotely resembled his own treatment by the Imperium. How stupid of Jafar to forget.
He'd have to remember that in the future, because while Cain was willing to tolerate a lot from his subordinates, clearly Jafar had found the line that, if crossed, would finally make him turn his prodigious power on them.
It had been a long day.
After riding though the streets smiling and waving at everyone, I had been forced to make another bloody speech, although by now I had enough experience it had gone like a charm. I had rambled about the duty we all had to assist our fellow humans who had been abandoned by the cruel and callous Imperium, about the threat of Decay and its servants, and the valor displayed by the USA and those who had made the ultimate sacrifice.
I had pointedly not mentioned my own against Gurug'ath, both because I still felt uncomfortable thinking about it and because I knew appearing to downplay my own achievements would only increase my undeserved reputation for leading from the front and taking on the greatest challenges even more.
The plebs and soldiers alike had lapped it up. I would probably have to give another one tomorrow at the ceremony in honor of those who, despite the power armor and Panacea, had died in the Cleansing of Skitterfall. The USA total casualties for the deployment were a frankly absurdly low number, given the opposition we had faced, but I knew that would mean little to their families and friends, and appearing not to care about them could plant seeds of resentment that could, in time, blossom into attempts to kill the one they thought was responsible (and since I was the one with my face on the pict-screens the most often, it would probably be me).
All in all, I had already been feeling tired when Jafar had dropped his findings on me with all the subtlety of an artillery shell. So, after Jafar left, I finished my recaf and returned to my quarters, where I promptly collapsed on my bed.
Between Hektor's history lessons and this, the more I learned about the Imperium's past the more it seemed the whole thing was trying to self-destruct in the most spectacular way possible. What the frak had the Assassins been thinking ?!
I had no choice but to hope what I had told Jafar would turn out to be true, and make damn sure that the biological abomination I had brought back to Slawkenberg didn't have any reason to hate me when she grew up. Considering what Jafar had said at the end of our exchange, it was clear that I'd have to raise her myself. I couldn't trust anyone on this whole planet to do it in a way that wouldn't create a threat to the Imperium – and, more immediately concerning, to everyone living on Slawkenberg, me included – that surpassed my worst nightmares.
It did mean I would spend time near someone who could kill me instantly any time she so decided, but really, what was one more at that point ?
I would make the announcement the day after the funerals. The images of me emerging from the crumbling gubernatorial palace with her in my arms had already spread across Slawkenberg, but I'd ordered everyone involved in watching over her to stay silent until I learned what the Tzeentchians had found out. I wouldn't even have to lie : I could honestly say that we'd found her at the heart of the Nurglite corruption on Adumbria, a baby used by the servants of Decay to fuel their vile works, and whom we'd saved using the Panacea.
A miracle child, rescued from the very pit of Hell and given a new chance at life. As I dwelled on that thought with morbid amusement, I was struck by the realization that I needed to come up with a name for the girl, too, if I didn't want her to think she was being treated as a tool or a weapon. She couldn't just be called Legienstrasse, that was guaranteed to bring the Assassins to my doorstep with pointed words and pointier blades.
After spending entirely too much time thinking about it and browsing several tomes from my suite's bookshelves (which, considering what I knew of its previous occupants, likely hadn't been read in generations, despite the absence of dust which spoke to the cleaners' diligence), I finally decided : the daughter of Legienstrasse, first and last member of the Maerorus Temple, would be called Zerayah Cain.
The Retribution-Class battleship Throne Eternal hung in orbit above Coronus. For all its majesty, the scars of the recent battle it had fought against the Hive-Fleet were all too visible : entire decks had been abandoned due to the damage the xenos bioships had inflicted.
Through the observation window, Inquisitor Amberley Vail (most would call her Lady Inquisitor these days, but she still thought of herself as 'simply' another Inquisitor) could glimpse the rest of the fleet which had barely managed to save the world of Corania from the maw of the Great Devourer. There were over two scores of Navy vessels, along with strike cruisers belonging to the Bone Knives and Reclaimers Astartes Chapters and a small flotilla of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
The victory at Corania had been hard-fought. What had begun as a mere clean-up of a Genestealer Cult, for which the gathered strength of the Panacea Cabal had been ludicrous overkill, had become a desperate battle for survival the moment the Hive-Fleet had arrived. In the end, it had only been a daring boarding action by the Space Marines which had disturbed the Hive-Mind long enough for the Imperial forces to gain the upper hand and defeat the main swarms on the planet while the xenos fleet was defeated in the void.
Amberley's days of going undercover to expose the xenos cults seeking to undermine the fabric of the Imperium were well and truly past her at this point. These days, she was forced to delegate such work to her operatives. She missed the thrill of it, but knew that she could best serve the Imperium by making sure the Panacea STC was spread across as many worlds and used to benefit as many loyal citizens as possible.
The battle of Corania had provided them with the opportunity to test the Panacea on individuals infested by the Genestealers, and the results had been very promising. As they'd hoped, the Panacea could purge the xenos taint from implanted individuals, freeing them from the brood mind, although the psychological scars of being violated in such a way remained. However, the Panacea could do nothing for the born hybrids, regardless of their generation. According to Magos Lazurus, the Tyranid genes were part of their natural state of being, so the Panacea merely healed them of any injuries or sickness, like it did for the transhuman Space Marines (not that Amberley would ever have compared the Astartes to Genestealer Hybrids, of course).
"Lady Inquisitor," a gruff voice called out. "They are all ready to meet you."
"Thank you, Ruput."
Major (formerly Captain) Ruput Broklaw was the highest-ranking survivor of the Valhallan 301st, a crack planetary assault unit which had been badly mauled by the Tyranids. Impressed by their bravery, and more importantly their martial skills, Amberley had decided to recruit the survivors of the Regiment directly into her service. She needed additional firepower she could rely upon, and the 301st were fiercely loyal to the Imperium and dedicated to her, since she'd gone personally onto the planet in her suit of power armor along with the reinforcements which had kept them from being wiped out and devoured by the Tyranid swarm.
Given who ran the Militarum in the Damocles Gulf these days, she had no doubt she'd get away with it.
As Amberley made her way to the meeting room, she found her psyker fidgeting in the corridor, clearly waiting for her.
"What is it, Rakel ?" she asked gently.
"The sickness is screaming in pain and fury," she replied with an expression of utmost seriousness on her face. "The shadow has defeated it, claimed the abandoned crossroad, and rescued the child of the seventh house."
"I see," said Amberley, lying through her teeth with practiced ease. Sometimes, the psyker's ramblings were understandable, and other times, they only made sense much later. This, it seemed, was the latter case. She'd have to see if Mott could make sense of it once the meeting was over.
"Go get some rest for now," she told the psyker, before walking into the meeting room.
There, waiting for her, were Lord General Zyvan, who had settled in as the supreme Militarum commander of the Damocles Gulf; Captain Gries of the Reclaimers and Chapter Master Khetep of the Bone Knives Space Marine Chapters; Admiral Jaymstea Flynt of Battlefleet Damocles; and Magos Lazurus, representative of the Mechanicus elements which had been informed of the Panacea's existence.
The Bone Knives and Reclaimers had been brought into the fold by being given copies of the Panacea STC along with samples of the final product, despite their kind's reluctance for all this cloak-and-dagger business. The decrease in battlefield casualties this had caused had convinced them of the importance of providing this technology to the rest of the Imperium, regardless of what entrenched powers might say. The Reclaimers in particular supported the cabal's agenda with enthusiasm, both because of their tight bond with the Mechanicus and because of how vital the Panacea had proven to their efforts in the Viridia Campaign.
The Chapter Master's armor, painted in the same magenta color as all Bone Knives', had been recently cleaned and polished, but the damage from boarding the Tyranid bioship was still visible. No doubt the Chapter's Techmarines had been too busy directing the repairs of the ships to have the time to perform more than the most basic maintenance (that, or Khetep had deliberately held from removing the traces of battle before this meeting as some kind of power play). Gries' own battleplate, painted in the white and yellow of his brotherhood, was in a similar state, the two of them having fought side-by-side at the turning point of Corania's defense.
Admiral Jaymstea Flynt was considered something of a maverick in Battlefleet Damocles. A scion of one of the many families which made up the bulk of the Navy's officer corps, he had spent decades stuck at his current rank due to being absolutely uninterested in playing the games of politics which were required to advance anywhere past a certain rank in any Imperial organization.
But for all his habit of playing the fool, there was no denying his skill at void warfare. It had been his daring manoeuvres at Corania which had given the Space Marines the opportunity to board the Hive Ship, and then to defeat the xenos fleet without sacrificing his entire Navy battlegroup in the process. And the crews of the ships under his command absolutely loved him, a love he either genuinely returned or went to great lengths to appear to (Amberley wasn't sure which yet, but she would find out eventually, for curiosity's sake if nothing else).
Compared to the Guard and Space Marines, the Navy had comparatively less to gain from the generalisation of Panacea use, but 'less' didn't mean 'none', far from it. Life aboard a starship was dangerous at the best of time, let alone during battle, and thousands of injured crewmen had been saved and returned to their duties thanks to the Panacea following the void-battle of Corania. Since there was no way of hiding how this medical miracle had happened, Amberley had decided she might as well bring Flynt on board. The Admiral had been utterly delighted to be made part of the Panacea Conspiracy; partly, Amberley suspected, because he enjoyed the excitement and intrigue of it.
It would have been easier to have this meeting by hololith, but also easier for it to be intercepted by hostile parties. This room, randomly selected among those available aboard the Throne Eternal, was as secure as they were going to get.
"Gentlemen," Amberley said as she took her seat – as the founder and nominal head of the Panacea Cabal, she sat at the head of the large conference table. "Thank you all for being here. Now, let us begin. Admiral, what is the status of the fleet ?"
"It needs repairs, a lot of them," replied Flynt without hesitation. "Half the ships need a complete dry dock and refit before I'd take them anywhere someone might shoot at them, and the rest could do with a few months in the care of the tech-priests but can still sail and fight."
"Nothing we didn't expect, then," said Amberley. "Lord General, what about the situation in the rest of the Sector, now that our astropaths have recovered from the Tyranids' shadow ?"
"The war against the Tau isn't going well, that much hasn't changed," said Zyvan grimly. "It's a meat grinder, and one that's taking valuable resources away from other fronts."
Gravalax's position at the end of the Imperial supply lines had allowed the Tau to bring their own assets to bear much more easily than they could. The planet itself was little more than a pile of rubble by now, not that it had been worth much to begin with. And while they were busy trying to salvage the situation on that front, the wily xenos had sent feelers across the entire borders to take advantage of their weakened presence.
Unfortunately, they couldn't just let the Tau take Gravalax and the rest of the border systems. In addition to being an affront to the God-Emperor, it would leave the rest of the Imperial territories in this galactic region unacceptably exposed.
"I have had our diplomatic corps reach out to the Tau Empire and explain that the whole Gravalax debacle was the result of a Genestealer Cult's plot, but without success," said Amberley. "The Tau have had little experience with such infiltrations themselves, and they think we're lying to cover up the fact it was one of our Governors who shot their Ambassador and started this mess."
Which, to be fair, was absolutely the kind of thing the Imperium would have claimed in an attempt to manipulate the ignorant newcomers to the galactic scene. It was just that, in this particular instance, that was the actual truth. If that traitorous, xenos-touched bastard Grice hadn't died long ago during the purges which had followed one of the Imperium's short-lived recaptures of Gravalax, Amberley would have gleefully executed him herself.
"Even if they believed us, it would change nothing," said Gries. "The xenos are notorious opportunists. The Gravalax incident merely gave them the justification they were looking for to invade without seeming to be the aggressors, in order for their propaganda to sway the weak-minded among the population of the worlds they steal from us."
"You're right, Captain," sighed the Inquisitor. "We'll just have to tough it out and hope the Tau run out of steam before they do too much damage."
That the Imperium could outlast the upstart xenos wasn't in question. They had their own informants within the Tau Empire – their very philosophies made them worryingly easy to infiltrate – and knew that for all their advanced techno-sorcery, the Tau were still only a minor power in the grand scheme of things, contained to a fraction of the Eastern Fringe, whereas the Master of Mankind's dominion stretched across the galaxy entire.
"In other news," she continued, "I've received astropathic word from my operatives on Periremunda. With the help of Captain Gries' battle-brothers, they managed to locate Killian's lab and destroy it. It turned out he was taking refuge inside a Sororitas convent of all things, lying to them about the nature of his work. Unfortunately," she grimaced, "while they got Metheius, Killian himself managed to escape with the artefact."
"That is unfortunate," said Zyvan. "Do we know what exactly that renegade was working on, at least ?"
"Most of Metheius' research was destroyed alongside the heretek himself," buzzed Lazurus, who had received the same reports she had through his own agents within the investigation team. "We do know, however, that it involved working with a small local Chaos cult."
"Oh, brilliant," groaned the Lord General. "Do you think he'll make a run for Slawkenberg ?"
"It is possible," admitted Amberley, although she had trouble imagining Cain entertaining the mad delusions of a Radical like Killian for long. Besides, Killian's particular brand of insanity was all about using any means necessary to destroy all followers of Chaos, and she could only hope Killian wasn't so far gone he'd hand over whatever it was he and Metheius had been working on to someone as dangerous as the Liberator.
"I am sorry to interrupt," asked Admiral Flynt, "but who are you talking about ?"
Right, he hadn't been part of the Cabal when she'd explained this before. Amberley gave the Admiral a brief summary, editing all the bits Flynt didn't need to know without even needing to think about it.
Years ago (while Amberley was enjoying the dubious hospitality of Archon Vileheart, in fact), a joint research facility of the Ordo Xenos and the Mechanicus on Perlia had been ransacked, its entire crew slaughtered and the invaluable artefacts being studied there stolen. It had taken years of investigation by her operatives while she was busy with trying to bring the wonders of the Panacea to the Imperium, but eventually she had figured out what had happened.
Metheius, one of the tech-priests working in the facility, had gone mad after spending too much time working on unravelling the secrets of ancient xenotech, an all too frequent professional hazard, and contacted one of Amberley's less-than-sane peers (also an all too frequent professional hazard) in order to pursue his own radical interpretation of the artefact's possible uses.
Ernst Stavros Killian, the member of the Ordo Hereticus in question, had tried to get the project passed under his control, and when the rest of the Damocles Conclave had rejected his request, decided that the only logical course of action left was to have over a hundred faithful servants of the Golden Throne brutally murdered in order to steal the artefact. How he had thought nobody would suspect him was, frankly, beyond Amberley's understanding. The Damocles Conclave had immediately summoned him, and when he'd failed to respond, branded him Excommunicate Diabolus.
Because Amberley was still a member of the Ordo Xenos, who had initially sponsored the research on Perlia, and one of the most junior Inquisitors in the Sector, she had been saddled with the task of finding the renegade and bringing him to justice. Since she didn't want her peers to realize how busy she was with the Panacea just yet, she'd had no choice but to graciously accept this honor.
Fortunately, her growing network of allies had given her more options on how to hunt Killian down, as well as the ability to call on a couple squads of Space Marines when her Acolytes had finally found him. And a good thing to, because if not for the presence of the Reclaimers to awe the Sisters of Battle enough for them to realize they had been deceived and used by a renegade, things would undoubtedly have turned ugly. As it was, the sisters of the Order of the White Rose on Periremunda had needed to be talked out of committing ritual suicide to atone for their unwitting participation in Killian's schemes.
"I see," said Flynt once Amberley was done bringing him up to speed. "This is … I confess, I had no idea the Inquisition was so fractious."
"That's very much on purpose," replied Amberley. "Keeping up the pretence of unity is more or less the only thing everyone agrees upon, since showing the cracks supposedly weakens the authority of the whole thing."
"Then why tell us this ?" asked the Admiral, not unreasonably.
Because using the assets of the Panacea Cabal meant she had to explain why she needed them in the first place. The rest of the Ordos weren't going to be happy she was sharing the Inquisition's dirty laundry with outsiders, but frankly, she didn't care. To her own dismay, the more she worked to bring the Panacea to Mankind, the more she was beginning to think Cain had a point with his disapproval of the way the Imperium ran things
As an Inquisitor, she technically outranked everyone else in the room, even Khetep, but pulling rank on them would never have brought them as far as they were now. The simple truth was that you could get a lot more of people long-term by treating them with common courtesy than by threatening them with unspeakable torment at the slightest perceived failure.
And besides, Amberley felt she was already keeping enough secrets as it was. After several years of stringing them along, Amberley had finally learned the name of the group of ancient Inquisitors she had stumbled upon before being abducted by Drukhari. They called themselves the Concilium Ravus, and together its members were a powerful block in the Damocles Conclave.
Amberley still had no idea what had caused them to band together despite their wildly varying expertises and ideologies, however, and had been forced to be very cautious in her investigations, lest the misunderstanding that had led them to accept her within her ranks be exposed. From what little contact she'd had with the other members since that first accidental meeting (most often trading them copies of the Panacea STC or stocks of the stuff itself for favors or information), they still thought her to be the proxy of the Inquisitor whose seat she'd taken.
She had no idea who that mysterious Inquisitor was, or what he or she would think if they ever returned and found out what she had supposedly done in her name. Hopefully, should that ever happen, her position would be strong enough that it wouldn't matter.
Of course, she couldn't say any of that to Flynt. The existence of the Concilium Ravus was something she had kept secret from the rest of the Panacea Cabal, lest she drew the ire of its members upon her allies. From what she'd gleaned, only a few Inquisitors of the Damocles Conclave even suspected the existence of the Concilium.
"Because I don't believe that pretending a problem doesn't exist will solve it," she replied instead. "And also because I trust everyone in this room to keep this to themselves."
The 'or else' wasn't spoken aloud, but everyone in the room heard it clearly all the same.
"In any case, there is little we can do on the matter at this moment," declared Khetep. "Once he is found once more, we'll deal with him, and if he has allied himself with the Slawkenberg heretics, then we shall crush them both. Until then, we have more pressing concerns to address while Inquisitor Vail's agents continue the hunt. "
"Indeed," said Lazurus. "The events of Corania have rendered continuing to conceal the existence of the Panacea a futile exercise."
True. Until now, the output of the Imperial Panacea production facilities had been mostly used on the same planet where it was produced, and the isolation of every Imperial world had helped keep things quiet. Furthermore, the only Guardsmen (who, unlike the immense majority of Imperial subjects, travelled from one star system to another until they died) to have benefited from the Panacea had been located in Militarum hospices, which were hardly the most public of locations.
But with how much it had been used on Corania, coupled with the fact that they had needed to withdraw to Coronus, where billions of Guardsmen passed on their way to other warzones, word would inevitably spread if it hadn't already. And while some of Amberley's colleagues might not have hesitated to execute every trooper and mark them as lost in battle against the Tyranids, Amberley wasn't going to do that, Throne have mercy.
"What do the rest of you think ?" she asked.
"I'm all for going public myself," shrugged Zyvan. "I understand it's going to get us a lot of attention we'd rather do without, but it was always going to happen eventually. By now, there're enough copies of the STC spread around that nothing short of the will of the Emperor Himself could pin that particular angel back to the heavens. Everyone in this room might get killed by the morons who'll try to anyway, sure, but the Imperium at large will still benefit."
"The Lord General is correct," said Gries, "though I feel he overstates the risks. With the possibility of monopolizing the secrets of the Panacea lost, any such selfish individuals will instead seek to acquire them for themselves so as not to be left behind. My Chapter is ready to send an envoy with another copy to Maccrage : once the Ultramarines are made aware of the benefits of this technology, they will make sure to spread it among their Successor Chapters."
And since those Chapters made up a good portion of all Space Marines in the galaxy, the benefit to the Imperium would be immense and impossible to roll back.
"At that point," continued the Reclaimer, "the only source of trouble will be the original STC. Which, as before, I believe should be sent to Mars, both for safe-keeping and to get it off your hands before you get yourself killed because of it, Inquisitor."
"How remarkably direct, Captain," Amberley chuckled.
Not that Gries was wrong, of course. While the existence of the Panacea STC was still kept a secret from the galaxy at large, there were still many outside the Cabal who had learned of its existence, and there had been numerous attempts to steal it from Amberley, even while there were copies of its contents far easier to acquire.
"While such a course of action would be the most convenient for us," intervened Lazurus, "I estimate non-negligible odds that sending the STC to Sacred Mars will result in the very internal conflicts we wish to avoid occurring there instead of here. Is this a choice we dare to make ?"
There was a moment of silence as they all considered the dreadful possibility. Then Khetep spoke up :
"There is … another option. One that I hesitated to bring up, but which would ensure the STC ends up serving the Emperor's will with as little internal conflict as possible in these circumstances. As Chapter Master, I have access to certain channels to the Throneworld."
Amberley raised an eyebrow. The dilemma posed by Lazurus was precisely why she hadn't already sent the STC to the Red Planet years ago, and hearing of a possible way out of that conundrum was of great interest to her.
"Who exactly are you talking about, Chapter Master ?"
There were millions, if not billions of astropathic messages sent to Holy Terra daily, as befitted its position as the Imperium's heart, brain, and soul. Every Imperial organization worth the name was based in the Sol system, if not on the Throneworld itself. She could only guess which one Khetep was referring to.
Then he told them, and she had to admit it made perfect sense in hindsight. After all, who better to ensure that the Master of Mankind's will be done in this matter than His very own Custodes ?
Alone in his quarters aboard His Righteous Punishment, Ernst Stavros Killian fumed with impotent fury. So much work, all gone to waste because of interfering, dogmatic fools, too blind to see that, through His divine guidance, they had at last uncovered the key to turning the tide of the endless struggle against Chaos.
He had lost Metheius, most of the magos' research, the loyalty of the Order of the White Rose and the facilities hidden beneath their convent, and even the steady supply of test subjects the Covenant of the Blessed had provided. They had been so close, Metheius had assured him. With every test, they had gotten a little closer to perfecting the process, closer to their ultimate goal of an army of invincible psykers, soul-bond to the Golden Throne, bringing ruin upon His foes.
He sighed. At least he still had the Shadowlight. That was all that really mattered, he told himself. Everything else could be replaced, but there was only one psychic enhancer. And the self-destruct he had set up while escaping would keep his pursuers from realizing the true scope of his work until it was too late.
For now, it was time to withdraw, regroup, and rebuild. Looking at a map of the Damocles Gulf, he considered his options. There were dozens of small, isolated worlds which could theoretically suit his needs, but he needed to be careful. His enemies were still on his trail, and any slip-up would bring them down on him.
His gaze stopped on Torredon. A whole Subsector wracked by numerous Warp storms, its relative isolation from the rest of the Imperium made even worse by the recent loss of the Adumbria system. There were sure to be plenty of latent psykers hiding among the ranks of the shadow cartels which preyed upon the Subsector's few stable shipping lanes, and he still had enough resources stored away in safe locations to buy his way into a position of influence within one of the cartels. His own activities would be all but impossible to uncover amidst the mess of corruption and crime which ran rampant through the Subsector.
It would take time, and playing nice with such outlaw scum would rankle, but he could bear it. Yes, this would do nicely. He stood up, and went to inform the captain of His Righteous Punishment to change their heading to the Torredon Gap.
Hopefully, his master would understand and forgive him for the delay.
Notes:
AN : No, I don't know how I wrote this chapter in two days either. Again, this won't last long, but I may as well enjoy it while it lasts.
Yes, all of you saw Cain adopting the child coming. It was a fairly obvious move, and the next chapter will explore the daily life of Zerayah Cain, daughter of the Liberator (and yes, I am recycling the name from several other stories of mine - and this version isn't even the scariest !).
It's going to be hilarious to write, and hopefully to read.
I know it's commonly believed that Legienstrasse was created using Tyranid DNA, but there is zero actual evidence of that in the book Seventh Retribution, and as Cain points out in this chapter, the timeline doesn't fit. And yes, I'm aware that there were Tyranids in the galaxy long before their official discovery, but the book itself refers to "rare mutant strains and shapeshifting xenos", thousands of which were reduced into goo from which the tech-priests refined the genetic material used to create Legienstrasse. Genestealers aren't shape-shifters as far as I'm aware, and neither are the rest of the Tyranid bio-forms : once a Tyranid creature is spawned, it stays the same until it dies and its biomass is reclaimed by the swarm. Truth be told, I'm not sure where the idea that Legienstrasse was a Human/Tyranid hybrid came from.
The Torredon Subsector is mentioned once in Duty Calls as part of the backstory of one of Amberley's Acolytes. Everything I have written about it in this chapter is part of the very short description we're given (well, not so much a part as literally everything in that description), except for it being connected to Adumbria by a Warp route. I'm not sure why I felt the need to add that. It probably won't come up again in the future.
Meanwhile, the Bone Knives are mentioned at the very end of The Last Ditch. And yes, their armor is magenta. That's all we canonically know about them, meaning it's perfectly fine for me to use them and give their Chapter Master the name of a Tomb King.
What else ... oh yeah, Broklaw is here. Sadly, the odds of him meeting Kasteen are quite low in this universe. But hey, Amberley Oak'ed him and the 301st into her warband ! Now they'll get to meet and kill all manner of interesting people.
As always, I look forward to your thoughts and suggestions. We're getting close to another timeskip, if only to give Cain's beloved daughter time to grow up, so now is the time to throw your ideas at me - maybe one of them will stick !
Zahariel out.
Chapter 21: Chapter 20
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The church was a small building in the outskirts of Cainopolis, which had survived the greenskins' rampage ten standard years ago through what many of its congregation had considered a miracle. It was surrounded by much larger buildings, constructed in the aftermath of the Ork attack as part of the reconstruction program.
Father Anthony wrangled his hands and muttered a prayer under his breath. In his seven decades of life on Slawkenberg, he'd been through many things, and survived situations that by all rights should have been the end of him. In recent years, he'd lived as the priest of the largest congregation of followers of the Imperial Creed in the planetary capital, practicing openly and without fear.
Yet still, he couldn't help but feel nervous – which was only natural. For today, his humble parish would be visited by none other than Ciaphas Cain, the man who'd led the Uprising and changed the entire world through his actions.
When he'd answered the insistent knocking on his door yesterday and found a squad of armored USA troopers standing there, Anthony had feared the worst. But instead of whatever his imagination had conjured, the squad's sergeant had respectfully greeted him, confirmed his identity, and handed him a letter, in which the uncontested master of Slawkenberg had politely inquired whether Anthony would agree to him dropping by to visit and discuss a few matters with him in person.
Of course, Anthony had hurriedly written a response telling the Liberator that yes, of course, he'd be honored to accept. He hadn't gotten any threatening impression from the letter – and after years of dealing with his Giorba-backed superiors in the Ecclesiarchy, he considered himself something of an expert at reading subtle implications in official correspondence – but he wasn't an idiot, either.
One just didn't tell the Liberator 'no', at least not without a very good damn reason, and Anthony couldn't think of any. And so today, precisely on time, a pair of vehicle parked in front of the building, and Ciaphas Cain emerged, to the astonishment of the small crowd which had gathered to see what all the fuss was about.
"Father Anthony," Cain greeted the old priest with a respectful nod and a firm handshake. "Thank you for agreeing to meeting with me. I know this must all be very unexpected."
It certainly had been. As a member of the Ecclesiarchy born and raised on Slawkenberg, Anthony had been taught that rebelling against the Imperium was a sin worthy of damnation, just like the worship of anything but the God-Emperor and His Saints.
But then, he'd also been taught that it was the Giorbas' Emperor-given right to do whatever they pleased with their subjects, and that the misery and cruelty they inflicted upon the population of Slawkenberg was all according to His design, which he had never accepted. And if his teachers could be so clearly wrong about one thing, who knew what else they were wrong about ?
At the very least, the priest refused to believe the God-Emperor would object to the removal of the Giorbas from power. As for the new faiths which had blossomed on Slawkenberg since the Uprising, well, he simply didn't know enough to decide one way or the other. All he could do was continue to care for those who still chose to believe in the Imperial Creed despite everything, and hope the God-Emperor would understand when their souls arrived at the foot of His throne.
"It certainly was a surprise, but not an unwelcome one," he said to the most powerful man on the planet. "Please, come in."
As Cain followed Anthony, his retinue remained outside, including his xenos bloodward and personal aide, setting up a perimeter to ensure the Liberator and his host weren't disturbed. The wodden doors slammed close behind the two of them with a sound Anthony tried very hard not to think about as an executioner's axe coming down.
The main room of the church had enough pews to sit a hundred or so people, an elevated altar for him to deliver sermons at, and the most precious item in the building : a five-meters high statue of the God-Emperor, which, despite being older than Anthony, was still in perfect condition. The statue depicted the Master of Mankind in the aspect Anthony most liked to think of Him as : a benevolent protector, arms raised to shield His people from the weight of the galaxy's evil, represented as a large sphere of stone with vague, threatening shapes carved into it.
To his surprise, Cain made the sign of the aquila while looking at the statue as the two of them walked down the aisle between the rows of pews.
"Do you still pray to Him, lord ?" Anthony asked tentatively as they stopped at the foot of the altar.
"Not much these days, no," Cain replied with a rueful smile. "I don't think He would approve of many of the choices I've made. But this is His house, so I should show some respect."
"It is not for us to know His mind, only to try to live as best we could according to His teachings," quoted Anthony, before adding : "Unfortunately, here on Slawkenberg, those teachings have long since been corrupted to suit the purposes of evil men."
"Quite. If you don't mind me asking, Father," Cain continued, "how did you make it through the Uprising ? I know the crowds were a little, shall we say, over-enthusiastic in their hunts."
That certainly was one way to put it. When the word had spread and the capital had shaken under the blows of clashing forces, for one terrible moment, Anthony had been afraid that the entire city would succumb to madness as its population finally let out centuries of suppressed rage at the Giorbas' exactions. He couldn't blame the people for their anger, but that hadn't stopped him from worrying about the damage their hatred would do to their souls.
Thankfully, it hadn't come to that. Tempers had cooled down, and wrath had turned to jubilation as the Uprising's triumph gave way to days of celebration – in great part, Anthony knew, thank to the man before him. By killing the Governor, Cain had given all their revenge to all the people of Slawkenberg, and his leadership had ensured things remained more or less under control.
"The people who knew me sheltered and protected me," explained Anthony. "In the past, I have participated in certain … unlawful activities, to prevent what exactions I could." Then, remembering who he was talking to and that there was no longer any need to hide the truth, he clarified : "Mostly by hiding people who were being hunted by the enforcers within the church, and stealing tithe funds to buy food for starving families. They remembered it, and came to my aid in my time of need. This building was spared the flames for the same reason."
"I see. That is nice to hear. And how have things been since the Uprising ?" asked Cain. "I know the laws made it clear all were free to worship whoever they chose, but there's a difference between making something a law and making it reality. Have there been any difficulties ?"
"The people of Slawkenberg have suffered much under the previous regime," said Anthony, phrasing his words carefully. "And all of it was endorsed by the Ecclesiarchy at the time. I do not blame them for the distrust they feel toward the Imperial Creed : the fault in this lies solely with my former superiors for failing so catastrophically in their sacred duties."
"So there have been difficulties, then," said Cain, frowning.
"Only minor things," Anthony hastened to explain, lest the Liberator misunderstand. "Shouted insults as I walk by, mostly, and a few instances of minor vandalism – anti-Imperial slogans painted on the walls, trash cans emptied before the door, that sort of things. All done by young people who were told of their families' suffering and lashed out against the closest thing to those responsible they could find. Nothing a good talk with their parents couldn't solve. To be perfectly honest, compared to the grief I got from my superiors, things are much improved."
"An all too common story on this world," sighed Cain. "That is some comfort, at least. Still, if things ever escalate to the point you feel in danger, don't hesitate to contact me for help. It is important to me that those who still keep faith with Him be allowed to do so peacefully."
In that moment, Father Anthony experienced something akin to revelation. Like all Imperial subjects, Ciaphas Cain would've been raised to worship the God-Emperor, though the priest was certain the religious teachings he'd received at the Schola Progenium had been quite different from those of Slawkenberg. More than anyone else on the planet, he must've realized what a perversion of the Imperial Creed the allies of the Giorbas had created in their efforts to keep the people subservient.
Rather than thinking the God-Emperor had abandoned him like most of the people of Slawkenberg who'd embraced the new faiths, Cain thought of himself as unworthy of following the Master of Mankind.
"Should the need arise, I will do so," Anthony promised Cain.
"Thank you. Now, onto the real reason for my presence here." Cain took a deep breath before continuing : "In truth, Father, I have come to seek spiritual guidance."
Anthony blinked. That … wasn't what he'd expected. But his decades of experience didn't fail him, and he smoothly replied :
"What little wisdom I have to offer is yours, lord. Would you care for us to discuss this sat down in my kitchen, perhaps ?"
"I … yes." Cain swallowed, turning his gaze away from the statue of Him on Earth. "Yes, that sounds lovely."
Five minutes later, the priest and the Liberator were sat at the small wodden table where Anthony took his meals, a couple of glasses and a pitcher of water between them. For a moment, Anthony had considered bringing out the mass wine, but then thought better of it. This was probably going to be a conversation he'd need all his wits for, and at his age, he couldn't handle alcohol nearly as well as in his youth.
For one, long moment, they simply sat together in silence. Then, Cain spoke :
"I am afraid, Father."
"I struggle to imagine what could scare a man such as you," replied Anthony.
"Oh, there are plenty of things that scare me," Cain chuckled. "But that's not what I want to talk about. I am afraid of what I might become."
"I see. Or, well, I think I do. You wield immense power, more than you ever expected, I assume."
Anthony didn't know much about the workings of the Imperium beyond Slawkenberg, but from what little he understood, a Commissar – which was what the Imperium had decided Cain should be – would only ever hold authority over a single Regiment of the Imperial Guard. Absolute authority, yes, including the right to summarily execute anyone at any time for any reason, but nothing compared to the billions who now looked up to the Liberator for guidance.
"Do you fear that power could twist you until you come to resemble the Giorbas, then ?"
"… No," decided Cain after thinking on it for a moment. "The rest of the Council wouldn't let that happen."
"Well, then –" Anthony began.
"I'm afraid of becoming something worse than the Giorbas ever were, Father," Cain cut him off, and it was like a dam had burst as the words kept pouring out of his mouth : "The other members of the Council trust my judgment, far more than they should, really. They'd stop me from descending into pointless hedonism, that much I'm sure of. But there is so much more we could do."
There was a pause as the Liberator caught his breath, then he continued in a haunted tone of voice :
"I have put … limits, on the Council's activities, forbidden certain courses of action I believe would only hurt us all in the long run. But I've seen, with my own eyes, the benefits these paths can bring to Slawkenberg, and to me personally most of all, in the short term. And while the Council accepts my reasoning on these matters, I know that should I change my mind, they would gleefully enable me, convinced we were doing the right thing every step of the way. And in the end, I would become a monster, worse than anything in the fiery sermons of your corrupt superiors."
"There would be nothing, and no one, to stop me," the Liberator finished, sounding and looking genuinely disturbed. "Until the Imperium came at last to destroy us all, and by that time, I'm terrified that death would truly be salvation, just like that madman Karamazov ranted."
There was another moment of silence as Anthony drank from his cup, thinking.
"And there is nothing to stop me from taking this knife," Anthony picked up the corresponding piece of cutlery to illustrate his point, "walk outside, and start stabbing people with it. The ability to do evil lies within all of us, lord. You may not trust yourself, but in all the years since the Uprising, when have you erred ? When have you not done right by the people you chose to protect when you decided to follow the spirit rather than the letter of your oaths ?"
"I've just been lucky," the Liberator muttered. "Luckier than anyone has any right to be. And it won't last forever. Sooner or later, I'll make a mistake."
"That is almost certain," admitted Anthony. "Nobody is perfect, not even you. But making mistakes is only human, lord. As long as you recognize them as such and learn from them, I do not believe you will ever fall so far as you're afraid you might. And if you're still worried," he added with a smile, "then here is a trick you can use : before making any big decision, ask yourself what kind of example you are giving your daughter. I've found parenthood can change people; inspire them to be their better self."
The public announcement that the Liberator had adopted the child he'd rescued from the den of evil on Adumbria had been made three days ago, to widespread jubilation. Apparently, Cain had wanted to wait until her long-term survival was confirmed before making his decision.
Anthony'd heard a number of theories as to the girl's origins – for surely the thralls of Decay wouldn't have used just any child as the keystone of their vile work. The wildest was that young Zerayah was actually the child of the Liberator and the martyred Lady Emeli, whose unborn spirit had been stolen by the vile spirits which served the Power of Rot in an attempt to break Cain's will.
"That's another thing," said Cain softly. "I've no idea how to be a parent."
Anthony felt his throat tighten at the reminder that, for all his strength and courage, the Liberator was still a relatively young man, orphaned at a very young age and raised without anything even remotely resembling familial affection in the cold, soulless halls of the Imperium's Schola Progenium. It was frankly a miracle he was as well-adjusted as he was, nevermind possessed of such strong will. Anthony had heard stories of the Schola during his training as a priest, and they still filled him with dread to this day.
"Well, I don't have any personal experience on the subject, but from what I've seen over my life, nobody ever really has any clue either," he jested. "As long as you make sure she is loved and knows it, though, you should be fine."
After that, the two spent about an hour discussing various topics, from the various policies of the Liberation Council to child-rearing methods Anthony had witnessed (the ones the Liberator himself remembered from his time at the Schola were, frankly, nearly as horrifying as the rumors Anthony had heard before, and though Cain was clearly not intending to use them on Zerayah the fact he spoke of them so freely was as worrying as it was reassuring).
Then, after a final handshake, Cain departed, leaving Anthony briefly alone before the members of his congregation rushed into the building to ask him what in the God-Emperor's name had just happened.
Of course, he didn't tell them anything : not only was everything he'd talked about with the Liberator covered by the secret of the confessional, he knew there were several very influential, very dangerous people who'd be very angry with him if he shared Cain's private doubts.
The next day, Anthony received another message from the Palace. This one contained an official statement that his funding request had been approved, a box containing ten doses of Panacea, and a handwritten note from the Liberator thanking him for his time, explaining that the medicine was for his bad leg, which the Liberator had noticed, and asking whether he'd be available for further discussions in the future.
Though he doubted Cain would thank him for it, Anthony made sure to include him in his prayers to the Master of Mankind the next time he led mass.
When Zerayah was six months old, she saw the sky of Slawkenberg for the first time.
Since she'd seen other skies for the first time, she'd spent her time in a warm, white, bright space, with a red blanket wrapped around her. Lots of different people had come, made noises, then gone. They'd brought her things to eat, too : first warm liquids, then solid stuff she'd to break with her teeth.
Time passed, until someone else came, who didn't smell of metal and oil.
She recognized him. This was the one who'd taken her out of the bad place. This was the one who'd carried her outside of the dark and showed her the beautiful purple skies. He wasn't surrounded by metal like he'd been then, but she still recognized him.
Gently, he picked her up, still wrapped in her red blanket, and carried her outside. They passed by lots of other people, and then she saw the sky again. This one wasn't purple, though : it was blue.
That didn't make it any less beautiful.
When Zerayah was two years old, she realized she wasn't like other children.
It was kind of obvious, given how she was already a good couple of heads taller than the other kids she'd been introduced to a mere three months ago. They were growing too, but she was growing faster, and they weren't dumb, but she was getting smarter. She could talk better than them, and read and write too, while they were still looking at picture books and needed their caretakers to read the words written in big, blocky letters for them.
She didn't understand why that was, so she did what she always did when she didn't understand something : she asked Daddy.
"Daddy," she asked when he came to pick her up that afternoon, once he'd finished all his boring grown-up work, "why am I getting big ?"
He smiled, and ruffled her hair in the way he knew she liked.
"Because you are a very special girl," he told her. She pouted. That didn't answer anything at all ! Everyone was special, just like everyone was important. Daddy had told her that, and so had the other grown-ups.
"Why am I special ?" she asked again. His smile went down a little.
"Because of who your mommy was. She was a very special lady, with very special powers. And since you're her daughter, you have the same powers, which is why you're growing up so fast."
Zerayah paused. The other children at the Palace's daycare had mommies, she knew. They came to pick them up when their day was done, just like Daddy, although sometimes their dads came to pick them up too. But she was always picked up by Daddy or by Uncle Jurgen when there were too many people who needed his help (but that didn't happen often, and Daddy always made sure to spend more time with her the next day to make up for it).
"Where is Mommy ?" she asked in a small voice. "Can I see her ? I want to see her."
Daddy's face turned sad, and he picked her up and hugged her.
"I'm sorry, Zee," he whispered in her ear, using his special name for her. "But your mommy is gone, and she isn't coming back."
"Oh," she said. She didn't know what else to say.
He smiled at her, but he was still sad. "But that doesn't mean you are alone. I don't remember my mommy either, you know."
When Zerayah was three years old, she realized that not all her memories were her own.
The not-hers-memories weren't as clear as the ones she knew were hers. They were more like nightmares, returning night after night to haunt her with images of dark corridors, tubes full of greenish liquid, skulls being added on everything, and giants in yellow armor shouting angrily at her as she tried to run away.
She didn't like them. They were full of pain, but that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was how empty she felt in them. She wasn't happy, or sad, or anything. It was wrong, and she didn't like it.
One day, she finally mustered the courage to ask Daddy about them.
"These are your mother's memories," he told her as the two of them sat down before the fireplace, as heavy snow fell outside, covering the city in a thick white blanket. Zerayah was wrapped inside the red cape that had been Daddy's before, and which she'd always kept close when she went to bed, even now. "I knew there was a chance of you inheriting some of them, but I'd hoped that wouldn't happen. She … didn't have a good life. I wanted – I still want – you to be free from that."
"What was her name ?" she asked softly.
"Legienstrasse," Daddy replied. "She was very strong, and very alone. That's why she died, in the end. You were taken by one of my enemies then, who brought you to Adumbria, where I rescued you."
"So I'm really not your daughter, then," she said, hating how small her voice sounded. She'd always known that, of course – the story of how Daddy had rescued her was known across the entire planet. She'd heard other people talk about it when they thought she couldn't hear – which at first she'd thought was silly, but then she'd realized she could hear a lot better than the other kids.
"You are my daughter in every way that matters," he immediately replied, getting up from his chair and gently seizing her chin to force her to look at him. "Family isn't defined by blood ties."
She looked into his face, finding only sincerity there, and the bad feeling in her chest abated.
"Is being her daughter why I can do what I can do ?" she asked.
A couple of months ago, Daddy had taken her to visit a greenhouse (which was called that because of all the plants inside which were green even if all the ones outside were red and orange and brown because it was autumn). A butterfly had landed on her hand, and she'd found it so beautiful she'd wanted it to stay with her – and then her hand had opened up and swallowed it.
She'd run to Daddy crying, and when she'd told her what'd happened, he'd explained that this was a unique gift of hers, not too different from the other kids at the crèche who Uncle Jurgen taught from time to time – the ones who could move things with their mind, or know stuff about objects just by touching them. And just like these other children, Zerayah needed to be careful, because she could hurt someone real bad if she wasn't.
"Yes," replied Daddy. "She could do the same things as you, and a lot more besides."
"What else could she do ?" Zerayah asked again, her curiosity piqued.
"I don't know," he shrugged. "We'll have to find out together, if you want."
"Yes !" she nodded frantically. "I want to !"
"Very well. I'll set something up. But remember : you have to not use these special talents of yours where other people can see it."
"Why ?" She cocked her head to the side, not understanding. "The kids at the crèche can."
"Because of the people who killed your mother," he said gently. "If they hear about you, then they'll come to kill you too. And I'll do my best to keep you safe, but I'm not strong enough to beat them. So we have to keep it secret, understood ?"
At the time, Zerayah couldn't imagine anyone stronger than Daddy. But she nodded anyway. No matter how quickly she grew up, she knew there were still many things the grown-ups knew that she didn't.
When Zerayah was four years old, she met Daddy's daemon girlfriend.
It was the anniversary of the Uprising, which was when Daddy and his friends had fought the bad men who ruled the world and saved everyone. Daddy had taken her to a big (but not as big as the Palace) place that was called the House of Remembrance. There were lots of interesting things in the House, but Daddy had to give a big boring speech, so Zerayah sneaked away to explore the building.
After some time wandering across the rooms and climbing up (because, she reasoned, that was where you put the best stuff), she arrived in a room that resonated with a song she didn't hear with her ears, and in which stood a statue of a very pretty lady.
She was looking at the statue when its eyes started glowing with a very pretty green light, and the statue started talking without moving its lips :
"Hello, Zerayah," it – no, she – said in a gentle voice.
"Who are you ?" asked Zerayah. Daddy had taught her about daemons, but somehow this didn't feel dangerous.
"I am Emeli, and I love your father very much."
"Of course you love him," said Zerayah, not understanding why Emeli would say something so obvious. "Everyone loves Daddy. He is the best."
"That he is, Zerayah," Emeli chuckled. "That he is. But you are mistaken, dear. Not everyone loves Ciaphas."
She frowned. "Everyone I know does."
Emeli chuckled again, but it was a little sad this time.
"Yes, dear. Everyone in the world loves him. But there are other worlds, little one. And there, people live who hate him and want him to die."
Zerayah felt something cold and unpleasant in her chest at the statue lady's words. Daddy couldn't die. He couldn't !
"Why ?" she asked. "Why do they want to hurt him ?"
"Because they're scared of him," replied Emeli. "Because they've grown up being told Ciaphas and the others on Slawkenberg are dangerous. But mostly ? Because they're bad people, and they don't like it when other people are better than them."
"I won't let that happen," Zerayah swore. "I'll protect him. I'll -"
"Oh, dear," Emeli cut her off gently. "That's not what Ciaphas wants. He is strong, little one, stronger than even you know. Maybe you fighting with him would help, but that's not what he wants for you."
"Then what does he want ?"
"You already know the answer to that question, little one. Above all, he wants you to be happy."
That was true, Zerayah thought. But she still wanted to make sure Daddy was safe, and she told Emeli that.
"Then, if you really want, you'll need to ask your father to teach you how to fight. He won't agree if you tell him that's to protect him, though. You need to tell him you want to be able to defend yourself, so that he won't have to worry about you."
Zerayah nodded. That made sense. Daddy could be silly like that sometimes.
"I will. Thank you, Miss Emeli."
"You're welcome, dear. Now, I think you should get back to your father. I can feel him searching for you, and we don't want him to be worried, now do we ?"
She gasped. "Right ! Goodbye, Miss !"
"Goodbye, dear. Oh, and one last thing : don't tell Ciaphas we talked, alright ? I want to tell him myself the next time we meet."
"Oh, uh, sure !"
Then she ran out of the room. Like Miss Emeli had said, Daddy was looking for her, and looked very relieved when he saw her. When he asked where she'd been, Zerayah told him she'd gone looking at the exhibits, which wasn't a lie, so it was alright !
Besides, Miss Emeli loved Daddy, so doing what she'd told her couldn't be bad, right ?
When Zerayah was six years old, she was formally introduced to the rest of the planet. By then, her accelerated growth had finally stabilized, leaving her looking ten years older than she actually was. She wore her black hair long and unbound, reaching to the small of her back, while wearing a purple dress that matched the color of her eyes – the color she first remembered them being, and which she'd kept in all her public appearances.
She wore a short dagger at her waist, which despite its ornate look was still very much a lethal weapon. It had taken a lot of convincing, but in the end Daddy'd agreed to let her get some training with Malicia so that she could defend herself without having to fall back on her unique abilities (she was training those too, but in a more discreet location, and with Uncle Jurgen's constant supervision).
Her nameday celebration was a large event, accompanied by celebrations across the planet (though as Daddy had half-jokingly told her, while the people of Slawkenberg undoubtedly loved her, they would also use any excuse to throw a party). Daddy gave a speech, she unwrapped a lot of presents from everyone, and then it was time to eat good food and drink fruit juices and other non-alcoholic beverages, listen to the music, and talk with people.
People like Father Anthony, who was looking very out of place in his priestly garments with the symbol of the aquila embroidered on the cloth. The Liberator's Confessor, Zerayah'd heard him called. He didn't have any official role in the Liberation Council, but was effectively the leader of the Emperor-worshippers on Slawkenberg by virtue of his proximity to Daddy, and the one who brought their concerns to him.
"Hello, Father," she greeted him.
"Ah, hello, Miss Zerayah. Happy nameday. I hope you're enjoying yourself ?"
"I am. Can we talk in private ? I have something I'd like to ask you."
He raised an eyebrow in surprise, before nodding. "Of course. I'm always at your father's and yours disposal."
The two of them moved to a small balcony. After taking a moment to center herself, Zerayah asked :
"Do you think the Emperor hates me ?"
"Well, I have heard a lot about you from your father, miss," replied the old priest after a small pause as he considered her question. "And while he isn't exactly unbiased, nothing the Liberator's told me makes me think He would disapprove of you."
"Even though I'm a mutant ?" she pressed. Daddy had told her how dangerous revealing her full capabilities would be, but saying that much was fine : everyone on Slawkenberg had seen the vid of Daddy carrying her out of the collapsing lair, and could see how fast she had grown since.
"Oh, I have no doubt my old superiors would want you burned at the pyre," he scoffed, waving a hand dismissively. "But, if you'll pardon my language, they can all go suck a goat's tits. You are here, alive, loved and loving, and unless I'm gravely mistaken about your character, you live in accordance with your father's laws regarding the treatment of others. I think the Emperor has more important things to worry about than one young girl who isn't hurting anyone."
Zerayah smiled. Sure, Anthony didn't know the truth about her nature, but she couldn't help but think he had a point. Even Daddy, on those rare occasions when he spoke with her about religion, had told her he'd always thought the Emperor had better things to do than keep an eye on everyone in the galaxy.
Not many people on Slawkenberg believed in the Emperor's divinity these days, but Daddy was very insistent that He was real, and so were Auntie Krystabel and Uncle Jafar, even if they didn't like Him and thought about Him in a very different way Father Anthony did. As long as she didn't become a threat to the Imperium, He would probably leave her alone.
Of course, like Daddy had warned her, just because the Emperor didn't want something didn't mean the Imperials wouldn't do it anyway.
"Thank you, Father," she told old priest.
"Anytime, my dear. And speaking of having better things to do, don't you think you should enjoy your party rather than spend time talking to an old man like me ?"
"You're right," Zerayah decided. With one final nod, she turned back to the rest of the room, determined to drag Daddy into a dance with her.
As the celebrations for Zerayah's nameday died down, I withdrew to my quarters. There, sat on my favorite chair, I watched the sun set over the planetary capital while nursing the half-glass of amasec that, much to my chagrin, would be my only drink for the evening.
I had been forced to cut down on my drinking in recent years, though Gods knew my position hadn't become any less stressful. There hadn't been any new large-scale military deployments since the Cleansing of Skitterfall (although given the reports I was getting from the shipyards in Adumbria, it was only a matter of time before I couldn't hold the rest of the Council back), but Slawkenberg itself had provided plenty of opportunity for Fate to attempt to catch up with me in the last six years.
There had been the incident with the Crèche for the Gifted, the corner of the Liberation Palace reserved for Slawkenberg's psyker children, where they were trained to control their abilities and where those of their parents willing to move lived as well. Despite the wards put in place precisely to prevent this, one of the youngest children had been possessed by a minor daemon of Nurgle while I was visiting. I'd barely managed to keep Malicia from killing a five-years old in front of the pictcasters, which had left me dodging projectile vomit which had eaten right through the floor and walls for a good five minutes, before the cult magi had arrived and performed an exorcism ritual that had sent the fiend back to the Warp without harming the child.
Then there'd been the 'live demonstration' of one of the borgs' pet project : a fully automated combat unit, based on the industrial automaton STC design we'd recovered aboard Emeli's Gift. No sooner had it finished destroying the dummies arranged before it for the demonstration that it had turned its autocannons on the observers' lounge, having identified everyone inside as enemies. If not for my paranoia and quick reflexes, that single robot would've killed half the Liberation Council in one fell swoop, and most importantly me among them. Needless to say, the borg in question had been thoroughly shamed by his peers : last I'd heard, he was doing maintenance on Cainopolis' sewage system, and was likely to remain there for the foreseeable future.
Even something as innocuous as the premiere of the latest holo supposedly based on my 'exploits' had proven unsafe – and not just because of how painful it always was to watch such blatant propaganda, which apparently the plebs just couldn't get enough of. That particular piece had been based on and named after the Cleansing of Skitterfall, a sequel to Faith and Duty, which was all about my confrontation with Karamazov aboard the mad Inquisitor's flagship, and Against Alien Foes, which covered the double Ork-Drukhari incursion.
(I could only give thanks to the Emperor that, in the later case, I'd managed to nick the idea of adding a romantic sub-plot between me and Malicia before my bloodward heard of it, though the fact I'd been forced to let the screenwriters add not-so-subtle implications of one between my character and Inquisitor Vail's was only slightly less worrying.)
Despite my clear instructions, some moron on the Cleansing of Skitterfall's production team had thought it a good idea to acquire unscrubbed, original footage of the battle and incorporate it into some of the fighting scenes. At least the fool had been among the first to die when some of the Nurglite daemons projected before the audience had walked out of the projection field and started killing people.
On another occasion, I'd jumped on the chance to take a trip back to Adumbria on the five-years anniversary of the Cainite Protectorate's establishment. Leaving Zerayah without me for so long had been a difficult choice, but in the end the opportunity to get away from yet another celebration in my honor had been too much for me to resist at the time : I'd, quite reasonably, thought that any celebration thrown on Adumbria would be much smaller than what I'd seen the Handmaidens plan, what with the planet's economy still recovering from a Nurglite invasion and the complete severance of the trade routes that'd brought so much activity to the system.
In this, I'd been correct, even if the people of Adumbria had clearly done their best to welcome me, undoubtedly out of fear of what my reaction to any perceived slight might me – I was, after all, only the lesser evil in their eyes compared to the Infected. What I hadn't anticipated was the coup attempt of Vice-Queen Kasteen's second-in-command, Colonel Jenit Sulla, whose loyalty to the Golden Throne had driven her to try to kill me and Regina before ending her own life. Fortunately for everyone (and especially me), she'd made her move at the very same time a group of shadowy monstrosities (which Malicia had later identified as Mandrakes, natives of the same hellish city as the rest of her kind) had ambushed us.
By the time the last xenos assassins had been dispatched by my aide and bloodward while I cowered behind a large piece of furniture pretending to be looking after Regina's safety, Sulla'd been yet another victim of my inflated reputation, and had offered her life in apology for her treason – which, mindful of the glare Regina'd been sending my way, I'd refused, instead giving her some platitude about how she'd earn atonement for her honest mistake by continuing to serve the people of Adumbria to the best of her abilities.
Finally, there had been that time just two weeks ago, when I'd gone to attend the opening of Cainopolis' Great Zoological Garden, which gathered animals and plants from all across the planet and put them into artificial reconstructions of their natural habitats for the viewing pleasure of the plebs. I couldn't see the appeal myself, but the borgs and Tzeentchians had enjoyed the technical challenges, the Slaaneshi were desperate for ways to introduce the population to new experiences, and the Khornates had appreciated the opportunity to go hunt what passed for dangerous game on the vacation world.
I had been resting in a small room, checking my clothes were in order before giving yet another speech and cutting the symbolic ribbon which would signify the garden's opening, when a black-furred megafelid had emerged from the storage room where he'd been sleeping after sneaking out of his enclosure. I'd later learned that this particular beast had been brought to Slawkenberg as a 'pet' by one of the most decadent tourists, only to escape a few days before the Uprising had rendered his owner quite definitely incapable of caring for him, though the locals had promptly adopted him before sending him to the zoo.
The megafelid had been born in captivity and had never hunted for his food. More than that, since his prior owner wasn't terminally stupid, he'd been subjected to various procedures which had thoroughly neutered his predatory instincts. He was completely harmless, but at the time, I'd no idea of that fact. All I'd seen was a three-meters long, one-meter high mass of predatory muscles, and a jaw full of fangs that could tear me apart like paper, staring at me with golden eyes.
Acting on instinct, I had slowly walked out of the room, and the beast had followed me, all the way to the podium, where I'd forced myself to deliver my speech like everything was normal, lest the predator react to my fear and pounce on me. Obviously, given Jurgen and Malicia were both here, I had been safe from the moment I'd stepped outside, but that had still been quite the experience, and it had resulted in an otherwise bog-standard speech being broadcast to the entire planet while a megafelid wandered around stage, sniffing everything curiously.
At least it had done wonders for the zoo's attendance. Of course, no sooner had I returned home that I'd been jumped on by Zerayah who had asked to go see the 'big kitty' herself – which I was perfectly fine with – and whether she could bring him home with her – which I most certainly wasn't. Unfortunately, my ability to say 'no' to the weapon of mass destruction currently living as my adopted daughter hadn't really improved with time, which was why the cleaners of the Liberation Palace now had to deal with the shed fur of Zerayah's beloved Alcides, as she'd decided to name the inoffensive predator.
And those were only some of the misadventures which had happened to me since my return from Adumbria. Combined with the daily stresses of keeping a planetary government run by faithless heretics functioning, I really would've appreciated being able to find relief at the bottom of a glass.
It was just that, with how little free time my duties left me with, I had to spend most of it in Zerayah's company, making sure she grew up as well-adjusted as possible and didn't decide to kill everyone on Slawkenberg and then in the Damocles Gulf one day. And drinking in her presence would hardly have fitted the image of a caring parent I was trying very hard to project, not accounting for the fact that the very idea of a drunk Zerayah was utterly terrifying (of course, she probably couldn't get drunk to begin with, but I wasn't going to risk it).
I was considering finishing my drink and going to bed when, after a respectful knock on the door to announce his entrance, Jurgen came in.
"Beg your pardon, sir, but there's something I would like to talk to you about. It's about the young miss," he added, meaning Zerayah. For all that she called him 'Uncle Jurgen', my aide had steadfastly refused to address her with any other term but what he believed protocol demanded.
"What ?" I asked him, immediately alarmed. "Is something wrong ? Has something happened to her at the party ?"
"No, nothing of the sort," he reassured me. The fact that even he, who spent more time near me than anyone else besides Malicia (but she was a pain-devouring xenos and so didn't count) had bought my act as Zerayah's loving father was quite heartening. "I was just thinking, isn't it time for her to get out of the Palace more ?"
"What do you mean ?" I asked, puzzled. Zerayah left the Palace quite often, either accompanying me on trips across Slawkenberg or to visit places on her own (well, without me : she was always accompanied by a solid escort and either Jurgen or another high-ranking member of the Liberation Council's bureaucracy whom I felt could be trusted with her for several hours without my direct supervision).
"I mean that everyone the young miss has interacted with in her life has seen her as your daughter first, and her own person second," my aide explained. "Getting to mingle with other people her own age – well, her own mental age, you know what I mean – can only be good for her. And there're plenty of schools or universities she'd fit right in now."
"She wouldn't be able to simply 'mingle' outside the Palace either," I pointed out. "Everyone would know she is my daughter …"
I trailed off. Jurgen was staring patiently at me, and I suddenly realized why. Of course. Zerayah could easily change her appearance so that nobody would link her to her official identity, and I could get a fake name and background for her with a simple vox-call to Jafar.
"I see your point," I conceded. "But I worry."
Specifically, I worried some idiotic juvie would try to play an ill-thought prank on her, and she'd respond by devouring them alive in front of her entire class. But there was no need to say to Jurgen.
"Of course you do, sir," he nodded, clearly indulging me. "But you can't keep her close forever. She needs to step outside her childhood home, big as hers might be."
He was right, I realized. Trying to restrain Zerayah's activities overmuch could only end badly, as the murdered shades of countless Assassinorum's agents working on the Maerorus Temple could attest. Even a gilded cage was still a cage, and could breed resentment in its captive.
And I most definitely didn't want Zerayah to resent me. An ordinary teenage girl's resentment, I could have dealt with easily, but this was Zerayah, whose mother had been one stroke of luck away from depopulating an entire Segmentum.
"I'll talk with her about it tomorrow," I promised Jurgen. "If she agrees, I'll ask Jafar to help set it up."
I had, at the time, no idea of how much more stress this decision would end up causing me, but looking back I cannot say I wouldn't do it again if I had the chance.
"What do you mean, you didn't find anything ?"
Inquisitor Tannenburg of the Ordo Hereticus wasn't used to failure from his underlings. Unlike some of his peers, this wasn't because he always punished it by death : he was experienced enough to realize that sometimes, failure was inevitable, and that killing his own servants would make the others more likely to lie to him or conceal vital information out of self-preservation.
That didn't mean he never executed his subordinates, though, and right now, he definitely felt the urge to do so. His Interrogator, currently standing on the other side of his desk within his office, clearly realized that, as he hurried to explain :
"We found the Schola in which Cain was raised without issue, lord. Following the parchment trail from the ship which brought him to Slawkenberg was easy, if time-consuming. And once we'd found the Schola, we were able to interrogate its faculty and confirm that this was indeed the institution which hosted Cain from childhood to his graduation as a Commissar."
"And did you find any sign of corruption or incompetence within the Schola itself ?" asked Tannenburg. "I find it difficult to believe none of the instructors noticed anything wrong about this heretic."
"The records of Cain's time in the Schola were made available to us, and we were able to confirm they hadn't been tempered with," continued the Interrogator. "There was nothing remarkable about them. Cain was a middling student, except for a talent in swordsmanship that was noted by his melee instructor, and a completely clean discipline record."
Which, in itself, was suspicious, as Tannenburg still remembered enough of what it was like to be a juvie to know that a clean record was more evidence of a great ability to not get caught than a complete purity of spirit. As for Cain's talent for swordsmanship, that much had been demonstrated when he'd killed Karamazov.
"We made sure to investigate the entire faculty, but found no sign of heresy whatsoever," said the Interrogator. "They were all as faithful and devoted to the God-Emperor as one might expect from people chosen to join the Schola Progenium."
"Which means that Cain's corruption both preceded his joining the Schola, and was subtle enough to elude them," said Tannenburg. "Making finding out where he came from even more important, and your failure all the more severe."
The Interrogator quailed under the Inquisitor's glare. However, he hadn't reached his current rank in Tannenburg's organization by being faint of heart, and he rallied quickly enough (which left the Witch-Hunter reluctantly impressed).
"The parchment trail ends at the Schola, lord. Cain was brought in one day with another shipment of orphans. The records say his parents died in the Imperial Guard, and his old teachers told us he sometimes made comments about having been born in a underhive, but nothing else. Given the reprogramming all Schola students go through to erase past ties, they thought nothing of it."
"Someone must have brought Cain to the Schola," insisted Tannenburg. "And they must know where he came from."
"The ship in question was lost to the Warp with all hands years before Cain's graduation," explained the Interrogator, "and it was responsible for collecting suitable orphans from half a dozen Sectors. Without more information to tighten our search area, it would be the work of decades to find more, if not centuries."
"I see," murmured Tannenburg. "Very well. Leave me and go rest. I will consider what you've told me, and summon you when I've a new assignment for you and your team."
The Interrogator bowed deeply, trying and failing to hide the relief he felt at being dismissed, and promptly departed, leaving Tannenburg alone with his thoughts.
Given what he knew of the Administratum's record-keeping, the youngster's estimation was likely on the optimistic side. He didn't doubt that the name of Cain's homeworld was recorded somewhere within the massive data-stacks of the Imperium's scribes, and that with enough time and resources, it could be found. The question was, would it be worth the effort ?
The rest of the Concilium Ravus still thought of Slawkenberg's rebellion as a minor issue compared to the greater threats to the Damocles Gulf. For a time, Tannenburg had agreed with them, though it had rankled to allow any blemish upon His divine dominion to linger. But when he'd learned that Inquisitor Vail had returned from her mysterious journey to that renegade world sixteen years ago with no less a prize than a long-lost STC of incredible potential in her possession, the Witch-Hunter had reconsidered his position.
Then, he'd received word from his diviners that the Adumbria system, which had been quarantined and declared Perditia after a virulent Warp plague had taken root among its population, had been rescued from certain doom by none other than Cain. No doubt he'd used his own Panacea to deal with the issue, and the people of Adumbria, knowing the Imperium had turned its back on them, had then been easy marks for someone as charismatic as the arch-heretic of Slawkenberg to manipulate into joining his so-called 'Cainite Protectorate'. The only question was whether Cain had just taken advantage of an opportunity, or had orchestrated the plague in the first place.
At least Inquisitor Vail's ongoing efforts to spread the use of the Panacea throughout the Sector and beyond would neutralize that diplomatic tool, Tannenburg reflected. Clearly the young woman had learned of Adumbria's unlikely salvation, and accelerated her plans in response to ensure the taint of Slawkenberg's heresy was contained while the Imperium dealt with more pressing threats. However, the Witch-Hunter was more and more convinced than letting the Protectorate alone was a mistake – but he needed more information before committing his own, ever-stretched thin assets.
Hence why he'd dispatched a team of Acolytes to investigate the past of Slawkenberg's so-called 'Liberator'. To be completely honest, it had been a minor errand, something he'd ordered out of curiosity and because the team in question needed some time to recover from a far more dangerous assignment hunting witches in a hive-city which had left a quarter of their number dead and the rest in various states of injury.
Tannenburg didn't believe for a moment that the loss of the ship which had brought Cain to the Schola Progenium was a coincidence. Of course, Cain himself would've been far too young at the time to arrange for it to happen, which meant there had to be some figure or cabal behind his sudden rise to heretical power on Slawkenberg, manipulating events from the shadows.
The list of potential suspects was too long to bother naming – the Eldar, the Traitor Legions, any of the subtler Daemons of Chaos, countless cults which continued to plague the Imperium despite the best efforts of his Ordo … Anyone of them could be responsible for erasing the trail of their pawn. And trying to find that trail again would only cost him more resources he didn't have to spare, with very little to gain from it. Cain's origins, while interesting, were not nearly as important as what he was doing right now : leading a successful rebellion against the Imperium of Man, one which had already spread its heretical ideology to another world.
This, the Inquisitor decided, had to stop. Fortunately, if Cain was as important to the entire Slawkenberg heresy as he appeared, then the solution was obvious. Tannenburg pressed a series of runes on the communicator built into his desk, then waited for a few seconds until the light indicating a secure link had been established :
"Get ready, agent," he declared, "I have a new mission for you."
Notes:
Me : "Alright, time to write another chapter of this fun, crack comedy of mine, this time with Cain having to deal with a superpowered biological weapon of mass destruction as a daughter. Let's see what fun shenanigans the Muse will inspire."
Cain : "Father, I need help. I'm struggling with nightmares of the monster I might become."
Zerayah : "Daddy, where is Mommy ?"
Me : "FRAK"
So yeah, this chapter ended up being a bit more emotionally loaded than I expected. And the Halloween Omake can now be considered canon (insofar as Cain has nightmares like that).
Alcides is another "Eff you, Nurgle" character, though don't expect to see much of him again in the future. I based him on a beloved family pet who died of cancer a couple of years ago. He was just as adorable, harmless and dumb as his story counterpart. And yes, I am going to make Nurgle pay for that in this story as well. I am that petty, and we are all in agreement that the Bloated Bastard deserves it and much, much worse anyways.
Finally, regarding the agent Tannenburg will be sending to Slawkenberg to "take care of the situation" : my initial pick was a character from the very first Rogue Trader Warhammer 40000 book, which was published decades ago, but I hadn't noticed she's got polymorphine in her gear and I've other plans for a Callidus Assassin to appear later in the story. I hesitated between making an expy of Agent 47 or Teatime from Discworld, but couldn't make up my mind, so I'm no looking for suggestions (keep in mind that character is most likely not going to survive, unless the Muse decides otherwise).
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter and look forward to your thoughts, reactions, and ideas for further ways in which to torment - sorry, bring everlasting glory upon the Liberator.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 22: Chapter 21
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
At the edge of the Slawkenberg system, the barrier between Materium and Immaterium shimmered and cracked, letting a single, tiny craft pass through. So small was the vessel, and so smooth its transition, that the pulse of Warp energy was barely registered by the various devices monitoring the Mandeville Point to keep watch for intruders – and even that was well within the margin of error.
The vessel was an ancient and priceless relic. While clearly of human design, it was a remnant from the Dark Age of Technology that the Inquisitor's tech-priests only managed to keep in working condition through great effort and at considerable expense. Less than ten meters in length, the Ineluctable Law could navigate the Warp without the guidance of a Navigator, sail through a planet's atmosphere, and its stealth technology could elude the most sensitive of detection networks available to Mankind in the current age.
Most of the scant few such ships in the Imperium were reserved to the use of the Officio Assassinorum, but Inquisitor Tannenburg had acquired this one decades ago, following a violent conflict with another Inquisitor which had ended in the woman's death and the seizure of all her remaining assets by the Witch-Hunter. Since then, Tannenburg had made great use of it as a mean of delivering his operatives in enemy territory – and as an Inquisitor, his definition of 'enemy' was quite wide.
At present, the pilot and sole passenger of the Ineluctable Law was Agent Orion, one of Inquisitor's Tannenburg's many pawns in his endless struggle to keep the Imperium free of heresy. In the twenty years and dozens of missions Orion had served the Inquisitor, this was only the fourth time he was deployed using the Ineluctable Law.
This time, the gunship had been brought to a nearby system by a vessel whose captain was in Tannenburg's pocket before making the last leg of the journey to Slawkenberg on its own. The days spent in the Warp, with only the Ineluctable Law's meagre Geller Field standing between Orion and damnation, had been far from pleasant, but Orion was used to discomfort.
When Tannenburg had wiped out the Coven of the Red Moon, it had numbered forty-five psykers. Orion had been one of the candidates for number forty-six, born and raised within the Coven's facilities, where he'd been subjected to endless rounds of testing and training.
Out of the hundreds of young children the Coven had stolen from the streets of the hive-world they'd sought to enslave to their sorcerous whims, Orion had been one of the most talented. Compared to some of the Coven's higher-ups, his talents were minor, but he'd a knack for using them to their fullest extent when it came to the bloody art of assassination. A minor precognition power let him know precisely what to do in order to arrange seemingly impossible accidents, while a weak telepathic gift let him blur other people's perceptions, making even the most rudimentary of disguises enough to let him wander in restricted areas.
At the Coven's orders, Orion'd killed dozens of people, never asking why his targets needed to die in order to further his masters' goals. Then Inquisitor Tannenburg had come, and brought sword and fire to the Coven of the Red Moon, hunting down each and every one of its forty-five members, along with hundreds of their servants. But Orion, along with a handful of others, had been spared.
In truth, Orion hated killing and always had, no matter how good at it he might be. But Inquisitor Tannenburg'd told him that the only way he could earn the Emperor's forgiveness for his unclean existence was by doing His work, and the only way he could do so was by putting the very talents that marked him as unclean to His service.
At the very least, Orion'd always done everything he could to ensure only his target perished on each of his assignments, by engineering various accidents to eliminate them instead of resorting to brute force. Unfortunately, this had only led Tannenburg to regard his skills highly, resulting in Orion being sent on even more missions, forcing him to stain his hands with more and more blood.
He was so tired of it all. But he couldn't stop. Lord Tannenburg – the Emperor wouldn't allow it.
With a deep sigh, he set the Ineluctable Law on a course to land in one of the least populated regions of Slawkenberg, and prepared to spend the next couple of weeks drifting in the cold void, listening in on the heretics' transmissions and building up a picture of the situation on the planet he could use for his infiltration.
From the hidden spot where the Ineluctable Law had landed, Orion made his way on foot to the nearest settlement. He was dressed in the kind of ordinary clothing that wouldn't draw any second look on any number of Imperial worlds, and his psychic ability to blend in ensured he was able to slip into the small farming community without anyone the wiser.
Obtaining enough local currency for his needs was a simple task. He could have just stolen it, of course, but he wanted to avoid doing anything which might draw attention at this stage of his infiltration, especially since crime tended to be very noticeable in such small communities.
Instead, he found a pawnshop to sell the jewellery he'd brought along with him was easy, and subtly convinced its owner that he'd obtained the jewellery in question during the rebellion, and had recently fallen on hard times forcing him to sell them. From there, securing passage to the capital was as simple as buying a ticket on the first train to the arrogantly-named city of Cainopolis.
There, he was able to begin his investigation properly.
It immediately became obvious that the heretical coalition which had claimed Slawkenberg was nothing like the cults of Chaos Orion had infiltrated before. There were no human sacrifices, no constant hunt for those who still served the God-Emperor : even the anti-Imperial propaganda was mild in comparison to some of the blasphemies the assassin'd heard in the past. There were no calls to slaughter all the followers of the Golden Throne : instead, the average citizen's opinion was that they ought to spread the Liberation to other worlds in order to help these faithful worshippers of the God-Emperor by freeing them from the Imperium's oppression.
The fact that the Imperial Creed hadn't been outlawed and was still practiced by a small portion of the population, even within the capital itself, was even more baffling. Inquisitor Tannenburg had warned Orion that the Cainite heresy was more pernicious than most he'd encountered before, and now the assassin could see the truth of it with his own eyes.
The people of Slawkenberg didn't spend their days praying to the Dark Gods or building monuments out of skulls : instead, they enjoyed lives more comfortable and peaceful than those of most Imperial citizens Orion had ever encountered. Illegal activity was practically non-existent : most crime pre-rebellion had either been endorsed by the Giorbas (and had thus promptly and bloodily ended after the Uprising), or had been controlled by the very groups that now composed the planetary government.
His investigation had also revealed that the United Slawkenberg Army was almost comically small by the standards of the Imperium : he wouldn't have thought it capable of defending half the planet. And yet, they had successfully repelled the first attempt at reclaiming the planet, defeated two simultaneous xenos raids, and purged Adumbria Prime of the Warp-born contagion which had resulted in the system's interdiction.
This made Orion's mission more important than ever.
Fortunately, the local print-sheets were obsessed with Cain the Liberator. Of course, with how little intelligence Orion'd to work with, separating propaganda from fact was difficult, but there were still nuggets of useful information to be found. One of the most obvious ones was that the traitor Commissar was undeniably the lynchpin of the entire Protectorate. While the various cults he'd unified before the Uprising had yet to come to blows, Orion could read between the lines well enough to realize there was still a lot of underlying tension, kept from blowing up into full-scale warfare only by the supreme authority of the Liberator.
It was true that, now that Cain apparently had an adopted daughter, the Liberation Council could technically replace Cain with her as a figurehead, but while Zerayah Cain was clearly no ordinary child (since she'd apparently grown up from infancy to near-adulthood in a mere six years), Orion doubted she had the same charisma and political instinct her father possessed.
Reading through the records of past years, Orion couldn't help but wonder whether another assassin had been sent to Slawkenberg before him. The sheer number of brushes with death Cain had encountered defied reason : it had to be the work of one or more assassins. Had Tannenburg dispatched someone else and neglected to inform Orion ? Or perhaps this was instead the work of some other Imperial faction, or even just typical infighting among the servants of Chaos.
Regardless, Orion's mission remained the same. Killing Cain would be a challenge, that much was certain. Not only was he accompanied everywhere by his aide, whose psychic powers far surpassed Orion's own meagre talents, but his life was safeguarded by a xenos female warrior as well. Orion recognized the latter as a Dark Eldar Wych, and while he'd never killed on himself, Tannenburg's files were quite clear that even someone like him couldn't hope to match her skills.
Direct confrontation, something Orion already preferred to avoid in any case, was thus straight out : even if he was willing to sacrifice his life, it wouldn't be enough to guarantee success. No, this would require subtlety, and a lot of research and planning. His psychic gifts were a great help in such matters, but they still required him to put in the effort, and he had a feeling this particular job would be the most difficult of his entire career so far.
In this, Orion would soon come to realize, he was entirely correct.
The Nails still weren't biting. Even now, after nearly seven standard years of being free from their pounding (and yes, he was counting the days, he couldn't help himself, even if he knew it wasn't healthy), Hektor still found himself on the verge of tears at that realization from time to time.
At first, when he'd arrived on Slawkenberg, the borgs had looked into removing the implants completely, but had soon concluded that it was too dangerous. The human brain was a very delicate thing, and how exactly the Panacea dealt with damage to that organ was still unclear (from what Hektor understood, Slawkenberg hadn't exactly had a surplus of older people with 'natural' brain degeneration to test the effects of the wonder cure on).
Given that regular doses of Panacea were enough to suppress the Nails and how available the stuff was on the Protectorate's core world, the World Eater had agreed with Basileus-Zeta's suggestion that they don't try to fix what wasn't broken. The improvised injection collar had been replaced by a more dignified pair of vambraces he wore under his warplate, which itself was a suit of power armor custom-made to fit his transhuman physique and was painted in the same scarlet as the rest of the USA.
The last years had been … relaxing, for lack of a better word. In truth, Hektor couldn't remember a time where he'd been as happy as he was now. Theoretically, his childhood before being inducted into the ranks of the Twelfth Legion might have been it, but even after years under the constant effects of the Panacea, those memories remained lost to him – which, given the typical recruits of the World Eaters, was probably for the best.
Since his arrival on Slawkenberg, the former Ravager had been attached to the United Slawkenberg Army as an advisor, though he didn't have an official rank. Technically, this role was similar to the one he'd held within the Ravagers : then, too, his purpose had been to instruct the mortal followers of the Blood God, pointing them toward the enemy and leading from the front. But, of course, the two couldn't have been more different – for starters, he actually hadn't killed another human being since … well, given that the Infected probably didn't count, the journey to Adumbria.
Apart from training with the soldiers, he'd also spent many hours talking with the USA's officers, discussing battles that, with his brain freed of the Nails, he could now remember with the eidetic memory of any Space Marine. For all that the common trooper's equipment, physical and martial performance were of incredible quality, the colonels of the USA were distressingly lacking in practical experience leading their forces in large numbers.
Numerous large-scale exercises had been orchestrated to correct this, with thousands of USA soldiers battling each other, wearing their full gear and using training weapons. By going through Hektor's recollections, the strategists of the USA had been able to recreate a wide variety of combat scenarios, ranging from the relatively ordinary to some truly bizarre engagements the World Eater had fought in the Eye of Terror.
Admittedly, it was unlikely the troopers would ever have to fight anything like the latter, but as Cain himself had pointed out, it was at least good to teach them to improvise and adapt to unforeseen circumstances – even if only partially recreating the conditions of a daemon world had still given the borgs a massive headache.
And today, the latest of these exercises was taking place. The fact that none other than the Liberator himself had taken the time to leave Cainopolis and come witness the exercise meant that everyone involved was even more motivated than usual.
To Hektor's mild embarrassment, however, he wasn't going to participate in the exercise any longer. Within five minutes of the starting mark, a particularly enterprising (or lucky, but luck had its place on the battlefield, as he knew very well) squad of the opposing force had managed to get the drop on him and tag him as eliminated. It had been a one-in-a-million shot which had taken him out, but one of the lessons Hektor had learned during his long life was that sooner or later, even a long shot became a statistical certainty.
The soldiers in question would no doubt have their evaluation suitably raised for such an impressive deed, but in the meantime, Hektor had found his way to the observers' lounge, where Cain and his entourage were watching the proceedings. It was located above the maze of ruined buildings which served as the environment for the exercise, at the top of a rockrete tower rising on the edge of what, to Hektor's understanding, had been a hotel complex for off-world tourists before the Uprising, but had since gone through several cycles of rebuilding by the USA builders.
Cain greeted Hektor the moment he entered the lounge, making no mention of his embarrassing defeat, for which the World Eater was grateful. Of course, not many people would dare to talk about it in front of him – even after seven years of peacetime, he was still a transhuman warrior whose every movement exuded threat – but if anyone could've expected to get away with it, it would've been the Liberator.
"And how is Miss Zerayah doing ?" Hektor asked after they'd exchanged greetings.
"She's doing well," replied Cain with a fond smile. "Very busy with her studies right now; her finals are coming up."
"Oh, that's good to hear. I'm sure she'll do fine – she is a very driven girl."
From time to time, when he visited the Liberation Palace, Hektor had been asked to help with the training of the Liberator's daughter. The World Eater was part of the small group who'd been told of her true origins, and Cain had judged it necessary for his daughter to learn how to act should she come face to face with an Astartes, so as to avoid sharing her progenitor's fate.
Sparring with Zerayah had been a rare experience. In his millennia of life, Hektor had fought all manner of xenos, mutants, daemons, and more of his own kind than he cared to remember, but the Liberator's adopted daughter was unlike any of them. From what Hektor understood, she was always holding back from using her unique abilities to their fullest extent, yet even with these restrictions, she was a true terror in battle. Her strength, agility and endurance far surpassed what someone of her build should be capable of, and her reflexes were even sharper than Hektor's.
If not for his vastly superior experience, the World Eater would have had the humiliating experience of being defeated by a six-years old child. As it was, their sparring sessions were the greatest challenges he had in centuries, and he'd been forced to intensify his own training in order to keep up with Cain's prodigy daughter.
Part of Hektor was still baffled that Cain was simply letting Zerayah live a normal life – well, as normal as the Liberator's daughter could. Even a simple battle-brother of the line like him could see that Legienstrasse's heir had the potential of turning the Protectorate into an unstoppable force. The risks of such a course of action were obvious, yes, but from Hektor's experience not many leaders had the strength of will to resist the temptation of such power. His best theory was that Cain genuinely loved the girl, and refused to do anything like what the Imperium had done to her mother.
Given Hektor's experience with his own transhuman demigod parent, the World Eater couldn't help but feel slightly envious of Zerayah.
"I think one of the squads is about to make its move," commented Cain, pulling Hektor out of his contemplation. "Could you pass me one of the binoculars, please ?"
"Of course," said Hektor, moving to pick up one of the devices from a basket where a bunch of them had been placed for use by the observers. However, he miscalculated the amount of strength he'd put in his grip, and the device shattered between his armored fingers.
Cain looked at him, amused. "Shall I tell the borgs to reset the counter ?"
"Yes, please," muttered Hektor, mortified, before carefully picking up another pair and handing it over to the Liberator.
The renegade tech-priests had done their best to make sure the equipment he used in his day-to-day life was capable of withstanding his strength, but these binoculars had obviously been made for baseline humans. He was trying to get better at fine motion control, which was not exactly something he'd needed since the Horus Heresy. The only kind of delicate work he'd needed to perform had been what little maintenance of his equipment he could still do with the Nails tearing his sanity apart, and it'd obviously been designed for Astartes use.
After the umpteenth time he'd accidentally broken something, one of the borgs had come up with the idea of a counter measuring the time since he'd last lost control of his own strength. Whether as a joke or as a genuine attempt to help him, Hektor still wasn't certain. He was getting better at it, though, even if his current streak had just been ruined.
Oh well, he thought, returning his focus to the exercise taking place below. He had plenty of time to learn.
Sixteen years.
For sixteen years now, Malicia Mortalyss had been forced to serve as bloodward to a mon-keigh, under the threat of her soul being ripped from her body by one of She-Who-Thirsts' greatest minions. Once, she'd been the Third Succubus of the Tainted Kiss, a Wych whose name had been on the lips of thousands of Drukhari attending the arenas of the Dark City.
Now, she was surrounded by inferior creatures, many of whom had pledged themselves to the Primordial Annihilator, heedless of the risks. And yet, despite this, she hadn't had the chance to torture anyone, as her employer frowned upon such methods, calling them 'inefficient' – as if efficiency had anything to do with it !
At least she didn't need to worry that the mon-keigh around her would try to kill her. Those who weren't outright terrified of her still held some modicum of respect for her position. Not nearly as much as they should, of course – that would've required them to press their forehead to the ground and beg for her mercy whenever she walked by them – but enough that they wouldn't try to remove her from their leader's side.
Not that she wanted to stay near that depraved mon-keigh's, of course. She just didn't have a choice. Without her, he was sure to get himself killed, which would only be what he deserved – but since it'd also mean the termination of her 'employment', she simply had to stay near him at all times.
Which included following him as he graced yet another drab factory with his presence, to make the pathetic little men who worked there feel like they mattered in the grand scheme of things. She'd no idea why he even bothered : the people of Slawkenberg worshipped him already. Perhaps he enjoyed basking in the sincere praise of his inferiors ? His mind was certainly perverse enough for that to be the case.
This particular factory was building gear for the local mon-keigh army. Weaponsmiths were among the few castes of Commoragh which enjoyed, if not immunity from the deadly games of intrigue that wracked the Dark City, then a certain amount of protection from them due to how important their work was to keeping the flow of slaves running. But among the Drukhari, weaponsmiths were artists : no true Kabalite would go raid wielding mass-produced garbage like what the assembly lines of Slawkenberg were churning out.
It was efficient, yes, but soulless. The workers here didn't even get to touch the weapons except for random testing : they just monitored and maintained the machines that did the actual work. And they didn't even test the weapons on slaves, just lifeless mannequins ! How could you know how good a weapon was at killing unless you let it kill someone ? Simply disgraceful.
A sudden motion among the crowd drew her attention. One of the workers had stepped out of line, falling to his knees. Before the clumsy mon-keigh could get to his feet, her blade was under his throat, ready to decapitate him the moment he showed any sign of aggression.
"Get back !" she barked, her armor's speaker immediately translating her words into the base language of the primates around her. The fact that she'd had to ask Cain to tell the borgs to install the device into the suit after her initial request for it had been rejected was yet another humiliation added to the unending list.
The man looked up at her, terror written plain in his gaze. For a brief moment, Malicia relished the sight.
"Malicia," chided – chided ! the indignity ! – Cain. "Leave the poor man alone, would you ?"
She clicked her tongue and stepped back.
Cain never threatened her, nor did he punish her. He didn't need to, and that was the worst (well, the second worst, the worst was bearing the soul-brand of a Daemon Princess of She-Who-Thirsts) of it. Punishing a subordinate meant that you had to put them in their place, which meant that they were a threat. But Cain didn't even see Malicia as a threat : he was confident that she'd been tamed, like an animal made to do tricks for its owner in exchange for being given treats (being spared from the Thirst) and being kept from the stick (her soul's eternal damnation in the Silver Palace).
He would pay for it. One day. This, Malicia swore. She didn't know how, or when, but he would pay for the dishonor he'd inflicted upon her.
One day.
Ferik Jurgen walked through the corridors of the Liberation Palace, a stack of data-slates under his arm. There had been some new developments with the building of the new underwater power plant in the southern ocean, and Cain'd asked to be kept informed of anything going on with the borgs' latest mega-project.
As he knocked and entered the office, he nodded to Mortalyss, who was leaning against a wall and inspecting her blades. He didn't like her and she didn't like him, but politeness cost nothing, as his ma used to say. Besides, she might be a soul-sucking xenos who was compelled to protecting the Liberator by sorcery and the constant threat of damnation, but she was good at her job.
"Sir ? I've got some new files for you."
"Hmm ?" The Liberator raised his head from the data-slate he'd been reading. "Oh, right. Put them here, I'll get to them once I'm done with this lot."
"Of course, sir."
Jurgen noticed that the trash can next to Cain's desk was almost full. He might as well take care of it while he was here. Without disturbing the Liberator any further, he picked it up (it was surprisingly heavy) and walked out of the office, before emptying its contents into the closest incinerator.
Due to how much paperwork was produced by the Protectorate, and the Liberation Council's aversion for the Administratum's inefficient parchment-heavy method of record-keeping, there were numerous chutes across the building leading to the central incinerator, so it wasn't much of a detour.
With that done, Jurgen started to make his way to the kitchens. The Liberator had looked rather exhausted : he could do with a snack to keep him up until dinner. The young miss had told Jurgen she'd made some new friends at school when he'd escorted her this morning, and planned to tell her father all about them tonight : he'd need to be awake to pay attention.
It really was inspiring, Jurgen mused, how the Liberator could manage leading the Protectorate into an era of unprecedented prosperity while also being such a caring and loving father for his adopted daughter.
Orion was on his knees, hands clapped before his face, head down before the large statue of the God-Emperor. It was the middle of the day, and the church was empty, all of its usual attendees being out working. Even so, Orion wouldn't normally have risked entering a public place like this, but he was nearing the end of his rope.
How ? How did it keep happening, again and again ?
His first attempt to kill the arch-heretic of Slawkenberg had consisted of infiltrating the logistic corps of the USA prior to a training exercise Cain was going to attend. By listening in on conversations, he'd been able to locate the crate of binoculars meant for the observation lounge, and his precognition had identified which pair the Liberator would pick up.
From there, it had been relatively easy to build a small bomb inside the device, set to detonate when someone pressed it against their eyes. From that distance, even a small explosion would be enough to kill – and while it'd be obvious it hadn't been an accident but an assassination, Orion had planned to be far away before his preparations reached fruition.
He didn't know why, but it hadn't worked. In fact, he had watched from a nearby bar as the training exercise proceeded without interruption, not even a mention of any incident in the observation lounge. Admittedly, it'd been a long shot : perhaps he'd messed up when assembling the finicky device.
The second attempt had required infiltrating one of the planet's weapon factories, with the corresponding security. Orion had disguised himself as a maintenance crew to get in. It was one of his favorite tricks : such individuals were typically beneath notice, while having unquestioned access to all but the most secure of locations. For some strange reason, the former wasn't true on Slawkenberg, but his psychic gifts had helped compensate for the unusual amount of attention someone in a janitor outfit received from the other workers, and he'd been able to sneak in and lay his trap. This time, he'd needed to take the risk of remaining on the scene to activate it, blending in the crowd of workers trying to catch a glimpse of the Liberator.
His finger had been on the button that would detonate the explosive charge he'd hidden under the floor while replacing a faulty electric cable when, suddenly, one of the other workers had slipped, stumbled out of the mass, and drawn the ire of Cain's xenos bloodward. Before Orion could get a good look at what was going on, Cain had wandered off the path Orion had predicted he would take to go deal with the situation. By the time it was done, the heretic leader had resumed his tour of the facility without getting close enough to the explosive that it'd be a sure kill. Orion had been forced to give up, and then spend an entire week working in the factory until an opportunity to remove the explosive presented itself (he couldn't risk it being discovered, as this mission was already difficult enough without people being alerted to an assassin's presence among them).
It had taken weeks of observation and planning, and no less than three different disguises to place the bomb inside Cain's office. With how many witches worked there, Orion had been forced to leave immediately, lest he be discovered and the scheme fall apart. He'd barely managed to stay out of Chief Clerk Jafar's sight on the way out, but he'd made it – and it had all been for nothing, as the bomb had never detonated, for reasons he'd most likely never learn.
Never before had his gift failed him so completely – on some occasions, he had failed to put things into place exactly as was required, but the fault had been his, not his gift's. Here, every time, he'd been able to put things into motion exactly in the way his precognition told him would lead to Cain's demise – and each time, he'd been thwarted.
He would have thought it the result of some gift of the Dark Gods, except Orion'd killed many of their champions before, ones who had displayed the favor of their infernal patrons much more openly than Cain. For all the influence he wielded, Cain himself appeared to be a perfectly ordinary if imposing specimen of Mankind. Obviously, the boons of damnation could be subtle – Inquisitor Tannenburg's work would've been much easier otherwise – but Orion couldn't help but wonder if the Liberator's ongoing survival wasn't due to divine protection from another source.
"You look troubled, my son."
Orion opened his eyes and looked at the old man wearing a simple ecclesiarchal robe approaching him. The assassin recognized him, of course : Father Anthony was a public figure, the unofficial leader of those still faithful to the God-Emperor on Slawkenberg.
"I know all those who come here by face if not by name, but I don't recognize you." Orion's body tensed, but the priest's next words made him relax : "I take it you've recently come to the capital, then ?"
"Yes," Orion admitted. "I came here for work."
The priest nodded. "Plenty of jobs here these days, that's for sure. So what's a strong fellow like yourself doing here at this hour ?"
"I … I am looking for His guidance, Father. I thought I knew what the Emperor expected from me," he said. "I spent my entire life doing it. But recent events have caused me to … reconsider that belief, and now I am lost and unsure what to do next."
"It is my personal belief that the Emperor loves us and wants us to be happy," began the Imperial preacher.
Did the Emperor want Orion to be happy ? He was unclean, a psyker born and raised by heretical deviants bent on enslaving Mankind to their whims. When he'd rescued him from the Coven of the Red Moon, Tannenburg had made it clear that his sole reason for doing so instead of executing him out of hand was that Orion might yet be of use to the Inquisitor, and through him to the God-Emperor.
"After all, if He didn't love us, why would He keep watch over us from His Golden Throne ?" Father Anthony continued. "So, if what you think He wants from you doesn't make you happy, then I think you try another path."
"Another path," repeated Orion. "What would that be ?"
"That is for you to decide, but maybe you can start with something as far from whatever it is you are doing right now that doesn't make you happy ?" Anthony suggested, and Orion wondered what the old, inoffensive-looking old priest thought of the tall bald man he'd found kneeling in his church.
That said, something completely different from what he was doing, huh ?
"Maybe I can do that," he muttered. "Thank you, Father."
"You're welcome, my son. Emperor's blessing be upon you."
Three days, a minor break-in and several quiet bribes later, Orion Rieper was registered into the data-banks of the Liberation Council as a citizen of Slawkenberg residing in the planetary capital.
After considering the options available to him, Orion decided to take up a job as a gardener, working on the various public parks spread out across Cainopolis. Once meant solely for the enjoyment of tourists, they had been converted for the use of the entire population, with families bringing their children to frolic in the grass and couples walking together amidst the fields of flowers.
The job's pay was more than sufficient for Orion's needs, and after so long spent killing, it was a joy to help things grow. To his surprise, his gifts were even helping him in this work, letting him know precisely what kind of work each plant needed to flourish.
Without Orion returning to it, the Ineluctable Law eventually flew off Slawkenberg on auto-pilot. In time, it would be recovered by Tannenburg's agents, who would check the contents of its data-banks and conclude Orion had died without accomplishing his mission. Perhaps, if the Inquisitor was in a good mood from the intelligence on the Cainite Protectorate's inner workings thus obtained, he'd even say a prayer for his lost assassin's soul.
One month after starting his new life, Orion was pruning a fruit tree growing in the middle of a field of white flowers, letting instinct guide each cut, when someone called out to him.
"Excuse me ? Are you the one who grew these flowers ?"
He looked down from the stepladder he was standing on, and saw a beautiful woman with hair colored silver.
"Ah, yes. I am the one charged with tending them, miss."
"Oh, good." The woman smiled, a sight that would've sent many to their knees in adoration. "I've been looking for you. My name is Artemis Suthanna; I'm a member of the Handmaidens."
Orion's instincts immediately reacted to the mention of the Slaaneshi cult. While the Handmaidens were mostly involved with running the various festivities and entertainment venues of Slawkenberg, it was obvious to anyone with any skill in these matters that they also ran part of the Liberation Council's counter-intelligence apparatus. Was this it ? Had they found out his origins ? The woman didn't look threatening, but that meant very little.
He was still holding his gardening tool. It was meant for cutting through plants, not flesh, but if he moved fast enough, he could maybe take her by surprise and dispatch her before she could react and unleash whatever sorcery was at her disposal. There were numerous witnesses around, but they were all civilians. He was confident he could make his way out of the garden, change his clothes, and disappear into the crowd –
"You see," she continued, either unaware of his nerves or deliberately ignoring them, "we've been trying to grow these flowers in the Academy's garden, but without any success. Could you tell me who you managed it ?"
Orion blinked, then looked around. He couldn't see anyone waiting in ambush. Was this a trap ? Now that he thought about it a bit more calmly, it seemed unlikely.
"Of course, miss," he replied, aware that the gardener he officially was would react to a Handmaiden's attention with a mix of awe and shyness. "Please give me a moment to finish what I'm doing, and I'll be happy to explain it to you."
Two hours later, Orion and Artemis were sitting at the terrace of a nearby café, discussing matters of soil composition, sun exposure, and proper watering. It was the first time Orion'd talked with someone for so long on something that didn't involve murder, and he found that he greatly enjoyed it. When they parted, Artemis insisted she pay for their drinks, and when Orion reflexively protested, she smiled, and said :
"How about this ? If you want to pay me back, then meet me again here next week."
Before he realized it, Orion accepted.
With my work for the day done, I was relaxing in my quarters, going back on the events of the day to make sure I hadn't missed something else that would come back to haunt me.
I couldn't think of any. To my own surprise, having Zerayah attend a school outside of the Liberation Palace hadn't ended in disaster. She had been going there for an entire year now, and both the school and the capital were still in one piece. The school was relatively new – but then, there were very few schools on Slawkenberg more than seventeen years old, as the old nobility had used tutors, and the plebs hadn't been allowed any education besides what was absolutely necessary for them to do the jobs the Giorbas wanted them to do.
It was one of the many which had been built right after the Uprising, as part of the first crop of reforms I'd designed to keep the Council busy with something other than plotting my violent overthrow. The current students had never known a Slawkenberg that hadn't seceded from the Imperium, but they'd learned all about the Giorbas' reign in the history books their parents' generation had written. From the few times I'd managed to make up an excuse to visit, I could say that their devotion to the cause of Liberation frightened me, but at least they made good friends for Zerayah – and the more human friends she had to keep her grounded, the less likely she was to go on a bloody rampage.
Thankfully, and despite Krystabel's influence, she hadn't started getting interested in the other youths of her apparent age beyond simple friendship. Whether that was because her mental age hadn't yet caught up with her physical one or because her Maerorus heritage removed such instincts, I didn't know, but I was happy to kick that discussion down the road as long as possible.
In fact, the entire Protectorate had been remarkably quiet. I'd been worried that, after I'd failed to find any convincing arguments against expanding the ranks of the USA to match the Protectorate's growing territory, the Khornates in charge would start clamouring for another war, but they were being remarkably calm about it. Maybe all those insane training exercises Hektor was helping them run took the edge of their bloodlust, along with their primary purpose of keeping the ex-Ravager, whose sanity relied on constant Panacea injections, away from me.
Back in Adumbria, Tesilon-Kappa was assuring me that the refitting of merchant ships was advancing apace, and the planet was well on its way to recovering from the Nurglite plague – although it'd take decades for the population to return to its pre-Infection level, since Slawkenberg wasn't exactly suffering from an excess of people itself and no one else was going to Adumbria anytime soon.
The wider Imperium seemed to have largely forgotten about us, which I was more than fine with. According to the divination rites of the Tzeentchians, Sector high command was still busy fighting against the Taus, along with the remnants of Hive-Fleet Behemoth and the never-ending threat of the Orks. Something strange was going on with the Panacea STC I'd given to Inquisitor Vail : after parsing the occult jargon of the magi, it seemed that Nurgle's power in the Eastern Fringe was waning, so she was definitely doing something with the archeotech. But there were so many competing influences around her that even Jafar couldn't make sense of it all.
I wished her all the best, regardless. Making sure the Imperium had access to the Panacea remained the single thing I'd done since my arrival on Slawkenberg I could be unevoquably proud of, after all.
All in all, things were going about as well as I could hope for. Which meant that, any time now –
The door slammed open, and I jumped to my feet, my hand moving instinctively toward my weapons before I recognized the intruder as Jurgen, looking distinctly ruffled (although someone less used to him than I would've found it hard to tell, such was his continued commitment to personal grooming). In the corner of my eyes, I saw Malicia slide her weapons back into their holsters as she identified him as well – with her preternaturally quick reflexes, she'd already half-drawn them by the time I'd started to move myself.
"Lord Liberator !" Jurgen gasped, clearly out of breath. "Vice-Queen Kasteen is on the ansible. She wants to talk to you about something vital to the survival of the Protectorate !"
And there it was. I swear, I could hear the Emperor laughing at me.
"Well then," I said dramatically as I stood up from my chair and made a show of checking my coat. "I guess I better not keep the Vice-Queen waiting, then."
Notes:
AN : So, this chapter started with the idea of an Imperial assassin trying and failing to kill Cain, eventually getting crazy until he confronted the Liberator directly, who still had no idea who he was, and killed him.
Then I decided to use an Agent 47 expy, and I couldn't just kill off the poor bastard, so we ended up with this chapter instead.
Agent 47 clearly has a handful of minor Warp powers : a short-range precognition that lets him set up accidents (or, more generally, the 'opportunities' of the latest games), a minor perception filter that lets him get away with his 'disguises', and even a telekinetic talent to help throw things in exactly the correct way to cause unconsciousness (see the legendary homing briefcase, for instance). And given that he's a clone made up of the genetic material of several high-profile assassins mixed together by a mad scientist, who can say with 100% certainty that he isn't some kind of early, low-level psyker unaware of his own abilities ?
... I have a feeling Slawkenberg might end up as some kind of reincarnation destination for fictional characters who got screwed in their original settings so that they get a second chance at living peaceful, happy lives under the benevolent protection of the Glorious Liberator. Any suggestions ?
Fun fact : while writing the backstory of Agent Orion, I checked what little lore there is on Inquisitor Tannenburg. One of the two things he's known for is his purge of the Coven of the Red Moon, a Psyker Chaos Cult, which had ... 45 members.
Admittedly, it's just one short, but that's still a crazy coincidence (I found that out after I'd decided to make the assassin an Agent 47 expy).
This chapter originally contained a Broklaw POV, but I cut it out because I felt it didn't fit in with the rest. Don't worry, I've just moved it to the next chapter, so you'll get to read it soon anyway.
Finally, regarding the cliffhanger : this Cain has seen a lot less combat than his canon self at the same age. It's time to fix that !
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and I look forward to your thoughts and suggestions.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 23: Chapter 22
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The Worldwounder burst out of the Warp, leaving a trail of debris and venting atmosphere in her wake.
Within a few moments, her pursuers emerged from the Warp behind her. Seven ships in total, of various classes and states of disrepair. One-on-one, the Worldwounder would have crushed them, even in her wounded state, for she was as mighty as she was ancient, a cruiser built more than five thousand years ago using techniques since lost to the Imperium, and further improved by generations of her masters since. But together, not even the skill of her shipmaster would suffice to see her victorious. The doom Worldwounder had fled into the Warp to avoid had followed her all the way here. Her engines still had enough strength to keep running for a while, but if nothing changed, then the only thing her flight would have achieved was to delay the inevitable.
On the bridge of the Worldwounder, Areelu Van Yastobaal, Rogue Trader, holder of the Van Yastobaal Warrant of Trade by virtue of being the one left to climb over the bodies of the other claimants at the end of the bloody succession conflict which had followed her predecessor’s death, watched the occulus open to reveal the black void of the Adumbria system.
Worldwounder hadn’t wanted to run. The ship was a bellicose beast, her machine-spirit shaped by the deeds of her infamous ancestor Jan Van Yastobaal, who had given the vessel her name, and it irked her to retreat from any fight, even one they couldn’t possibly win. But Areelu hadn’t survived for a hundred years as a Rogue Trader by letting others dictate her actions, even her own ship.
She had ordered the Worldwounder to run for the Warp, but now it seemed it had been for nothing. But she couldn’t die, not yet. She still hadn’t fulfilled her promise. She had to find a way out of this. There had to be one : in her experience, there always was, if you only had the wit to see it. Of course, she was smart enough to realize the survivorship bias of such reasoning, but she didn’t care – if nothing else, it kept her from despair, which was a victory in itself.
“Auspex, report,” she ordered, her voice cold and collected, forcing her own outward calm onto the rest of the bridge crew. Panicking at this stage would achieve nothing but lower their chances of survival even further.
“We’re getting multiple ship signatures close to Adumbria Prime, my Lady,” replied the Master of Auspex, and Areelu turned toward him, barely keeping her mouth from opening in shock. “There are also signs of vox-activity on the planet, although on a much smaller scale than would be expected of a planetary population like that recorded on this world. I’m seeing some structures in orbit, too, which don’t match with the orbital stations on the records either.”
Areelu couldn’t blame the man for sounding so perplexed at his own words. Like the rest of her crew, he’d known that Adumbria had been declared Perditia by the Imperium seven years before, due to some kind of virulent plague which had spread through the once-prosperous system, defying all efforts to cure or contain it. She herself had expected to find a dead system, populated only by ghosts and automated warning messages.
Fleeing to this place had been a desperate gambit, one she’d only taken because there had been nowhere else to run when the pirates had cornered her. They had needed to escape the Torredon Subsector and get back to stars more firmly under the Imperium’s control, and the Warp route leading to Adumbria had been the only one left open to them.
Areelu had hoped to shake off the pursuers, and make use of the Warp routes that crossed at Adumbria to get to a safer system, gambling that her Warrant (and, if need be, some suitably impressive bribes from the Worldwounder’s vaults) would be enough to ensure nobody asked where they had come from. As for the plague which had led to the system’s quarantine in the first place, as long as her crew remained onboard, it should have been safe.
But instead of a silent graveyard, they had found … this. Areelu didn’t know what it meant, but she was sure she could take advantage of it somehow.
“My Lady,” called the Mistress of the Vox, “we’re being hailed by one of the ships orbiting Adumbria Prime !”
“Put it on speaker,” she ordered. “Let us see if we can learn what is going on here.”
“Unidentified vessel, this is Adumbrian SDF command,” came the static-filled voice over the bridge’s vox-speakers, sounding as surprised as she was and not quite managing to hide it. “State your name and intentions immediately.”
“Adumbrian SDF command, this is the Worldwounder,” replied Areelu, drawing on her decades of experience to avoid letting her surprise color her voice. “I am Rogue Trader Areelu Van Yastobaal, of the Van Yastobaal Dynasty. Our pursuers are members of the shadow cartels of the Torredon Subsector. In the name of the Emperor, I ask for any assistance you might be able to give.”
There was a silent pause, which stretched just long enough to become nearly unbearable, then the vox-speakers crackled again :
“Worldwounder, your request has been received. The ships pursuing you are registered in our data-stacks as pirate vessels. We are moving to engage them.”
Within moments, the Master of Auspex reported that the ships anchored in orbit were accelerating in their direction. There were twelve of them : from so far away, it was difficult to identify their exact types, but at least a couple were around the same size as Worldwounder. Predictably, as the lumbering behemoths began to move toward them, the pirates saw the writing on the wall and began to turn back.
They had chased the Worldwounder all the way here expecting to finish off a wounded prey, not fight a squadron of fresh foes in a system they had every reason to think would be empty. Reporting on what they had seen to their masters would be enough to avoid punishment for failure, or so the pirate captains probably hoped.
“Worldwounder, power down your shields and weapon systems, and make for the orbital docks,” returned the voice of the unnamed SDF commander. “We are transmitting the coordinates of an empty berth where your vessel will be able to dock. Lady Van Yastobaal, the Vice-Queen would like to meet you in person once you’re docked at your earliest convenience. Welcome to Adumbria.”
The vox-link went dead. In the silence that followed, the bridge crew looked at one another, still not quite believing they had survived after all.
“Get back to work, everyone,” Areelu ordered once she had recovered from her own sudden rush of relieved exhaustion at the realisation that she was going to live after all. She stood up from her command throne and continued : “Follow the instructions of our new friends, and prepare a report on the ship’s damage for them as well. Suture, with me.”
“Where are we going ?” asked the scarred Space Marine clad in power armor painted the purple and red of the Van Yastobaal Dynasty. He fell in step behind her as she left the command deck in the hands of her subordinates, his gaze moving around as he searched for any potential threat to the woman he’d sworn to protect in order to repay the life-debt he owed her for stitching him back together.
“Back to my quarters,” she answered. “If I am going to talk to this ‘Vice-Queen’, then I want to look presentable while doing it.”
They may have escaped from certain death, but she still had more questions than answers, and that was a state of affairs Areelu disliked greatly. This call with the Vice-Queen (whom she guessed was the local Governor, though from what she remembered Adumbria had used the standard Imperial title for the office until recently) was her chance to change that. There was a story here, and she was determined to learn it.
Fortunately, diplomacy was an arena in which she was even more experienced than that of the void.
For seven years, Slawkenberg had been at peace.
Mahlone would never have accused the Liberator of going soft, but he’d wondered, sometimes, whether Cain’s love for his people had eclipsed his desire to spread the ideals of Liberation to those who so desperately needed it.
Now, the General of the USA realized how foolish these concerns had been. The last seven years had been peaceful, yes, but the Liberation Council hadn’t been idle during them. All that time, they’d been training, preparing, growing. Cain had known that a conflict would come – Mahlone didn’t think he’d known it would come from the Torredon Gap, though that wouldn’t surprise him – and made sure the Protectorate was ready for it.
All members of the Council, along with other individuals of note, were gathered in the war room, where the ansible link between Slawkenberg and Adumbria had been redirected by the borgs. Cain had summoned them early in his conversation with Vice-Queen Kasteen, once it’d become clear the situation warranted their presence.
All of them had changed since the Uprising, twenty-four standard years ago, in one way or another. But age had so far spared them, thanks to the regular Panacea injections they all enjoyed. Nobody was quite sure how much the miracle substance would prolong their lifespan, but Mahlone was determined he wouldn’t die of old age, not when there were so many threats to the Liberation left to face.
The hololith projected the image of Regina Kasteen in the air so that she was facing the Liberator, with the rest of them watching, ready to interject if needed. The Vice-Queen couldn’t see them, but she’d be able to hear them, and that was all that was needed; really, it’d have been childish to ask for more. In the Imperium, such a conversation would’ve been impossible already. But thanks to the wonders of the ansibles, the Council could speak with the Vice-Queen as if she were on the same planet, rather than an unimaginable distance away.
“From the entire Subsector ?” asked Cain, reacting to the surprising news Kasteen had just delivered. “You’re certain ?”
“Yes, Liberator. The Imperium has pulled back the Navy battlegroup tasked with protecting the shipping lanes of the Torredon Subsector,” said the projection of the Protectorate’s first (and so far, only) Vice-Queen.
“But why ?” questioned Cain, sounding appalled at the Imperium’s decision – which Mahlone could well understand. “Who would do something so short-sighted ?”
“No one Lady Van Yastobaal spoke to was sure : apparently, the reassignment orders came all the way from the top, and all attempts to argue the order were swiftly crushed,” answered the Vice-Queen, sounding even more disturbed by the implications as they all were. Which was understandable, given how she and her Regiment had been abandoned and left to die by the Imperium.
“As you would expect,” she continued, “this has left the Subsector at the mercy of the shadow cartels which already infested it. The local SDF are only barely capable of protecting their own systems from raiders, and not even that well. Trade across the Subsector has collapsed as a result, and if people haven’t already started to riot over lack of food it’s only a matter of time. Lady Van Yastobaal apparently made considerable profits by providing her services as a pirate-huntress, but eventually the cartels had enough and gathered together a force large enough to force her to flee.”
“And you trust this Rogue Trader’s word on all this ?” asked the Liberator.
“Aside from the fact that her pursuers definitely intended to kill her, I was able to convince her to give us access to her ship’s cogitators as part of the price of entrusting the Bringers of Renewed Greatness with the repairs,” she explained. “It is possible the records therein were fabricated well enough to fool them, but Magos Tesilon-Kappa’s brethren assure me the probability is minuscule.”
“I see. You’re certain these pursuers will make it back home in a state to deliver the news of Adumbria’s current state ?”
“Nothing is certain where Warp travel is concerned, but regardless of the pirates’ lack of proper maintenance, if they managed to make the journey in one direction …”
“I know,” sighed Cain. “I was just entertaining a vain hope. So, we must assume that the shadow cartels of Torredon will soon learn that Adumbria isn’t the plague-ridden graveyard they believed it to be. The question, then, is : how do we think they will react to that information ?”
“Lady Van Yastobaal believes that they will try to add Adumbria to their sphere of influence by force,” replied the Vice-Queen. “The Adumbrian experts I’ve talked to on the subject tend to agree with her interpretation, especially if the Imperium did withdraw its protection.”
Cain’s gaze swept the rest of the Liberation Council. “Thoughts ?”
“This Rogue Trader is almost definitely correct,” said Hektor. Nobody interrupted him : he had, after all, spent centuries as a raider himself while his mind was mercilessly shredded by those grotesque implants of his. “Unless the situation in Torredon changes dramatically – something like a civil war between the cartels to see which one gets to inherit the Subsector – they won’t ignore such a juicy target right on their border. It’s possible they’ll think Adumbria was turned into some kind of secret Imperial base, and the edict of Perditia was just a cover, but that would require the kind of high-level thinking I wouldn’t associate with pirates.”
“Alright.” Cain returned his attention to the hololith. “If the cartels mount a coordinated assault, can you see them off ?”
“Not with what we have in the system at the moment,” replied Kasteen. “Even the ships which pursued the Worldwounder would have been a challenge, if they hadn’t run. I think they were intimidated by the size of our refitted crafts, and ran away before realizing that they’re all merchant ships. If a proper armada, even a piratical one, shows up, it’ll be bloody.”
“Don’t worry,” the Liberator reassured her with a smile. “We’ll send you reinforcements. Since they need to get back home first, we should be able to arrive before them. You just need to hold the fort until we get there. As for the Lady Van Yastobaal, how much does she know about the Protectorate ?”
“Not much, but she’s curious, and digging like a snow leopard. She knows that we managed to survive the Infection with help, but not where that help came from.” The Vice-Queen appeared mildly embarrassed as she continued : “I had no choice but to tell her that much, to convince her we weren’t cultists of Nurgle in disguise waiting for a chance to infect her crew.”
“Perfectly understandable,” Cain told her, nodding in approval. “What else ?”
“We’ve distributed doses of Panacea aboard her ship, so she must be aware of it by now. But she does not know of the ansibles’ capabilities. I let her believe I needed to contact my ‘benevolent backer’ by using an astropath.”
“Keep it that way for now,” commanded Cain. “Continue the repairs on her ship, but make sure she cannot leave before I arrive. We need to ensure she understands her position and the risks of revealing too much.”
“Understood.” It was good to see that, despite the somewhat familiar way in which the Vice-Queen addressed the Liberator, she still knew her place in the Protectorate’s hierarchy. “Another thing. When Lady Van Yastobaal came to visit, the magi of Change claimed that they were able to sense what they described as ‘the touch of power’ on her. They aren’t sure whether that means she is a psyker or a practitioner like them, though.”
“Interesting,” mused the Liberator. “Then again, I have no idea how common either of those would be among Rogue Traders.” His gaze swept the room. “I don’t suppose anyone here has any experience with them ?”
“Some visited Slawkenberg for one reason or another over the last centuries, according to the records,” offered Jafar, frowning as he dredged the details out of his impressive memory. “Either they wanted to sell something to the Giorbas, or they wanted to enjoy the touristic facilities themselves. But none had visited in a hundred years at the time of the Uprising.”
And a damn good thing too, thought Mahlone. The presence of a real warship in orbit, with no borg presence aboard to seize it, would have made their revolution considerably more difficult, although the General didn’t doubt for a moment the Liberator would have found a way.
“Since she was willing to break the edict of Perditia, it’s possible she isn’t completely loyal to the Imperium,” Krystabel pointed out. “Especially if she dabbles in matters the Imperium has forbidden.”
“Possible,” conceded Cain, “but even if that is true, it doesn’t mean she’ll be willing to join the cause of Liberation. Rogue Traders are legendary for their independence, after all, and even if they stand outside of the Imperial hierarchy, they still consider themselves above the rest of Humanity.”
There was a chorus of disapproving whispers across the table. One of the core tenets of the Liberation was that all human lives were equally important and deserving of happiness, regardless of the circumstances of their birth. The tyranny of the Imperium, where something as asinine as bloodlines were used to determine one’s station, was one of the many things they’d rebelled against.
“For what it’s worth, Van Yastobaal hasn’t shown any sign of such prejudice so far,” offered Kasteen. “Of course, I haven’t talked with her much.”
“That’s something I’ll need to look into once I arrive,” decided the Liberator. “In the meantime, however, we have more important things to worry about. How quickly can reinforcements leave for Adumbria ?”
From there, the meeting moved on to logistical matters, as they discussed at length the question of how much of the fleet assembled over the last seven years should be sent, and how much should be kept in reserve to see to Slawkenberg’s own protection, along with the myriad other matters which needed to be dealt with before such a large undertaking. They needed to bring the USA along, of course : if the pirates managed to land forces on Adumbria Prime, the local forces (undoubtedly brave and skilled as they were) were simply too few in number to repeal them. That meant bringing troop transports along, which also required support crafts, and on and on.
With a sigh, General Mahlone took a sip of his recaf. Boring as this all was, he told himself, it was also necessary, and he could endure through this if it was for the greater glory of the Liberation.
After several hours of debate, with the sun having long since set over the horizon, it was finally over. I checked one last time with everyone that there wasn’t anything else which needed my personal decision, then made my way back to my quarters, where, after going through my hygiene routine, I collapsed on my bed, utterly mentally exhausted.
At least Jurgen had made sure we were all fed and watered throughout the meeting, delivering water, recaf, and snacks for everyone as we drew up our plans to go to the aid of Adumbria. Much as I would’ve preferred, there was no avoiding it : Slawkenberg needed to send reinforcements to Adumbria, and I needed to be there, ostensibly leading them as we sailed to the rescue of our … ally ? Vassal ? Partner in heresy against the Golden Throne ? The relationship between Slawkenberg and Adumbria was a tangled mess of diplomacy, paperwork, and mutual dependency which only a Tzeentchian could make sense of. In any case, we had to go help them.
Oh, sure, from a strictly military perspective I’d be absolutely useless in Adumbria as anything other than a mean of propping up morale, but I hadn’t even dared suggest that I could remain safely on Slawkenberg. Not only would it destroy my undeserved reputation for leading from the front, but it’d also mean that supreme command of the fleet would be left into the hands of the Khornates, which was something I wanted to avoid at any cost.
Besides, my presence aboard the fleet would ensure smooth passage through the Warp, thanks to Emeli watching over me. Which wasn’t quite as reassuring as it sounded, but apparently was regarded as a good omen by the lunatics around me. The Tzeentchian magi (whose numbers had also increased in the last seven years, though either they had followed the restrictions I’d placed on sorcery or, more worryingly, they’d gotten much better at not being found out) were competent enough that they could manage the regular trips between Adumbria and Slawkenberg without issue, but the Warp was the Warp, and we couldn’t ignore the possibility of Nurgle intervening directly in the matter.
For practical reasons, the bulk of the Protectorate fleet was stationed at Slawkenberg. We had all assumed, quite reasonably I’d thought, that since Adumbria was supposed to be a plague-ridden graveyard and Slawkenberg was a world known to host a rebellion against the Imperium, any threat to the Protectorate was much more likely to strike here.
Upon completion of their refitting, all ships reclaimed from the Adumbrian graveyard had been sent to Slawkenberg with a minimal crew, due to Adumbria simply lacking the population to sustain them. Fortunately, merchant ships were far simpler than their Navy counterparts, and once the borgs were done installing their dubious automation upgrades, the crew requirements diminished dramatically. Even so, tens of thousands of Slawkenberg natives had taken to the stars aboard the growing Protectorate Navy (and, once again, it had been a struggle to keep my own name out of that appellation, but by the Emperor, I had prevailed).
A smaller but not insignificant number had also joined as pilots for the Cainwings, whose squadrons made up the better part of our navy’s offensive power. After seven years of running the training programme, we had enough of them for all the ships which had been converted into carriers
Truth be told, this growing navy hadn’t been that much of a strain where it came to people. In the last two decades, Slawkenberg’s population had grown considerably. Predictably, there’d been a number of births nine months or so after the Uprising as a result of people celebrating their new freedom from the Giorbas, but the natality rate had only slightly gone down since, especially once the Panacea had made such things much safer. Already, the oldest members of the post-Uprising generation (who only knew of Slawkenberg’s time as part of the Imperium through their parents’ tales and visits to the House of Remembrance) were slowly trickling into the pool of available manpower.
I had tried to delay that as much as possible by making schooling mandatory and encouraging the creation of multiple universities, thinking that it would slow the economic growth of Slawkenberg. Under the Giorbas, children had been inducted into the workforce almost as soon as they could walk, with all the deplorable consequences you could imagine. As a result, the new parents were determined to give their children the opportunities and lives that had been denied to them (not that plenty of adults hadn’t taken advantage of the education made available to them by the Liberation Council, if only out of the desire to spite their former masters).
Unfortunately, my training as a Commissar hadn’t included being taught planetary economics. I had ordered every aspect of education be made free, but while that had put a dent into our finances it hadn’t been nearly as large as I had expected, especially compared to the resources allocated to building up our fleet. And with the borgs working hard to reduce the Protectorate’s reliance on manual labour, skilled workers were much more in demand anyway. According to Jafar’s latest estimations, Slawkenberg was on the verge of yet another economic boom. I had only barely been able to swallow his lavish praises of my long-term policies without shooting him when he’d explained this to me in great detail.
This time, unlike during our first military expedition to Adumbria, General Mahlone would accompany us. Colonel Ygdal, his second-in-command, would be in charge of Slawkenberg’s defense in his absence. And, because leaving a Khornate in charge of the planet unopposed was a recipe for disaster if I’d ever seen one, Jafar would also stay behind. Ostensibly, he’d run civilian affairs while Ygdal ran the military, but in truth I was counting on them keeping each other in check to make sure there was still a planet for me to return to once this errand was over.
Apart from that, Krystabel and Tesilon-Kappa both expressed their intention to join, while Jafar announced that Harold would represent the Tzeentchian faction of the Liberation Council as he had done during the Adumbrian campaign (the fact that he wasn’t present at the meeting, and presumably hadn’t agreed to this, was apparently of no concern to the Chief Clerk, although to be fair I doubted Harold would feel any reluctance). And, of course, both Jurgen and Malicia would accompany me, as would Hektor, whose experience of war surpassed that of the entire USA’s top brass combined, very much including my own.
The World Eater’s presence was something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, disregarding his strategic input, having a transhuman killing machine at my side could only be good for my survival prospects. On the other hand, I knew that the only thing keeping Hektor from turning back into an uncontrolled, indiscriminate killer were the constant injections of Panacea into his system. Sure, those hadn’t malfunctioned even once in seven years, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be anywhere in the vicinity if it ever happened.
There was nothing I could do about it, though, so I would just have to deal with it. Even if nobody had said so out loud, I wasn’t blind to the reason why so many members of the Council wanted to come. They saw this not just as our duty to go to the aid of our sworn ally, but as an opportunity to spread the cause of Liberation and expand the Protectorate beyond two worlds. It was why Mahlone had been so insistent on bringing so many USA troopers, ‘just in case’. I could have overruled him, and probably gotten away with it, but there was always a chance we’d actually need them in Adumbria.
While the entirety of the Council seemed convinced our victory against whatever fleet the cartels sent to pillage Adumbria was guaranteed, I was far less confident that, if it came to an outright void battle, our untested carrier doctrine would work against experienced raiders who’d run circles around Battlefleet Damocles for centuries. Simulations and training exercises were all well and good, but they didn’t measure up to a real fight.
After all, there must be a reason the Imperial Navy, to my (admittedly limited) knowledge, almost never used carriers and focused instead on the awe-inspiring power of large guns bringing the wrath of the Emperor upon His foes. And if the cartels had to survive centuries of harassing the trading routes without being wiped out, then clearly they knew their business. Certainly better than the Protectorate’s navy, which was made of refurbished merchant ships with inexperienced crews.
Maybe we could bluff the pirates into retreating through sheer numbers ? It would depend on the character of whoever was in charge, I supposed. On the one hand, pirates were mere criminals, and unlikely to want to risk their lives in an uncertain fight. On the other, the shadow cartels were probably riding high over the Imperium’s retreat from Torredon, and the commanding officer might not want to appear weak by turning tail and running.
I couldn’t fault Kasteen for how she’d handled the situation, of course : the moment the pirates had arrived in Adumbria, them bringing knowledge of the system’s survival back to their cartels was inevitable. That Rogue Trader was a bit worrying, but maybe I could use her to deliver the secrets of the ansibles to the Imperium. Unlike with Inquisitor Vail, I couldn’t rely on Van Yastobaal to use that technology for the betterment of Mankind, but sheer greed should ensure she sold the tech to somebody once she left the Protectorate. Unlike with the Panacea, though, I wouldn’t be able to paint that as striking a blow against Nurgle, so I’d either have to keep it secret from the rest of the Council (which was unlikely to work in the long term) or convince them she’d stolen the technology (which wouldn’t work on Emeli).
Oh well. That was a problem for later. Now, I had to figure out a way to tell Zerayah that I had to leave the planet for an indeterminate amount of time, without her deciding to accompany me – regardless of how powerful she might be, I had no intention of dragging her into a war zone, as that was all but guaranteed to lead to her nature being revealed, which would bring the Assassinorum right onto our heads. If anything, that should make the rest of the expedition look simple by comparison.
Of course, I had no idea at the time of what exactly I’d end up facing before making it back to Slawkenberg, which was for the best, as otherwise I’d have needed to be dragged aboard the Fist of the Liberator kicking and screaming.
Inquisitor Lorquai watched through the occulus with a deep sense of relief as Simia Orichalcae finally broke apart under the Exterminatus, destroying the Necron tombs that laid hidden beneath its surface. It had taken several years and entirely too many lives, but at last the Necron threat had been dealt with, at least in this particular corner of His domain.
The final battle had been very difficult, with the troops she’d gathered launching a planetary assault spearheaded by a Deathwatch contingent in order to disable the Necrons’ planetary shields before the bombardment could begin. The stocks of Panacea she had made sure to acquire before the expedition would ensure that the survivors who had managed to get off-world (of which there were punishingly few) in time would heal, physically at least. But the Panacea could do nothing for the ships lost in the engagement with the Necron fleet. Despite having double their numbers at the start of the fight, less than on in ten of the battlegroup she had summoned for the task had survived, and those who had bore the scars of the xenos’ techno-sorcery. Based on the first estimates of the tech-priests, it would be years before they were fit for duty once more.
Leaving the Torredon Subsector vulnerable by stripping it of its assigned battlegroup like this had left a bitter taste in her mouth. She had been well aware of the consequences of such an act even before the Navy’s headquarters had sent her a sober report on the expected impact of the battlegroup’s removal. But making such heavy decisions came with the rosette. With Adumbria lost and quarantined, Torredon had become almost more of a burden than an asset to the Imperium. Whereas, had the Necrons been allowed to spread from Simia Orichalcae, they could have emptied God-Emperor knew how many worlds of life before finally being stopped (if they could even be stopped, something Lorquai, to her shame, was beginning to doubt more and more as her research into these ancient monstrosities progressed).
Since Battlefleet Damocles was already stretched far too thin fighting against the Tau, the Orks and the Tyranids, Lorquai had judged this to be the least bad of all the options available to her. Which, of course, would be little consolation to the billions of Imperial citizens living in the Torredon Subsector, now at the mercy of the pirates which had haunted the region for generations.
It’d have been much better to stop the Necrons before they had fully awakened, of course, but you might as well wish for the Emperor to step down from the Golden Throne and lead Humanity directly once more. From what she’d been able to piece together, the Necrons had been awakened by the Warp signature of the brutish Ork raiders which had arrived in-system some years ago, and proceeded to kill the greenskins before turning their attention to the miners, who’d just barely managed to get an astropathic message out before being slain to the last.
Now, with nothing but the clean-up left to do here, it was time for Lorquai to depart, and go ask pointed questions to the Mechanicus about what exactly they had been doing on the ice-world. Her analysts, working with surveys extracted from the empty remnants of the mining installation, had told her that there had been promethium deposits on the planet far richer than the one atop which they’d built the mining station – and which, by the greatest of coincidences, had just happened to be located atop the Necron tomb closest to the surface.
It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t be the first time that the Martians’ greed for the Necrons’ incredible technology drove them to forsake all common sense and ultimately unleash them upon the rest of the galaxy. Heads would roll for this, Lorquai swore to herself, and to the Warp with the political consequences. It was the least she owed to those brave souls who had perished to check this rising threat, and to those who would suffer as an unintended consequence.
“Tell me you’re frakking kidding me,” deadpanned Major Ruput Broklaw, unable to believe what the cogboy in front of him had just said. “Please. I am begging you.”
Broklaw had seen a lot of things since he’d been ‘recruited’ by Inquisitor Vail along with the tattered remnants of his Regiment. At the top of the list was that time a group of Custodes had come to take the original Panacea STC and bring it safely back to Holy Terra, but the rest of his time in the service of His Most Holy Inquisition hadn’t been boring either.
In the last few years, the 301st had fought against a bunch of xenos (some of which he’d never heard of before), along with pirates, heretics, and people who were supposedly on the side of the Imperium but objected to spreading the Panacea STC for some unfathomable reason.
This, though. This still surprised him. And Major Broklaw did not enjoy surprises. He hadn’t enjoyed them before working for the Inquisition, and he enjoyed them even less now.
“I’m afraid I cannot do that, Major,” replied Cogitator Yanbel. “The gene-scans are clear. These individuals are entirely free of the Genestealer taint.”
“We’ve been chasing the tracks of these xenos smugglers through five star systems in the last two years, ever since one of the Inquisitor’s agents found out they were trafficking Genestealer purestrains,” Broklaw said slowly. “I’ve myself had to lead the rescue of the investigation teams fourteen times. This operation alone involves all that’s left of the 301st, along with the entire local Arbites and three PDF regiments which were judged trustworthy enough. All of that, while the entire Sector is gearing up for the war against the Tau on the border. And now you’re telling me that all of this was because some bored spire-born frakheads wanted to have Genestealer purestrains fight hivers in their private arenas ?!”
“Exactly, Major.” Unlike most cogboys Broklaw had encountered, Yanbel didn’t make a point of being as expressionless as possible (which probably had something to do with why he was working for Inquisitor Vail in the first place), making it easy for the Major to see he was as infuriated by the whole situation as him. “My best guess is that they really only thought the purestrains made their ‘game’ more interesting.”
Broklaw didn’t bother trying to suppress his scowl. The two of them were currently standing inside a hive district that had officially been abandoned several centuries ago, but which had instead been secretly refitted to serve as a grotesque arena. Here, the lords and ladies of Kiltor had watched as hivers kidnapped from the streets by their thugs, or promised monetary rewards that were life-changing for them but less than petty change for the nobles, struggled for their lives in a series of gruesome contests designed to whittle down their number until only one winner was left.
Elsewhere in the complex, he knew, medicae were tending to the traumatized men and women who’d just been rescued from the ‘games’. They had fought for their survival (the 301st had arrived in the middle of the latest round), had watched others die in front of them, and in some cases had been forced to kill to survive. It was monstrous; it was inhumane; it was wrong.
And, Broklaw knew, it also wasn’t illegal under Kiltorian law, which made sense given most of the people involved in writing said laws were in the room. If not for the fact the nobles had tried to get Genestealers in their sick games, it was doubtful they’d ever have been stopped or punished : even the local division of the Adeptus Arbites had been wary of going after them until Inquisitor Vail had shown up with her rosette and a bunch of armed troops. But then, people like that would always go further and further into depravity, until they inevitably did something to draw the attention of greater powers. If not the Genestealers, it would’ve been something else.
At least this particular affront to decency and the God-Emperor would end today, the Major told himself as he took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. Inquisitor Vail was many things, a hard woman prominent among them, but she’d even less patience than him for fools.
“You can’t do this !” brayed one of the fools in question, adding one more mistake to the long list which had brought him here as he drew Broklaw’s attention to himself.
Like the rest of the twenty-two men and women who’d been watching the arena from a room dripping with excessive luxury, he had enough fat on his body to make even walking a herculean effort. His clothes were covered in enough precious metal to pay the 301st’ wages for the next year, and a jewel-incrusted mask in the shape of some long-extinct bird of prey hung around his thick neck after having been removed from his face during the raid.
The soldiers tasked with watching the prisoners moved to intercept, but Broklaw stopped them with a raised hand. Partly, this was out of morbid curiosity; partly, because he was starting to get really angry and could use an opportunity to vent some of his frustration.
“Do you know who I am ?!” the man blustered as his waddling came to a halt in front of Broklaw.
“Magos ?” asked the Major, his voice calm and cold.
“This is Akalepsi von Lolligo,” Yanbel obliged. “Head of House Lolligo, who owns approximately fifty-three point eighty-nine percent of all industrial plants on this planet.”
“That’s right !” blabbered the fat man. “And I demand that you –”
“Shut up,” Broklaw interrupted him. The man’s face reddened : it had probably been years since the last time anyone had talked to him like that, if ever. “There’s nothing you can say that’ll get you out of this.”
When the man opened his mouth to complain again, Broklaw drew his laspistol and shot him in the leg. He immediately collapsed, whining and groping his cauterized wound. Broklaw wished he hadn’t enjoyed that as much as he did – he might need to visit a chaplain after the operation was complete.
Suddenly, the door slammed open, and Inquisitor Vail stalked into the room. Everything from the way she moved to the look of utter fury on her face reminded the Major of a predator on the hunt, and he was very, very glad that he wasn’t her prey. Her golden power armor was covered in guts of various colorations, none of it looking like it’d belonged to a human being.
Oh, Broklaw was going to enjoy this, he thought as Yanbel muttered something about needing the special unguents to clean that mess. It took a lot for Amberley Vail to lose her temper, but when she did, it was a thing of beauty to behold – although, like the storms of Valhalla, that beauty was better appreciated from a safe distance, and preferably with thick, solid walls all around you.
“The menagerie has been purged,” she declared. “Yanbel, please go check there isn’t anything among the corpses susceptible to fire before the troopers cleanse the area with their flamers.”
“As you wish, my lady,” the cogboy replied, before promptly getting out of the room.
“Now,” said the Inquisitor, turning her burning gaze onto the wounded man, who was still moaning in pain. “You.”
To Broklaw’s faint surprise, the son of a gretchin had enough survival instincts left in his trembling body to freeze under the weight of the Inquisitor’s displeasure. Slowly, he turned to face the woman who held his life in her power-armoured hands.
“I am Inquisitor Amberley Vail of the Ordo Xenos,” she declared, her voice carrying through the room and to the rest of the captive nobles, who reacted to the announcement with predictable terror. “I’ve been investigating your activities for the past two years, tracking down your agents as they smuggled forbidden xenoforms into the God-Emperor’s domain. And I am not pleased by what you’ve been doing here.”
“They were only hivers,” protested the spire-born man. “We made sure not to take anybody who mattered ! Our competitions didn’t affect this world’s productivity at all, I swear it on the Golden Throne !”
The absolute sincerity of the statement – the fact he genuinely believed this made all the difference – disgusted Broklaw to his core.
“Life is the Emperor’s currency,” quoted the Inquisitor. “Which means that He alone dictates how to spend it – and it is spent on things far more important than your pathetic games !”
Akalepsi tried to say something, but no word left his mouth as he looked up into the Inquisitor’s cold fury.
“You’ve failed in your duties to the Golden Throne. You’ve betrayed your oaths and your stations. By your deeds, you’ve endangered this entire world. For that, and for your many other sins, you will pay. I’ve already lost too much time dealing with your mess,” she spat, her voice leaden with contempt. “You will tell me the names of your accomplices. Then you will die, and your assets seized by the Holy Inquisition so that they might be put to better use.”
“P-please …”
“Come to think of it,” the Inquisitor suddenly added (although Broklaw was certain she’d always planned to do that, and was just playing it up for the audience), completely ignoring the spire-born’s pleas, “I know the first thing we’ll do with those assets. You promised coin to these poor souls if they won your vicious game, didn’t you ? I think I’ll make sure each and every single one of them gets the prize in full. Even those who died before we arrived will have it delivered to their families.”
The noble stared up at her with dumb incomprehension in his gaze. She sneered, then turned away.
“Take them away, Major,” she ordered Broklaw.
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Broklaw with a sharp salute before turning to his men : “You heard the Inquisitor ! Get those frakheads moving, on the double !”
Within moments, the nobles had been escorted outside at gunpoint, including Akalepsi, who’d needed to be carried by three of Broklaw’s men despite their excellent physical conditioning, such was his mass. The Major remained standing at attention next to the watching Inquisitor. Once the last prisoner was outside and the gates had been closed, she sighed.
“I can’t believe this was the reason for all this mess,” she complained. “I expected a Genestealer Cult who needed more purestrains immediately instead of patiently waiting for more to be born, or maybe some demented Drukhari scheme to get exotic beasts for their arenas. Not … not this.”
“I don’t either, ma’am,” replied Broklaw. One of the few things about his assignment he resented was that he’d been read in on the Genestealers’ reproduction cycle enough that he understood what she meant – he’d much rather have remained ignorant of that particular piece of nightmare fuel. “Nor did Yanbel, for that matter. It seems so … stupid. And these people are supposed to be the leaders of this world ?”
“Careful, Major,” said Lady Vail with a tight smile. “I might have to execute you if you go further.”
“You know what I mean, ma’am. What if one of the purestrains had gotten out ? Frak it, how do we know it didn’t happen already ? If they’ve been doing this long enough …”
“I know,” she sighed again. “The team I’ll leave behind to clean up this mess will need to investigate the possibility, run some random gene-screens across the population, follow-up on mysterious disappearances and other suspicious activities, that sort of things. It’ll require more assets I can’t spare, but it needs to be done.”
“Are we really stretched that thin ? What about your friends ?” asked Broklaw, carefully wording his question to avoid directly referring to the Panacea Cabal.
“They’re all just as busy as us, I’m afraid. We’ve already lost far too many border worlds to the Tau, and the rest of the Imperium is too busy with its own threats to send reinforcements of the scale we’d need to break the xenos’ spirit.” She took a deep breath. “Well, there’s nothing for it. We’ll just have to do the best we can and leave the rest to the Emperor, won’t we, Major ?”
“As you say, ma’am,” Broklaw dutifully replied. “As you say.”
As the two of them walked out of the room and back to work, he heard the Inquisitor mutter under her breath :
“At least that mess on Slawkenberg has been quiet so far.”
Notes:
AN :
Random Acolyte : "My lord, should we inform the rest of the Concilium that Adumbria has fallen under the influence of the heretic Cain ?"
Inquisitor Tannenburg : "Sharing information with my peers so that we can all work together for the betterment of the Imperium ... at the cost of revealing my sources to them ? HERESY !" *BLAM*
So, yeah, neither Amberley nor Lorquai have any clue that Adumbria is now part of Slawkenberg's sphere of influence, and, in Lorquai's case, that the Torredon Subsector isn't as isolated as she thinks. Tannenburg may not have killed anyone for suggesting sharing the information, but that may be only because nobody was suicidal enough to suggest it to him. The Imperium is the Imperium, after all.
Areelu Van Yastobaal is an expy of Areelu Vorlesh from Pathfinder : Wrath of the Righteous (the videogame version, not the tabletop pen-and-paper one, as there are significant differences between the two). You don't need to know the lore of the latter for this story, don't worry : I just needed a personality for the Rogue Trader, and she fit in perfectly with what I've in mind for the Torredon Arc.
I wonder if anyone will catch on what I mean by that. You do have all the pieces of that particular puzzle, after all.
Meanwhile, the Van Yastobaal Dynasty is reference to the very first Rogue Trader ever created, Jan Van Yastobaal. His backstory has changed since the days of the original Rogue Trader : Warhammer 40000 book, but I just had to use it once I found out about him.
Also, like with Sectors, the size of a Subsector is very much variable in the 40K lore. But, on the map of the Scarus Sector on Lexicanum, one of the Subsectors has five marked planets, and another twenty. Basically, I am going to have a lot of freedom as to what Cain is going to find in Torredon.
So, if you've your own suggestions for things you'd like to see in this new arc, then now is the time to propose them. I already have a list that will most definitely make the Liberator's existence more complicated - I mean, GLORIOUS.
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter. I'm probably going to focus on the next chapter of the Roboutian Heresy for the foreseeable future, as it is about 3/5 complete at 20k words, but we'll see what the Muse dictates.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 24: Chapter 23
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Among the shadow cartels which ran the piratical and crime scene in the Torredon Subsector, the Bloodied Crown was the one which put the most effort into maintaining a veneer of, if not respectability, then at the very least professionalism. While the various groups gathered under the cartel's umbrella were as vicious and uncivilized as such groups always there, the greater organisation prided itself on certain standards of behavior when the representatives of these subordinate groups interacted with each other.
Which was why, when the leaders of the Bloodied Crown were summoned by the cartel's high seat, they didn't meet in some dark hole surrounded by the still-living bodies of their former enemies, but inside a well-lit room at the heart of a hollowed asteroid which served as one of the cartel's bases in one of the Subsector's lifeless star systems. It was also why, rather than whatever ridiculous titles and self-aggrandizing ranks each of the individuals present might go by outside this room, here they were all merely 'directors', called together by the Chairman of the Board, as if this whole affair were a meeting between the head of a mercantile guild rather than a gathering of merciless killers.
Admittedly, the professional ambience was somewhat tarnished by the decadent sculptures and paintings which surrounded the long table at which they were seating. Then again, it wasn't as if those who had earned their fortunes in ways which the Imperium considered legal were any subtler when it came to flaunting their wealth.
Ernst Stavros Killian was the newest member of the group of seven worthies assembled here. Getting a directorship had required quite a lot of effort on the disgraced Inquisitor's part, and his ascension to this table was still a relatively recent affair, which left his position vulnerable.
Selling psykers to the other directors had given him some influence, since they were unlikely to risk killing the grox that laid adamantium eggs. Sure, they had tried to learn more about his operations, but Killian hadn't survived as an Inquisitor running what close-minded fools would see as a dangerously Radical program without knowing how to hide his tracks.
He didn't know what this meeting was about, and as an Inquisitor, not knowing things made him naturally nervous. To calm his nerves, Killian considered each of the other attendees, reviewing what he knew of them.
They were seated around a rectangular table that could easily have accommodated ten times their number, but keeping a safety distance between them was probably for the best. Besides, the room's acoustics were excellent, so there was barely a need to raise one's voice to be heard by all.
Sitting at the head of the table, Chairman Tutha Jabbus was a repulsive human being. He was morbidly obese, to the point Killian was reasonably sure he was a mutant of some kind, as surely no untainted set of human organs could possibly survive under so much fat. Jabbus had long since passed the point of being able to walk on his own, and went everywhere on an anti-grav chair whose engine constantly struggled to bear his prodigious weight. The clothes he wore, which had entirely too much gilding to be in good taste, had obviously been made specially for him, and Killian didn't envy the poor soul who had the misfortune of being the crime lord's tailor.
Yet despite his repugnant appearance, there was a reason Jabbus was the head of the Bloodied Crown, whose name he'd penned and whose emblem he wore around his head, a circlet of gold and rusted silver. It was him who had forged the cartel in the first place, gathering a bunch of disparate crime lords under a common banner through diplomacy, intimidation, and the outright assassination of a couple who had made the mistake of refusing his invitation. According to Killian's investigation, Jabbus had once been a menial worker on one of the Subsector's hive-worlds, before being press-ganged into joining the Navy. The ship he'd been indentured on had been seized by pirates, and Jabbus had seized that opportunity, eventually rising to command a flotilla of his own.
Apparently, the reason he ate so much was because, after spending so much of his life working for the gain of others, he was determined not to put any physical effort into anything ever again. His servants, a pair of androgynous youths with eyes utterly devoid of any emotion, stood at his side, one of them holding a data-slate and the other a platter of finger food. They'd been specially commissioned from a renegade Magos Biologis, and were rumoured to have been created using the genetic material of several of Jabbus' defunct enemies, as one final post-mortem insult.
To Jabbus' right was the most ancient of the cartel's directors, the only survivor of the original group and the Chairman's unofficial second-in-command (the shadow cartels of Torredon didn't believe in things like lines of succession, as they tended to encourage unhealthy ambition in the appointed successors). Director Wisent Balor, known to the Imperium as the Ripper General, couldn't have been more different from Jabbus if he tried. The renegade Guardsman was a mountain of vat-grown muscle, which strained the counterfeit General uniform he most definitely wasn't entitled to wear under Militarum regulations – in fact, if Killian remembered correctly, merely wearing it without the corresponding rank was ground for summary execution, as was the defilement represented by the emblem of the Bloodied Crown sewn onto its shoulder pad.
Not that Balor had any reason to be worried about that, since the Guard had plenty of other reasons to kill him on sight already, although the Commissariat had apparently offerred a sizeable bounty for his capture alive, just so they could put him on trial before executing him as an example. Once a sergeant in a Torredon Regiment, Balor had turned coat in the middle of an anti-pirate operation, leading to the death of thousands of his comrades in exchange for a place in the renegades' ranks. Numerous treatments by hereteks had turned him into the giant he was now, capable of crushing the skull of a grown man in the palm of his hand – something he did often, whether to punish failure or to make an example of a captured enemy.
Standing next to the Ripper General was his 'aide' (Jabbus insisted every director bring one – and only one, with him alone being allowed two as a sign of his superiority – to these meetings as part of the trappings of formality). The Munitorum-issued uniform fitted the man – Pelton, Killian's investigation had uncovered – much better than Balor's own. Pelton was a hardened criminal, who had killed without hesitation nor remorse at Balor's command since he had joined the Bloodied Crown. Ruthlessly efficient, without indulging into excessive hedonism and cruelty – something Killian wished he could say about the director sat straight across the table from Balor.
Now, Killian didn't have anything against psychopaths; Throne knew he'd employed more than his fair share during his career. Their lack of a conscience made them such useful tools, once properly trained and motivated. Which was the source of his dislike for Jeremiah Smile, because the man was neither of those things. He was a dangerous, unfettered lunatic, kept under control only by the fact that the Chairman absolutely would've him killed the moment he stepped out of line.
Jeremiah had gained his directorship by murdering his predecessor, along with the rest of his immediate subordinates. That wasn't especially unusual among the shadow cartels, but he had done it using a particularly painful poison, which he'd spread through the ventilation of an entire section of the ship. Hundreds of pirates had died in horrible agony alongside their leaders, leaving nobody willing to oppose Jeremiah's takeover once he'd told the other ship captains that similar poisons may or may not be hidden aboard their own vessels, waiting for a single vox-signal on his part.
That had been over twenty standard years ago, and since then, the Laughing Fiend had become a recurring figure in the nightmares of millions of people across the Subsector, as he led his pirates into acts of ever-greater depravity upon the crews of captured merchantmen and whatever settlements they could raid.
Jeremiah's aide was as violently insane as the man himself, though for different reasons. The nameless thug, who was only known to the rest of the Laughing Fiend's crew as 'Big Joe' due to his prodigious size (nearly the size of an Ogryn, though he wasn't of abhuman stock), had numerous injection tubes plunging into his neck and arms, linked to a reservoir of drugs on his back. With a single spoken command, Jeremiah could activate the device to pour all kinds of combat drugs into his bodyguard, turning him into a rampaging killing machine before stopping him with another word to replace the combat drugs with tranquillizing ones. If the constant flow of mind-altering chemicals had left anything of Big Joe's original personality behind, Killian didn't envy it, as surely it must be little more than a passenger in its own body by now.
Sat to the Fiend's right was Magos Negando. Like Balor, he had no right to his favored title : if he had any connection to the Cult Mechanicus, Killian had failed to uncover it. Negando simply seemed to have a preference for heavy augmentation, taking particular interest in capturing tech-priests and forcing them to work on augmenting his men to make them more efficient reavers.
Negando's own body had been augmented with cybernetics ripped from the still-living bodies of captured tech-priests and skitarii, and was rumoured to be able to survive the void of space unaided for hours. His arms ended in a pair of brutal power claws which were more than capable of tearing through the walls of a boarded ship, let alone the armor and flesh of its defenders. A trio of mecha-dendrites rose from his back for fine motor work, but the way they twitched and shuddered made Killian think that either the augment had been incompetently grafted, or Negando lacked the ability to control them properly, something no real member of the Mechanicus would struggle with. Given that the rest of the director's augments were working fine, Killian suspected it was the latter.
His 'aide' was a simple servo-skull hovering at his side, doubtlessly recording the meeting for its master's later perusal. It had once belonged to one of the tech-priests Negando had enslaved, and still bore the cogwheel symbol of the Cult Mechanicus crudely engraved on its forehead. As one more affectation of being a real Magos, Negando was always accompanied by a servo-skull, but his habit of leading boarding operations from the front meant that the devices rarely survived for long. Given Negando's propensity for punishing failure, disobedience, and insult from his thralls with death, however, replacing them wasn't much of a problem.
In front of Negando was Valusios the Serpent, a vile mutant whose skin, what little of it was exposed underneath the patchwork carapace armor he wore, was covered in iridescent scales. His yellow eyes and forked tongue completed the wretch's monstrous appearance : on any properly Emperor-fearing world, Killian knew, he'd have been killed at birth. Unfortunately, that hadn't been the case, for Valusios' homeworld preferred to enslave rather than purge the abhumans, and the Serpent had become a figure of terror throughout the Torredon Subsector, as he led his band of freaks across the stars.
A lord of the twisted and the unclean, he had spies on numerous worlds, lurking in the shadows and feeding him information for his raids. Cowering behind him was his aide, an even more wretched creature, half-rat and half-man, with the dignity of neither. Its beady eyes darted from one Director to another without pause, and it hadn't stopped trembling since entering the room, clearly terrified to be in the presence of so many people who could so easily kill it. Killian could only imagine Valusios had brought it along as a twisted jest, or perhaps merely to torment it for his amusement.
To Valusios' left, and joining Killian at the end of the table, was Mitslav Sertanov. Apart from the Inquisitor, he alone in the room fit the impression of professionalism Jabbus sought to show. Once the head of House Sertanov, whose bloodline had been among the rulers of Torredon for thousands of years, he had been forced to flee the Subsector's capital after finding himself on the losing side of a civil war to decide the next Planetary Governor. Upon realizing defeat was inevitable, Sertanov had decided (wisely, given what Killian knew of the man who had ended up ruler of the hive-world at the Subsector's heart) to take his entire House and as much of its assets as he could into the void.
The Aristocrat, as he was nicknamed by the rest of the cartel, still claimed to be merely biding his time and gathering resources until he struck back against the Governor and reclaimed what he saw as his rightful place, and made a point of continuing to wear the kind of clothing you'd expect from a spire-born noble. Of course, given the Imperium's attitude toward pirates and the fact that all Governors ruled at the pleasure of the Adeptus Terra, that claim was nothing more than a pipe dream. Nevertheless, Mitslav was still a ruthless pirate lord, who ruled over his extended family with an iron fist, very much including his grandson Illarion, who stood at attention behind him.
The last person in the meeting room besides Killian himself was his own aide, the single most successful result of his research program on the Shadowlight's psi-enhancing capabilities. Aleric Heinrich had been nothing, just another thug among the thousands who dwelled in the darkness of the Torredon Gap. Then, through the experimentations of Magos Galerion, whom Killian had recruited as a replacement for his slain accomplice Metheius, his latent psychic powers had bloomed.
Aleric had become a pyrokinetic of great skill, which, combined with his previous talents as a hired gun, had made him very deadly indeed; so deadly, in fact, that Killian had made sure to have a small explosive surgically implanted between two of his vertebrae, waiting for a coded vox-pulse the Inquisitor could send with a single push of a button. Killian, after all, was no fool : while he knew Mankind needed the power of psykers could survive in the galaxy, taking precautions against treachery was only good sense.
In any other circumstances, Killian would have taken great pleasure in ordering the execution of every single other man in this room other than Aleric (well, perhaps not all of them : he might be able to make use of someone of Pelton's talents, and the servo-skull could always be repurposed). Unfortunately, the Concilium Ravus had left him no choice. His work with the Shadowlight was far too important to the future of Mankind to let scruples stop him. If he had to lower himself to dealing with such scum and play along with their delusions of grandeur, then he would willingly dirty his soul by suffering their presence.
"Gentlemen," began Jabbus. "We are all gathered here today to discuss a matter which was brought to my attention by the leaders of the executive task force I sent after the detestable Areelu Van Yastobaal."
"Are we here to celebrate the bitch's death ?" asked Jeremiah, smiling widely. His depredations had been severely curtailed by the Rogue Trader in the last couple of years, and she'd forced him to flee with his tail between his legs on three separate occasions where they'd crossed paths in the void. "I'd have brought some alcohol if you'd told me in advance."
"Unfortunately no," replied Jabbus, unperturbed. "Not only that, but the squadron returned with interesting news. It seems that, upon facing certain doom, Van Yastobaal fled through the Warp, seeking to escape to the Adumbria system."
There was a muted gasp. As pirate lords, all assembled had heard of what had befallen the once-prosperous trade world, leading to its interdiction by the Imperium. The impact of that quarantine on trade within the Subsector had been severe, though the cartels had only benefited from the merchants being restricted to what Warp routes remained available to them.
"I assume they pursued her, irregardless of the Perditia edict ?" asked Sertanov, matter-of-factly.
"Of course," chuckled Jabbus. "My men know better than to put the Imperium's will above my own. They chased the Worldwounder through the Immaterium all the way to Adumbria, which is where things took an interesting turn. For Adumbria, you see, is no haunted graveyard. The system's main world is still inhabited, and the ships which were scuttled in orbit are in the process of being salvaged. In fact, enough of them were already fit for service that, when they moved to engage, the executive task force retreated to bring me these news rather than stand and fight."
"What happened to the one who gave the order to run ?" asked Negando.
Jabbus smiled. "He was … thoroughly debriefed, along with several other captains of the squadron, just to be sure. In the end, I judged he made the correct call. My medicae estimate that he will be ready to resume his position in a month or two."
Of course. Then again, an Imperial Commodore making a similar decision could expect a similar treatment by the Navy. Cowardice was a sin which had no place among the servants of the Golden Throne, after all.
"So, Adumbria managed to overcome the plague which was killing it," mused Jeremiah. His face was suddenly split by a wide smile. "How wonderful ! What a great opportunity this is for us !"
"Indeed it is," said Jabbus, looking at the Fiend with an indulgent smile. "I'm glad that you grasped it so quickly, Director Jeremiah. While I do not know how exactly Adumbria managed to survive, we cannot let that chance pass us by. The planet's defenses were never much to talk about, and the plague will have decimated them. Now is a perfect opportunity for us to claim the entire star system as our own, along with the bounty of abandoned ships in orbit. According to the data from the hunting flotilla's cogitators, only a fraction have been repaired. Once we've seized and refitted the rest, we'll be the most powerful cartel in the Subsector."
"I would like to volunteer to lead for this acquisition operation, Chairman," grinned Balor.
"I am afraid that will not be possible, General," replied Jabbus. "The situation in the Sanguia system remains unresolved : I would like you to go there in person and help the locals understand their position, now that the Eldar raids which kept us from the area have stopped for over ten years, we will be replacing the xenos as new management."
"As you wish, Chairman," said Balor. "Then what about Adumbria ?"
"I already have someone in mind for the job. Director Jeremiah," instructed Jabbus, "you will take your fleet and go to Adumbria. Make sure to capture the infrastructure as intact as possible, along with the people crewing it."
"What about the rest of the planet ?" asked the Laughing Fiend with a hungry gleam in his eyes.
"Do with them as you wish," said Jabbus, condemning Throne knew how many people to the whims of the lunatic director with the same passion Killian would put into choosing his socks in the morning.
In spite of himself, Killian found that he felt sorry for the people of Adumbria. To have apparently survived a plague that had resulted in their system being cast out of the Imperium, only to then come into the sights of the likes of the Laughing Fiend, was truly one misfortune after the other.
Well, it wasn't Killian's problem.
"Now that the most important subject has been dealt with," continued Jabbus, "let's make a quick check on everyone else's projects. It isn't that often we're all together in one place, after all."
Really, the nerve of the bastard. This whole thing could've been handled with the Chairman sending a message to Jeremiah alone, instead of summoning them all. But then again, that had probably been half the purpose of the meeting. A pointed reminder that, even as the Subsector slowly fell into anarchy and the cartels reigned supreme, Jabbus was still the one in charge of the Bloodied Crown, and they all had to obey his whims.
For the next half an hour, they discussed the cartel's various efforts to undermine Imperial authority and increase their profits across the Subsector. Apparently, the Beastkin of Torredon, the Subsector capital, were still rejecting Valusios' entreaties to have them rise up against their Imperial oppressors. The animals were convinced the Serpent only planned to use them as bolter fodder, which was entirely true, of course, but Killian was surprised they had the intellect to realize it.
"Find the source of the rumors and have it dealt with," ordered Jabbus. "The Subsector's capital will be of vital importance to determine the next rulers of the Gap."
Next, they talked about the other cartels, which were also taking advantage of the withdrawal of the Imperial Navy to increase their raids. From where Killian stood, it was obvious that soon enough, the entire economy of the Subsector would grind to a halt. Barring intervention from the wider Imperium, which was unlikely given what Killian knew of the situation in the rest of the Damocles Gulf, the cartels would inevitably end up as the new rulers of the Subsector, ushering in a new order with them at the top instead of the current aristocracy.
Millions, if not billions, would die before the situation stabilized, but in truth it wasn't all that different from the way things had started in many other domains of the Imperium. It wouldn't surprise the Inquisitor if, in a couple thousand years, the Imperium reclaimed the Torredon Gap by granting the descendants of the men in this room the mantle of Governor of the worlds they'd respectively conquered.
Well, unless those rumors of Traitor Astartes being involved with some of the other cartels were true. Then only fire and desolation awaited Torredon. Thankfully, by that time Killian would have long finished his work and left this benighted Subsector.
"And finally, Director Auric," said Jabbus, using the pseudonym Killian had used when establishing his fake identity in the cartel, that of Jereb Auric, renegade agent of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. After all, it was all but certain the Ordos had agents within the crime scene of the Subsector; it was the same reason why he had changed his appearance on the way to Torredon. "How goes your work ?"
"The latest shipment of potentials was promising. We are on schedule for all currently planned deliveries," replied Killian, careful not to let anything slip. "Magos Galerion is as competent as you promised, Director Negando : my thanks once again for recommending him to me."
The cybernetic monstrosity nodded slightly in response.
"Good, good. If you require any additional funding to scale up your activities, you need only ask. I'm sure we can come to an arrangement."
In addition to being the Chairman of the Bloodied Crown, Jabbus was also the cartel's main bank, lending money, personnel and resources to the other members at rates that would make any Administratum-approved institution blush.
"Thank you for your kind offer, Chairman," demurred Killian, "but that won't be necessary. I'll be sure to get in touch if things change."
Things petered out after that, Jabbus clearly enjoying keeping them all seated, until he finally declared the meeting was over. Killian left, Aleric following behind him, and the two of them went back to his ship. His Righteous Punishment (who, as far as the rest of the cartel was concerned, was named Wickedness' Reward) ignited is engines and left.
It would take at least a week before they arrived at Killian's base of operation. There were shorter paths than the one his Navigator would follow, but Killian wanted to keep the base's location secret from his 'colleagues', and the longer trip would help make sure nobody was following him. Plenty of time to read through Magos Galerion's latest reports, and put together his own report for his true master.
The Emperor's will would be done, regardless of the cost to his own soul or that of the Magos' test subjects.
Jenit Sulla stood at attention, at the head of twenty of the best women of the Adumbrian Guard, as the gunship landed on the pad. According to what she'd heard the bureaucrats from Slawkenberg whisper, the vehicle had once belonged to the insane Inquisitor Karamazov, before Cain had stolen it in the course of his daring escape from the madman's ship just before its detonation.
It was a great honor to be here to welcome the Liberator, and Sulla was fully aware of how lucky she was to have it bestowed upon her. She was incredibly grateful the Vice-Queen had forgiven her foolishness, despite being well within her rights to have her executed for her betrayal years ago, when she'd foolishly attempted to kill Cain.
At the time, she'd thought Cain had led her superior astray, making her turn from the light of Him On Earth by offering her a way to save the people under her protection from the Infected. And so, when he'd returned to Adumbria, she'd made her move, only to be forced to face the full extent of her mistake.
When the shadow-things had emerged, Cain hadn't hesitated to engage them, leaping straight into the fray, heedless of how doing so left his back exposed to Sulla, who had still been holding her weapon. She could have killed him then : he'd been wearing armor, yes, but his head was exposed, and no daughter of Valhalla unable to make such an easy shot would've been accepted into the ranks of the Imperial Guard.
She'd almost taken the shot on reflex, before the realization of how dishonorable that action would be had hit her. Cain had the God-Emperor's blessing, whether he realized it or not. It was the only possible explanation.
The strength of will, the confidence, they had been captivating. The Liberator had put himself into harm's way to protect Colonel Kasteen without a moment's hesitation. In that moment, Sulla had known she'd been mistaken to think him some heretical manipulator, out to drag the women of the 296th into damnation. Not just mistaken : foolish. For had Cain not demonstrated his valor already, when he'd led the charge into the very heart of the vile darkness that sought to consume Adumbria, and struck down the foul fiend which had directed it ?
She felt ashamed that it'd taken witnessing that valor in person to make her see the truth, and turned that shame into determination not to err again. Yes, Cain was associating with heretics, but that was only so that he could make them do the Emperor's work, whether they realized it or not. Sulla couldn't imagine the pressure and constant intrigue such a task must require, but if there were anyone capable of it, then surely it was the Liberator.
"Lord Liberator," she saluted him, her motion mirrored by the rest of the honor guard. "Welcome back to Adumbria."
"Thank you, Colonel," he smiled. "It is a pleasure to be back, though I wish it were under better circumstances."
"As do we all. Please, follow me. The Vice-Queen and the Rogue Trader are waiting inside."
"Good." He made a show of shivering, as if such mundane things as the cold still bothered him – but then, he was always so dismissive of his own greatness. "Let's get somewhere warmer, then."
Areelu Van Yastobaal caught her first glimpse of the Liberator as he strode confidently into the reception hall of the Vice-Queen's estate in Glacier Peak. By the standards of the Imperial nobility, the building was insultingly utilitarian : prior to the plague which had gutted the system, it had been the vacation home of a House Head from the capital, who hadn't made it out when Skitterfall had fallen to the undead horde.
Areelu didn't mind. There was an earnestness to the ruling class of Adumbria that she'd never encountered in her previous interactions with the elite of the Imperium, and to her own surprise, she found herself enjoying it.
Behind Cain came his entourage. Apart from the other members of the Liberation Council, the Liberator was accompanied by a psyker, a Dark Eldar, and an Astartes. It was an eclectic group, one which wouldn't have been too unexpected from a Rogue Trader like Areelu, but which no Governor of the Imperium could have gotten away with – but then, Cain was no mere Governor.
As she approached him, he raised her hand to his lip, and kissed it in a way that wouldn't have been out of place in the dancing halls of a hive-world's highest spires.
"Lady Van Yastobaal, a pleasure to make your acquaintance," he declared. "I am Ciaphas Cain, leader of the Liberation Council of Slawkenberg, and ally to Vice-Queen Kasteen."
"The pleasure is mine. I have heard of you, Lord Cain," she replied, matching his smile with one of her own. "The man who led the rebellion on Slawkenberg, defeated Inquisitor Karamazov in single combat, and fought back not one, but two xenos invasions at the same time. Quite the résumé.
"I had help," he deflected. "Well, except against Karamazov, I suppose, but that wouldn't have amounted to much if not for the rest of the team who actually stopped the Exterminatus while I was getting lost."
"Is that so ? I look forward to hearing more about this." Areelu had only heard rumors about what had happened at the former vacation world, her interests laying in other directions. "Truth be told, I was unaware your interests extended beyond Slawkenberg. Her Excellency didn't tell me you were her off-world ally until your ships arrived in-system."
It was easy to see why Kasteen hadn't done so, of course. Rogue Traders weren't as feared as Inquisitors (nobody else really was), but they still weren't the kind of people you wanted to admit consorting with heretics and enemies of the Imperium to. Until today, Areelu had thought the Vice-Queen's allies were some kind of shadowy cabal seeking to turn Adumbria into a secret base of operations, hiding behind the Perditia edict.
"Ah, it must have been quite a surprise then," said Cain, his smile suddenly taking a more cunning aspect. "But I don't think this will be a problem, do you ?"
He knew, Areelu suddenly realized. Somehow, Cain knew the truth of her allegiances, despite all the years she'd spent making sure nobody who learned of them survived to tell the tale.
She chuckled. "I see your reputation wasn't exaggerated at all, Lord Liberator. Yes, you're right. I don't have any issue with working with others who have turned aside from the Ecclesiarchy's lies."
Kasteen stared at her, then at Cain, flabbergasted. Areelu could guess what was going through the Vice-Queen's head in that moment : despite spending hours in her presence, she hadn't so much as suspected the Rogue Trader's allegiance, whereas Cain had only needed a moment to figure it out.
"I thought as much," said Cain, his smile widening. "You don't strike me as a Khornate, though, and I won't insult you by even contemplating the possibility of someone of your stature having fallen in with Nurgle's dupes. Taking this into account, I would say … the Architect, yes ?"
"Your insight is as sharp as your swordplay," Areelu complimented him, before making a complex gesture with her right hand which caused the symbol of Tzeentch to briefly flash into the air before harmlessly dissipating, provoking an audible gasp from their audience. "I do indeed follow the Tzeentchian philosophy."
Cain nodded, clearly unsurprised. "Good. I wouldn't have had any issue working with you had you been a devotee of the Imperial Creed, but I suspect it'd have made things awkward on your end, Lady Van Yastobaal."
"Please, since you are getting to know the real me, call me Areelu," she said. "By the way, this is Suture," she introduced her own transhuman companion, "my bodyguard."
"'Suture' ?" asked Cain, raising an eyebrow.
"He refused to tell me his name after I saved his life," explained Areelu. "At first, I called him that to try to get under his skin so he'd change his mind, but it stuck."
"I see. Well, in that case, let me introduce you my own entourage. This is Krystabel, mistress of the Handmaidens of Emeli; General Mahlone, commander of the Unified Slawkenberg Army forces we brought with us; Tesilon-Kappa, leader of the Bringers of Renewed Greatness; Sir Harold, representative of the Liberation Council's bureaucracy and spokesman of the Tzeentchian acolytes in their ranks; Jurgen, my aide; Malicia, my bloodward; and Hektor, military advisor to the Unified Slawkenberg Army."
Areelu greeted each of the new introductions in turn, before realizing that Hektor and Suture were staring at one another in complete silence. Despite the years she'd spent in Suture's company, Areelu had no idea what he was thinking at the moment. She could only hope things wouldn't turn violent – she wasn't afraid for her life, but it would certainly make things awkward.
"World Eater," said Suture after nearly an entire minute. "You look calmer than the last of your kind I met."
Hektor smiled, which was not a pleasant sight. He tapped his finger against the strange cybernetic implants that hung from the back of his skull like dreadlocks, and replied :
"Having the Nails finally silenced will do that. Can you believe it's been seven years since I've killed someone ?"
"Really ? How ?"
"The Panacea allows for many things which are commonly thought to be impossible," Cain cut in.
"The Panacea ?" repeated Areelu, her curiosity suddenly piqued. "Are you referring to that healing substance your medicae used when they came aboard the Worldwounder ?"
"Indeed," said the tech-priest Cain'd introduced as Tesilon-Kappa. "Which reminds me : as a Rogue Trader, had you not already heard about the Panacea before now ?"
"I had, actually," replied Areelu. "There are rumors that such a miraculous substance is being deployed across the Sector to support the Imperial Guard and the Space Marine Chapters. I'm impressed that you managed to acquire it : from what I understand, access to it is quite restricted."
There was another moment of silence, eventually broken by Cain sighing painfully.
"We didn't 'acquire' anything," the Liberator explained. "We were the ones who obtained the Panacea STC in the first place, and I personally made sure it reached the Imperium in order to curtail Nurgle's power. After all these years, I was hoping it had become commonplace, yet it seems the Imperium's disappointed me yet again."
Areelu blinked. "Oh. That is … surprising news. I take it you make use of the Panacea more liberally within the Protectorate, then ?"
"We use it for everything, more or less," Cain explained. "It helped us greatly in the campaign we fought on this world against the Infected, since it made our troops immune to the Nurglite contagion."
Areelu's breath caught in her throat. The Panacea could help fight off the plagues of the Lord of Decay ?! If so, then maybe, just maybe …
No. She had to stay calm. She couldn't let her enthusiasm get ahead of her. Before she dared to let herself hope, this needed further investigation. Cain had already seen through her entirely too much for her liking : if nothing else, her pride wouldn't let her expose such vulnerability to him. And if the pirates killed them all, then it wouldn't matter anyway.
"In any case," she rallied herself, "I look forward to witnessing the Protectorate's martial might under your command, Warmaster Cain."
"Warmaster ?" Cain repeated, a strange expression on his face.
"Yes. Doesn't it make sense ?" explained Areelu. "You are, after all, leading the combined forces of Slawkenberg and Adumbria, and I'm willing to lend my aid as well. Given that three distinct chains of command are involved, and you stand at the top of them all, I feel the title is appropriate."
"I … hmm. I never considered it."
"It makes sense," said General Mahlone, his eyes seeming to shine at the suggestion. "Lady Van Yastobaal has a point, lord."
"Indeed," added Krystabel, who'd been glaring at Areelu for several minutes for some reason (though given the looks the Slaaneshi cultist was giving Cain, the Rogue Trader was fairly sure she knew why). "It'd clarify the chain of command, make sure everyone knows their place."
Suddenly, Areelu knew what was going on here. Cain couldn't have claimed the title for himself without damaging his image as a humble hero of the people, and his followers were too enamoured with his title of Liberator to even think of granting him a new one. Which was fine so long as he remained within his domain, where everyone knew who he was, but when dealing with outsiders, a Warmaster would be much more feared than a Liberator.
"Well, if you all insist, then it'd be childish of me to refuse," accepted Cain. "I shall serve as the Warmaster of our alliance, then, until the threat of the shadow cartels to Adumbria has been dealt with."
What clever wording, thought Areelu. She was going to enjoy working with the Liberator.
Three hours after my arrival at Glacier Peak, I was sitting in the office provided for me by Kasteen, sipping a cup of recaf as I considered what had just happened.
When I'd said I didn't think Van Yastobaal would be a problem, I'd meant it as a reminder that even if her ship was doubtlessly a match for any of ours, it was also alone, and still docked at the orbital dockyard, while she was on the planet right in front of me. Not the most subtle threat I'd ever made to be sure, but one I'd thought would get the point across that neither of us wanted things to escalate to shooting.
I had most definitely not expected Areelu to reveal herself as a follower of Tzeentch, which I was pretty sure went against the terms under which her bloodline had been bestowed a Warrant of Trade. But try telling that to my entourage of heretical lunatics.
"How did you know, my lord ?" asked Jurgen conversationally as he refilled my cup without me needing to even mention it. "About the Lady Van Yastobaal, I mean."
For a moment, I considered simply telling him the truth. It wouldn't even hurt my reputation all that much : luck, after all, was considered the purview of Tzeentch, with every coincidence being part of the Architect of Fate's overarching scheme. Personally, I thought it was all nonsense, used to justify anything bad that happened so that you could feel better about it being all part of the plan.
My aide's own approach when it came to religion was rather simple : as long as the Dark Gods were helping the Liberation and opposing Nurgle, he was fine with them being worshipped by the people of the Protectorate. While he still prayed to them on occasion (as the old saying went, there is no such thing as a godless man in a trench), he had no interest in swearing his soul to any of the Three, and any faith in the God-Emperor he'd possessed had withered away during his captivity.
Once I'd accidentally revealed that she was a heretic herself, deducing which of the Four she'd aligned herself with had been a simple process of elimination. Khorne and Nurgle were out for the reasons I'd told her, and if she were a follower of Slaanesh I was pretty confident Krystabel would have been warned by Emeli beforehand, instead of being as surprised as she'd been.
If Jurgen had been the only one in the room, I might've just told him as much, but Malicia and Hektor were also present, so I needed to play up the image foisted upon me.
"I had a, let's say, hunch," I simply said, with what I hoped was an appropriately enigmatic smile. Both the Drukhari Wych and the Chaos Marine seemed to buy it, which was a relief. Before anyone could push me further and risk unravelling my web of deceit, I turned to address Hektor :
"This Suture fellow," I began, changing the subject. "What can you tell us about him ?"
Having another transhuman killing machine in my vicinity was making me nervous. I couldn't ask Areelu to send him back to her ship for obvious reasons, and thought that getting as much information as possible would help me handle the potential threat he represented (there weren't many things in the galaxy which could get past Malicia and Jurgen, but by my reckoning a Space Marine had better odds than most).
"Not much," the World Eater replied, frowning thoughtfully. "He isn't a member of the Twelfth, that much is obvious. I doubt he's Thousand Sons either, and we'd definitely have noticed if he were Death Guard."
Since joining what he thought of as my banner, Hektor had given me and the rest of the Liberation Council a primer on the Traitor Legions which were imprisoned within the Eye of Terror after Horus' failed attempt at usurping the Emperor. He'd admitted that it was far from in-depth, due to being based on observations made while he was still under the influence of those awful implants of his, but it had still given me material for fresh nightmares. Especially once I'd learned entirely too much about the Death Guard, the Traitor Legion which had pledged itself to Nurgle. Of course, they were supposed to all be trapped in the Eye of Terror, where they were kept by the ceaseless efforts of the loyal servants of the Golden Throne, but then so was Hektor.
"Still," Hektor continued, "that leaves a lot of options even just among the old crowd, and he could be a renegade of any number of Chapters, renegade or loyalist. He clearly recognized the Nails, but that doesn't mean much : he could've encountered another of my Legion before. Usually, I could tell make a few more guesses, but those scars of his make it impossible to tell whether he used to have some of the more visibly striking mutations of, say, the Salamanders or Night Lords before Yastobaal put him back together. Still, the fact he didn't try to kill her even after she admitted her allegiance at least means he shouldn't cause trouble for us."
"There is that," I nodded. Unless, of course, Areelu decided to turn on us for Emperor knew what reason. By now, I was reasonably certain the Protectorate Tzeentchians wouldn't turn on me unless I did something really stupid, my unmerited reputation keeping them in check. But I'd no idea how someone like Areelu would act.
It was clear she was already playing some kind of game here : her suggestion that I assume the title of Warmaster made that obvious even to someone who'd coasted on the unwarranted respect of far more dangerous people like myself. By making me Warmaster of the assembled forces, she was making them equal under me, despite the existing power unbalance between Slawkenberg, Adumbria, and herself.
Once my attempts to refuse the title by playing up my supposedly humble persona had failed, I'd been unable to think of a good reason, and now I was stuck with it. I tried very hard not to think about the implications of that title. Of course, numerous Imperial commanders had borne it before, but there were only two individuals who really came to mind when thinking about it. Regardless of what it might look like at first glance, neither of them was someone I wanted to emulate, being either dead or insane.
But it was only symbolic, I told myself. Despite my inflated reputation, I was still only a figurehead, who kept things in balance within the Protectorate by virtue of being equally terrified of everyone else. Somehow, I doubted Horus or Abaddon had to worry about things like that, although I couldn't suppress a nervous rictus at the mental images conjured by the thought.
Hektor and Malicia exchanged a glance, and I wondered what they were thinking – hopefully they hadn't caught on to my fear.
"Sir Harold might be able to find out more," offered Jurgen. "If the magi were able to figure out Miss Zerayah's origins, uncovering those of Sir Suture shouldn't be beyond them."
"True," I agreed, "but they've more important things to work on right now. I'll think about it once we've dealt with the pirate fleet, if it's still relevant."
On most Imperial worlds, the astropathic choir would've been able to detect the approach of a fleet in the Warp, though it would have been as imprecise a process as everything involving the blind star-speakers. We didn't have those (none of those stationed on Slawkenberg and Adumbria had survived their worlds' respective upheavals, and we could hardly petition the Administratum for replacements), but the acolytes of Tzeentch who ran much of the Protectorate's bureaucracy were almost as good, even if (from what I'd been told) they used very different methods.
According to them, we had two days (or, given Adumbria Prime didn't have those, forty-eight hours) before the pirate armada emerged from the Warp at the system's edge. Which meant that I'd have to get back to the Fist of the Liberator very soon, leaving no time to properly renew my acquaintance with Regina. A shame, as I'm sure you'll agree, but there were more pressing concerns on my mind at the moment.
Given how short time was, you might wonder why I'd gotten planetside in the first place. The reason, as was far too often the case in my life, had to do with optics. News of the incoming pirate attack had spread through the population of Adumbria : that much had been inevitable. But Vice-Queen Kasteen had been able to prevent the very understandable fears of the proles from degenerating into abject panic by declaring that she'd called their stalwart Slawkenberg allies to help, with Cain the Liberator, he who had struck down the evil which had plagued their world at its very source, leading them.
The fact that the figure public imagination fondly imagined me to be had nothing to do with who I actually was was irrelevant. By showing up planetside, showing every sign of confidence in our ability to overcome this latest crisis, I'd reassured everyone that things were well in hand. Which would keep Kasteen's people free to focus on handling the actual threat instead of panicking civvies, not a prospect any military worth the name has ever relished in the history of Mankind.
If only I could convince myself so easily. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, and unlike the rest of our task force, I couldn't even throw myself into work to keep my mind busy : there was simply nothing for me to do. The others were handling the final preparations, coordinating with the local SDF and the crew of the Worldwounder, or disembarking the USA contingent meant to defend the planet if the pirates managed to land.
Meanwhile, all I could do was sit, and wait until the time came for me to return to a ship where I'd still have to sit and wait while other people's actions determined whether I lived or died.
Throne, I wanted a drink. Since Zerayah wasn't here for me to be a bad influence on her, I was badly tempted to ask Jurgen to find some amasec to go along my recaf, but I decided against it. My aide could be very discreet when needed, but the thought of word spreading that the Liberator was getting drunk before so important a battle couldn't help morale, and morale would help keep me alive, so better not risk it.
My mind wandered back to my adopted 'daughter' back on Slawkenberg. Zerayah had wanted to come with us, but I'd put my foot down as firmly as I could fake. Arguing with her – our first actual argument in seven years – had been a terrifying experience, since I'd been all too aware of how easily she could've killed me. But in the end, she had grudgingly accepted the groxshit I'd fed her about not wanting to risk my successor on the same battlefield I'd myself be, which of course had then turned into me telling her that yes, of course I'd be safe, I would have Jurgen and Malicia with me at all times.
Just to make sure she didn't sneak aboard one of the fleet's vessels, I'd made sure to contact the Liberation Palace using one of the ansibles aboard the Fist of the Liberator to check she was still there before we had left Slawkenberg. If she hadn't replied, I'd fully intended to stop the entire fleet until she was found and returned to the planet, and she knew it, meaning that I'd been able to rely on her unwillingness to cause delays in such a monumental operation to ensure she'd stay where she would be safe from harm (and the rest of the galaxy would be safe from her).
I'd made sure to call her the moment we'd dropped out of the Warp and the ansible connection to Slawkenberg had started working again, reassuring her that the journey had gone well. I'd then spent the next hour or two of the trip from the Mandeville Point to Adumbria Prime talking with her about how things were back home, making sure nothing had gone wrong in my absence. It'd been a gross abuse of power, but nobody had said anything.
I sighed. I was trying to distract myself, and it wasn't working.
"I'm going to take a nap," I announced to the three hardened killers in the room with me. "Make sure all of you are fresh and ready by the time we get back in orbit as well."
With any luck, some sleep would help me relax before I had to once again risk my life.
Notes:
AN : Coming up with all the directors of the Bloodied Crown took me entirely too much time. I wonder how many references the readers will get.
I know some of you wanted Zerayah to come along to go pirate-hunting and be all horror-monster-ish, but do you really think the Glorious Liberator would bring his seven-years old daughter to a warzone ? Really ? Shame on you all.
While writing Cain's POV at the end of this chapter, I went back and edited Chapter 15 to remove the five words that indicated that the ansibles worked in the Warp. Because while I don't know frak about quantum entanglement, it not working in the Warp seems like the kind of stuff that'd make sense - well, as much sense as anything in 40K ever does. Sorcerous interference while in the Materium, like what blocked the vox-net during the Cleansing of Skitterfall, is another story, since the ansibles are still in reality.
Is it a minor detail no one would've noticed if I hadn't pointed it out in this AN ? Probably. But I do try to have my stories self-coherent, even when they're crack.
I haven't actually decided Suture's backstory, so if you've a suggestion, don't hesitate to leave it in your review/comment.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. The next part of the Roboutian Heresy is about 4/5th done, with only one part left to finish and then a lot of polishing and beta-reading, but I think it'll come out before the next chapter of this story (unless the Muse decides otherwise).
Zahariel out.
Chapter 25: Chapter 24
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The Murderous Jest, Jeremiah Smile's personal vessel, burst out of reality at the edge of the Adumbria system.
Once, the ship had been a Lunar-class cruiser of the Imperial Navy, before Jeremiah had arranged for its ventilation system to be flooded with frenzon. By the time his boarding parties had landed, the entire ship had been nearly empty of life, as its crew had torn each other to pieces under the influence of the combat drug. The few holdouts where people had managed to put gas-masks on in time and survive the hordes of their frenzied comrades had provided sport for his people for weeks afterwards.
It was Jeremiah's prized possession. He had gone so far as to have its entire prow repainted to create the impression that the ship itself was grinning as it bore down upon its hapless victims. He was especially proud of the red stains on the smile, which had been created by turning the engines on while the slaves painting it were still outside.
Sitting on his command throne on the bridge, Big Joe standing silent and threatening at his side, the Laughing Fiend watched as the rest of his fleet emerged one by one, taking position alongside the Murderous Jest. It wasn't anything like a proper formation, but it looked intimidating, and the ships' captains had enough experience raiding together that they could still outmanoeuvre members of the Imperial Navy from time to time. Not that such would be needed today : they weren't expected any serious resistance from Adumbria.
Or at least, that had been the plan. Now that they were there, however, things seemed to be a little different from expected. The Worldwounder was there, standing at the head of a flotilla of converted transports and merchantmen, which fit with what the retreating hunters had told them. However …
"There are more ships than Jabbus told us there would be," the director of the Bloodied Crown noted out loud as the readings of the ship's augurs resolved themselves into a readable format, showing several unknown signatures between the cartel's fleet and their prize.
Had the Chairman lied to him ? No, that was unlikely. Jeremiah had checked the records from the hunting party himself, and while it wasn't impossible that Jabbus had falsified them, the Laughing Fiend couldn't think of any reason for the Chairman to do that. These ships must simply have been out of the system at the time, and had rushed back once they'd realized the danger their homeworld was in.
How brave. How noble. Jeremiah was going to enjoy crippling these ships, boarding them, and making their crew watch as he had his way with whoever was in charge.
It would be easy. After all, none of the ships opposing him were real warships. The augur scans made it clear that those were all merchantmen and troop transports (probably the ones which had brought the last Imperial reinforcements to Adumbria before the planet had been forsaken). They would be no match at all for Jeremiah's raiders. The only real danger was the Worldwounder, the ship of that bitch Areelu, but it was alone, and still bearing the scars of its last battle.
"Director," one of the bridge's crew called out, his voice not quite managing to hide the shiver of dread at speaking to him directly. "We are being hailed by one of the local ships."
"Oh ?" Jeremiah grinned, and the crew member's composure failed him completely. "How interesting. Put it on the main hololith, please. Let's hear them beg for their lives, hmm ?"
There was a round of nervous laughter around the bridge. Jeremiah's crew were hardened killers all, who enjoyed victimizing others as much as anyone else, but even they were afraid of their boss, as they damn well should be. The Laughing Fiend had gone through great pains (well, not him personally, others had gone through great pain at his hands) to make sure nobody in his warband would even consider turning against him : the very thought of it would bring images of the consequences of failure so terrible, they'd immediately turn away from that course of action.
The central hololith flickered a few times (despite being on the bridge, it was given lower priority when it came to maintenance compared to the far more important guns), then resolved itself into the image of a tall, steely-eyed and intimidating man wearing a very fetching uniform that was lacking any Imperial insignia, with a bolt pistol and chainsword hanging from his belt. This, everyone who looked at the projection immediately realized, was a man of power and will, a leader whose people would willingly jump into the fires of war for.
Jeremiah hated him on sight, and resolved to find something particularly painful and amusing to do to him before this was over.
"Members of the Bloodied Crown cartel," said the image in a calm, authoritative voice – the kind of voice used to being obeyed without question. "I am Ciaphas Cain, Warmaster of the Protectorate."
Ciaphas Cain … Jeremiah had heard that name before, he was sure of it. Oh ! Right. This was the rebel leader who had overthrown the Imperium on some vacation world, over twenty years back. That had been some time before his own ascension to the directorate, and he'd heard about it only because of the ensuing Inquisitorial response, which had not only failed disastrously, but had also disrupted Militarum operations through the entire Sector, giving the cartels of the Gap plenty of opportunity to expand even before the Navy battlegroup had been withdrawn from the Subsector.
Really, Jeremiah and the rest of the cartel owed the man a great deal. Unfortunately for Cain, the Laughing Fiend hated being indebted to anyone, and generally repaid debts with death. Especially debts owed to parvenus with delusions of grandeur, because seriously ? 'Warmaster' ? As if. That title might be enough to impress the plebs on the backwater world Cain had managed to take over, but Jeremiah was a man of the galaxy, and he knew about the real Warmaster.
"This system and all the people within it are under my protection," the projection continued. "If you depart, you shall be allowed to leave unmolested. If you surrender, you shall be treated humanely, and your safety, if not liberty, will be guaranteed. If you fight," the vox-corrupted voice hardened noticeably, "then you shall be broken."
The transmission ended. For a moment, silence hung over the bridge, before Jeremiah erupted into a mad, unsettling laugh that filled the space and drove the crew to cower at their stations. Automated routines installed into the throne by captured tech-priests triggered, broadcasting the terrible noise all throughout the ship.
And then, just as abruptly as he had started, Jeremiah Smile stopped laughing, as his mounting anger surpassed his hilarity.
"All hands, prepare for battle," he snarled. "Send the word to the rest of the fleet : one million credits to whoever brings me that smug bastard's head, ten if it's still attached to the rest of his body and in a state to scream !"
From the landing bay of the Fist of the Liberator emerged the flight of Cainwings to which Perseus Kilaiz, Slawkenberg born and raised, belonged. The twenty fighters flew out in perfect formation, their pilots having spent years training for this moment.
It was Perseus' first combat sortie : unlike the flight's leader, he hadn't been a pilot at the time of the Cleansing of Adumbria, when the Cainwings had first been used to provide support against the Infected. But while the Infected had barely possessed any anti-air capabilities to speak of, this was going to be the first engagement of the fighter corps of the USA against a real opponent.
Like all of his flight, Perseus' Cainwing was equipped with a set of las-lances and a handful of missiles. That particular loadout had been designed to take on other fighters after hundreds of runs through the borgs' simulations and training exercises, and assigned to Perseus' craft after the evaluations had determined it was the role he was most suited for.
The flight's mission was to escort the bombers who would do the real damage to the enemy ships, keeping the enemy off their back along the way. The pirates had fighters, just like the Rogue Trader's data had said : even now, Perseus could see them fly out of their ships to meet them. But they were using stolen Imperial Navy craft in various states of repair, and the pilots were nowhere near as disciplined as the USA's.
"All pilots, engage at will," came the voice of Perseus' flight lead. "For Slawkenberg ! For the Protectorate ! For the Warmaster !"
"For the Warmaster !" shouted Perseus, the title feeling strange in his mouth even as he spoke it.
Like everyone on Slawkenberg, Cain had been 'the Liberator' to him for so long it felt borderline blasphemous to call him anything else – but the hierarchy of battle had to be respected. Outside of battle, Cain was still the Liberator, but once the las-bolts started flying and the defenders of the Protectorate went to battle to protect all that they loved, he donned the mantle of Warmaster.
At least that was what Perseus' commander had told them after that big meeting planetside with the Vice-Queen and the Rogue Trader lady, and to be frank the pilot had been busy thinking about more important things since.
The Cainwings met the pirate fighters in the void between the fleets, thousands of kilometers away from either side. It had taken a long time for Perseus' mind to truly grasp the enormous distances that were involved in void fighting, to build the instincts required to handle three-dimensional engagements and to get a proper sense of what the Cainwing could do. Now, at last, all of his training would be put to the test in the only way that really mattered.
It was a slaughter. The Cainwings flew circles around the pirate crafts. Within the first ten minutes of the engagement, Perseus alone killed twelve enemy fighters. Then the enemy started to get clever, or perhaps they'd just culled the less competent.
It didn't make much of a difference, however : the better cartel pilots just lived long enough to realize how outmatched their crafts were and turn back, fleeing for their motherships. Perseus' flight gave chase, mercilessly taking out even more targets, until they reached the envelope of the pirate vessels' point-defences.
The next few minutes were a confused mess of evasive manoeuvres, engaging the remaining pirate fighters, and sending missiles back at the short-range weapons of the ships. For the first time since the start of the operation, the USA took losses, as Cainwings were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of enemy fire and sheer, blind chance.
But eventually, the void around the target was clear of anything that didn't serve the Liberation.
"Path to the target is clear," called out Perseus' flight lead. "Bomber flight Alpha, go ahead."
"Bomber flight Alpha, copy that," replied another voice. "Moving in now."
Another twenty Cainwings moved close to the enemy flagship, approaching through the opening in its point defenses the fighters had discovered. The additional weight of their payloads meant they were less manoeuvrable, but that didn't make their pilots any less skilled.
In a breathtaking feat of coordination, fifty-three bombs hit the shields and detonated within a couple seconds of each other. It was too much for the shield generators, and the energy barrier crackled and popped, leaving the ship exposed.
"Solid hit !" declared the bomber flight's leader on the open channel. "Flight Beta, now you !"
The next flight of bombers was already making its approach. This time, the bombs weren't timed to explode at the same time : they were spread across the ship's megastructure, targeting vital areas – the bridge, the blazing engines, the guns, the vox-towers.
And just like that, the enemy flagship, identified as the Murderous Jest, was reduced to nothing more than an inert mountain of metal floating in the void, still carried toward the Protectorate's fleet by its own momentum.
"Good job, everyone !" called out control, back aboard the Fist of the Liberator. "Sending new target now !"
Sat in his cockpit, moving at speed defying imagination as he battled the enemies of the Protectorate, Perseus couldn't help but smile. It was a good day to be a member of the USA, and a bad day to be pirate scum.
I couldn't believe it.
After I had spent the entire trip to Adumbria and then the days waiting for the pirates' arrival worrying about this battle, thinking that the Protectorate's fleet was going to get pounded to oblivion by the raiders, we had instead won a crushing victory within an hour of the battle's beginning. Our ships hadn't even needed to fire a shot : the Worldwounder had fired her lances precisely once, and that had been to take out a pirate ship trying to escape, long after their formation had completely collapsed and we'd finally gotten into range of our respective main weapons.
Of the fourteen pirate vessels, half had been reduced to flaming hulks, their inner atmosphere burning up as their engines underwent critical failures. Four others were floating in the void, powerless, their engines and weapons silenced by targeted bombardment by the Cainwing flights. According to the borgs' analysis of the pirates' comms, the enemy flagship was among them. As for the remaining three, they were running away, abandoning their comrades and leader without hesitation as they made for the Mandeville Point.
Meanwhile, we hadn't so much as taken a single shot past our shields. The fighters had taken losses to the pirates' point-defences, yet, but the ratio of damage we'd inflicted upon the enemy was downright absurd. Looking at the reports, it looked like we'd lost maybe fifty crafts, with several times more damaged and needing urgent repairs. Sure, I'd need to make sure the dead pilots were suitably honored to avoid resentment against me, since I'd been the one technically in charge of the whole thing, but I was fairly certain even the Imperial Navy would've been impressed.
I could only imagine this was due to the pirates' appalling lack of discipline and proper maintenance on their ships, and that our tactic of staying out of range of the enemy guns while the Cainwings did all the work wouldn't be so devastatingly effective against a proper naval force. Still, it was better than the alternative, which would have had us run away and abandon Adumbria to its fate.
I would have given the order to retreat the moment the battle had become hopeless, of course, but the hit to my fraudulent reputation would've been massive, to say nothing of the fact that the pirates would then have a base of operations right on Slawkenberg's metaphorical doorstep, and I could well imagine how tempting a prise the planet would've been.
I was beginning to relax when Mahlone, who was observing the battle from his own seat on the bridge, turned toward me and asked :
"Shall we finish them off with a shot of our main gun ?" suggested Mahlone. "Give the ones running away something to talk about !"
I stamped down on my first instinctual response, which was 'Frak no, you crazy bastard'. Despite all the years spent studying the Fist of the Liberator's superweapon, the borgs still only had theories as to how it worked – mostly because I had firmly rejected all requests to test fire it, on account of one hole in the fabric of space in the Slawkenberg system being one too many already. Yet everyone seemed very enthusiastic about using it, regardless of the fact that for all we knew, it would explode and kill us all the next time it was turned on.
I couldn't just say that, though : I needed a reason these maniacs would accept, and which wouldn't reveal how little I trusted the work of the borgs. Fortunately, inspiration struck me (although if I'd known what the long-term consequences would be, I'd have ordered the weapon to fire, and Horus take the rest).
"No, General. I have another idea." I pressed a button on my command throne, opening a vox-link to the one landing bay of the ship which hadn't disgorged a flight of fighters : "Hektor, this is Cain. Do you read me ?"
"Yes, Warmaster," came the reply, Hektor's voice still possessing that distinct transhuman timbre even over the vox.
Since the battle's beginning, Hektor had been waiting in one of the flight decks, along with several hundred USA troopers waiting aboard a bunch of troop transports, ready to be deployed to any of our ships that might get boarded by the pirates and needed help repelling them. That situation hadn't presented itself, and I'd a feeling not giving Hektor anything to do in the battle would be a bad idea.
Besides, I wanted to check whether he could be trusted to fight (a real fight, not the training exercises he'd taken part in back on Slawkenberg) without succumbing to his old habits, even with the Panacea injectors keeping his implants quiet. The fact that I had the perfect excuse to do so in a way that would ensure he was on another ship from me if he lost control was just killing two sump-rats with one sharpened femur, as we used to say in the underhive.
"The enemy flagship has been disabled," I told him. "Do you think you and the troopers could capture it for us ?"
"A bunch of pirates against our people ?" The World Eater laughed, a sound which made my hackles raise. "That won't be a problem, I assure you. The troopers could do it even without me."
"Good. Then get to it, if you please. Oh, and try to take the enemy leader alive if possible," I said as something else came to me. "We need to know all we can about the cartel which sent him."
"From what Lady Van Yastobaal told us about these pirates, it won't be easy to make him talk," remarked Hektor.
True enough, I thought. According to Areelu, anyone who rose to command of so large a squadron, even one as weak as this one had turned out to be, had to be a very special kind of ruthless to survive what passed for politics among the cartels. But I didn't care : what mattered was that I could see Mahlone listening on the conversation and nod in approval, all thoughts of using the unstable superweapon forgotten when presented with the opportunity for his maniacs to have some fun boarding a ship full of desperate pirates.
Frakking Khornates.
"I'm sure the magi can figure something out to make him talk," I told Hektor, before one final idea came to me, and I added : "And if they can't, I'll just give him to Malicia."
Admittedly, nobody really deserved to be handed over to the inexistent mercies of a Drukhari, but I figured the mere threat of doing so would be enough to crack anybody. According to the Adumbrian records, the Torredon Subsector had been the site of several Dark Eldar raids in the last century, so pirates probably had their own horror stories about the xenos torturers.
As Hektor confirmed reception of his orders and went to prepare, I swore I could hear my bloodward purr in anticipation from her place behind my throne.
Well, at least she was having fun.
As the gunship carrying Hektor and the ten other USA troopers packed into the cargo hold along with him, Hektor's blood was flooded with pre-battle adrenalin, while his mind considered every possible angle of attack for the battle to come. For so long, such things had been drowned in the agony of the Nails, made all the sharper by the promise of imminent relief. Now, at long last, he could enjoy the simple joy of anticipation once more.
In the end, even without the Nails, Hektor was still a warrior, his entire body remade for war. He hadn't lied to Suture back on Adumbria Prime : he truly hadn't killed anyone since the Cleansing – and whether the Infected qualified as people was debatable.
The craft shook all around them as its pilot took it to its absolute limits, but that was nothing compared to a boarding torpedo. Hektor had suggested those to the Liberator when they had designed the Protectorate's fleet, and Cain had looked at him like he was crazy before asking him to explain what he meant.
So, instead of being hurled in a straight line at the enemy ship, the boarding parties were being escorted through the void by a full flight of Cainwing fighters. Of course, by that point there were only a handful of enemy crafts still operating, the rest having either been killed or retreated to their landing bays once it had become clear they were massively outmatched, but the Liberator was nothing if not careful with the lives of his followers. Which, once again, was a nice change from literally every commander Hektor had ever had that he could remember.
They landed in one of the Murderous Jest's landing bays, which barely deserved the name compared to the Fist of the Liberator's own. It was open to the void, its atmosphere vented due to the damage the ship had taken, but that wasn't a problem for Hektor and the USA troopers, whose suits of armor were fit to operate inside a Space Hulk.
"Team B, secure the engines and make sure whoever is working there doesn't turn them back on while we're aboard," the World Eater ordered over the vox. "Team A, you are with me. We're going to the bridge."
The exits of the bay were sealed by thick blast doors, but one of the squad members had been trained by the borgs, and the machine-spirits of the ship were all too happy to let them through after a little coaxing. Then they were into the dark maze of corridors that stretched throughout the ship's decks, surrounded by signs of poor maintenance. Alarms were blaring from vox-speakers, along with the rantings of the ship's commander, threatening a variety of horrible if imaginative fates to his crew if the ship didn't start working again, as if his words could somehow alter the very reality of his situation.
Hektor led the way, trusting his instincts to guide them to the bridge. He might or might not have been aboard that particular class of ship before, but all Imperial vessels were built following certain patterns, and it was a poor Astartes who couldn't navigate them with his eyes closed. Behind him, a score of troopers followed, managing to keep up despite Hektor going nearly as fast as he was capable of.
Good. Their training was paying off. It was all very good to know how to shoot someone or stab them with a knife, but if you couldn't run a distance that would have an untrained human puke and then get into a fight and win, then you weren't a real soldier. Cain's training regimen had made sure all the troopers of the USA were real soldiers in Hektor's book.
After around twenty minutes of moving up the ship, they were finally challenged. So far, the crew they had encountered had turned and ran away from them, and Hektor had told the troopers to save their ammo. Besides, they might be slaves taken from raids and forced to work for the pirates rather than pirates themselves, and the Liberator wouldn't like it if they killed them.
The hundred or so armsmen waiting in ambush in the next chamber, however, were definitely pirates. Hektor heard them long before he saw them : they were whispering to each other, not even really bothering with stealth.
He triggered his great chainaxe, letting the deadly sound herald his approach, then confidently walked into the chamber, staring them down. At once, Hektor saw the recognition in their body language, as they instinctively recoiled from him. His borg-made armor might be of a different type than any other worn by his Astartes kind, but it was still impossible to mistake him for anything else.
"Space Marine," he heard someone whisper in terror, then the name was taken up by the rest in panicked screams : "Space Marine ! Space Marine ! SPACE MARINE !"
"That's right, you scum," The World Eater laughed. Then he paused, remembering something. "Now, before we start … anyone willing to surrender ?"
Instead of answering his generous offer, the pirates opened fire, pelting his armor with ineffective las-bolts and small-calibre gunfire.
He shrugged, barely feeling the impacts. Oh well, he had given them a chance. Best get to it, before one of the troopers behind him got hurt by a lucky shot – unlikely, given the quality of their own armor, but you never knew. Even Orks could get lucky, and the pirates were at least trying to aim.
He swung his chainaxe around, forming a whirlwind of death that ripped through the pirates like a plasma cutter through butter.
He didn't even draw the bolter the borgs had made him. Despite their best efforts and numerous attempts, the ranged weapon had never felt quite right in his hands, though he couldn't say whether it was because the borgs didn't have access to the schematics of Legion-issue weaponry, or because the centuries of seeking battle in melee to appease the Nails had permanently wired him to prefer close quarter combat.
It didn't really matter anyway, at least not in this battle. The confines of a spaceship were perfect for him, and he even had the troopers to cover him with their own las-weapons (not that they weren't also ready for melee if need be).
From there, the team's advance became a lot more contested, and the closer they got to the bridge, the more intense and desperate the resistance became. Hektor repeated his offer of surrender several times, but the pirates never took it – yet he could tell they were terrified of him : it was just that they were more terrified of their boss.
He couldn't help but be mildly impressed at that. Had one of Curze's progeny found his way to the Torredon Subsector ? This was the sort of motivation he'd expect from the unfortunate souls trapped on their ships.
A ship like the Murderous Jest could house tens of thousands, and it felt like he was cutting his way through every single one of them. So, when the tide of terrified mortals abruptly stopped, Hektor's first reaction was suspicion.
"Hold," he told the team. "I'm going ahead to scout. Wait for my signal."
They acknowledged his order and obeyed without questions – another sign of their training's quality, that they trusted the instincts of someone with far more experience than all of them put together. Slowly, cautiously, Hektor stalked through the dark corridors, until he arrived into a chamber hosting a large staircase leading several decks up.
Ten mortals stood at the base of the staircase, waiting for him – and completely unarmed. Despite the Panacea injectors in his arms, Hektor felt the Nails react; not to cause pain, but to send a cold shiver down his spine. Psykers. They were all psykers, and looking at their expressions, not the stable and trained kind like the Liberator's aide. Where in the War God's name had these pirates found so many ? Torredon had only just been abandoned by the Imperium, there hadn't been enough time for the Black Ships' harvests to stop and make any real impact.
No matter. It would just be one more question to ask the leader later. Right now, Hektor had to focus on getting through this latest obstacle.
"Once again," he growled, covered in the gore of those who had tried and failed to stop him, and to their credits they only flinched and did not turn and run. "Anybody interested in surrendering ?"
There was a brief pause, and he thought they might just take the chance – that the insanity that afflicted so many of the psychically gifted might be enough to override their fear of their master. Then one of the witches pointed a hand at Hektor, and a wave of agony washed over him. It was as if his skin had been bathed in acid and then set on fire, from the top of his scalp to the sole of his feet. It was pain enough to drive someone mad, to make them beg for death or run as far from the source of it as they could.
The World Eater laughed. Compared to the memory of the Nails, it was nothing.
"You call that pain ?" he bellowed. "I have had worse headaches !"
Then, before any of the others had time to react, he was among them, axe swinging. Psykers were dangerous, even to Astartes, especially wild ones like these. Imperial battle-psykers were, in his experience, shackled by their training and their bond to the False Emperor, taught to wield their powers in very specific ways. Wild ones, on the other hand, were capable of just about anything, though they only had one or two tricks each unless they were gifted with real power, like Cain's aide. And if it had been the case of these ones, they would have ruled the warband, not served in it.
The butchery was quick, precise, and merciless. Nothing at all like the wild frenzy the Nails would have driven him to. By the time the first head bumped against a wall and stopped moving, every single one of the psykers was dead.
After waiting a moment to make sure no daemon would rise from the corpses, Hektor signalled for the USA troopers to join him.
They climbed up the stairs, ready to face an ambush that never came. The rest of the way to the bridge was unhindered, until they came before the blast doors leading in. They were, of course, closed, but that wasn't what drew Hektor's attention first.
The entire space between them and the door was filled with dirty, starving mortals, unarmed and in rags that had once been civilian clothing. Dozens of them, men, women and children, each one wearing an injector collar around their scrawny necks.
As Hektor cautiously approached, he heard the sudden hiss of a hundred injectors activating at once. Then the mortals started screaming and convulsing, eyes bulging in their sockets, faces contorted in expressions of anguish that soon dissolved into mindless rage.
Drugs. The pirate lord had taken these people, doubtless captives from earlier raids, and pumped full of some kind of aggression-enhancing drug, just to throw them in the USA's path. Hektor heard the cries of disgust from the troopers over the vox as they realized the same thing he had.
The Nails were silent, yet Hektor still felt his rage mounting. He controlled it easily, of course : compared to the impulses of the Nails, all-natural fury was the easiest thing in the galaxy to suppress.
"These are yours to deal with," he commanded the squad behind him. "Use minimal force, try to keep them alive. I will deal with the animal responsible."
Much as it galled the World Eater to leave them behind, the simple truth was that Astartes had not been designed for taking down their enemies non-lethally, and the Liberator wouldn't want him to get (more) innocent blood on his hands. As the frenzied slaves charged the crimson intruders, heedless of the fact they could have killed them all in seconds had they opened fire, Hektor moved to the side of the chamber. With a mental command to his armor, he activated his boots' magnetic locks, and proceeded to run across the wall, up above the throng of mindless thralls, before landing behind the mass and in front of the doors to the bridge.
It was a trick he had figured out he could do a couple of years back during one of the training exercises, which relied on the fact his current suit of armor was a lot lighter than the patchwork ceramite one he'd worn for so many centuries. The armor was also theoretically slightly less resilient than a proper ceramite battle-plate, but given the state his equipment had been in even before the Infected had torn him open and left him for dead, it was still a definite upgrade.
The bridge doors were made to resist fire, the void, and breaching attempts by mutinous crew, but they were no match for a determined Astartes with a chainaxe. As the troopers engaged the thralls, their own armor completely proof against their bare fists (and, in some cases, teeth), Hektor carved his way through, ripping metal apart until he had made a hole large enough for him to pass through.
The moment he entered the bridge, Hektor was rammed by a hulking, screaming mortal, with enough strength to actually make him take a few steps back.
He could smell the chemicals running through the poor wretch's body, granting him unnatural strength at the cost of his mind. It was similar to the drugged slaves, but far more advanced, a cocktail designed to push the recipient far beyond the normal limits of the human body over the course of months, if not years of regular injections; he wasn't an Apothecary, but he could still tell this wasn't the result of just one injection.
Dropping his chainaxe, he wrestled with the brute for several seconds, before managing to lift him up in the air and bringing his back down onto his knees. The spinal column shattered with an audible snap, and he threw the drug-fuelled mortal behind him.
"Stay down," he growled, before telling the USA troopers : "Get some Panacea into that one when you are done with the rest."
With that taken care of, Hektor turned his attention to his target. There, sitting on the command throne, was a man dressed in flak armor painted a shade of purple that reminded Hektor from the Emperor's Children, back before their heraldry had become as degenerated as the warriors wearing it. He was staring at the Space Marine who had just disposed of his enforcer, eyes wide, his mouth open and moving, but no sound coming out.
Hektor could smell his fear, his sheer refusal to accept what was happening. Not a Night Lord, after all. Just a small and cruel man, raging at the galaxy and making people around him suffer as if it would make him matter, as if Mankind hadn't seen and forgotten countless others just like him before.
"I would say you are lucky the Warmaster wants you alive," he told the pirate lord, "but given what's in store for you, I would be lying."
Then, with all the care years of practice holding back his strength in a world built by and for unaugmented humans, he knocked the scum out. None of the bridge crew tried to stop him; in fact, Hektor was fairly sure he heard them breathe in relief.
"Warmaster Cain," he called out over the vox, his transmission relayed to the Fist of the Liberator by the ansible Team A's designated vox-man was carrying. "The bridge is secured, and I have the enemy leader in custody."
"Well done, Hektor," replied the Liberator. "Make sure the ship is secure, then bring him back, please. We're just about finished with the rest of the battle over here."
"As you command," said Hektor, before closing the link and looking down at the collapsed form of the pirate lord.
He wasn't going to enjoy carrying that wretch back to the flagship : it felt like merely holding him would dirty his armor somehow. But, duty was duty, and he had obeyed far worse orders in his time.
Once the post-battle clean-up was over (which, in this case, meant seizing the pirate hulls which hadn't fled or been destroyed, if only to ensure they wouldn't drift into something important like Adumbria Prime, as well as processing the thousands of captives from the pirate crew which had surrendered when the certainty of their defeat had become obvious even to them), Areelu received an invitation to join the rest of the Protectorate's leadership on the Fist of the Liberator.
According to Cain's message, the purpose of this meeting was to discuss the intelligence they had acquired and their next course of action to secure Adumbria from future incursions. She came aboard a gunship bearing the emblem of the Van Yastobaal House, with Suture and an honor guard of her household troops. Of course, the latter would have to stay outside the conference room, but she'd been assured Suture would be allowed in, whether because he might possess useful martial insight or because nobody had felt like saying no to him, Areelu honestly wasn't sure.
The battle had been unbelievingly one-sided. The flights of fighters unleashed by the Protectorate fleet had swarmed the pirate vessels long before they could get into range of their own weapons, and proceeded to utterly demolish them. Worldwounder had been in the vanguard of the defensive fleet, being the sole proper warship they had despite her wounds, but she hadn't needed to fire a single shot.
From what Areelu could tell, the pirate fleet had been designed to fight the Imperial Navy, which relied on the heavy firepower of its ships of the line to break the enemy. As such, the pirate vessels were quick, meant to use their speed to avoid enemy fire while using their own heavy guns to punch through shields and armor.
But the Cainwings were capable of operating far beyond the range of any conventional weaponry, meaning that they had engaged the pirate fleet while their carriers were still at a safe distance. At this point, it had been a fight between the Cainwings and the cartel fleet's own fighters and point defenses – a fight the Protectorate had won hand down.
Areelu's crew had been suitably awed by the spectacle. They were all seasoned professionals – Areelu only surrounded herself with the best people money could buy – who had participated in scores of void battles over their careers. In their time in Areelu's service alone, they had fought human renegades, Eldar reavers, Rak'gol and Demiurge privateers, and other, less common adversaries. But very rarely had the fight been so overwhelming, at least not when the other side was as powerful as the pirate fleet had been.
In Areelu's view, this promised great things for her alliance with the Protectorate, though these were all secondary to the opportunity to finally fulfill her promise that Cain had already dropped in her lap. The Liberator didn't even seem to have noticed what he had done, though given he'd seen through her guise as a loyal Imperial agent immediately, the Rogue Trader wouldn't bet on that façade of ignorance being true.
She and her escort walked from the bay where her transport had landed, which was a veritable hive of activity as the Protectorate's tech-priests fretted over damaged fighters and wounded pilots were extracted from their machines and damaged void-suits before being injected with Panacea and gently carried away to recover (or, in the case of those more badly hurt, to receive the care of the medicae in a more proper setting). Then, she and Suture were ushered into the conference room by the squad of armored USA troopers guarding the entrance.
A single round table filled most of the space of the room, with a smaller one against the wall with refreshments. Cain's aide directed her to a seat (all seats, including Cain's, were completely identical, she noted), while Suture would have to stand, as did Hektor, but then she had found out that Space Marines preferred to stand in such situations anyway.
Apart from the Liberator, his aide, his Drukhari bloodward (who looked like a feline who had just eaten a particularly tasty bird) and the World Eater, General Mahlone, Sir Harold, Lady Krystabel and Magos Tesilon-Kappa were all in attendance, while the Vice-Queen of Adumbria was attending the meeting by hololith. She made a good effort at concealing her relief at the pirate fleet's defeat, but Areelu could still see it in the subtle shifts of her posture and expression.
"Thank you all for being here," began Cain once they were all set and Jurgen had served recaf to everyone (which, Areelu had to admit, was of excellent quality). "First off, I want to congratulate our forces for this incredible victory. I don't think anyone here expected it to be quite as overwhelming as it turned out to be."
"The pirate scum stood no chance against the might of the Protectorate," boasted General Mahlone, amidst a general chorus of approval.
"Indeed they didn't," allowed Cain, "but that doesn't mean we should get complacent. Especially since the greater threat to the Protectorate is far from dealt with."
There were solemn nods from all present.
"What about the prisoners ?" asked Suture, surprising Areelu. "From what I saw, you captured thousands of them. What is to be their fate ?"
"Penal labor," declared Cain, before anyone else could speak. "The USA does not execute its captives, and Adumbria can use the manpower anyway. Isn't that right, Vice-Queen Kasteen ?"
Regina nodded, but there was clear reluctance in her voice as she replied : "We sure can, but I'm not sure about allowing these wretches on my world, Cain. Some of them might have been forced into piracy, either by circumstance or outright coercion, but they are still criminals. And, based on Lady Van Yastobaal's reaction to their leader's identity, I have a feeling they have participated in a number of atrocities over the years."
"Make it clear to them that this is their last chance," ordered the Warmaster. "If they cause problems, then their overseers will have full permission to execute them on the spot. Those who can be rehabilitated will be useful."
"Are you sure ?" asked Areelu, sceptical of the whole idea. "There are good reasons why the Imperium's punishment for piracy is death."
"I'm sure there are," he replied, though the brief flash of a smile he didn't quite manage to hide was all the Rogue Trader needed to know he was merely indulging her. "But we are not the Imperium, Lady Areelu. I would rather err on the side of being too merciful than the opposite."
Areelu inclined her head, understanding there was no point arguing further. Why the Schola Progenium had thought to make this man a Commissar, she would never understand. Yes, he had the strategic acumen such a duty required, but he very obviously lacked the cruelty and lack of empathy all members of the Commissariat whose paths she'd crossed had possessed.
"Speaking of prisoners, although we won't inflict this one on Adumbria, the pirate commander Hektor captured has started to talk," continued the Liberator. "His name is Jeremiah Smile, and he is one of the directors of the Bloodied Crown. Lady Areelu, I assume you recognize that name ?"
"I do indeed," the Rogue Trader grimaced in disgust. "He is one of the vilest pieces of scum I have ever had the displeasure of hearing of. His reputation spreads across the entire Torredon Subsector, and not in a good way. The list of atrocities he has committed is as long as it is repugnant."
It was the waste of it all that irritated Areelu the most, truth be told. The man was smart, ruthless and determined : he couldn't have become a director of one of the Torredon Subsector's most powerful cartels otherwise. And what had he done with it ? Indulged in petty and melodramatic evils, for no greater purpose than his own sick amusement. Pathetic.
Then the implication of what Cain had said hit her.
"Wait a moment," she asked. "You already made him crack ? It has barely been a few hours ! I would have expected someone like him to be very hard to make talk, or at least talk about anything useful."
"Oh, it wasn't that difficult," said Krystabel, preening. "With Lady Malicia's help, he caved in remarkably quickly; but then, I suppose you wouldn't have such unique assistance."
Was she trying to get under her skin ? She was ! How cute. Oh, Areelu had no doubt the girl was perfectly competent at the games of intrigue – she wouldn't have survived to see her homeworld breaking free from the Imperium otherwise. But Areelu had been playing these games since before Krystabel's mother had been born.
She merely smiled at the Slaaneshi cultist, whose own smile soured in response. Cain coughed, and everyone's attention immediately returned to him.
"In any case, as we suspected, he was sent here by the Chairman of the Bloodied Crown himself, after the hunters of the Worldwounder made it back to Torredon. His mission was to seize the orbital refitting facilities, so that the cartel could use them to take control of the ships in orbit and expand their activities in Torredon."
"Should we expect another fleet, then ?" Kasteen asked. "Since some of this one managed to escape, they will surely report back to their superiors."
Cain nodded. "It was my hope that a clear display of strength would be enough to put them off, but from Smile's attitude, it seems unlikely. Lady Areelu, what do you think the Bloodied Crown's reaction will be ?"
"Escalation," she replied without hesitation. "The leadership of the shadow cartels live and die by their reputation. It's one thing for them to retreat from the Imperial Navy, but the Protectorate isn't the Imperium, and we took out one of the Bloodied Crown's directors. If the others want to keep their seats safe from ambitious subordinates, they'll have no choice but to try again. It won't be soon, but it will happen, I guarantee it."
There was an exchange of glances between the assembled, but nobody contradicted her. Cain's gambit might have worked if the commander of the pirate fleet had been less highly ranked among the cartels, but the defeat of a director wasn't an insult that could go unpunished.
"What about the psykers ?" Hektor asked. "Did that wretch tell you where he found them ?"
"He did," replied Krystabel. "Someone named Jereb Auric has apparently been selling wyrds to the other members of the Bloodied Crown cartel, but Smile didn't know where he is getting them from –"
The Handmaiden stopped talking as the air suddenly became charged with threat. Everyone in the room felt it, and the lumens flickered, along with the Vice-Queen's hololith projection. Searching for the source of the disturbance, Areelu immediately realized it was coming for the Liberator's aide, whose usually composed expression had contorted into a furious grimace.
"Jurgen, enough," Cain ordered, voice firm and completely unperturbed by the angry psyker standing not two meters away from him. "I understand why you are angry, but keep yourself under control. You will have the opportunity to express your displeasure to those responsible in person, I promise you."
And just like that, the psychic pressure vanished. It spoke both of incredible control on Jurgen's part, and of how absolute Cain's authority over his aide was. Areelu could tell that the Liberator hadn't doubted his order would be obeyed for a moment. She made a note to look into Jurgen's reaction : while one didn't need to be an Inquisitor to guess why he'd reacted so poorly, it was always best to check one's gut feelings.
"Already, sons and daughters of Slawkenberg have given their lives in this war," the Liberator mused, a sorrowful expression on his face. "And yet I must ask that more do so before we return to our home."
Then the sorrow vanished, replaced by steely determination. This, she thought, this was why she'd ensured Cain took the title of Warmaster. He might not enjoy it, because he was no mindless Khornate pursuing war for its own sake, but nor did he shrink for it if it was required to accomplish his goals – instead, he made sure to stack the deck in his favor as much as possible.
After all, he'd given the order to board the Murderous Jest instead of blowing it apart once it had been rendered defenceless. Clearly, this had been done to seize more intelligence from the enemy, all in preparation of the very campaign he was now declaring in the Torredon Subsector.
"Very well then. If such is the price of our freedom and the safety of our people, then it is one we will pay. We will travel to the Torredon Gap, and bring Liberation to the beleaguered worlds of that Subsector." He raised his hand, forestalling the chorus of cheers that had begun to raise. "However, let it be clear that conquest is not our objective there. We will not compel the worlds of Torredon to join the Protectorate by force of arms. Our goal is to remove the threat to Adumbria by destroying the Bloodied Crown cartel, and all other shadow cartels if necessary, along with any other threat to our home we discover during our journey. I will not have the banner of Liberation turn into an excuse for conquest and oppression, for doing so would make us no different from the Imperium."
And he meant it too, Areelu was sure of it. And so was everyone else, who looked like they hadn't expected anything less from him.
"Lady Areelu," he turned toward her, and she sat just a little bit straighter under his attention. She had made sure that the robe she was wearing clung to her figure just so, and she saw Krystabel's frown deeper in the corner of her eyes – though if Cain noticed, he didn't show any sign of it. "You have my thanks for your assistance in defending Adumbria."
"You didn't exactly need it," she pointed out. No point in trying to pretend otherwise; sincerity would help her the most here.
"But we didn't know for certain we wouldn't," he replied, "and you were willing to stand with us as well as share what you know of the enemy. For that, I consider any debt owed for your rescue and the repairs of your ships to be cleared."
How generous. True, Worldwounder was far from being completely repaired, but the borgs had done impressive work in the time they had. In any Imperial port she could think of, that alone would have cost her a relative fortune, nevermind the fact she was responsible for the Bloodied Crown learning about Adumbria's survival and the Protectorate's existence, albeit indirectly.
"My dear Warmaster," she said, "I hope this isn't a prelude to ending our alliance ? If I remember things right, the ships of your fleet don't have Navigators. And while the magi in your employ are more than capable of leading you from Slawkenberg to Adumbria and back again, that route has been one of the most stable in the Gulf for centuries. I can tell you from experience that the Torredon Subsector is nowhere near as easy to traverse. However, my own Navigator is experienced enough to chart a path through the Warp storms with ease, and can lead the way for the rest of your fleet … if you would have me at your side, of course."
"And what do you stand to gain from this ?" asked General Mahlone, frowning suspiciously at her. Which, given Areelu was both a Rogue Trader and aligned with the God of Ambition, was reasonable enough.
"Well, to start with," Areelu replied, "killing pirates can be very lucrative if you do it right. And I do want to take revenge on the Bloodied Crown for forcing me to run from them, while I'm at it. But I would also like a copy of the Panacea STC for my own use in exchange for the services of my Dynasty."
"Done," replied Cain with a snap of his fingers and absolutely no hesitation. "Tesilon-Kappa, please make sure the Lady has a copy with her before she leaves the ship."
She … she hadn't thought it would be that easy, or that she would get the priceless technology before they had even left for the Gap. Some of her surprise must have shown on her face, because Cain chuckled :
"Come now, Lady Areelu. I told you we shared the secrets of the Panacea with the Imperium, didn't I ? As far as I am concerned, every additional source of Panacea in the galaxy is another blow to Nurgle's power. I would've given it to you even without you offering your continued assistance in our efforts, just to spite the Rotten Lord." He looked at the rest of the gathered worthies, then added : "But, to reassure my dear comrades of your continued dedication to the cause, I will add this incentive : once we return from Torredon, I will give you a copy of another STC template."
Oh, he was brilliant. Areelu really looked forward to getting to know more about the Liberator.
Notes:
AN : Before anyone asks me where is Harley, there is a mind-healer on Slawkenberg (a new discipline that appeared after the Uprising, as a lot of people needed help to deal with the trauma of the Giorba's atrocities) who just got married to her long-term girlfriend, one of Orion Rieper's gardener colleagues. There, that's that taken care of.
Regarding the void battle : a lot of people spent a lot of time debating things on the SB thread. Frankly, you people put more thought into it than I did. I took inspiration from a variety of posts, and I hope that the end result was enjoyable and didn't break anyone's immersion in what is, remember, crack.
Perseus is another character recycled from Warband of the Forsaken Sons. In that fic, he ended up becoming a Helldrake, so things can only go better for him in this one.
Also, this story now has a TVTropes page ! Please check it out and add to it !
Next chapter : the journey to Torredon, a certain renegade Inquisitor's reaction to the news, and the reveal of the nature of Areelu's promise in this story. I was kind of surprised by how popular of a character she seems to be among my readers, but don't worry : I have plans for her beyond this arc. Wonderful, glorious, terrible plans, fit for someone like her.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts, theories and suggestions.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 26: Chapter 25
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
On Slawkenberg, news of the great victory won by the Protectorate fleet against the Bloodied Crown were being broadcast across the entire planet. Footage of the battle had been sent back through the ansibles, and already the military strategists who had helped develop the USA's void doctrine were furiously analysing every bit of data to learn all they could from it.
The victory against the pirates had been overwhelming, as befitted a battle led by the Liberator, but there was always more to learn. Especially since, as Cain himself had warned in his personal dispatches, the next enemy the Protectorate fleet would face was unlikely to be as debased and incompetent as the pirate lord they had faced this time.
The names of the brave pilots who had laid down their lives in defense of Adumbria had also been sent home. A ceremony honoring them had taken place in Cainopolis, with their relatives being honored by the Chief Clerk himself in the Liberator's absence, until such time as their mortal remains (those which could be recovered from the void) were returned to Slawkenberg, there to rest forever among the other heroes of the Liberation.
As the sole member of the Liberation Council left on Slawkenberg, Chief Clerk Jafar was nominally in charge of running the planet's affairs in the Liberator's absence. It was a responsibility that could only have been bestowed upon one whose skills and loyalty were held in such high esteem by the Liberator as Jafar, and one which he would have to bear for longer. For, having defeated the enemy's first attack, the Liberator had decided to pursue the foe into its lair, and wipe out the threat of the shadow cartels which had plagued the Torredon Subsector for centuries.
Not all were so delighted at the prospect of spreading the glorious ideals of Liberation even further, however. It was rumored that Zerayah Cain, the adopted daughter of the Liberator (and, though it wasn't spoken aloud often, presumptive heiress of the Protectorate should the unthinkable come to pass), had been in something of a funk at the news, already missing her beloved father. There were whispers that some kind of party was being prepared in the Palace to cheer her up – for, despite her apparent maturity, she was still a child at heart, and as attached to her adoptive father as one would expect of a child of the Liberator.
If I was to name one good thing about this entire foolish journey into danger I had found myself cornered into, it was that the Worldwounder's hospitality left nothing to be desired. Areelu's chefs were masters of the culinary arts, the quarters assigned to me were comfortable without veering all the way into decadence, and the service was impeccable, despite the ship having been mauled by the Bloodied Crown not so long ago.
My presence aboard the Rogue Trader vessel, rather than the Fist of the Liberator, had been the subject of some debate before our departure. There had been no question of refusing Areelu's offer to guide the fleet to Torredon : even the Tzeentchian magi had to admit that leading the fleet into the Warp Storms of the Subsector was an entirely different proposition than the regular trips between Adumbria and Slawkenberg. Theoretically, we could have just relied on Emeli's help, but I felt reluctant to do so for obvious reasons (well, not so obvious to everyone else, who thought I simply didn't want to bother my beloved Daemon Princess too much, which really said everything you needed to know about the kind of lunatics I'd found myself surrounded by).
In order for the rest of the fleet to keep up with the Worldwounder once we were all in the Warp, a significant number of Tzeentchian and Slaaneshi cult magi needed to be on board, synchronized with others scattered across the other ships through constant rituals, who would be performed in relay by several teams. This included Krystabel and Harold, and by that point it made more sense for me to be there as well, keeping an eye on them to ensure they didn't do anything stupid (or, as I had told them, being in position to intervene should something unexpected happen).
Basileus-Zeta had come with us to monitor the health of the magi and provide assistance when required. At the time, I had thought it overkill (we had the Panacea, after all), but I would soon be more grateful for his presence than I could possibly have anticipated.
I couldn't have avoided bringing Jurgen and Malicia with me if I'd tried, but I'd left Hektor behind, to continue training the troopers in anti-piracy operations. While nobody had been so uncouth as to say it out loud, we all knew he had plenty of experience pillaging himself from his time in the Ravagers (although to be honest, I suppose he had been more interested in slaughtering people than plundering their possessions, due to these grotesque implants of his).
We had debated taking the Murderous Jest with us : the firepower of a cruiser was nothing to sneeze at. But we didn't have the crew to spare for it, and even if we had, no one in Slawkenberg's navy had any experience with that kind of ship. Well, I suppose Areelu's people did, but they had taken losses during the battle which had led to their flight to Adumbria in the first place, and didn't have the manpower to spare either. So, like the rest of the captured pirate ships, we had left Jeremiah Smile's flagship in Adumbria, much to the enthusiasm of the reclamation crews.
I had eventually decided that the ships would be made part of Adumbria's own defense fleet, partly in case someone else decided to take a trip to what was supposed to be an interdicted system, partly to make it up to Regina for saddling her with a bunch of former pirates as prisoners, and party to get the question solved once and for all and get a meeting that had already run entirely too long over with.
We had also left the unfortunate wretches Smile had filled with chems and unleashed on the boarders behind on Adumbria Prime. Somehow, the USA troopers who'd accompanied Hektor had managed to take down several times their number of frenzied civvies without inflicting anything worse than broken bones and concussions, which a few doses of Panacea had promptly taken care of. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't much to be worried about, but I couldn't help but dread how terrifyingly effective the Khornate soldiers had become since the days of the Uprising.
The rescued civilians, along with the others we'd found aboard the captured ships (I tried very hard not to think about the vessels which had been destroyed with all hands during the battle) were in the care of the local hospitals. The medicae were confident that with enough time, food and Panacea, they would recover from the damage their bodies had suffered – though they were less confident about their mental states. The pirate lord's prime enforcer, whose drug-fuelled strength had impressed even Hektor, was also among them, though he had yet to wake up from his coma by the time we had left the system.
The same was true of the Murderous Jest's Navigator. Smile's flagship had been the only vessel of the pirate fleet to have one of the three-eyed mutants on board : they had been part of the crew back when the ship had sailed under the banner of the Imperial Navy, and were one of the few who had survived his takeover. Apparently, even the Laughing Fiend (and Throne, what a stupid nickname that was) was sane enough to realize the value of a Navigator – though while they had survived, they hadn't done so unscathed, far from it. Smile had made the consequences of disobedience very painfully clear : the poor mutant was a wreck, terrified of their former master even now that he was safely in our custody. They were still aboard the Murderous Jest, refusing to leave their quarters, and it was clear they would take as long as the ship itself to be functional again, if not longer.
All that, however, had been taken care of before we had entered the Warp, and all contact with the rest of the Protectorate had been cut off. This, for the first time in quite a while, had left me with a lot of free time, which I had decided to use familiarizing myself with the Worldwounder. Unlike the late and unlamented Giorbas, Areelu (or whichever of her ancestors had commissioned the decor) clearly had taste : most of the ship looked like a cross between a fortress and a palace lifted straight from some technologically advanced, prosperous Imperial world – although, to someone with my suspicious mind and inside knowledge, the conspicuous absence of any clear emblems of the Ecclesiarchy and the Imperial Creed was quite notable.
I was presently touring a section of the ship dedicated to the history of the Van Yastobaal Rogue Trader Dynasty. While it was obvious that the accounts presented here would be heavily biased, I was confident I could parse through the self-aggrandizing exaggerations and extract some valuable information as to our illustrious host.
According to the plates describing the deeds of each holder of the Warrant of Trade in excruciating and hagiographic detail, the Van Yastobaal Dynasty had come into being over five thousand years ago, at the closure of the Age of Apostasy. Jan Van Yastobaal, then a minor noble of the paradise world of Chiros, had led the resistance against the forces of the Apostate Cardinal Bucharis, eventually defeating them and forcing them off-world, even as the rest of Bucharis' short-lived empire fell apart.
For this, Jan Van Yastobaal had been granted a Warrant of Trade. Reading between the lines, it was clear that this decision had been motivated partly to recognize his genuinely heroic deeds, partly because Vandire's Reign of Blood had led to the extinction of several Rogue Trader lineages and the Imperium was looking for replacements at the time, and partly because the Planetary Governor of Chiros hadn't exactly covered himself in glory during the occupation and wanted to get a potential rival for his throne safely out of the way.
The rest of Jan's section of the museum spoke eloquently of the many worlds he had discovered for the Imperium, and of the enemies of the Throne he had slain, but no amount of flattering language could conceal the truth that, over time, the founder of the Dynasty had become more and more unhinged. The wealth and authority of an Imperial noble was as nothing compared to the power of a Rogue Trader, and it had clearly gone to his head. Jan's followers, many of whom had been with him since the war on Chiros, had deserted him in droves, while those who remained had become pillagers rather than explorers, little better than pirates themselves, until Jan's death a couple of centuries later.
Predictably, two hundred years of carousing across the galaxy had resulted in Jan fathering a number of children, all of whom had been eligible for succeeding him as holder of his Warrant. Equally predictably, a bloody free-for-all had ensued, until the Administratum had decided on the one true heir.
From there, the fortunes of the Van Yastobaal Dynasty had waxed and waned over the millennia, with some Rogue Traders being better at upholding their duties than others. I was approaching the end of the section, and looking forward to learning more about Areelu herself (if nothing else, what she'd allowed her visitors to see could let me get a better read on her, which would help me keep up the image of the all-knowing mastermind she'd apparently deluded herself into thinking I was), when the sound of heavy footsteps drew my attention to the gallery's entrance.
Suture was approaching, still wearing his battle-plate. He didn't seem hostile, but I still suppressed my entirely human reaction of fear at the sight of a Space Marine walking in my direction. Malicia was here, of course, looking supremely unimpressed by the epic deeds being depicted around us, while Jurgen was off taking care of some minor supply business with the ship's quartermaster. Having seen my bloodward spar against Hektor, I was confident that, if things turned violent, she could at the very least buy me enough time to escape.
"Lord Cain," the Astartes greeted me after stopping at a distance that would've reassured me had he been mortal.
"Yes, Suture ?" I replied. The nickname should have sounded silly, but I have found there are very few things you can call a two-and-a-half meters tall transhuman killing machine to his face and not take seriously. Besides, it did fit him, though my paranoia kept wondering what reason the renegade had to hide his past from his employer.
"Lady Van Yastobaal is inviting you to join her in her private laboratory," he told me. "She has something she wishes to show to you."
My palms began to itch, but I didn't really need my subconscious to tell me that the laboratory of a Rogue Trader who was secretly a Tzeentchian heretic was a dangerous place to be. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a good excuse to refuse, and even if I had, letting Areelu do whatever she was doing unsupervised was unlikely to be a good choice anyway in the long run. Blessed might be the mind too small for doubt, but from my experience what you didn't know was much more likely to get you killed.
"It would be my pleasure," I lied, hoping Suture wasn't any more immune to my talent for shameless deceit than Hektor.
Fortunately, if he was, then he showed no sign of it this time.
When Cain arrived in (one of, though this one was the most important) Areelu's laboratory, he brought his aide and bloodward with him, of course. Areelu hadn't expected anything less. They might be allies, but she would have been insulted if he had simply followed Suture into her lab without backup : it would have implied he thought so little of her, he didn't need either his combat psyker or pet Wych. That he brought both was, in a roundabout way, a compliment to her.
After thanking Suture for bringing him here and asking him to stand outside and make sure they weren't disturbed, she let the galaxy's youngest (as far as they knew) Warmaster take her lab in. Bookshelves covered every wall, filled with recorded knowledge taken from all across the Segmentum. Banks of cogitators hummed gently, running through calculations of unimaginable complexity, taken from the ruins of a dead human world and repaired by tech-priests more interested in credits than theology. Arcane sigils were carved into the marble floor, along with the burning traces left by the daemons Areelu had summoned in her vain attempts to gain the answers she needed. And, occupying most of the space, were the alchemical and medical devices with which she had spent the bulk of her time in this room.
"While most of the things in this room are beyond my ken, I think I recognize that," said Cain, pointing at a particular device on her workshop. "That is a Panacea maker, isn't it ?"
"Indeed," Areelu confirmed. "The STC copy Tesilon-Kappa gave me contained everything I needed to build one here. It is, admittedly, small, but it suits my purposes for now. I intend to have bigger ones assembled later for the rest of the crew, of course."
"Did you doubt the integrity of the data we gave you ?" asked Cain, smiling. "I would be hurt, but I would have done the same in your place. It is such an incredible piece of technology that it makes it hard to believe it's real, isn't it ?"
The way he'd phrased that … did he know already ? No, surely not. Although he did have access to the services of powerful cultists of Tzeentch, who, based on the few conversations she'd had with Sir Harold, specialized in divination rituals.
It didn't matter, she decided. Whether he knew or not, her next move remained the same.
"It is incredible," she admitted. "That our forebears possessed such capabilities, only for it to be lost for so long … it is both humbling and infuriating. A feeling which, I expect, you understand all too well."
"Ah." Cain's smile tensed slightly. "You heard about that, then ?"
"About you declaring war on the Ruinous Power of Decay ?" she asked, amused despite herself. If he was faking his embarrassment, then he was an excellent actor. "It came up in my conversations with your subordinates, yes. And that is why I wanted to talk with you now."
Areelu pressed a series of runes on her control panel, and a whole section of the laboratory turned, revealing a stasis casket. Within the casket, kept frozen out of time, was the small figure of a little girl, wearing the same medical gown Areelu had dressed her with after the incident, stained with sweat and other sickly secretions. Her hair was pink and shoulder-length, and a pair of small horns, which had always reminded Areelu from the ears of a felid, protruded from it.
Despite the painkillers Areelu had made sure her little girl was on before putting her in the stasis field, her expression was still twisted in discomfort. Areelu knew exactly how much pain she was in despite the painkillers, but she had always been so brave, trying to keep her from realizing the true extent of her suffering.
"This is my daughter, Lucia," she introduced her child to the Warmaster, who walked to stand by her side in front of the stasis casket.
"She looks adorable," said Cain softly, not mentioning her horns at all. "How old is she ?"
"Six years old," replied Areelu, her voice nearly breaking as she added : "She has been six years old for over ninety years now."
"What happened ?" he asked.
Areelu took a deep breath to steady herself. Revisiting it all wasn't going to be pleasant, but it was important Cain got the full context, so that her request had all the weight behind it she could muster.
"I was not born Areelu Von Yastobaal," she began. "Once, I had another name, and no idea I was related to the Van Yastobaal bloodline – indeed, I didn't even know it existed."
"In those days, I lived on one of the Imperium's many worlds, one untouched by war or strife beyond the petty games of power that occupy the nobility. I was a medicae of some renown, and, secretly, an occultist. I had not then learned of the Powers : it was mere curiosity that saw me gather tomes of lore that, looking back, were almost complete nonsense written by conmen and madmen."
"Eventually, I decided that I wanted a child, so I made it happen. But when I performed an echograph on myself late in my pregnancy, I saw her budding horns. I immediately realized she would never be safe in the Imperium. You know what they do to mutants, don't you ? Every hospital I knew of had an incinerator to dispose of them right after birth. I couldn't accept that."
After all, it was her child, and even back then Areelu had been sure it had been her dabbling in the occult which had caused the baby's alterations.
There was no judgment in Cain's eyes at her confession. Then again, given what he had already done himself, she hadn't really expected any from him.
"I retreated to a small house in the countryside, claiming I wanted to focus on my daughter. I gave birth to Lucia on my own, with a couple of medicae servitors' assistance. For the next six years, we were together, and we were happy."
Areelu paused, nearly overcome with the flow of memories her story was bringing to the surface. To her surprise, Cain moved next to her and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, anchoring her in the here and now. She smiled at him, though she knew the worst part of her tale was next.
"Then the last holder of the Van Yastobaal Dynasty's Warrant of Trade died, and once again the heirs began to kill each other to secure the legacy for themselves. One of them decided to wipe out as many possible claimants as possible by tracking down the bloodline, and hired numerous mercenaries to wipe them out. The first thing I knew of this was when a team of ruffians broke into my property and attacked me and my daughter."
"We would both have died : back then, I had next to no experience with violence. But Lucia had begun to exhibit telekinetic abilities. My precious little girl protected herself and me, until one of the mercenaries threw some kind of glass flask at her. I never learned where he had gotten it, but it contained a Nurglite poison. It didn't save him, but Lucia fell very ill immediately after, and nothing I could do helped."
"I was forced to place her in the stasis casket I kept in the house for emergencies, to buy time while I looked for a cure. But nothing on the planet could help. It was then that I realized that I needed more resources to do what I had promised her and bring her back to health."
"Is that why you became a Rogue Trader ?" asked Cain.
"Yes. It wasn't easy : it took years of toil, of gathering allies and assets. I played the other claimants against one another, letting them exhaust their resources while I slowly built up mine, until I alone remained victorious, crowned by the Administratum as the lawful holder of the Van Yastobaal's Warrant of Trade."
"Being a Rogue Trader opened a lot of doors to me. I consulted with Magi Biologis, but none of them had the slightest cue as to how to cure my daughter's affliction. I turned to more esoteric means, which was when I learned of the Primordial Pantheon, and the true nature of Lucia's sickness. I confess, my alignment with Tzeentch was at least partially done out of spite."
She left unsaid the fact that, at some point during that hopeless period, she had considered going to the Inquisition for help. She knew now that, had she done so, she would be dead, along with her daughter, her assets either destroyed or claimed by the Ordos, and her Dynasty's Warrant either voided or handed over to some distant relative who had managed to stay undetected during her bloody rise.
"For nearly a century now, I have kept playing the part of a Rogue Trader, searching the galaxy for the means to save my daughter. I have done many things, great and terrible alike, in pursuit of that goal, Cain. And I would do a hundred, a thousand times more if that is what it takes. I would give up everything, every coin and weapon, all the prestige and power I have gathered, if only I could see her smile again."
"And now, you have the Panacea, which proved capable of curing Warp-touched diseases during the Cleansing of Adumbria," finished Cain.
"Exactly. I have tested it on cultivated cells, and it worked," said Areelu, gesturing at the now healthy samples laying under her array of microscopes, and at the images being displayed on the screens above. "It might work on Lucia. Everything I know about medicine and about the Empyrean tells me it should. But … I am afraid. And so, I ask for your help."
"I understand. We should call Basileus-Zeta. He is our expert when the Panacea is concerned, and he has experience working against Nurglite contagions from the Cleansing of Adumbria. I'm sure he can check your tests and find out if there's anything you missed, then help you in the procedure itself."
Areelu blinked. She'd expected Cain to ask for something in exchange for his assistance, to seize upon the glaring weakness she'd just revealed to ensure she remained in his debt for the rest of her life. It was a price she'd have paid willingly, for the Liberator was far from the worse master she could imagine. Instead, he'd just … offered his help, without demanding anything in return.
"You would go that far ?" she asked.
"This is your daughter we are talking about, Areelu. Of course I would." He sounded genuinely offended that she'd even thought he would demand payment for his assistance. "Didn't you know ? I have a daughter too. Adopted, but as precious to me as if she were of my blood all the same. Of course I'll help you. The fact that assisting you in this will anger Nurgle is just a bonus. Besides, I think Basileus-Zeta will relish the challenge."
Perhaps this was all a manipulation tactic, Areelu thought. Maybe Cain thought this approach was the one most likely to make her truly, completely loyal to him, beyond even what a willing agreement could achieve.
If so, it was working.
They had set up no less than five loaded Panacea injectors, with an additional three as backup. Two of Basileus-Zeta's colleagues had spent an entire day studying the stasis casket and comparing it to the smaller fields Lady Van Yastobaal used to preserve her samples, and were ready to perform immediate repairs should the injection fail to cure the young girl only for the casket to fail. Lady Krystabel and Sir Harold were also present in case of an accident of an Empyric nature, as was Sir Jurgen, ready to intervene if the child lashed out with her telekine abilities to prevent accidents. In addition, this entire section of the ship had been emptied of non-essential personnel, and all those present were wearing void-suits, to ensure the contagion didn't jump to another host.
If everything went well, then all those precautions would end up being for nothing. But the Liberator had insisted they do everything in their power to make this as safe as possible. And besides, there was no such thing as being too careful where the vile afflictions of the Plague God were concerned.
This was good, righteous, holy work. Of this, Basileus-Zeta was utterly certain. No just god could possibly argue against the healing of a sick child, and any that did deserved only scorn, not worship. The cause of the Liberation demanded that all human beings be freed from the curses of the God of Decay, that they might then pursue a better future unburdened by the twin poisons of apathy and despair, and today, he would strike one more blow toward that distant but ever-worthy goal.
"Begin the procedure," he intoned, and, on the other side of the stasis casket, Lady Van Yastobaal entered a lengthy code onto the device's control panel, initiating its shutdown sequence.
The stasis field went down, and the coffin opened in a gust of steam and cold air. Basileus-Zeta's ears, which he had subtly augmented, immediately picked up the new sound of labored, pained breathing emanating from his patient.
"M-mommy ?" the girl said groggily. Her gaze was unfocused, clouded by fever and painkillers.
"I'm here, sweetheart," Lady Van Yastobaal reassured her child. Her voice was muffled by her own suit, but it was still recognizable, and her daughter turned toward its source on instinct. "Everything is going to be okay. I promise."
Despite the warmth of the void-suit he was wearing, Basileus-Zeta suddenly shivered, without any idea as to why. A quick self-diagnosis returned no issue with his personal biology : most likely he was just nervous, which made sense, since this was yet another battlefield in the long war between the Protectorate and the Rotting One.
"Who … who are these people ?" asked Lucia, blinking as she tried (and failed) to clear her vision.
"They are friends," replied the Rogue Trader. "They are here to help you get better."
"Hello, Miss Lucia," said Basileus-Zeta, with the best bedside manner he could muster while wearing a void-suit. "My name is Basileus-Zeta, and like your mother said, I'm here to help with your treatment. I will now begin with the first injection," he continued, carefully bringing the injector down to the child's neck. "You might feel a slight pinch, but this shouldn't hurt."
The child didn't move as Basileus-Zeta injected the first dose, whether because she didn't feel pain, because she was too exhausted to struggle, or because she was already suffering too much, he didn't know.
"First injection successful," he declared, before glancing at the screens which displayed the child's vitals, as observed by a dozen medical devices surrounding the three of them – the mother, the child, and the magos. "Life signs are improving. Beginning second injection."
With each successive injection of Panacea, Lucia became healthier and healthier. By the time the third had done its work, she came up as the picture of health to Basileus-Zeta's senses, although she was still a little too thin for her age – but nothing good nutrition couldn't solve. Just to be safe, Basileus-Zeta still injected the last two doses.
"All symptoms have disappeared," the magos announced. "No Empyric manifestation, and the air is clean of contaminant. Miss Lucia, how do you feel ?"
"It … it doesn't hurt anymore," she whispered in a disbelieving tone. Next to her, Lady Van Yastobaal let out a strangled noise.
"Good, good. We need to run some tests to make sure the infection has been completely cured and the Panacea isn't simply suppressing the symptoms. If it is, then I will have to prepare you some kind of injector like Sir Hektor's … ah." He realized she wouldn't know what he was talking about. Then again, she was a child, regardless of how brilliant her mother might be, so she probably didn't understand anything he was telling her. "Right. Let's just say that no matter what, you won't fall sick again, Miss. The procedure was a complete success. Congratulations."
Lucia turned her head to look at her mother, who was crying openly.
"Mommy ? Is that true ?"
"Yes, my treasure," Von Yastobaal managed to say between her tears. "It's all true, I promise."
"Oh." Lucia looked back at Basileus-Zeta, and smiled. "Thank you very much, Mister !"
Though nobody could see it, the borg smiled under his suit.
"You're welcome."
"How is she ?" I asked as Areelu emerged from the chamber where her daughter had been relocated after the procedure. From what I'd glimpsed, it had been kept ready for her for years, if not decades, never used until today.
Areelu had gone in with her daughter around an hour ago. I had spent that time waiting outside, sitting on a chair and enjoying a glass of excellent amasec, to make sure nothing had gone wrong. Regardless of the tripe I had managed to sell her, I couldn't say I understood what Areelu must be feeling, but it was clear this whole situation had taken a toll on her. And since I needed her help to have the best chance possible of surviving this whole expedition, I thought it best to check on her mental well-being.
"She … she fell asleep. She was exhausted, but … but that's only to be expected."
Suddenly, the Rogue Trader threw herself at me. I tensed reflexively, nearly drawing my weapons, before realizing she was hugging me, shaking with relieved sobs as she buried her face into my chest – making quite a mess of my uniform in the process, but I wasn't so gauche as to mention it.
"Thank you," she hiccuped. "Thank you. Thank you …"
I had attended enough ceremonies paying homage to the victims of the Giorbas to be at least somewhat familiar with crying civvies. As gently as I could, I hugged her back, whispering reassuring nonsense at her. In truth, while self-preservation had definitely been the decisive factor, I would probably have offered Basileus-Zeta's help even without that consideration.
Sure, Lucia was a mutant, but honestly, her horns weren't much to talk about … Throne, I had really become used to heresy, hadn't I ? Still, I refused to believe that the Emperor cared if a child was born with a small pair of horns. After all, Ogryns and Ratlings were much more divergent from the human baseline than the young child I had seen in the stasis casket, and they were still welcomed in the Imperial Guard.
I had been more worried about her being a powerful psyker infected by a Nurglite contagion. Now that she was healed, there was less chance of some daemon using her as a vessel to kill me in revenge for everything I had done that might have gotten the God of Decay angry at me. Also, had Areelu tried to heal Lucia with the Panacea and failed, there was no telling what her reaction might have been, especially if, Gods forbid, her daughter had perished in the attempt. Given that I was stuck on a ship with her, however large the Worldwounder might be, it was definitely safer for me to ensure the healing went well.
A better, more faithful to the Imperial Creed man than I might have pointed out that Lucia was hardly innocent, having killed an entire team of mercenaries by herself according to Areelu's tale (which, to be fair, might or might not be based on reality, though I suspected in that case at least the Rogue Trader had been honest with me). But, despite everything, I was still a child of the underhive, and could hardly throw stones at someone for making their first kill at a young age.
And besides, not only had they been assassins, they had been carrying a Nurglite poison.
In the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Krystabel glaring at Areelu, who was still clinging to me, and held back a sigh. I couldn't exactly describe Krystabel or Emeli as jealous, given how many Handmaidens had been involved in the 'communion rituals' I had taken part in since the Uprising, let alone whatever was going on between me, Krystabel and Regina. However, it seemed Krystabel was regarding Areelu as a potential threat to her position. Which was patently absurd, of course : Krystabel was the one with the connection to the Daemon Princess waiting for my soul in the Warp, and was thus of far greater concern to me than the heretical Rogue Trader.
But it is a foolish man indeed who claims to be able to understand the heart of a woman, nevermind that of a cultist sworn to the service of an ascended servant of the Dark Prince of Pleasure. I'd just have to be careful, so as to avoid two of my supposed allies going for each other's throat in the middle of a Subsector-wide campaign.
We weren't even in Torredon yet, and already complications were appearing. I dreaded to imagine what else I would face before this whole enterprise was over. Not that even my wildest imaginings could have measured up to the reality, of course, which was for the best, as, had I any inkling of what awaited me in the Torredon Gap, I would have spent the entire trip emptying Areelu's amasec cellar.
One of the main benefits the Bloodied Crown had gained from Killian joining them was that, among the psykers produced by his research, a small number were capable of using the Warp to communicate with one another across interstellar distances. They weren't true astropaths, of course, but they were still able to send short messages across the Immaterium within the Subsector (although they tended not to live long, their lifespan burning with every message sent or received). It'd been thanks to these that Jabbus had been able to summon the cartel's board of directors without the weeks it'd have taken for messenger boats to reach them.
And it was through them that the message Killian was presently considering had arrived, sent by Jabbus. The missive was short and to the point, as trying to get more details across this method of communication was futile :
'Smile's attack on Adumbria failed. Fleet destroyed by a non-Imperial force under the command of Ciaphas Cain, the Liberator of Slawkenberg and self-proclaimed Warmaster of Chaos. Prepare.'
That was it. Killian would have loved to have more details, but even that little was cause to worry. While Killian hadn't been involved in Karamazov's disastrous 'crusade' against Slawkenberg, he'd heard about it and the consequences it had brought about for the Sector – he'd have needed to be blind and deaf to miss them.
After receiving the message, he'd woken up a few other successfully awakened psykers and questioned them on the currents of the Warp. It had cost him two of his supply, but he'd managed to learn that Cain's fleet wasn't staying in Adumbria, but had instead begun the crossing through the Empyrean toward Torredon. From this, there was only one rational conclusion to draw :
Cain knew. Somehow, the renegade Commissar knew about Killian, about the Shadowlight and his ongoing research to unlock its secrets. It was the only explanation that made sense, that explained why Cain would dare challenge the might of not just the Bloodied Crown, but every shadow cartel in the Subsector by charging straight in. It was one thing to defeat Smile's horde of looters and savages, and another entirely to seek the conquest of a whole Subsector, even a backwater like Torredon.
Killian had to assume that, whatever Smile knew, Cain now knew as well. That meant the location of the base where the directors had met at Jabbus' summon was now compromised. And, if the Dark Gods had already revealed the existence of the Shadowlight to the traitor Commissar, then Killian couldn't gamble on the God-Emperor's adversaries not being willing to inform their pawn of its location.
After all, Cain was a heretic of the highest order, who had sold his soul to the Ruinous Powers in exchange for his own little stellar dominion. There was no telling what insights his infernal masters might whisper into his mind to guide him to the Inquisitor's location.
The Dark Gods wanted the Shadowlight. In retrospect, Killian really should have seen this coming. They had realized the threat his research, the promise of a psychically-awakened Mankind united against them, posed, and they had sent their agent to prevent it from coming to pass. That stopping him warranted the invasion of an entire Subsector was flattering, in a way, and certainly reaffirmed that he was on the right path, whatever the fools of the Concilium Ravus might think.
The thought of the xenos artefact in the hands of someone like Cain was chilling. As much good as the Shadowlight could do in the right hands, Killian wasn't blind to the danger it posed if wielded by someone enthralled to the Arch-Enemy. But while Killian's research base was hardly defenceless, secrecy was its best protection. Against a force capable of defeating Smile's flotilla, the Inquisitor was all too aware that he had no chance. At best, he might be able to evacuate with the Shadowlight, Galerion's research, and the magos himself aboard his ship while the psykers died to buy him time. But even then, Cain would simply continue chasing him : the Shadowlight was simply too great a prize for a Chaos Lord to give up.
All of that led him to a simple, inescapable conclusion : Cain had to die. By all accounts, the so-called Liberator was the pillar which supported Slawkenberg's heretical coalition : take him out, and the whole thing would collapse at once.
He called up a list of the most recently awakened psykers on his cogitator. Magos Galerion had helpfully listed the abilities each successful subject exhibited following their exposure to the Shadowlight. Killian searched for one, or several, who could stand a chance against the monsters Cain had gathered around him. His assassin squad didn't need to survive, just to get the job done (not that he would tell them that before sending them).
It was possible that the combined strength of the Bloodied Crown would be enough to deal with the threat on its own, of course : the Chairman was no doubt already making plans to muster as strong an armada as possible to avenge the insult to the cartel. But Killian hadn't survived that long by depending on others.
Even as he browsed through the options available to him, another part of Killian's mind was considering how to bring his killers to their target. He could use his counterfeit astropaths to learn where Jabbus was gathering forces and send them here – it would even get him some kudos from the rest of the shadow cartel, which he could always use. But that meant he'd rely on Jabbus' forces catching up to Cain's before the traitor Commissar found his base.
No, that was unacceptable. He didn't want to send His Righteous Punishment, not when he might need to relocate in a hurry, but he had several other ships available. One of those, disguised as the civilian ship it had once been, could be used instead. He'd need to have someone in charge whom he could, if not trust, then be reasonably certain would follow his orders, though.
Several minutes later, Killian sighed. He'd tried to find an alternative, but there wasn't any. Aleric had been a valuable aide in managing Galerion's demands and dealing with the clean-up of those experiments which went catastrophically wrong, but it seemed Killian would have to do without him going forward.
Oh well. The path of duty was a harsh and stony one, and the Imperium was sustained by the blood of martyrs.
Notes:
AN : Mostly backstory in this chapter, and Areelu's promise is revealed. This version of Areelu is probably more sympathetic than the one from Pathfinder : Wrath of the Righteous, since she only started doing questionable things AFTER her child was effectively taken from her.
Yes, Lucia is based on the character Lucy from the manga/anime Elfen Lied. My only knowledge of that series comes from the Death Battle episode featuring her, and I mean, come on. What other choice did I have, really ?
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I look forward to your thoughts and suggestions. Many thanks to the numerous readers who decided to try their hand at writing Omakes for the Omake Throne on the SpaceBattles Thread : if you're reading this elsewhere, I recommend you check it out.
The next chapter (which already has 2k words written, what in the Liberator's name is going on) should be a bit shorter than this one, and will end with the reveal of what bit of old, old lore I have most recently decided to use to torment our dear Ciaphas.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 27: Chapter 26
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Stationmaster Thompson, lord and sovereign of Station Dis by the will of the God-Emperor, the writ of the Administratum, and the fact nobody else was stupid enough to want the job, stood in one of his domain's many landing bays. He tried to keep his exhaustion and mounting dread from showing on his face, which had been prematurely aged by the rigours of duty. The last few years had been hard, and the last few weeks harder still.
As Stationmaster, he was responsible for the running of Station Dis, the only human installation in the eponymous system, apart from a handful of small mining installations in the asteroid belt. If not for the fact that the Dis system was the last star of the Torredon Subsector before the tumultuous Warp journey leading to Adumbria, it wouldn't exist, but it had served as a stopover port for tens of thousands of ships since its creation, providing repairs and resupply to the flow of merchantmen making the trip, along with the other services which always popped up in those kinds of places.
Unfortunately, that flow had completely dried up when Adumbria had been declared Perditia, leaving the Wayfarer-class space station's entire population (a little under ninety thousands strong according to the latest census) stranded there. Thankfully, the station's systems were still working as well as they ever did, and the mining installations provided them with the fuel needed to keep them on, so water, air and power were still running.
Food, on the other hand, was starting to get dangerously scarce. If they weren't resupplied, then sooner or later the hydroponic gardens wouldn't be enough to feed everybody. Thompson would much prefer not to think about what would happen then, but unfortunately thinking about the worst-case scenarios was part of his Emperor-damned job.
Things had gotten even worse since the Laughing Fiend had paid them a visit some weeks ago. Thompson had been forced to let the bastard and his crew board the station, to do and take whatever they wanted : the station's defences simply couldn't stand up to the pirate lord's fleet. They were still counting the bodies and listing all the damage the vandals had done during their stop.
Then a couple of the pirate ships had returned, damaged and fleeing straight for the Mandeville Point as if all the devils of the Warp were on their heels. Thompson had been happy to see them humbled like that, but had worried about who might be responsible. And now, after several days of the astropaths going crazy and ranting about how 'he comes, bringing fire and judgment, the finder of the lost, the liberator of the forsaken, the beloved of the dark princess', a new fleet had appeared, led by the Worldwounder. Thompson had thought the Rogue Trader vessel destroyed by the pirates which chased it to Adumbria, but it seemed that wasn't what had happened. Instead, the Rogue Trader had contacted Thompson, and politely asked if she and her employer could come to the station to discuss certain matters of interest.
Of course, her politeness hadn't taken away the fact that she had a lot of guns at her disposal, so Thompson had done the smart thing and sent his agreement, phrased as politely as he could manage. He was curious to know who Van Yastobaal's employer could be : in his admittedly limited experience with Rogue Traders, they didn't surrender their independence lightly.
The gunship landed, its landing ramp came down, and Thompson heard several gasps from the security guards he'd brought with him. He couldn't blame them : none of them had ever seen a Space Marine, let alone two at once. But there was no doubt in his mind that the two giants in power armor were Space Marines.
Standing between two beautiful women, with a fellow in a crispy-clean suit and a tall, feminine figure wearing a suit of armor that clung tightly to her body, was a tall man wearing a uniform of black, gold and red, who smiled as he strode forward and shook Thompson's hand.
"Greetings, Stationmaster," the man declared. "I am Ciaphas Cain, Warmaster of the Protectorate. Thank you for welcoming us."
As if they had a choice, Thompson thought bitterly. Still, at least he was being polite about it, which was more than he'd expected, even if he couldn't help but wait for the other boot to drop.
Then, suddenly, he recognized the man's name, and his mind froze with terror as he realized the boot had already come down, he just hadn't seen it until it was about to squash him.
"I know who you are," he heard his own voice say. "Even here, we have heard about you. You are the Black Commissar, the one who led the rebellion on Slawkenberg."
"Black Commissar ?" Cain sighed, while the two women smiled, amused. "Really ? Is that the best the Munitorum's propaganda scribes could come up with ? It doesn't even mean anything : every Commissar wears black. It's part of the uniform."
That wasn't the response Thompson had expected, though to be fair it wasn't as if he'd met any arch-heretics before today.
"Anyway, let us finish the introductions before getting to business," Cain continued, pointing to each of his companions in turn. "This is Lady Krystabel, and this is Lady Areelu Van Yastobaal. Our tall friends over here are Hektor and Suture, and this is my aide Jurgen and my bodyguard Malicia."
"Charmed, I'm sure," said Thompson, who had managed to recover his wits, at least in part. The rest of him was still terrified by the thought of being face-to-face with a man who had led an entire world to rebellion and heresy, killed an Inquisitor in single combat, and – apparently – turned a Rogue Trader to his service. "I'm Stationmaster Thompson."
"Yes, Areelu told us about you and the great work you've been doing here." If Cain was being sarcastic, Thompson couldn't find any trace of it on his face. "Now, Stationmaster, I have a gift for you. During our engagement with the Bloodied Crown's fleet, we gained custody of a certain … individual. From what he told us when we interrogated him, I understand that he was responsible for a number of crimes against your people during his last visit to your station."
Cain snapped his fingers, and a pale figure, gagged and with his hands tied behind his back, was roughly pushed out of the transport by a soldier in crimson armor, before being made to stand in front of Thompson.
The Stationmaster recognized the bastard immediately, though his flamboyant clothing had been replaced by a simple prisoner's uniform. How could he not ? He remembered the feeling of powerlessness as that monster in human form did whatever he wanted on his station, murdering and torturing people while Thompson was forced to stay back, knowing the Murderous Jest could kill them all if its master so decided. He remembered what the sick whoreson had done to his daughter, once he'd tracked down where Thompson had hidden her while he did his best to mitigate the damage caused by Smile and his crew.
Before he even realized what he was doing, Thompson drew his gun – a simple, run-of-the-mill slug gun which had nonetheless served him faithfully since the start of his career – and shot the Laughing Fiend in the head. The bullet went through the pale skin, then the bone and brain underneath, before pinging against the crimson armor of the soldier standing behind Smile.
There was a moment of tense silence, as everyone's hands moved closer to their own weapons while those who had already been holding them raised them up, unsure where to point them. For a few seconds the sheer relief Thompson felt at the sight of Jeremiah's corpse slumping bonelessly to the floor was mixed with horror that he might just have doomed himself and everyone on Station Dis. Then Cain suddenly started clapping, catching everyone off-guard and defusing the tension.
"A decisive move to be sure, Stationmaster !" declared the arch-heretic, a smile on his face. When Thompson simply stared at him, he added : "I did say this wretch was a gift for you, didn't I ?"
Of course, Thompson realized. The man had been a Commissar, after all : obviously he wouldn't be fazed by a summary execution. And if there was one person in the entire galaxy who had deserved one, it had undoubtedly been Jeremiah Smile – or, at least, Thompson couldn't think of anyone else.
"I … Yes. You did. Sorry about the mess on your man's armor," Thompson replied lamely.
"Think nothing of it," Cain waved off his apology without concern. "Now, Stationmaster, I believe that the two of us can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. You have access to all manners of records from this station's operations as a spaceport; and we need all the information we can get on the situation in the Subsector. And we have holds full of supplies and technology you can scarcely imagine; while you, if my guess is correct, are in desperate need of some way to avoid mass starvation in the near future."
Thompson blinked.
Some time after the meeting aboard Station Dis, Areelu was back on Worldwounder, playing with her daughter in her room. By now, Lucia had completely recovered – at least physically. She still would need some time to process what had happened to her, but Areelu had faith in her daughter's strength, and she would be here for her every step of the way.
As the two of them sat among the toys the Rogue Trader had brought with her from their distant home, part of Areelu's mind couldn't help but consider what had happened earlier today. After Jeremiah Smile's well-deserved demise, they had moved to the office of Stationmaster Thompson to discuss Cain's proposal in more details.
Cain had offered the schematics for a device which could turn nearly any material into a paste containing all the nutrients the human body needed. The paste in question wasn't just tasteless like most Imperial rations : it was truly, appallingly vile (not that Areelu had tasted it herself, but Cain apparently had, and he had made no secret of it). The STC template from which it was constructed had incomplete : the borgs believed that the missing parts contained something supposed to turn the paste into something more fitting for the human palate.
Cain had actually apologized for that, nevermind that even a STC fragment was a prize the Mechanicus would go to war for. He'd promised that the Protectorate would bring more supplies to Dis as they made use of the Warp route and the station's facilities, not once saying out loud that this would effectively mean they'd taken over from the Imperium.
When Thompson had let it slip that his own daughter had gotten badly hurt during Smile's spree across the station, Cain had immediately offered him the use of the fleet's Panacea stores, both for his daughter and for anyone injured or sick. Of course, the stores could be replenished in a matter of days thanks to the Panacea production facilities on board the Protectorate ships.
The offer of getting his daughter back on her feet within a few days, without the need for extensive augmetic surgery which would otherwise be required given the description of her injuries, had been something no parent could possibly refuse. Cain'd known about the whole thing already from Smile's confession, of course, and had masterfully guided the conversation in order to use that nugget of information to completely crush any opposition Thompson might have had to his offer.
Areelu would have called it a masterful manipulation, except was it really manipulation when everything he'd said was the truth ? 'Illumination' was probably a better term.
Such generosity made sense when you thought about it. Cain lost nothing by ensuring the people of Station Dis didn't eventually starve to death : the technology he'd shared was useless to him as anything but an emergency back-up plan, and he still had it if things came to that. But to Stationmaster Thompson, it was priceless. The man, already in Cain's debt for giving him Jeremiah Smile, had been completely won over by the Warmaster's offer, regardless of what he'd heard about him before. He had given complete access to the station's cogitators to the borgs, and instructed his people to assist them in any way they could.
It was typical of Cain, really. He'd offer something you hadn't even dared to dream could exist as if it was the simplest thing in the galaxy, and ask for so little in return that the chains of debt forged by the exchange would strangle you forever … except they wouldn't, because from what she'd seen so far, Cain didn't care to pull on them. In a galaxy full of slaves and enslavers, the Liberator truly lived up to the name bestowed upon him by the first people he'd freed from bondage.
Now that her century-old promise had been fulfilled, Areelu had found herself adrift, unsure of what exactly she wanted to do now. Be there for her daughter, yes, obviously, and assist Cain in whatever way she could to pay back what she owed him, of course.
But how exactly could she best repay the Liberator ? She had wealth, even in the Van Yastobaal Dynasty's current diminished state, but Cain was the ruler of two worlds already, and was poised to add an entire Subsector to his Protectorate. She certainly wouldn't object to indulging in the pleasures of the flesh with him, but such a thing paled compared to what he'd already given her.
What, then ? Her knowledge, perhaps. In her quest for Lucia's salvation, Areelu had pursued all manner of forbidden knowledge. She had studied the Immaterium, and hadn't come to Torredon just in pursuit of profit fighting pirates : the Warp Storms wracking the Subsector had been a subject of interest to her as well. The daemons she'd summoned had been curiously cagey about their origins – she'd have called them fearful had they been mortal and not figments of the Empyrean.
Well, she had time. She was sure she'd find some way to pay the Warmaster back eventually. For now, she had more immediate things to take care of – like applauding her dear daughter's efforts to brew her tea using her play set.
Several hours later, when Lucia was asleep in her bed once more and Areelu was watching her daughter with a smile on her face she didn't bother hiding, there was a soft knock on the door.
"My Lady," whispered Suture when she opened it. Looking at him, no one would have thought him capable of making such little noise, and even Areelu was surprised at how quiet her bodyguard could be when he needed to. "Cain is calling for you. The scribes have gone through the records from the station; the strategy meeting is starting soon."
"Thank you, Suture. Let's not keep him waiting, then."
The war council of our little expedition met once more aboard the Fist of the Liberator. I would need to return to the Worldwounder before we returned to the Warp, but having this meeting aboard Areelu's ship would be undiplomatic. I didn't want the USA to have any reason to be angry at me, not when we were about to plunge into war.
The hololithic projection at the center of the table around which we all sat showed a slowly rotating map of the Torredon Subsector, edited by the borgs to include the latest intelligence we had acquired from the station's records. At the moment, we were in the Dis system, on the border between Torredon and Adumbria.
Deeper into the cluster of stars that made up the Gap was Torredon itself, the Subsector's capital, which housed a hive-world, several smaller agri-moons, and three gas giants crowned by numerous mining stations. As far as Areelu's and Thompson's information went, the capital had endured the departure of the Imperial Navy better than most of the Subsector's inhabited worlds, though its economy had plummeted with the collapse of the Subsector's trade network.
From Dis, there were two Warp routes we could take leading deeper into the Subsector. One led to the Sanguia system, which according to what Malicia had convinced Smile to share with us before Thompson had executed him, was currently the site of an ongoing conflict between the locals and another of the Bloodied Crown's directors, Wisent Balor, who held the delightful nickname of the Ripper General. The Sanguians were holding firm against the pirates – apparently, their world had been the target of xenos raids for generations, which had bred tough men and women from the survivors, as well as instilled a defiant mentality that the pirates were struggling to break.
Apart from Smile and Balor, there were four other directors in the Bloodied Crown. Valusios the Serpent was trying to start an uprising on the Subsector capital; Mitslav Sertanov was besieging an agri-world responsible for feeding several systems; Magos (not that any of us used that title out loud, as Tesilon-Kappa was in attendance) Negando was harrying the other cartels' fleets. As for Jereb Auric, who had sold the psykers Smile had used in his ill-fated attempt to stop Hektor's boarding action, nobody had any idea where his base of operation was located.
And then there was Tutha Jabbus, the Chairman of the shadow cartel. Smile had only guesses as to what the Bloodied Crown's corpulent leader was up to these days, and given that he was no doubt responding to the battle of Adumbria, these were useless anyway.
Sanguia was the obvious next step for a force ostensibly out to crush the Bloodied Crown and the other shadow cartels, a fact that the rest of the war council didn't miss. They were all suggesting we go there next, but I wasn't convinced. For one thing, I had no desire to face off against another pirate fleet. Especially one which must surely have been forewarned of the tactics used to defeat Smile by the survivors of the battle of Adumbria, and whose leader was of a more military mindset, compared to the Laughing Fiend's rule of terror.
For another, the second route led to the Cassandron system, named after its sole inhabited planet – a hive-world with a thriving population, which depended on food imports from an agri-world two systems over to survive; imports which had all but ceased with the Navy's departure and the cartels being given free reign over the shipping lanes.
Having been born and spent my early years in the underhive, I knew all too well how things would play out. Civilization would soon collapse, if it hadn't already, as hunger drove the masses to riot, cannibalism, and all manner of horrors. The spireborn nobles would try to hold up in the upper sections of the hives with their stores and private armies, but those would be overwhelmed by the billion-strong hungry hordes sooner or later. Within a year, there would be nothing left of Cassandron but empty mountains of iron and rockrete, haunted by vermin and isolated pockets of maddened survivors.
It had happened before, more times than anyone cared to count. Hive-worlds were always dependant on food imports, whether by sheer necessity or by design. The High Lords were wary of any Governor having as much power as control of a hive-world granted, and used this reliance on imports from nearby agri-worlds as a tool to prevent rebellion.
Although, given my own memories of pollution clouds blocking the skies and what I'd learned about agriculture on Slawkenberg, it was possible the High Lords were merely taking advantage of something made inevitable by the very nature of hive-worlds. Even the borgs would've been hard-pressed to develop food production on a hive-world.
Regardless, this whole thing had given me an idea.
"The people of Sanguia could certainly use our help," I admitted out loud, causing the discussion to stop as every eye in the room turned to me. "But they have been holding the line against the cartels for years. Meanwhile, the people of Cassandron are doomed to starvation if we do not go to their help. I know it isn't as glamorous or glorious a course of action as sailing to Sanguia to crush this so-called General, but we must look at the greater picture. Billions of lives are at stake here."
I could read the room well enough to know that, even if none were challenging me yet, they weren't completely convinced. Racking my brain for something, anything which would ensure I didn't end up facing a mutiny, I continued :
"In addition, starvation leads to despair, especially for those who watch their family die before their eyes, helpless to do anything to help them. And despair is one of the tools of Nurgle. We cannot allow an entire hive-world to fall to the Rotten One, not when we already need to deal with the shadow cartels, and not when preventing it is as easy as sharing our resources with them."
And just like that, I had them. My efforts to turn Slawkenberg's hatred away from the Emperor and unto the God of Decay were paying off : if there was one thing the Liberation Council enjoyed more than fighting the Imperium's tyranny, it was purging the taint of Nurgle from the galaxy.
As the discussion turned to how to handle the logistics of providing relief to an entire hive-world, I felt quietly happy with myself. Barring a miracle, we would still end up having to face Balor's forces sooner or later, but I was content to push back that confrontation as long as I could.
Besides, with any luck, the pirates would gather their forces in mass to respond to their defeat at Adumbria. There was a small chance that, if we faced the other directors one by one, we would crush them all as easily as Smile, but if they gathered their strength, then I might have an excuse to 'reluctantly' abandon this whole expedition in order to 'focus on the defence of the Protectorate', or something like that.
Hell, maybe the Protectorate fleet would even get its wings clipped in the process, diminishing the threat it posed to an Imperium that really seemed not to be doing too good in the greater Sector. It was unlikely, but by now so many of my attempts at weakening the rebellion had backfired that I was willing to gamble on it anyway. And so long as I was on Worldwounder, I was pretty sure I could survive any engagement : Areelu wouldn't let her ship be lost in battle, not when her newly returned daughter was still on board. If retreat became necessary, I could shift the responsibility squarely on her shoulders, preserving my own unearned reputation for suicidal bravery.
First, though, Cassandron, where we could help prevent the death by starvation of billions of the Emperor's subjects, which could only help my case once I ended up before the Golden Throne after my death and had to explain myself to its occupant. And if things turned hairy for one reason or another (by now, I was familiar enough with my own luck to know not to let my guard down), a hive-world was ground I was familiar with : if need be, I could 'get lost' in the maze that made up any respectable hive-city and only re-emerge once the shooting had stopped. Sure, I doubted I'd be able to lose Jurgen or Malicia, but neither of them were gossips anyway.
Of course, I had no idea of the perils that awaited me at Cassandron. Which was for the best, as otherwise I'd have charged into Sanguia even if it meant I had to duel the Ripper General myself with only a sharpened stick, the consequences of which for Torredon, the Damocles Gulf, and possibly the entire Segmentum, would have been dire indeed.
In the Realms of Chaos, the Daemon Princess known to mortals as Emeli watched her beloved as he ventured forth into the unknown with a smile on her lips and the song of their fallen enemies' agonized screams in her ears. It had taken a lot of work to adjust Karamazov's and Vileheart's voices to her liking, but she had managed it eventually, and their screams provided a nice background to relax to while she watched Ciaphas' latest adventures.
Dear Krystabel's jealousy of this Areelu he had found was adorable, but misplaced. Nothing and no one could come between Emeli and Ciaphas : their love was far too strong for that. Of course, if that Tzeentchian hussy dared to try, she would still need to be punished, but not too harshly. Ciaphas still needed her help, after all, and much to her displeasure, there was only so much Emeli could do to assist him in his current endeavours.
The Warp storms that wracked Torredon made it nigh-impossible for her kin to manifest fully, something which had intrigued her (as typically, such disturbances of the Immaterium made crossing the veil easier, not harder) until she had discovered the origins of the storms. Then, it had all made sense.
On the other clawed hand, the shadows which shrouded her beloved's destiny had only become harder to pierce in the years since they had first appeared – or, more accurately, since she had first noticed them. Emeli's ties to the Materium meant that she couldn't indulge in the true timelessness of the Empyrean, not without risking the severance of those ties, which was unacceptable. But even the likes of Gurug'ath couldn't see through the obfuscation : wherever her beloved walked, the future was obscured.
She liked to think that this was due to the radiance of his greatness, but was afraid that it might be something else, something which threatened the one she cherished above all else. There were many other powers in the Warp which may be envious of Ciaphas' glory, or seek to manipulate him to their own ends. Which was unacceptable. Nothing and no one could be allowed to interfere in her beloved's ascension, that he might join her in the Immaterium as her equal in eternity.
With direct intervention and scrying the future impossible, Emeli reluctantly turned her gaze away from Ciaphas' dashing figure, focusing away from the spiritual link which let her see through Krystabel's eyes whenever she so pleased. Instead, she looked upon Torredon's psychic landscape, searching for any piece of knowledge which might be worth passing on to her beloved through her Handmaidens.
Even through the storms, she could see the strings of so many intrigues, so many plots and factions, all mingling together. Torredon had been on a course for bloodshed and mayhem long before the rise of the Silent Ones had forced the Imperium to all but abandon it.
Though hidden behind walls and wards, a lightless radiance shone, transforming all those brought before it. In the shadows of Imperial glory, the enslaved and the forsaken suffered under the leash of cruel tyrants, whispering prayers for their own Liberation. In the cold void, the darkling souls of reavers – most of them mortal, but a handful, steeped in blood and terror, not – shone with joy and hunger as they plotted and schemed to take advantage of the situation.
And on Cassandron, where Ciaphas had so cleverly seen the threat of Nurglite resurgence, ancient covens made their own moves in response to the Subsector's upheaval.
Notes:
AN : Go ahead and look up the Covens of Cassandron on the Lexicanum wiki. I will wait.
Did you find it ? Good.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH !
I regret nothing. This is going to be fun. So many opportunities for misunderstandings, so many different ways to make Cain suffer for comedic effect. I have so many ideas, I think Cassandron might turn out to be its own mini-arc. I have four pages of new lore and story beats.
To be clear, I've had that idea for a long time before I posted the crossover concept that's in the Apocrypha threadmark on SB.
Bit of a shorter chapter this time, on account of being mostly set-up. Oh, and Jeremiah Smile got shot, but he'd outlived his narrative usefulness, and did just spend several weeks in the care of a Drukhari Succubus, so he probably was hoping for death at this point in any case.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and look forward to your thoughts and suggestions. Check out the SB thread for more Omakes (and don't hesitate to try your hand at writing one, I always enjoy reading them) and the TVTropes page for this fic. I am especially fond of the "If the Emperor and Sons Watched Ciaphas Cain: WARMASTER OF CHAOS" series, which at the time of writing covers this fic's first eight chapters.
Next might be the return of A Young Girl's Weaponization of the Mythos, as the Muse seems to be growing impatient for more Eldritch Horror in the "found documents" format.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 28: Chapter 27
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Trouble was brewing in Cassandron.
With the departure of the Imperial Navy's battlegroup from the Subsector, the shipping lanes on which the hive-world depended to import the food for its billions-strong population had been cut off by pirates. The flow of supplies had first slowed down to a trickle, before stopping altogether. For now, the stores of foodstuffs kept by the nobility as a precaution against disturbances to the flow of supplies had been enough to keep famine at bay, but even the lowest underhive scavenger knew these stores couldn't last forever.
What little local food production existed was being expanded as quickly as possible, the Administratum's protests at this violation of Imperial doctrine quickly silenced, but the corpse-starch production facilities, orbital gardens and mushroom farms couldn't hope to match the needs of the hungry world. The hives were holding their breath, waiting for the inevitable explosion of violence as hunger overcame caution and the first food riots started.
Then, as if sent by the God-Emperor Himself, a fleet emerged from the Warp into the Cassandron system. At first, the SDF feared that this meant the shadow cartels had come for Cassandron at last, but that fear vanished when the first vox-messages reached them, replaced first by confusion, then hesitant, disbelieving hope. For the Rogue Trader Areelu Van Yastobaal had come with a cargo full of nutrient paste, and the technology needed to make more out of whatever materials could be thrown into the machinery.
As soon as the news reached Cassandron, the spires of the planet erupted in a flurry of frenzied communications. Eventually, a reply was sent, inviting the Lady Van Yastobaal and her entourage to a meeting in Hive Primus, the planetary capital, where the Governor himself would welcome Cassandron's savior-to-be in a grand ceremony which would be broadcast all across the planet in order to calm down the plebs. Vox-speakers across the hives announced this, propping up the meeting as a miracle that would save Cassandron from the specter of starvation.
Thanks to the ansibles, people rejoiced all the way back on Slawkenberg, where there had been concerns that the fleet would arrive too late, and find a world populated only by the dead and cannibals. Even if some scoffed that the great Liberator needed to hide behind his latest ally, it was generally agreed upon that this fiction would help ensure that supplies were distributed in a timely fashion.
Besides, surely the Liberator had a masterful plan to help bring Cassandron into the arms of the Protectorate, using his peerless diplomatic skills.
I ducked under the claws of my assailant, and fired a shot with my bolter right into its misshapen head. As it burst apart, I turned in place on instinct, just in time to bring my chainsword to bear and cut another wretch in two before it could gut me.
Having bought myself some space, I took a look at the melee that had engulfed the large audience chamber where our party had been supposed to meet the Governor of Cassandron. Between the moonlight streaking down through the glass ceiling and the torches set into the pillars of the gothic architecture, there was more than enough illumination to see clearly – not that the picture was all that pretty.
The Imperial Commander himself was lying dead on the floor, ripped to pieces by the first clutch of the pale, diseased-looking mutants which had suddenly erupted from a number of secret passages. A shame, that : for all of the five minutes I had known him, he had seemed much more tolerable than Caesariovi Giorba. Certainly not the kind of individual to do something stupid once he realized the Rogue Trader he had invited to his private domain was accompanied by the Black Commissar of Slawkenberg – Throne, what a stupid name – especially once he was reminded that we were the ones with the fleet in orbit which massively outgunned his SDF.
Suture and Hektor were fighting back-to-back, tearing into the horde and keeping it away from a group of terrified nobles and the borgs and administrators we had brought along with us to deal with the actual work of setting up whatever accord was eventually signed. Areelu was among them, making sure none of them panicked and did something stupid, whether that was running away in the case of the locals, or try to help by summoning a daemon or something else equally likely to backfire for the acolytes of Tzeentch.
Not that the Protectorate diplomatic party was entirely useless. Even the Tzeentchian bureaucrats Harold had brought with him to help organize the food distribution were all veterans of the Uprising, and they had all pulled las-pistols and were firing at the mutated horrors with a precision that wouldn't have resulted in too harsh a punishment during the Schola Progenium's live-fire shooting exercises on death row criminals. Krystabel too was especially precise with her shots, though given the 'enhancements' her body had received as a result of her frequent possessions by Emeli, that wasn't surprising.
Malicia and Jurgen were also diving into the fray, my bloodward ripping the Nurglite mutants (their allegiance to the Dark God of Decay clearly proclaimed by their appearance) to shreds while Jurgen was either reducing their skulls to pulp with deliberate applications of telekine power or firing with his high-powered las-rifle.
The squad of Van Yastobaal's household guard we had brought with us hadn't fared nearly as well. They were all already dead, having been overwhelmed during the panic of the battle's crucial first seconds, where nobody knows what is going on and instinct and luck are the only thing separating the quick and the dead – well, that and power armor. I ruefully thought that USA troopers would probably have served us much better, even if their presence might have given the game away too soon. I wished I could say this would be the last time I put political considerations above my own safety, but even as I fought for my life, I was bitterly aware that was all too unlikely to be true.
Naturally, I really, really wanted to run and join the area protected by two Space Marines, but unfortunately, I couldn't be seen retreating from these wretches. The servo-skulls which had been broadcasting the meeting were still flying around : if I gave ground, the recording would be all over the planet in minutes, and more importantly aboard the fleet in orbit, and from there to Slawkenberg and the rest of the Protectorate.
The Liberator didn't run, and while I would have gotten away with ordering a general retreat out of the room and back toward the transports which had brought us here, they were too far away for that to be practical, and I didn't know the area well enough to be sure moving elsewhere wouldn't end up bringing us to a worse position. At least the audience room had plenty of space for us to manoeuvre, and clear lines of sight to shoot the mutants which, fortunately, didn't appear to carry ranged weapons – or, indeed, any weaponry at all besides their claws and fangs.
Their presence here didn't make sense, some part of me reflected while the rest was busy trying to stay alive. These wretches were clearly all but mindless, their brains rotten by whatever 'gifts' Nurgle had bestowed upon them. Yet they had made it here, in one of the highest spires of the entire planet, right in time to attack our welcoming party.
This reeked of a conspiracy of some kind (among other, equally unpleasant things). It seemed my theory about Nurgle's influence taking root on Cassandron as a result of the hive-world being cut off its food sources had been more on point than I'd imagined, and the metaphorical and literal rot had reached all the way to the Governor's household.
Suddenly, another bunch of pale mutants arrived, and we all became hard-pressed to stay alive, let alone move out of the room. By now, I could dimly hear the sound of fighting elsewhere in the spire : whatever plot had led to this assassination of the Governor was clearly unfolding through the rest of the spire as well.
I cursed as one of the freaks suddenly leapt over the rest of its fellows and landed right next to me, a sudden display of strength and agility that took me nearly completely off-guard. I raised my left arm just in time to stop the monster from tearing out my throat, but its claws instead cut through my uniform and into the flesh beneath. As my arm was split from elbow to wrist, I found myself, in the instant before the pain hit, really wishing I had come in my suit of power armor after all, and Horus take the diplomatic implications.
Then the pain did hit me, and the distraction it caused might very well have been the end of me, except for the fact that my attacker (and, indeed, every single one of the pale mutants in the chamber) suddenly froze, looking at the blood pouring from my wound and onto the intricate carvings of the floor – which resembled nothing more than a drainage system, directing the red liquid toward what at the time I thought to be some kind of evacuating pipe, probably leftover from a previous Governor who executed his enemies in this very chamber.
Gritting my teeth through the pain, I loped the wretch's head off with my chainsaw, before fumbling for one of the Panacea injectors I always carried on my person. Doing so with one hand out of commission and the other holding onto my weapon was easier said than done, though, but thankfully I was spared from the indignity of accidentally cutting myself with the whirring teeth of my own blade by Jurgen's sudden presence at my side. Looking back the way he'd come, I saw the remains of several mutants who'd had the bad luck of standing between my aide and my wounded self : clearly Jurgen had decided that the time for holding back had passed.
"Steady there, sir," he said, his voice calm despite the chaos of our situation.
He jammed an injector into my wound, and the pain immediately receded (the ancients who had designed the Panacea had clearly known that twitching in agony could result in tearing injuries back open, and taken steps to avoid the issue). Within a few seconds, my forearm had regenerated, leaving me somewhat light-headed from the blood loss, but not so much that my survival instincts couldn't keep me focused on the situation at hand.
"Thank you, Jurgen," I gasped, flexing my hand and moving my arm to check everything was back in working condition (which, of course, it was). On the whole, letting my relief show was probably a good idea, as I didn't want the lunatics around me to start thinking I was literally invincible and immune to harm – if they thought that, they wouldn't try as hard to protect me.
"You're welcome, sir," he replied, before handing me my bolt pistol, which I took with a nod of thanks.
The two of us stood back-to-back as the mutants, who by now had overcome their strange stupor at the sight of my blood (which in hindsight really should have concerned me more, since I wasn't exactly the first person they had hurt in their attack) and were advancing toward us with renewed madness. Some of them were even drooling, although that may have been venom for all I knew.
I cannot say whether we would have managed to deal with them all, though I would have put good odds on it, especially as Malicia was making her way back to us with gratifying speed, clearly terrified at the realization that I had gotten hurt under her watch, and the thought of the punishment Emeli would inflict upon her if I got killed. Yes, the mutants looked to all be focused on me for some reason, but that left them open to being hit by a counter-attack by the Astartes and USA troopers. It would all have depended on whether the three of us could hold the line long enough, and while that wasn't a gamble I enjoyed having to make, we might just have managed it.
However, before the wretches could reach us, the floor suddenly exploded in a shower of stone shards that sent the horde reeling back, and a figure emerged from the hole, moving with the kind of grace and speed I associated with Malicia's kin. As the dust cleared, I saw that it was a woman – and, based on the shape of her exposed ears, not a Drukhari, but a human, although clearly no ordinary one either.
She was beautiful, with skin pale like marble and long, tressed black hair. What little clothing she wore was made of gold and precious stones, and wouldn't have looked out of place at one of the Handmaidens' less public celebrations. But it was her mouth that drew my attention, covered as it was in red blood – my blood, I realized, which had somehow flowed down through the floor and onto her face.
For a moment, I thought she was some ally of the mutants, a leader or champion of some sort, although her body didn't show any sign of the rot which festered on the others. Then she caught one of them by the throat, effortlessly lifting it up so she could stare into its eyes despite her lithe frame.
"Nergalite filth," she hissed, her eyes – which were the same color as my blood on her chin – flashing with inner light. She spoke Gothic with a strange accent, different from the dead Governor's or any of the locals I had met so far. Yes, it was a strange thing to focus on, but I can tell you, every eye in the room was on her in that moment. "Begone from my sight."
And just like that, the creature withered away and turned to dust, its mouth opened in a silent scream. Seconds later, the rest of its kin started screeching in pain or horror as the same happened to them, and within moments, none were left standing.
There was a pause as everyone processed what had just happened.
Despite her beauty, there was something distinctly inhuman about her. It took me a few seconds to realize what it was : she didn't show any of the minute movements that all humans do all the time, the small shifts and adjustments in posture. Her face was the same, completely devoid of the micro-expressions so much of my ability to read people depended upon.
She turned toward me, and it was only my long, unwanted experience with facing beings capable of killing me in an instant that kept my terror from showing. Without a word, she took my left arm in a surprisingly gentle grip and raised it to her mouth, before starting to lick the blood that covered it, moaning softly in what I could swear was delight. This close, I could see her teeth in detail : they were human standard, except for the canines, which grew in length several times when she started licking my blood.
"Such clean, potent blood," she whispered. "It has been so long …"
Now, ordinarily I wouldn't have objected to such an intimate gesture from such a beautiful woman, but not only had she just demonstrated her sorcerous prowess by incinerating scores of mutants in one moment, I was also all too aware of the looks Areelu and Krystabel were sending in my direction. Areelu especially was toying with one of the rings she wore, which I suspected was much more dangerous than a standard piece of jewellery. Given how close to the target of the Rogue Trader's ire I was, I felt defusing the situation was in my best interests, lest I be caught in the splash zone.
"Now, miss," I began, fighting to not let my nervousness show. Whatever else, I could be certain this woman was a predator, and you didn't show any weakness to her kind, not if you wanted to live. "I'm grateful for your assistance, but I'm afraid I need all my blood where it is."
She cocked her head, her eyes locking onto mine. For a moment, I felt as if I was going to be swallowed into their crimson depths, before my self-preservation instincts kicked in and broke whatever mental manipulation was going on. All too aware of how close to me she was, I gently shook my head and clicked my tongue disapprovingly, not too differently from how I'd reacted to Zerayah doing something wrong during her shortened infancy.
She blinked, clearly taken aback by my resistance, but didn't turn violent.
"She doesn't have a heartbeat," said Hektor, reminding me once again that, even though Space Marines were mostly known for their incredible strength and martial prowess, the God-Emperor had also raised them above common Mankind in many other, subtler ways. He was approaching me with his chainaxe held not quite in an aggressive position, but anyone who'd ever seen him fight knew that meant very little given the speeds at which he could move when needed. "Neither did the freaks."
"I am nothing like these scum," the blood-drinking lady spat, turning to glare at him. To his credit, Hektor didn't seem intimidated, but then he was a two-and-a-half meters tall transhuman killing machine who had fought in some of the galaxy's worst wars for a hundred centuries.
Of course, it was only then that help arrived, as the doors of the audience chamber boomed open to reveal a score of guards in ornate but practical armor, led by a tall, dark-haired man who couldn't have embodied the image of a warrior-aristocrat better. He held an activated power sword in one hand, and judging by the tainted viscera on his armor, he had been fighting the same kind of plagued mutant as us moments ago.
"Hektor ?" I asked, my hand subreptitiously moving back to my holstered bolt pistol.
"No heartbeat for any of them either," replied the World Eater.
I don't mind admitting that I briefly considering ordering him and Suture (who had stayed near Areelu and the other civilians all that time) to charge the newcomers and kill them all. But I didn't, which probably was for the best in hindsight, all things considered.
"My Lady Akivasha," the noble said, awe-struck. "You are awake."
"Vlad," replied the now named Akivasha, finally taking her hands off my bloody arm as she turned to glare at the newcomer. "How did you allow this invasion of our demesne to happen, Regent ?"
"We would appreciate an explanation of what is going on as well," I said, sounding as unworried and calm as I could fake under the circumstances, "if that is alright with you all."
"And who are you ?" he asked, with suspicion but no outright hostility.
"My name is Ciaphas Cain." I saw his eyes widen in recognition, and couldn't stop myself from adding : "You may have heard of me."
As it turned out, he had. And, luckily for all of us, his reaction to finding himself face-to-face with the Arch-heretic of Slawkenberg wasn't to open fire first and ask questions later, which, given my and our party's state of exhaustion, I was grateful for (though Hektor, at the very least, seemed ready and eager for another round).
Instead, the aristocrat introduced himself as Vlad Volkihar, Regent of the Volkihar Coven. None of that meant anything to me, but I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about, something I was well used to do from far too many meetings with the Liberation Council. Then, at the command of the terrifying pale lady (who was still staying entirely too close to me for comfort, despite the looks Jurgen and Malicia were sending her), he asked us to follow him into a more secure location.
Moments later (and after a quick chat over the vox with Mahlone to stand down the fleet's batteries and redirect the descending reinforcements to actual landing platforms rather than the more direct routes they'd planned to use, during which I learned that the servo-skulls’ feed had turned to static the moment the attack had begun
), we were standing inside a windowless chamber, closer to the center of the spire, which I could tell from a glance had served as the space for countless meetings of no doubt great importance to the planet's affairs over the millennia since the spire's construction.
On the way, I'd learned that whatever Akivasha had done to the Nurgle-corrupted mutants had wiped out the entire attack force throughout the spire, a level of power which left me trembling in my boots. It wasn't that the cults of Slawkenberg couldn't have done the same, but that would have taken them time to prepare, whereas she had done it on her own and instantly.
Once we were all set up, the explanation we'd been promised began. According to what Vlad Volkihar told us, an entire race of immortal, blood-drinking mutants had ruled Cassandron from the shadows since before the planet had become part of the Imperium. And, from what I remembered of the records Areelu had gotten for me on our way to this system, they had done a better job than most non-Vampire Imperial nobles.
I was, sadly, not that surprised by that realization. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised, and that fact was perhaps more disturbing than anything else about the situation.
Hektor had been the first one to use the word 'Vampire'. According to him, it was a very, very ancient legend from Old Earth, about monsters that drank the blood of the living. The only reason the World Eater knew it was because it was often used in the Eye of Terror as an insult to the Blood Angels, whose gene-seed suffered from a flaw afflicting them with a thirst for blood capable of overwhelming them and driving them to attack both their allies and even civilians.
I was certain that was utter nonsense, of course. The Blood Angels were among the most famed and noblest of all Space Marine Chapters, with a history of impeccable service that stretched back all the way to the First Founding itself. If they had such a thirst for human blood, then the Inquisition would have had something to say about that. I didn't think Hektor was lying, but he was clearly repeating some piece of heretic propaganda the Traitor Legions had come up with during the Heresy in an effort to justify their rebellion against the Emperor.
In any case, our host had confirmed that this was indeed their name for themselves, though they used a variety of euphemisms in most circumstances, and using it was regarded as something of a social faux pas. After all, they didn't want to risk anyone outside their sphere of control realizing what was going on in Cassandron.
At first, I had been sceptical of the Regent's claims that the Covens had ruled Cassandron from the shadows for thousands of years, but then I had realized it actually made sense. We were, after all, in the Damocles Gulf, far from the galactic centers of Imperial power. With the presence of Imperial authorities so diffuse in the region, that a breed of mutants had seized power on a human world without anyone noticing wasn't that surprising, especially since Vlad assured me that the Covens had no intention to expand beyond Cassandron, nor of doing anything which might draw the attention of the Imperium on them. They, quite reasonably in my opinion, were of the belief that, should their existence be uncovered by the Inquisition, the Holy Ordos would stop at nothing to wipe out their entire species, even if it meant burning Cassandron to the ground.
I couldn't help but think that the arrival of a bunch of heretics from a planet whose rebellion against His Holy Majesty's kingdom had become famous through the Sector might ever-so-slightly disturb their perfectly understandable efforts to stay under the radar. Sure, we had brought Cassandron food it desperately needed (although truth be told, the situation wasn't nearly as catastrophic as I'd feared, the Vampires apparently having gone to great lengths to keep their prey population fed). But that wouldn't help the Covens much once the Inquisition arrived to punish the planet for consorting with heretics and found out about the mutants running the place.
Fortunately, the presence of Akivasha at my side had kept the Volkihar Regent from choosing the most obvious option to maintain his people's secret and kill us all. As it turned out, Akivasha wasn't just an 'Ancient' of the 'Volkihar Coven' : she was also something called a 'Paragon', which, from context, I deduced was some kind of title of honor granted only to a few Vampires. She had also been asleep in a tomb beneath the Governor's audience chamber for centuries, and her awakening was clearly being regarded as some kind of good omen by the Vampires – like an esteemed ancestor or Living Saint returning to help them in their hour of need.
And, since it had been my blood, accidentally spilled into what I now knew to be the feeding drains carved into the floor, which had caused her awakening, I was granted a share of the respect the Volkihar Coven held for her. From Vlad's explanation it was clear that the whole thing was more than a little mythological for them, their ancestor-worship having become codified over the course of millennia in the way of all such belief systems – which was refreshingly human of them.
My entourage accepted that explanation without question : of course their Liberator's blood could awaken an ancient Vampire from her centuries-long slumber in mere moments. Given who and what they thought me to be, they might genuinely have been offended if the Vampires hadn't found my blood special in some way.
I, however, was more sceptical, and suspected that the blood of any of my Slawkenberg's cohorts would have done the trick, charged as it was with regular uses of Panacea. Then again, there were few people in the Protectorate who used the stuff as frequently as I. While my use had decreased since becoming responsible for making sure Zerayah didn't go off and eat the Segmentum, I still took a dose regularly to help deal with the ulcers and headaches of my situation.
Of course, I couldn't exactly suggest that out loud, especially since we didn't know much about the Vampires' biology (although Basileus-Zeta had made his interest for the subject clear). For now, though, we had more pressing concerns, such as the Nurglite incursion that had nearly ended my life.
"The Brood of Nergal came from the underhive," Vlad was explaining, a scowl on his face. "They shouldn't have made it anywhere near the spire, but they had inside help. One of our Coven betrayed us and let them in, probably in some attempt to take advantage of the resulting chaos to further his prestige and power."
Oh, brilliant. It seemed not all Vampires were smarter than the typical Imperial noble after all.
"That traitor also must have concealed their numbers from us," Vlad continued. "We have no idea how many more are hiding in the warrens, meaning that we need to launch a purge. Lord Cain, I apologize again for the disturbance, but I fear I must ask you and yours to remain within the spire while your people coordinate with ours to set up the food distribution while I prosecute the cleansing of Hive Primus' depths."
On the one hand, the thought of staying in the upper hive while the Regent did the dirty work was very appealing. On the other, not only would that not fit with my image, it would leave me surrounded by a bunch of blood-drinking mutants, at least one of which was still sending me disturbingly hungry glances from time to time.
At least in the underhive I could shoot at anything threatening me without causing a diplomatic incident.
"I'm sure Harold can manage that on his own, and probably do it better without me hovering over him," I declared with a smile in the direction of the Tzeentchian bureaucrat, before refocusing on Vlad. "I think I'd much rather join you in this little cleansing expedition of yours."
"Why would you go this far ?" asked Vlad, one eyebrow raised. "Merely repaying you for the supplies you've brought will already put us in your debt."
I hadn't managed to keep up the charade of the Liberator this long by failing to take advantage of such a straight line. I sighed theatrically, as if disappointed in the Vampire's cynicism, and replied :
"If you can't accept that we'd help you simply out of the goodness of our hearts," which, speaking for myself, I most certainly wouldn't do, "then consider this : we have declared ourselves as enemies of Nurgle since years ago. While all other faiths are welcome on Slawkenberg and Adumbria, the God of Decay is anathema to all civilization, be it the Covens or the Protectorate. Letting his influence grow here can only threaten our own interests further down the line."
"… I can understand that," said Vlad. "But are you sure your forces can help us ? While I have no doubt of your martial prowess, Lord Cain, the guards you brought with us didn't fare well against the Brood. And even such potent warriors as the rest of your company," he gestured in the direction of the two Astartes, the Drukhari Wych, and the psyker in the room, "their small number will prevent them from being of much help for an operation of that scale."
That was, of course, perfectly true. Given the sheer size of a typical underhive, a handful of combatants, no matter how skilled, couldn't hope to have much of an impact in what we all assumed at the time would be a search-and-destroy operation targeted at groups of the Nurgle-corrupted Vampires we'd faced. If the Brood had possessed some kind of leader, then they would have been the perfect kill-team to direct at them, but as far as we knew the Brood were leaderless – except for, maybe, the Volkihar traitor who had brought them to the spire.
"That would be because we left our most capable forces in orbit, and brought only a lightly armed escort – except for Hektor and Suture, of course – as a gesture of good will," I explained, before seeing an opportunity to ensure my future safety and sighing regretfully. "In hindsight, it was a mistake, and one which cost us good men."
There. Now, the next time I had to come down in foreign territory, it was all but certain someone else would suggest bringing the USA regardless of diplomatic considerations, without me having to do it myself and risk looking afraid.
"All soldiers of the Unified Slawkenberg Army are clad in their own suit of power armor," I continued, not missing the brief stiffening of Vlad's posture at the casual statement.
It was easy to forget, given how much time I'd spent away from the Imperium and into the madness of Slawkenberg, but human-sized power armor was rare. To my knowledge, only the Sisters of Battle used them for their main infantry forces, and outside of the Guard, even flak armor was usually considered top-of-the-line equipment.
"In addition," I finished, "they all are trained to operate in a multitude of hostile environments, and while I don't think we have built a replica underhive yet, I feel the inside of a Space Hulk will be a suitable replacement."
"Ah. Well, then, in that case, I would be a fool to refuse your assistance, since you're offering it so graciously. And I assume you will lead your forces personally ?"
"Of course," I replied with a smile, knowing that I had no other choice. Still, I wasn't too worried.
Not only would I be accompanied by Jurgen and Malicia (with Hektor leading the USA troopers), I would be inside the Liberator Armor, so I was confident my personal safety was guaranteed. The corrupted Vampires we'd faced would be no match for the borg-built suit, nor would any of the other monstrosities that usually dwelled within a underhive. The worst danger would come from the risk of a hive-quake burying me under several hundred tons of rubble, but I trusted the Liberator Armor's sensors and my own instincts to see me through that peril – and besides, if I was lucky, I might even be able to use that excuse to avoid getting deep in the fray.
You would think that, by now, I would know better than to make such assumptions. My only defense is that, by that point, it'd been a while since I'd been in actual, dangerous combat, and the fact my plot to avoid danger during the void battle in Adumbria had worked had me cautiously optimistic that my luck might have turned.
The events to come would, of course, soon most thoroughly disillusion me of that foolish notion.
Mannfred Volkihar cursed silently as he walked through the dark tunnels of Hive Primus' depths, one hand on the weapons he carried while he kept a wary eye on his surroundings, just in case any of the degenerates who dwelled there were stupid or desperate enough to attack him.
It had taken months of careful, deliberate work to pave the way for the Nergalites' infiltration of the spire. And before that, years to ingratiate himself with the wretches, ever since he had discovered the existence of that small remnant of the fallen Coven in the depths of the underhive, during one of his expeditions (of which he had oh-so-unfortunately been the sole survivor, ensuring secrecy).
Manipulating the disgusting freaks into thinking he sympathized with their plight and could help them get revenge had been long, arduous work, but the likes of Nergal's Brood were no match for his wits. And if a few Volkihar Vampires who were poking around near their lairs had mysteriously disappeared, well, such things happened all the time in the underhive of Primus. It was why only the lower members of the Coven ever made their domains there.
Mannfred had thought the arrival of the off-worlders the perfect timing to unleash his 'allies' : the Coven's leadership would all be gathered in the Governor's spire palace to keep an eye on the proceedings, and the guards would be at least partially distracted by the strangers in their midst. With his authority as the Regent's Progeny, manipulating a few patrol schedules to ensure things went smoothly had been the easiest thing in the world. And as soon as he'd confirmation that his intended targets were slain, he would assume command and lead the purge, first of the spire, and then of the underhive nests, which his peerless investigation skills would have promptly discovered. The fleet in orbit would have made things a tad more complicated, but nothing Mannfred wasn't confident he could handle.
And now, it had all fallen apart. Not only were Vlad and Isabella still alive, one of the Ancients had awakened from her slumber. Damn that Cain ! His interference had ruined everything. Mannfred refused to believe that it was all coincidence. The Black Commissar's reputation had reached all the way to Cassandron, and Mannfred didn't doubt for a moment that Cain's infernal masters had guided him to the hive-world just in time to foil his plot. Not only was he now forced to flee his Maker's retribution, but Cain had doubly earned the gratitude of the Volkihar Coven, both by bringing an alleged solution to the looming food crisis and by returning one of the Coven's Ancients to them.
The mere thought of someone pledging their service to the Dark Gods filled Mannfred with disgust, for the same reason he'd always secretly held Vlad in contempt. What was the point of power, if you only held it at the sufferance of someone else, be they Ancient or Ruinous Power ? For all the power he held (and truly, that power must be considerable, to have defied the Imperium so blatantly and lived to tell the tale), Cain was still naught but a slave to the Archenemy.
Yet even a slave could be dangerous, as Cain had so disastrously demonstrated. Mannfred's plans were in tatters, Vlad had discovered his treachery, and off-world troops were descending from orbit to join the cleansing expedition in the underhive. Mannfred's supporters in the Coven had turned on him without hesitation – he hadn't even tried to go to them for aid, knowing how they'd have welcomed him. Consorting with Nergal's Brood was one of the few unforgivable sins of the Covens, and by being caught red-handed, Mannfred had lost every protection and privilege that'd been afforded him due to his station as Vlad's Progeny. He had barely managed to grab a few valuables and weapons before making his escape.
Mannfred would have his revenge, though. There were still Nergalites in the depths he could find and rally against the new Protectorate-Covens alliance. Yes, victory in an outright conflict was likely impossible, but targeted assassination might still be in the cards. Vlad's arrogance would force him to lead the inevitable purge from the front, and a warlord such as Cain was unlikely to be far behind.
And once they were dead … well, he would think of something, he was sure of it. The chaos would bring plenty of opportunities for someone as cunning as him to seize.
In the end, he was Mannfred Volkihar, the one true lord of the Volkihar Coven and all of Cassandron. And he would have what he was due.
Notes:
AN : Yes, Mannfred, I'm sure you will manage to use an apocalyptic threat to accomplish your own selfish ambitions. What could possibly go wrong ?
I have a file describing the society, powers, and nature of the Vampires of Cassandron. Once this arc is complete, I might post it on the SB thread as an Informational threadmark (but not before, since I might need to adjust stuff for story purposes).
Speaking of the SB thread, if you are reading this on FFnet or AO3, I really recommend checking it out. A LOT of Omakes were written by my readers since the last chapter.
I had to cut some stuff from this chapter because it didn't flow like I wanted, and in order to get it done in time for this fic's first year anniversary. Speaking of, here is to many more glorious adventures of the Liberator ! Don't worry, the stuff that didn't make it in (like a more detailed explanation of what the Covens and the Brood of Nergal are) will be in the next chapter.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I look forward to your thoughts, comments and suggestions.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 29: Chapter 28
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Even as a bloody, merciless war was being waged in the depths of Hive Primus, twin celebrations were taking place in the highest spire of the sprawling metropolis.
As far as Cassandron's human denizens were concerned, the Governor's assassination had been the doing of vile mutants, which would be answered with all due force. Although the arrival of the Protectorate's envoys had been broadcast planet-wide, the feed had cut off with the arrival of the Brood : despite their corruption, the Nergalites were still Vampires, and possessed the same ability to disrupt all means of electronic surveillance as the rest of their kind. With so many of them present, the servo-skulls had been completely blinded, rather than simply unable to detect them as might have been the case if only one or a handful had been there.
The official announcement had blamed heretic sabotage for the blackout, although the question of why a group willing to murder the Governor wouldn't want their deed to be seen by as many people as possible had been promptly ignored. It had then gone on to assure that the food relief of the Protectorate would still arrive, and that the logisticians were hard at work planning the distribution of supplies and the deployment of the technology offered by Cassandron's new off-world friends.
The Governor's successor had officially ascended to the position early today (Cassandron's laws allowed for remarkably quick and painless transitions of power – at least among the humans : things were quite different for Vampires). Like all of his line for over a score generations, he'd been raised with some knowledge of the Covens, and the possibility of joining them if he distinguished himself in the service of the world's true masters had been forever dangling over his head.
Of course, while it wasn't unheard of for a Planetary Governor to receive the Gift, it was still incredibly rare. Besides the risk of drawing Imperial attention, Governors were used to wielding near-absolute power, even on Cassandron, and tended to react poorly to joining Vampiric society, stripped of most of their prestige and power. Still, it was possible the new incumbent would be one of the lucky ones – stranger things had certainly happened, and several just today.
With the succession ceremony over (at least the important, legally binding part : there was still going to be weeks and weeks of paperwork and rituals to go through), Cassandron's worthies were mingling in the great halls of the Governor's spire. There, they played the petty games of intrigue, alliance, seduction and betrayal that kept the Imperial nobility of a million worlds occupied.
By the end of the night, there would probably have been at least a dozen affairs, twice that many secret pacts sworn, and twice again that number of feuds declared between rival families. But you wouldn't have thought it looking at the smiling, painted faces of the aristocracy, none of whom sported any of the bionics common on other Imperial worlds – a small quirk of Cassandron's nobility which had surprised some off-worlders, but hardly counted among the strangest local traditions of the Imperium's million worlds.
To reassure the population that everything was under control and proceeding as normal, the celebrations were being recorded by servo-skulls and broadcast across the planet, which, of course, meant that the Vampires couldn't mingle with the mortal elite, lest their nature interfere with the broadcast. That was fine : they had their own, far more significant gathering to attend.
Within sun-proofed rooms that didn't appear in most maps of the spire, the deathless rulers of Cassandron had assembled. Akivasha's awakening, the Brood's resurgence, and the death of the Planetary Governor were, each on their own, events that would have shaken the Covens' politics to various degrees. Both of them happening at the same time, combined with the arrival of off-worlders bringing desperately needed food supplies (and led by such a figure as the Black Commissar, no less, whose infamy had reached all the way to Cassandron), had sent shock-waves through their entire society.
Every Coven had sent representatives to this party, whose official purpose was to celebrate the Ancient's return and cement the Covens' alliance with the Protectorate, even as their combined forces prosecuted the cleansing of Primus' underhive. Each of Cassandron's hive-cities was home to a small embassy of the other Covens, of course, but these had been reinforced by dignitaries from their respective Covens, who had made the trip to Primus aboard private, sun-proofed transports.
Now, Akivasha was granting audience to these visitors one by one, accepting their tributes and renewed pledges of friendship between the Volkihar and their own Covens like the warrior-queen of some feudal planet. The ancient Vampire sat on a throne that had been crafted for her use only millennia ago, and taken out of storage especially for tonight. The dress she wore had also been taken out of storage, where it had laid within a stasis field in order to preserve the priceless fabric for the centuries of its owner's slumber.
Looking upon the Ancient, you wouldn't know that she'd awakened only hours prior. Usually, it took many, many liters of human blood to fuel the reawakening of a Vampire of such esteemed age and power, and returning to complete awareness was a matter of weeks, if not months. Yet Akivasha had been returned to her full power in a matter of moments, and that, too, was the source of much gossip and speculation among the Covens. Although if Akivasha herself knew how such a thing was possible, she hadn't said anything about it, merely playing the part of an Ancient in Vampire politics with consummate ease.
Meanwhile, Isabella Volkihar, elder of the Volkihar Coven and Progeny and spouse of its Regent, smiled as she exchanged pleasantries with the Rogue Trader Areelu Van Yastobaal and the Protectorate envoy who had introduced herself as Krystabel, leader of the Handmaidens of Emeli.
The three of them were sat on luxurious chairs in a side room to the main chamber where Akivasha was holding court. Portraits of the Coven's most renowned members hung from the walls, each the work of a master. As paintings were the only way in which the Vampires could see their own image after receiving the Gift, Cassandron had long boasted a number of very talented artists, whose works were in high demand across the entire Damocles Gulf and beyond.
As she sipped blood from a crystal glass to accompany her guests' own, more conventional refreshments, Isabella inspected the other two women without making it obvious. She had met off-worlders before; she had even drunk from them occasionally, her bloodline's predilection for mental manipulation making it easy to erase all memories of her feeding and replace them with those of a pleasantly exhausting tryst with a local beauty.
But few of them had registered as healthy to her senses as the Slawkenberg envoys, and none as tantalizing as the Black Commissar himself, in those few moments she'd been in his presence. If not for the presence of Lady Akivasha right next to Cain until he'd left for the underhive, Isabella might have found it difficult to hold herself back from having just a taste. As it was, her instincts had kept her from doing anything which might be construed as encroaching on the Ancient's territory.
Both Areelu and Krystabel were curious about the nature of the Covens. While her dear Vlad had shared some of the more practical aspects of Vampiric nature during the preparations for the ongoing military operation in the underhive, there hadn't been time to go into the finer details. And so, Isabella had taken it upon herself to introduce the Covens' new allies to some of the subtler aspects of their hidden society.
Such a course of action would obviously have been forbidden under most circumstances, as the Covens took their secrecy very seriously. But things had changed with the Imperium all but officially abandoning Torredon to the shadow cartels, and in any case, the Protectorate was made up of heretics and rebels against the Golden Throne.
They still needed to keep up pretences for the general population (no one was quite sure how the humans would react to knowing, without any doubt, that they were ruled by a mutant race of immortal blood-drinkers, but the smart bet was that it wouldn't be with calm acceptance), but being open with the Protectorate's leaders could only be a good idea. Especially since their fleet vastly outgunned Cassandron's SDF, which was meant only to prevent piracy within the system.
"So, you were human, once ?" Areelu asked, picking up where the conversation had paused as they all took a sip of their drinks.
"Indeed," Isabella replied. "All of us were, until we earned immortality in the eyes of our Maker. In my case, it was my dear husband, Vlad, who brought me into the Volkihar Coven."
"Is that common ?" asked Krystabel, raising an eyebrow. While Areelu was far from ugly, Krystabel radiated a dark charisma that was the equal of any Turel Vampire – the fruit, no doubt, of her dedication to the Dark Prince. Idly, Isabella wondered how such an allegiance might affect the taste of her blood : the cults of Chaos had never had much of a presence on Cassandron, save for the Brood. "I mean no insult, but it sounds like a somewhat frivolous reason."
Isabella chuckled. She'd heard the same thing many, many times, phrased much less politely – and at least the Rogue Trader had the excuse of ignorance.
"Oh, I assure you, I earned the Gift just like anyone else. And Vlad didn't propose to me until I'd been a Vampire for some time. To do anything else would have been extremely gauche. After all, sharing the Gift with another is not something lightly done, for a multitude of reasons."
"I think I can guess some of them," said Van Yastobaal. "With all Vampires being immortal, population control has to be tight."
"Yes, but not as much as you might think. There is blood aplenty on a hive-world, and turning someone else into one of our kind is a difficult process, not something done lightly. In addition, not every Vampire lives for long : some just aren't suited for this existence, or fail to measure up to their Maker's expectations. To have one of your Progeny fail in that manner is a source of great shame in the Covens, so prospective Makers choose their future Progeny very carefully."
Which was why that wretch Mannfred's betrayal had hurt her dear husband so much. In Isabella's opinion, Vlad should have disposed of the megalomaniacal man-child centuries ago, but for all his ruthlessness, her husband could be surprisingly sentimental when it came to his family.
"What about the Brood of Nergal ?" asked Areelu. "Where did they come from ?"
Isabella had known the question would come : given what had happened earlier today, it was inevitable. She'd made sure to brush up her knowledge of the whole sordid affair, especially since all of it was second-hand – though, unlike most Vampires, she'd learned about it from someone who had actually been present for it all. Still, she was talking to worshippers of Chaos, so she'd to phrase the story carefully : it wouldn't do to accidentally give insult to their guests.
"That is a long story," she began, settling comfortably in her chair. "It happened many centuries before my birth, but I was told the tale by my husband, who lived as a human in those days, a high-ranking officer of the Cassandron PDF and a dedicated servant of the Volkihar Coven. As he told me, Hive Septimus was once the demesne of the Ruthven Coven, instead of the burned-out, lifeless, ruined husk it is now. Nearly all of their culture was lost in what happened to them, but from what I know, they were as proud and powerful a Coven as any of the others – though of course, they were still second to the Volkihar," she added with a smile.
"Of course," repeated Areelu drily.
"Then, four thousand years ago, the Thrice-Damned, Regent of the Ruthven Coven, whose name we are all forbidden to speak, fell to the Great Corruptor. To this day, we do not know for certain how it happened; how exactly the seeds of his madness took root. Our best guess is that he met with a heretic from off-world who introduced him to the worship of Nergal."
"Nurgle," whispered Areelu Van Yastobaal, all but hissing the name. Next to her, Krystabel's face was also twisted in anger and disgust. "The Protectorate and I have both our own grudges against him and his servants."
"Nergal, Nurgle, it doesn't really matter," Isabella shrugged. "Gods have always had many names, for as long as Mankind has believed in them. But Nergal was the name by which the Thrice-Damned called his patron, and so it became the name we gave to the Brood once the truth became clear. Regardless of the source of the Thrice-Damned's heresy, for decades following his fall from grace, he studied the forbidden arts, delving deeper and deeper into the mysteries of Decay and using sorcery to mask the ensuing warping of his flesh."
This portion of the tale was mostly speculation, based on some texts which had been recovered from the heretic Regent's lair in the aftermath – texts which had promptly been destroyed, just in case his madness could spread through their contents.
To be honest, having seen what the members of the Brood looked like on a handful of occasions during her long life, Isabella found it hard to believe none of her ancestors had caught on to the Thrice-Damned's deceit. Then again, every Vampire became good at hiding secrets by necessity sooner or later, and the Regents of the Covens were among the best at it.
"During that time, the Thrice-Damned recruited other members of the Ruthven Coven to his blasphemous cause," she continued. "Then, one night, he dug up the coffins of seven Ruthven Ancients and offered them in sacrifice to his Dark God."
Isabella paused then for a moment.
"It is … difficult, to put the sheer scale of that transgression into words someone who isn't one of us would understand. The Ancients are the oldest and most powerful of our kind, some of them older than the Imperium itself. They are the leaders and founders of the Covens, the common ancestors of all of the tens of thousands of Vampires who bear its name and blood. That is why what Lord Cain did when he awakened Lady Akivasha is so impressive to us."
"I think I see where this is going," said Areelu with a grim expression. "The Thrice-Damned used those very bonds of blood against the Ruthven, didn't he ?"
"Exactly," confirmed Isabella, making a mental note that the Rogue Trader clearly had access to knowledge the rest of the Imperium didn't. "The curse of Nergal flowed through the bonds of Blood that link all members of a Coven to each other, and in that single moment, every scion of the Ruthven bloodline was transformed into a member of the Brood, from the mightiest elder to the lowliest fledgling. Their souls were overcome by corruption, their minds broken, and the Ruthven Coven was reduced to a horde of monsters."
Isabella didn't mind admitting to herself that the very concept of it all was terrifying. Despite the political differences and slight variations of character and Talents between the Covens, they were the same at a fundamental level. What had happened to the Ruthven could have happened to the Volkihar, if Nergal had managed to sink his poisoned fangs into a member of their bloodline instead of the Thrice-Damned.
"The Brood fell upon Hive Septimus' population in a frenzied orgy of feeding. Their corrupted Gift spread like a plague, and social order collapsed immediately, as people died, turned, or tried to flee into the wasteland without any plan or preparation. Hive Septimus' surroundings became a graveyard of millions of fleeing refugees, and the situation inside the hive proper was far worse. Even the Ruthven who weren't in Hive Septimus weren't spared by the curse. Ambassadors and exiles alike were turned into vectors for the contagion, and every Coven had to deal with outbreaks within their respective hive-cities."
This was where the records became clearer, thanks to how many witnesses to the Ruthven's sudden affliction there'd been – though not many had survived to write about it.
"Once the outbreaks were successfully suppressed, the Covens figured out that something had gone horribly wrong in Hive Septimus. The Ancients were urgently awakened, and they went to war against the Brood, with their loyal PDF troops at their side. My dear husband Vlad was a commander of the PDF at the time, and it was his bravery during the conflict that earned him induction into the ranks of the Volkihar Coven by none other than the Lady Akivasha herself."
Yes, she was boasting about her husband. So what ? She loved him.
"At the head of this army were the mightiest of our Ancients, those we call Paragons. They are those few among us who have gained mastery over all the Talents of the Blood, and reached the peak of Vampiric power." They had discussed the Talents before, with Isabella explaining how each bloodline had its favored supernatural abilities passed down from Maker to Progeny, so there was no need to repeat that now. "In all the Covens' history, only a handful have ever claimed that title, as it takes thousands of years of practice; even mastering the Talents of one's own bloodline is the work of centuries."
"Given what we saw Lady Akivasha do, I can only imagine such beings are very powerful indeed," said Areelu, letting some of her curiosity show on her face.
"Extremely so," Isabella confirmed, seeing no reason not to tell the Volkihar's newest allies of the Coven's might. "Paragons can face an army of thousands single-handedly and triumph; and indeed, during the Purge of Septimus, that is exactly what they did. In the end, the Thrice-Damned was slain by a party of several Paragons, a number of Ancients, and the support of thousands of Vampires and hundreds of thousands of PDF troopers to breach through the hordes of the Brood. It was a great victory, though not one without a terrible cost."
It was possible that, during the confusion of the battle, some grudges older than the Imperium had been quietly settled between the Ancients, and the victims blamed on the Thrice-Damned. Possible, but, in Isabella's opinion, unlikely. After all, at the time, the Covens would've had no way to know for sure they had truly dealt with the threat, and the Thrice-Damned wasn't about to return and force them to ally once more. In a strange way, perhaps the Brood of Nergal had ensured that the Covens would never go to total war against one another again, just in case.
"Hive Septimus was purged from top to bottom by kill-teams made up of Vampires of every remaining Coven, while a cordon around the hive prevented the Nergalites from escaping," she continued the story. "Once they withdrew, with Septimus' defenses and the Thrice-Damned's sorcerous wards brought down, the PDF artillery shelled the hive continually for an entire month without stopping, just to make sure."
"We saw the site from orbit during our approach," said Krystabel. "I think even Hektor was surprised by the scale of the destruction."
"Not impressed ?" asked Isabella.
"Well," the Handmaiden shrugged, "he is a veteran of the Siege of Terra."
"Yes, I suppose that would put things into perspective," the Volkihar allowed, suppressing a shiver at the casual reminder of the kind of beings the Black Commissar had under his command. "In any case, the Covens took great pains to ensure the Imperium thought this whole sordid affair a mere civil war, of the kind that happen on Imperial worlds all the time as a result of the local aristocracy feuding with itself."
The fact that, despite their degeneracy, the Brood retained the antithetical effect we have on technological recordings had helped a great deal, though it could just as easily have been regarded as a source of suspicion in itself had the Covens not navigated the situation as well as they had.
"I understand that there was some grumbling from the Administratum as the PDF tithe had to be delayed, but we managed to smooth things over quickly enough no Inquisitor thought to investigate. After that, the threat of the Brood was thought to be over. It wasn't entirely so, of course : some of them managed to escape Hive Septimus, or to hide in the ruins of their realm, deep enough to survive even that level of sustained devastation. Ever since then, there have been outbreaks, which the Covens have worked together to purge as soon as they learn of them."
"But nothing on the scale of what happened this time," said Areelu, "isn't that so ?"
Isabella shook her head. "No, nothing like that. It was always limited to small groups being discovered in the underhives, or launching small-scale strikes against Coven assets or even random Imperial institutions. Something must have happened, and I doubt it was only that bloodless wretch Mannfred's treachery helping them grow their numbers without being detected."
If for no other reason than she refused to give him any credit whatsoever.
"The Nergalites' vile patron must have increased the blasphemous assistance he was granting them," said Krystabel. "Lord Cain suspected Nurgle's influence was at work in the system when he led us here. I don't think he knew the details, but truly, his instincts are a wonder to behold."
This, Isabella found hard to believe. Oh, there was no question that Cain was opposed to the Brood of Nergal : Lady Akivasha would surely have sensed any taint of the Rotting One in his blood. But the timing of the Protectorate's arrival was simply too convenient to be the product of mere chance. It was much more likely that Cain had known of the threat in advance, and arranged matters so that he'd be in a position to earn the Covens' gratitude and alliance against a common enemy.
If so, then it was quite the master-stroke, and a reminder that, for all that the Vampires of Cassandron had spent millennia sharpening their skills at intrigue against one another, the galaxy was still a big place, and there was a reason their ancestors had elected to remain on a single world. Isabella could only hope her husband would realize the threat Cain might pose if he turned into the Covens' enemy, and do his best to ensure this didn't come to pass – just like Isabella would do her best to ingratiate herself to the Liberator's diplomatic envoys.
"They certainly are," she agreed out loud. Krystabel's infatuation for her leader was obvious – the fact that the Handmaiden didn't even try to conceal it was very interesting, especially given the fact she was pretty certain Areelu had her own interest in the Liberator. "Now that you are caught up on ancient history, shall I introduce you to the rest of our esteemed guests ?"
"That would be much appreciated," replied the Lady Van Yastobaal, standing up. "We should get to know our new friends, after all."
This, Areelu reflected, must be exactly what Cain intended when he'd gone to the underhive and left her and Krystabel behind, trusting they would read his intent without needing to voice it aloud. Neither of them were suited to fighting in the dark tunnels beneath untold millions of tons of earth, stone, rockrete and metal, whereas the social arena of the high spires of Hive Primus were the kind of place where the Rogue Trader had spent decades, plotting and scheming in pursuit of knowledge to cure her beloved daughter, or the wealth needed to continue that pursuit.
The three of them left the side room to go back to the main hall. Without a word, Suture moved from the shadowed corner where he'd been silently standing guard during their conversation to follow them. Even after all this time, she was still surprised by how quiet the two-and-a-half meters tall transhuman warrior could be when he wanted to.
The reception hall was lavishly decorated with the fruits of millennia of accumulated wealth. Unlike so many noble dwellings Areelu had visited in the past, however, the display of wealth and power wasn't so ostentatious as to become vulgar. Every piece of furniture was a centuries-old masterpiece, carefully preserved through the efforts of what she could only imagine must be a veritable army of exceptionally well-trained servants.
She recognized some of the styles on display. Here was a seat whose wooden framework had been carved on Tanith; there, a low table sculpted in Macraggian marble. The small orchestra which was playing soft, nonintrusive music (Bartholomew's Ninth Symphony, if her ears didn't deceive her) were all carrying instruments from the ocean world of Eleusis, each one costing more than a member of the artisan class could hope to earn in a lifetime. And the chandelier hanging over them all was made up of a thousand diamonds, resulting in a strange, almost hypnotic effect as the lights shifted ever so slightly with every change of the room's air currents.
But despite how interesting the decorations were, Areelu's focus was on the guests. Over a hundred Vampires were present to celebrate Lady Akivasha's awakening, and you could have cut the intrigue in the air with a chainsword. These represented only a fraction of the Volkihar Coven, of course : only the most powerful and influential scions were welcomed here. They wore the clothing of Imperial highborn, but moved with a predatory grace which few human Imperial nobles possessed (but not none, as Imperial politics could be as cut-throat as the gang warfare of any underhive).
Isabella, Krystabel and her drew more than their share of looks, which didn't surprise Areelu. Isabella was the Volkihar Regent's wife, while the two of them were the representatives of the Cainite Protectorate – and then, of course, there was Suture, who could hardly have looked more out of place as he trailed behind them in his suit of power armor. At least he'd left his weapons behind, like everyone else, although that didn't make him harmless, of course. But then, none of the guests to this party could ever truly be said to be unarmed – and Areelu was no exception.
It reminded the Rogue Trader of a number of other high-society parties she had attended before. Only the nature of the beverages being served, and the absence of augmetic implants in the attendees (Vampire physiology rejected all such implants, and their regeneration meant they didn't need them in any case) set it apart.
The beverages in questions were served by thralls dressed in white robes walked between the guests, carrying trays of refreshment. According to Isabella's explanations, these were the Covens' favored servants, whose will had been suborned through repeated feedings until their loyalty was guaranteed. The Volkihar matriarch had been coy as to the exact nature and mechanisms of this submission, probably thinking that such supernatural slavery would run against the principles of a regime so dedicated to the cause of 'Liberation' as the Protectorate.
In this, she was probably correct. Areelu was admittedly still new to this whole 'Liberation' business, but she'd seen enough to know that Cain was truly committed to bringing freedom to those who suffered under the yoke of tyranny, whatever form it might take. She suspected that, in the years to come and once the threat of the Brood had been eliminated, the Warmaster would push for certain … changes in the way the Covens ran their operations on Cassandron.
Which was another reason for her to learn all she could about the Vampires' ways. Cain was too honorable to turn on the Covens after they'd faced a common enemy : he would prefer to use diplomacy to bring them under his banner, and no diplomat could work without understanding the other party. Doing all she could to help that was the least Areelu owed him.
"Ah, there she is," said Isabella. "There is someone in particular I wanted to introduce you. Genevieve ! How nice to see you !"
A woman who had ostensibly been examining a portrait of Lady Akivasha turned toward them at Isabella's call. She looked young, a teenager who hadn't fully transitioned to adulthood quite yet; at least, until you looked into her eyes, which were far older than the rest of her appeared to be. Given the prevalence of juvenat treatment usage among the Imperial aristocracy, Areelu was well used to people being older than they looked, but the Vampires of Cassandron took it to an entirely new level – Isabella hadn't said precisely how old Akivasha herself was, but Areelu had her suspicions.
"I'm always happy to meet you as well, Lady Volkihar. And a pleasure to make your acquaintance as well, Ladies of the Cainite Protectorate. I am Genevieve Moroi, emissary of Hive Quartus," she introduced herself with an impeccably executed curtsy.
Moroi. Areelu recognized the name : it was that of the Coven which ruled Hive Quartus. The fact that Genevieve wore the name as her own meant that she was of a high rank within that Coven, which wasn't surprising, given her presence here.
"Oh, I assure you, the pleasure is mine," replied Krystabel, with a smile that would have made many men (and women) go weak at the knees. Genevieve, however, was made of sterner stuff than most, and merely widened her own smile a fraction in response, showing the merest hint of her elongated canines as she did so.
Areelu smiled. She was going to enjoy herself tonight, she could already tell.
Notes:
AN : Well, that took entirely too much time. Initially, this chapter was supposed to include the battle in the underhive of Primus, but the lore dump of the first part ran away from me and I decided to cut it here instead.
There will be more reveals about the Vampire Covens further down the line, but I wanted to establish a baseline, so to speak. I also tried to put more stuff in Areelu's POV, but for the life of me I couldn't manage to write anything of her discussion with Genevieve (who I am sure you'll have recognized), so I decided to cut my losses and stop here.
I look forward to your thoughts on this chapter, which admittedly was different from usual. Next time, we'll get back to our GLORIOUS LIBERATOR.
Zahariel out.
PS : because I am weak and the Muse is strong and cannot be denied, you can expect on a certain significant day later this week.
Chapter 30: Chapter 29
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Jon Skellan snarled through fanged teeth as he smashed in the skull of yet another Nergalite bastard with his club. The weapon was a brutish and ugly thing : a piece of rusted metal he had pulled from the wreckage of the underhive, hammered somewhat into shape, and wrapped a bunch of rusted chains and nails around. Before the battle, there had still been spots of blood belonging to the last ganger he'd killed with it on it. But it did the job, especially when wielded with his supernatural strength, and in the underhive that was all that mattered.
Lizbet was fighting by his side, wielding her own, equally ugly-looking but efficient weapon. Despite the grim and dirt that covered her, she was just as beautiful as she'd been on the day of their wedding. Which only made sense, since that had been the same day the four of them had been Turned.
Jon still remembered it as if it were yesterday, the events of that fateful day burned into his memory. He and Stefan Fisher had known each other all their lives, and falling in love with a pair of sisters had brought them even closer to another, to the point they had been brothers in all but blood. Jon had proposed to Lizbet on the same day Stefan had to Leyna, and their weddings had taken place on the same day (both to celebrate them all becoming family, and for the more pragmatic reason that it would make the celebrations less expensive, always a concern even in their comparatively prosperous section of the underhive).
Then, right after the priest was done leading them through their vows and everyone had stopped clapping, the doors of the church had burst open, and the Vampires had swaggered in, already covered in the blood of the people they had killed outside, too quickly for anyone to scream.
Even now, years later, Jon still dreamt of their laughter sometimes. They had taken their time with their victims, making sure nobody could escape as they killed the guests one by one, before bestowing a 'wedding gift' on the two couples.
Jon's first memory as a Vampire was lapping the stale blood of his family from where it had pooled on the floor, all reason lost to the terrible thirst that afflicted the newly-Turned as their body's complex changes finished. Thankfully, Stefan was made of sterner stuff than Jon, and he had pulled Jon away from the red liquid, pinned him against a wall, and held him there until he had regained control, stoically bearing the scratches Jon had dealt him with his claws. If not for his brother-in-law, Jon was morbidly certain he would have lost himself to the beast inside of him then and there.
He had never forgotten that debt, which had been the one bright spot on that awful day – well, along with the fact that Lizbet had risen as well, the two of them still together despite everything.
With their human lives lost to them, vengeance had been their drive for the next seven years, even as they learned to cope with their new condition. The monsters responsible had turned out to be from the mid-levels of Primus, having come down to slum it and indulge their depraved appetites on people nobody would miss, so that they wouldn't earn the disapproval of the Vampires tasked with maintaining Cassandron's order.
They might have been able to avoid the attention of the Coven's law enforcers, but they'd been wrong to think nobody would care. One by one, Stefan, Jon, Lizbet and Leyna had hunted them down, sharpening the skills everybody in the underhive needed to reach adulthood in the process, along with mastering the strange gifts that came with their new status.
The last of the bastards, Aigner, had gotten wise to their pursuit and tried to flee to the highest levels of the hive and beg protection from the leadership of the Volkihar Coven, but they had caught up to him and ended his miserable existence on the very threshold of the mass-conveyor which would've carried him to the spire.
Jon had taken a dark delight in how the wretch had begged for his miserable life, even if Stefan had stopped him from making Aigner suffer like he deserved before ending him. Although, given they'd been right in front of a bunch of armed guards from up the spire, he'd to admit his brother-in-law had a point, so Jon had simply ripped Aigner's heart out and shot him in the head repeatedly with a shotgun. Supposedly, there were Vampires who could survive that, but Aigner wasn't one of them.
And then, for a time, they had been lost, with no idea what to do next. The four of them had spent a few months wandering the hive, feeding on vermin and gangers. Eventually, they had gone back to their home-town, which had returned from ruin during their absence as new settlers claimed the area where their families had lived before being slaughtered.
With Stefan as their family's leader, they had taken the region as their territory. Since then, they had fought off gangs and rival Vampires, all while carefully feeding on the population – taking enough blood to keep the beast inside satiated, but not enough to threaten anyone's life. It was a delicate balancing act, and the four of them were all too aware that they would frak up and kill someone they didn't mean to eventually, but it hadn't happened yet, and on the whole, Jon was pretty sure they'd done more good than harm.
And if he was wrong, he was certainly evening that score now, fighting to protect the underhive's denizens from the monsters rising from its deepest and darkest depths, where even Vampires feared to tread.
This was their family's first time fighting the Brood of Nergal. They'd been told about them by the other Vampires with whom they'd occasionally dealt, but hadn't seen one before in person. Which, given how many of them had revealed themselves today, had very worrying implications – but there wasn't time to think about that right now.
Getting news from the rest of the hive was difficult at the best of time, but they had still gotten word of the Governor's assassination. Everyone who knew the truth of the Brood had expected a forceful reaction by the spireborn, but the Nergalites' numbers had taken them by surprise. It had actually taken several hours for them to hear about the onslaught, simply because at first, no survivors had managed to escape the Brood long enough to send a warning.
Once they'd heard about what was going on, though, the four of them had immediately gotten to work. After a brief evaluation of their situation, they'd decided that their territory was too far from the evacuation lines and defensive points being set up higher in the hive-city. The four Vampires might manage to make the trip alive, but the ones relying on them for protection most definitely wouldn't – and leaving them behind wasn't an option.
So they'd gathered everyone they could reach, barricaded them inside the most secure building they could find, and prepared themselves to face the horde. They hadn't needed to wait long, and had been fighting more or less non-stop ever since, more and more Broodspawns emerging from the labyrinth of tunnels which made up the underhive.
At first, they had just been protecting their people. But word of a safe haven had spread across the region, and people had flocked to them for aid. Jon didn't know how many exactly (there hadn't been time to do a proper headcount), but it had to be in the thousands by now. Anyone who could hold a gun and shoot above their heads and into the Nergalite horde was on the walls, and anyone who could hold something heavy to smash a skull in was standing behind them, ready to finish off any horror which slipped past their Vampiric protectors.
So far, it had worked. It felt strange to be a hero, but Jon could get used to the feeling. Unfortunately, it didn't seem he would've the chance.
"We can't hold here forever," whispered Lizbet, her words too low to be picked up by the humans but more than loud enough for the enhanced hearing of the Vampires. "Not if they just keep coming like this."
Her words, however softly spoken, were true. They were getting tired, even with their inhuman endurance, and their equipment, such as it was, was reaching its limits. Soon, they'd be reduced to fighting off the Brood with their bare hands, and while they could still do plenty of damage with those, it'd inevitably mean being overwhelmed and ripped apart by the frenzied horde.
"We do not run," grunted Stefan. "If this is where we die, then so be it."
They could still escape, Jon knew. If they disengaged and fled, the Nergalites would go after the people inside rather than pursue them. They could run away, hide from the Brood until the Coven had dealt with them.
But if they did that, they would become no better than Aigner and his cronies, and Jon didn't value his immortal life so much that he'd throw away his soul to preserve it.
Jon was well aware that, out of the four members of their strange, deathless family, he was the one with the most tenuous grip on his humanity. Even as a human, his temper had been something he needed to keep an eye on, and becoming a Vampire had only made it worse. But with the help of his family, he had been able to hold on these last three decades, partly out of a desire not to fail them, and partly, he must admit, out of sheer spite and the drive not to give the bastards who had done this to them that last victory.
And he would not let the Broodspawns win, either.
For the next half-hour, they kept on fighting with grim determination. Scratches were beginning to accumulate on their exposed skin as their innate regeneration was slowly being overwhelmed, and Jon wasn't sure whether the blurring at the edge of his vision was due to creeping exhaustion or some kind of Brood plague finding its way into his cold, undead blood.
Suddenly, he heard a cracking sound from behind the horde of corrupted Vampires. Las-weaponry was far too valuable to be common in the underhive, but Jon still recognized the noise from the few times he'd heard it before. Had the spireborn sent help ? It wasn't impossible : they were coming down to purge the Brood, after all, and there were certainly enough Nergalites here to warrant their attention.
Then he saw what was leading the newcomers, and knew that whoever this was, they weren't spireborn at all.
A towering crimson figure led a host of armored troops, which looked small in comparison – but only in comparison. In the figure's hands was a blade of purest darkness, which seemed to swallow all the light around it as it scythed through the Nergalites. Behind it walked a smaller armored silhouette carrying what looked like a heavy machine gun, except it fired las-bolts instead of bullets, a woman in a weird bodysuit with a pair of blades, who moved with more speed than any Vampire Jon had ever seen, and a veritable army of red armors, who were firing into the Nergalite horde with ruthless precision.
The Broodspawns tried to run, but they were caught between Jon's family and the unexpected reinforcements. Within minutes, the last of them had been put down, and the armored titan walked toward the refuge. Instinctively, Jon raised his cracked club, before lowering it with a scowl. There was absolutely nothing he could do to the warmachine if its pilot was hostile, and it would be a very stupid way to die if he wasn't.
"I am Ciaphas Cain," said the red giant, his voice booming out of a vox-speaker on his horned helm – which was a weird design choice, but Jon wasn't about to argue with the man about it. "I am here on behalf of the Volkihar Coven and the Governor of Cassandron, to assist in purging the Nergalite taint from Hive Primus. Who speaks for you ?"
The four Vampires looked at one another, then Stefan hesitantly stepped forward, cranking his neck to look up at their savior (or so Jon hoped he was).
"I am Stefan Fisher, lord Cain," Jon's brother-in-law said, and bowed deeply. "Thank you for helping us."
"Think nothing of it," replied the lord, and Jon couldn't help but think he sounded sincere. "We received your vox-calls for help, and couldn't just leave you alone. The entire reason we are on Cassandron in the first place is to assist its people, after all. However, I must admit I was surprised by the sheer number of Broodspawns assailing you. There shouldn't be –"
Cain suddenly went silent. Someone was talking to him over the vox, but his helmet was too well insulated for even Jon's enhanced hearing to pick up more than a vague buzzing. When the voice stopped, the warlord cursed.
"Well, that answers my question," he continued ruefully. "It seems we were more right to come here than we thought, Sieur Fisher. There is another wave of Broodspawns on its way here, and it's a big one. The defenders above us have just reported in that the Nergalites pressuring them are pulling back, and my oracles tell me this place is their target."
"What ?" asked Stefan, sounding as flabbergasted as Jon felt. "Why ?"
"We thought your people were only targets of opportunity, drawing the Brood because of the concentration of victims your stronghold represents," explained Cain grimly. "We were right, but we missed the reason for it. There is some manner of foul sorcery at play, and the people you have been defending are to be the sacrifice that will activate it."
"That's impossible," said Jon before he could stop himself. "When the towering red armor turned toward him, he forced himself to continue : "Broodspawns are barely more than animals, they can't plan or coordinate like this ! And they don't use 'sorcery' either !"
"All things change in time," said Cain sombrely. "And in my experience, thinking the slaves of Decay to be mindless beasts is a dangerous assumption to make. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how or why this is happening : the Broodspawns are coming, and we have to deal with them."
Then he turned to his forces, giving order in a calm, controlled voice, guiding the red-clad troopers as they took positions around the stronghold. Despite their bulky armors, they moved swiftly, clearly being experienced in such tactics. Those with ranged weapons took position to lay down covering fire, while those who carried heavy shields and melee weapons formed a wall behind their lord.
For a moment, Jon simply looked on. Then, he shook his head, snarled, and with a pulse of supernatural strength, leapt over the heads of the crimson-armored soldiers to land on the other side of their line, ignoring Stefan's alarmed shout.
Cain wasn't alone, Jon saw : the two figures which had stood at his side during the earlier battle were both still there, and they immediately turned toward him, hands moving toward their weapons, only to stop as their lord raised a hand.
"Are you sure about this ?" Cain asked, looking down on Jon.
"This is our home," replied the Vampire. "I'm grateful for your help, but I won't let you fight alone."
"Very well," said Ciaphas Cain. "I won't insult your honor by denying you this. Tell me, though : what's your name ?"
"Jon Skellan, lord."
Lizbet landed next to him, soon followed by Stefan and Leyna, all of them looking at Jon with fond exasperation. Cain looked at them all, his thoughts unreadable behind his faceplate, and nodded slightly. In the distance, Jon began to hear the sounds of the Broodspawns approaching again, and his hands tightened around his cub.
"And what of you, ladies ?"
"Lizbet Skellan." "Leyna Fisher," they replied.
"Fine names one and all," said the warlord, before turning toward the source of the growing cacophony that heralded the Nergalites' return. His armor moved with surprising grace, even as it crushed Broodspawn corpses underfoot with every step – they had fought for so long, the entire open space was littered with them.
"All together then," he declared, pointing his weapon forward and igniting its black energy blade. His voice rose up, carrying across the space : "Hear me : not one Broodspawn shall get pass us ! For Cassandron and the Protectorate !"
The battle-cry was picked up by every crimson-clad soldier, and to Jon's own surprise, he found the words emerge out of his own throat, along with those of his kindred and the shooters hiding behind the shelter's barricades.
How easily they'd all fallen in Cain's orbit, he thought, in the brief moment before the Broodspawns erupted from the tunnels and the butchery started anew.
In hindsight, I really shouldn't have been surprised that everything went wrong so quickly.
The cleansing of the underhive had gone extremely well to begin with. Getting from the spire-top to the lower levels had been a slog, but the Covens had made sure to maintain a decent level of transport infrastructure, likely with this exact scenario in mind, so although it had been a bit of a headache to coordinate we had managed it relatively easily.
Once down here, the USA troopers had started butchering the Nergalites with great enthusiasm, and the Cassandron PDF showed a surprising level of competence (I suspected that being used as cat's paw in the Vampires' politics had kept their skills sharp). Vlad himself was frakking terrifying : I didn't know who would win if it came to a fight between him and Malicia or Hektor, but I knew I would fare very poorly outside of the Liberator Armor, and would prefer not to test it inside either.
The only trouble – if you didn't count the thousands of underhivers who had already died by the time we even got there, but there was nothing we could have done to help them – had been the revelation that Vampires, including the Brood, were somehow undetectable by any conventional technology. Thus, while our logistic corps were planning our descent, the borgs had worked feverishly to create an emergency patch for the USA troopers' suits of armor. The update disabled their sensor suites, which wouldn't have been able to detect the Nergalites. That was good, because I must admit, the idea of fighting an invisible enemy had filled me with terror.
I had been nervous about deploying this update, since there hadn't exactly been time for proper testing, but the alternative was too dire to contemplate. Fortunately, the borgs had once again surprised me with their competence, and there hadn't been any major issues with it so far. Equally fortunately, the standard USA training covered how to fight without the benefits of a power armor's enhanced sensory capabilities.
I'd been thinking of how the daemons of Chaos could mess with technology by their mere presence when I'd added that course to the curriculum, and I was trying very hard to convince myself that the Vampires' disruptive effect on all surveillance technology wasn't anything like the Warpspawns' own. I wished I'd been able to ask Areelu and Krystabel for confirmation, but there hadn't been an opportunity to talk with them somewhere that wasn't likely to be bugged or otherwise spied on before I had to leave for the underhive. The ansible connection was still up, but I had no idea how sharp the Vampires' senses were, and asking whether our new allies were actually some rare kind of daemons in disguise wouldn't have been good diplomacy.
Fortunately, a quick word with Jurgen had confirmed that the Vampires' supernatural abilities weren't like those of psykers : while my aide had felt something when Akivasha had annihilated the Nergalites back at the spire, it had been distinctly different from the impression he got when his fellow witches called upon the Empyrean with their own unnatural gifts.
Of course, we couldn't guarantee that the same was true of the Broodspawns – in fact, it was all but certain that they had their own warlocks among them. So I'd ordered Jurgen to avoid using his considerable psychic talents unless absolutely necessary, just in case. Besides, he was more than deadly enough within his suit of armor, his multi-barrelled lascannon cutting down swathes of Nergalites with nearly the same ease it had the Infected of Skitterfall.
I was beginning to see a pattern here, and I didn't like it. Unlike the Infected, the Brood were capable of speech and basic planning, and my paranoia refused to let me think for a moment that it was a coincidence they had returned to the spotlight right in time for my visit to this planet. I had a sneaky feeling that Nurgle was escalating in response to me foiling his puppet's scheme with Zerayah on Adumbria, which meant there had to be more going on than a 'mere' uprising by a rapidly spreading plague of monsters.
I'd gone to battle piloting my own custom suit of armor, which would have been overkill for this type of enemy if I'd believed such a thing existed. Like its predecessors, the third iteration of the Liberator Armor had an extensive sensor suite, but I'd been forced to turn off nearly every one of them and rely instead on my own eyes, looking through the lenses of the suit's helm. Mercifully, the borgs who'd built the thing had made sure those were clear – something I'd have considered part of how over-engineered the whole thing was, but which I was now very grateful for.
Even with its senses hampered by the enemy's weird abilities, the armor was still more than worth the effort of bringing it down to the underhive. Between its toughness and the sorcerous wards against corruption that had been woven into its design, the fangs and claws of the Brood could do little more than scratching the paint, and I had been able to lead from the front without worry, cutting down entire swathes of the Nurgle-corrupted mutants with Liberation's Edge.
Then one of the USA's vox-officers had told me they were picking up a faint signal coming from some distance off our planned path. A few adjustments of the device by one of the borgs who had accompanied us and we'd been able to decipher the distress signal, despite how badly garbled it'd been by the poor quality of the transmitter and interference from trying to get any kind of signal which didn't use the techno-sorcery of the ansibles down here.
I had thought rescuing the civilians would be a nice way to avoid the darkest depths of the underhive. Cain the Liberator had a reputation for valuing the lives of civilians, and there was even a case to be made that since the Broodspawns were attacking them, coming to their aid was tactically as well as morally sound (the latter of which, admittedly, had little place on the galaxy's battlefields).
Of course, I couldn't divert the entire Protectorate complement from the initial battle plan on a whim. Strategic stupidity aside, it would make it look like I was scared – which I was, but I couldn't have everyone else realize it. However, I could take command of a small detachment and bravely lead them to rescue the endangered civvies, while leaving the bulk of the fighting to my subordinates. I had left Hektor leading the rest of the USA troopers, along with General Mahlone (who, unlike the World Eater, had to stay in a command vehicle and properly coordinate things instead of rushing ahead of the soldiers in a whirlwind of messy death).
It had seemed like the perfect way to avoid having to fight in potentially unstable terrain while wearing several tons of power armor. Out of all the ways I could die, being crushed by a hive-quake was one I'd thought I'd left behind when the Schola had taken me.
At first, my plan had appeared to work like a charm, despite the itching of my palms which told me the other shoe was just waiting to drop. Sure, I'd needed to fight once we'd reached our destination, but the Nergalites had presented little danger to me inside my suit of armor and with Jurgen and Malicia at my side, to say nothing of the bunch of bloodthirsty Khornate psychopaths (but I repeat myself) following me.
But no sooner had we crushed the vermin between ourselves and the locals that Harold had piped in over the ansible network, cheerfully informing me that he and the other oracles had detected some kind of infernal sorcery at play here, and that the hivers were probably the target of some grand sacrifice which would rupture reality and allow the putrid legions of Nurgle to enter the Materium. From the way he'd phrased things, I could tell he had somehow deluded himself into thinking I'd known about it from the start, or at least strongly suspected it.
I hadn't said anything to dissuade him of that belief, though I hadn't confirmed it either. In my worryingly growing experience managing the expectations of insane Chaos cultists, letting them come to their own conclusions about myself was much safer than outright lying to their faces, if only because most of them had spent years lying to their superiors and hiding the fact they'd sold their souls to the Ruinous Powers.
In any case, I was stuck here now, with only my aide, my bloodward, a company of USA troopers and four Vampires who looked more like underhive gangers than the dark aristocracy I'd encountered in the spires. At least unlike Akivasha, none of them were likely to be able to tear me open with their mind, else they probably wouldn't be down here in the first place.
What I hadn't told Stefan and the other Vampires was that, according to Harold, the Nergalites had deliberately herded survivors to them, so that they could kill them all at once. The 'stronghold' was more or less directly above where the magi had located the lair of the Brood in Hive Primus (though there were several hundred meters' worth of metal in the way), which apparently would have helped with whatever it was the mad mutants intended to do.
Being trapped in the underhive with a daemonic incursion of Nurgle would be very bad for my chances of survival, even inside the Liberator's Armor. So I had no other choice but to stand my ground, lead the defense, and make damn sure I lived to inconvenience the Plague God another day
The soldiers went into position, showing that all that time and resources spent building elaborate training scenarios hadn't been in vain (which I felt ambiguous about, but right now it meant they were better prepared to save my life if I needed it). I gave another short, rote inspiring speech, once again using the training I'd received at the Schola for a cause that would've horrified my old instructors (absently, I wondered how they were doing, what with having apparently trained a traitor to the Throne, but that train of thought didn't lead anywhere good so I swiftly abandoned it).
Then it was time to fight once more. There was a brutal simplicity to the fight, in truth. The Broodspawns were trying to get past us, to slaughter the civilians cowering inside the boarded-up building so that they could feed the despair and horror of their final moments to the Warp, and we were fighting to stop them. Inside the Liberator Armor, I'd no choice but to fight in the vanguard, but it continued to do its work admirably well, although it would need a new coat of paint once this mess was over.
For the next four hours, the USA troops and our new Vampire allies held the line against the Brood. All the while, I kept receiving reports from the rest of the purging forces informing me that, thanks to the distraction we were providing, things were going very well everywhere else. They were in awe of my strategic genius, because of course they were.
At least I could vent my frustration on the Broodspawns instead of screaming incoherently over the vox. Eventually, the drudgery of the battle dragged me into a weird, semi-meditative state, where I kept slaughtering the Broodspawns by the score, regular small injections of Panacea and stimms keeping me from feeling fatigue as I directed the movement of the Liberator Armor. This wasn't the mindless rage Hektor had described so many followers of Khorne fell into, thank the Throne, but rather something I suspected had happened to countless human soldiers in our species' long and bloody history.
And then, suddenly, it was over. No more Nergalites emerged from the passages to throw themselves at our line.
Despite our overwhelming advantage in equipment, we had still taken losses. USA troopers had been dragged down by clutches of Broodspawns, who had used their supernatural strength to rip open their armor and do horrible things to the fleshy humans inside. None of the fallen were in a state to get an open-casket funeral, even if their bodies hadn't been going to be burned on the spot to prevent contagion as a matter of procedure.
Out of the one hundred troopers I'd brought with me, nearly a quarter were dead, and that number again were wounded, though the Panacea would take care of that promptly now the fight was over. The four Vampires were all alive, though definitely the worse for wear, with the one who'd nearly given me a heart attack when he'd jumped over the soldiers to land next to me having lost an eye and half of his face. Jurgen and Malicia were fine, the former's armor having absorbed what few blows the Broodspawns had managed to land, and if Malicia had even taken a hit or felt any exhaustion whatsoever, I couldn't see it.
I raised Liberation's Edge up, careful not to accidentally cut into the ceiling and cause debris to fall on me, which wouldn't have done my image any good. A cheer rose up from the survivors, swiftly picked up by the local defenders on the wall. Then the clean-up started, with the troopers piling up corpses for the pyres as the medics ran checks on their squads. I told them to go check on the civvies once they were done : we'd brought more than enough Panacea with us, and it was a good opportunity to foster some goodwill. You never knew when someone would know something useful they would feel more inclined to share once you'd done them a good turn, after all.
As the tainted gore of thousands of Broodspawns cooled on the floor, my armor's internal systems chimed in to inform me that I was being hailed over the vox – and it was a powerful signal, to work so deep in the hive. I checked the caller's id, and found that it was marked with Vlad Volkihar's personal sigil – or, rather, that of the man who spoke for him when using devices which didn't register the existence of Vampires.
It was hard to believe that the Covens could run a planet without such basic conveniences as being able to use a vox, but I guessed it ensured they would always need human servants. I blink-clicked the link open, and was greeted by someone speaking with in a tone I'd have expected from a butler at a fancy banquet rather than someone in the middle of a purging operation.
Predictably, I didn't like what he had to say.
Vlad Volkihar laughed in exaltation as he cut through the hordes of the enemy, his power blade (acquired from off-world through a series of intermediaries at an obscene cost, but well worth the price) slicing plagued flesh and rotten bone with equal ease. Behind him came the elite of Cassandron PDF, carrying shock mauls and riot shields, guarding the ranks of soldiers equipped with standard-issue lasguns who followed in their wake and fired above their heads.
Even as he laughed, though, part of his focus was spent keeping himself from succumbing to the beast that dwelled within the heart of every Vampire. It would give him strength, true, but it would also rob him of his intellect, and he needed it to wield his weapons rather than rip the Nergalites to shreds with his bare hands, let alone lead the armed forces under his command.
Besides, losing control to the monster within was among the greatest faux pas of the Covens' ruling elite, as it implied that the Vampire's will was weak. And with what had happened to Mannfred, Vlad couldn't afford to look weak to the rest of the Coven if he wanted to have any hope of keeping his rank of Regent once this was all over.
Mannfred. Vlad still couldn't believe his Progeny would fall so low, even though the evidence his servants had discovered in the spire after the attack was undeniable. He had always known Mannfred was ambitious : it was part of the reason why he had Turned him in the first place. Ambition was a valued quality among Cassandron's human nobility, a virtue to cultivate to prevent them from becoming too reliant on their immortal masters and give up on exercising power for themselves.
Vlad had thought that, as a Volkihar, Mannfred would channel that passion and ambition to pull the Coven to ever greater heights. But instead, Mannfred had fallen prey to the same trap so many Vampires did : he had become too self-centered, thinking only of increasing what was his by taking from others, rather than by contributing to the expansion of the whole.
Still, Vlad had held onto hope that his Progeny would grow out of it in time. Now, however, that would never happen. Mannfred had become a parasite instead of a symbiote, a net drain on the Coven. And while that was failure enough, it paled into insignificance compared to his alliance with the Brood. Even trying to kill Vlad would have been more acceptable than this.
With all Vampires being immortal, there were limited opportunities for advancement, and while killing one's superior to take their place was frowned upon for obvious reasons, it was still more or less regarded as a fact of life – so long as the would-be usurper was subtle about it, and, more importantly, didn't endanger the entire Coven in doing so. Something which Mannfred's unholy alliance with the Brood most definitely had done.
There could be no forgiveness for what Mannfred's actions. He would die for this, and Vlad would be the one to deliver the death blow. Finding him would be difficult : Mannfred had successfully hidden his treachery for who knew how long. But there were very few places beyond the reach of the Volkihar Coven.
Before Vlad could avenge this slight on his honor, however, he had more pressing duties to attend to. The Broodspawn had known they were coming, of course : after their brazen attack, even their corrupted minds couldn't fail to realize that retaliation would come, and they had chosen instead to strike first. Within hours of the Governor's assassination, reports had begun to reach Vlad, relayed from the Vampires who, having failed to earn a better place for themselves in the ceaseless games of power and influence of the Coven, dwelled closer to the bottom of Hive Primus than its top.
Hundreds of Broodspawns had emerged from their hiding places and immediately gone on a frenzy of feeding and infection. Unlike the true Gift of the untainted Covens, the Brood could spread their curse with incredible speed, and even the strongest-willed infected humans could only resist the madness that had devoured the Ruthven Coven for a few moments before succumbing to it.
Turning someone, making Progeny from mortality's clay, was a lengthy and delicate process, with the Maker staying by their chosen's side and helping them through the changes, all while regularly feeding them both their own blood and that of other humans. Oh, it was possible to make it quick, to simply pour blood into the mouth of someone as they lay dying and let the ancient power of the precious crimson fluid work on its own. But that ran the chance of the Progeny rising as a feral beast, fit only to be quickly dispatched. Some lowly Vampires might still resort to it, but not the aristocracy which ruled the Covens.
The dark gifts of Nergal, however, completely changed these rules. As more and more underhivers were assimilated by the Brood, hundreds quickly became thousands. If they weren't stopped, these thousands would become tens of thousands, which would become millions – and then Hive Primus would fall, just like Hive Septimus had fallen thousands of years ago.
Vlad remembered it well : the sight of the corrupted hive-city was burned into his memory deeply enough that not even the fog of passing centuries could cause it to fade. He had been human, back then : an officer of the Cassandron PDF, part of the forces gathered for the Purge of Septimus. It had been his actions during that time which had marked him as worthy of the Gift, bestowed by none other than Lady Akivasha herself, one of the Coven's most revered members.
It had been a nightmare, where the atrocities of the Brood had damaged the barrier between the Materium and the Warp to the point it had been on the verge of breaking. If not for the Ancients' defeat of the Thrice-Damned, all of Cassandron would have been transformed into a playground for daemons, with the Brood of Nergal left to rule the ashes.
Things would not degenerate to such extremes this time, though. Although this particular outbreak was of a size not seen since the Purge, the Covens were still well-used to dealing with such situations, and the Nergalites had never been able to recover from the losses they had suffered during the Purge of Septimus, when their corrupted elders had been slaughtered to the last. Even without Cain's help, they would have eventually cut out this infection.
That wasn't to say Vlad didn't appreciate the Protectorate's assistance. Well-trained as the Cassandron PDF might be, they were still restricted by the quality of equipment the planet could produce. That was fit for Militarum service (and indeed, the system had raised numerous Regiments for the Imperial Guard, tithed from units that had been carefully kept ignorant of the Covens' existence), but it was clear that the USA's own wargear was on a different level.
Vlad would have to make inquiries about acquiring such gear for the PDF at some point. Not that their equipment was the only reason for the Protectorate's troopers' efficiency, far from it. After the strategy meeting in the spire, Vlad had asked one of Cain's aides, as politely as he could, whether the man had making a jest when he'd mentioned the USA trained its members inside a Space Hulk. While the question hadn't been taken as an insult, thankfully, the uniformed woman had barked a brief laugh and assured him that no, the Liberator hadn't been joking.
Now that the Imperium had abandoned Torredon, Cassandron must look to its own defense, and the coalition which had gathered under the Liberator looked to be their best bet. Making alliances with the followers of Chaos was unprecedented : over the millennia, preserving the secrecy of the Covens' existence from the Imperium had been their absolute priority, and the disciples of the Dark Gods weren't renowned for their subtlety, at least in the long-term (and the leaders of the Covens, by definition, always looked to the long term).
But Lady Akivasha had ordered it be so, and the Volkihar Coven had followed the lead of its awakened Ancient. Given that it was Cain's blood which had awakened her, and that even without the Broodspawn uprising, the food the Protectorate brought was the miracle the Covens had been hoping for since the collapse of the trade routes even as they made preparations for famine, it only made sense.
There was also the fact that the Protectorate had a fleet in orbit which the Cassandron SDF couldn't possibly stand up against, but nobody had been so gauche as to bring that up in polite conversation.
Not that there was any real danger of Cain opening fire on the planet. For all his martial prowess and dedication to Chaos, it was clear that the Liberator held a much non-Imperial view on civilian casualties. He'd gone so far as to split off the main thrust of the purge to go defend a bunch of survivors, with nothing but a company of troopers with him. The fact he'd given command of the rest to sir Hektor, one of the two Astartes who had accompanied the Protectorate envoys to the planet, without hesitation, said something about the trust Cain held for his subordinates – Vlad wasn't sure what exactly, but he'd find out in time.
"My lord," said Vlad's aide, the latest in a long line of mortals who'd held the title, after approaching him during a lull in the fighting. "We've been contacted by sir Hektor. He told us the Protectorate forces have reached the Nergalite lair, but there's a problem. He's asking us to join them as soon as possible."
"So we lost the race, then," mused the Volkihar Regent. The PDF and Protectorate forces had split up on their way to the depths, to cleanse more ground and avoid being too disadvantaged by the terrain. "Very well, let us see what the issue is."
Moments later, Vlad was standing at Hektor's side at the entrance of a large cavern which had formed amidst the rusted metal and crumbling ferrocrete of the underhive. The way in was blocked by a green shimmering barrier, the sight of which made the Vampire nauseous despite not having eaten anything solid in millennia.
Without a word, Hektor picked up a rock and hurled it at the obstacle. The stone stopped mid-air as it hit the barrier, before crumbling apart as sickly roots burst from inside it.
"Sorcery," spat the Astartes. "I haven't checked what happens when someone tries to go through, but I can guess. And the scouts I've sent to try to find another way report the same thing in every passage. We can't go any further until it's brought down."
"Great," sighed Vlad, hiding his worry. This was something new : he hadn't seen anything like that in Septimus. Maybe the Ancients had when they'd gone deep into the Thrice-Damned's palace, but that wasn't exactly reassuring either. "Do you know how to do that ?"
"No," replied the former World Eater. "But I know who can. We need to call the Warmaster. Jurgen, his aide, should be able to break it."
"And if he cannot ?" asked Vlad.
"Then we're going to need to call the magi from the fleet and have them join us here," shrugged Hektor. "But that will take a lot of time, so …"
"You're right. I'll call Cain right away."
If nothing else, he reflected as his own aide tried to raise Cain on the vox, the Liberator would appreciate the opportunity to join them for the final push into the lair of the Brood.
Notes:
AN : Hello everyone, I'm back !
This chapter really fought me for some reason, not sure why (I blame the heat, it's been brutal). Anyway, it's done now.
Jon Skellan and his family are characters from the Von Carstein trilogy, and if you have read it, you will know that their fate in this story is much, MUCH kinder than what it was in the Old World. Yes, even though I made them into vampires themselves (keeping in mind that the Cassandron Vampires are very different from the Warhammer Fantasy Vampire Counts, if only by virtue of not having the "our mere presence in a region causes life to rots due to the unnatural, Nagash-designed magic which keeps up moving, and being transformed turns nine out of ten normal people into monsters" thing). Go read the books if you don't believe me.
I came up with Broodspawn as another name for the Nergalites and decided it flowed better, so I introduced it in this chapter. In-story, the reason why it wasn't used before is because the Vampires with whom the Cainites interacted were all high-class Vampires, who use the appropriate language.
(Don't think about it too hard.)
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I look forward to your thoughts and comments. Next chapter, Cain and his companions face off against the source of the corruption in Hive Primus, and learn a horrific truth. Stay tuned !
Zahariel out.
Chapter 31: Chapter 30
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
After the call of the Regent's aide informed us of the situation, we left the refugee stronghold and its local defenders behind. The four Vampires actually offered to join us, and after a moment's consideration, I agreed, but made a show of worrying for the civilians so that only one of them – Jon Skellan, the one who'd first volunteered to keep fighting – would come with us.
For all their admittedly impressive strength, the four Vampires could do little that a hundred USA troopers couldn't when it came to fighting the Brood, but having a local with me could always be useful. On balance, I'd decided that the boost to my reputation was worth the sacrifice of three additional bodies I could put between me and the enemy.
We made our way deeper into the underhive, Skellan soon proving I'd been right to bring him along by guiding us through the labyrinth of collapsed corridors and unstable passages. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my own tunnel rat's sense of direction was as sharp as ever despite the years that had passed since I'd been on a proper hive-world, and I was able to anticipate many of the turns our Vampire guide led us through.
The deeper we went, though, the more nervous I got. Not just because we were approaching the lair of a bunch of crazy Nurgle-corrupted mutants who apparently had a witch powerful enough to erect a sorcerous barrier capable of stopping the advance of an entire army, although that certainly was part of it. More immediately worrying, however, was the fact that the lower levels of the underhive were in an even worse state that the ones we'd traversed so far.
Eventually, I was forced to come to terms with the inevitable : I couldn't take the Liberator Armor any further, not without risking causing a collapse which would see us all buried under enough rusted metal and dirt that even Jurgen would strain to dig himself out with his psychic powers, nevermind the rest of us. The armor's servos were strong, yes, but I was all too aware of just how many megatons of potential rubble hung above our heads. Also, the tunnels were becoming smaller and smaller, and while I could have just dug my way down, the previous point made that an unacceptably risky course of action.
Of course, I couldn't help thinking that leaving the borgs' masterwork unattended in the underhive was a poor idea : even with most of the locals having fled or been eaten, I was cynically certain we'd be lucky to find a single bolt of it left by the time we made our way back. There was nothing for it, though, and truth be told, if some enterprising scavvies were resourceful enough to break the massive piece of wargear apart and carry it away, they deserved to have it. Besides, I had a few more stored aboard the Fist of the Liberator, precisely due to what had happened the previous two times I'd gone into battle in one.
We took Liberation's Edge with us, of course. Jurgen picked up the weapon's deactivated form and started carrying it without me even needing to ask, holding it with all the care of an Ecclesiarch entrusted with a relic of the God-Emperor. Unlike the rest of the armor, it was irreplaceable, since the borgs still hadn't cracked the scavenged Drukhari technology it was made of. It could technically be wielded by someone in a standard suit of power armor, but only in the same way an Ogryn could technically use a tree trunk as a club : it would hurt whatever it smashed, yes, but you would have Horus' own time trying to hit anything in particular.
That left me in my own suit of custom-made, human-sized power armor. While it had a few extra bells and whistles I hadn't asked for (but hadn't refused either), it was basically the same as every trooper's when it came to how much damage it could take before breaking. I was armed with my trusty chainsword, which had gone through so many repairs over the years due to my regular practice with the USA, I doubted there was much left of the original weapon, and that damned bolt pistol I'd taken from Caesariovi Giorba, in what might as well have been another life.
I told myself there was no reason to panic. I had survived for years in a underhive before, and I didn't have the advantage of such advanced gear or a bunch of hardened killers dedicated to protecting my life. Yes, the Nergalites' use of sorcery was concerning, but the Infected had done the same on Adumbria, and I'd managed to survive there too.
Still, all my attempts at rationalization couldn't stop the tingling of my palms, which I'd learned long ago was one of the ways my subconscious tried to warn me of imminent peril – although really, in this particular case, I had already figured it out for myself.
It took us around an hour to link up with the rest of the forces. I spent every minute waiting for an ambush that never came, but made sure no trace of it could be heard in my voice as I greeted Regent Volkihar, General Mahlone, and Hektor, who stood around a hololithic projector showing a patchwork map of the nearby tunnels.
"Lord Liberator," Mahlone (identifiable only thanks to the rank markings on his own armor, as he was keeping his helmet on, like every other trooper) answered me. This was his first time being deployed on the frontline of a military operation since the Uprising, and part of me had worried his Khornate nature would rise to the fore at the opportunity. But it seemed that particular worry had been for nothing : the General appeared to still be as professional as ever.
"Follow me," he continued. "We set up camp out of sight of it, because … well, you'll see."
He led me past the impromptu camp, around a bend in the path, and gestured at the obstacle which had stopped their advance dead in its tracks. "This is it."
The sorcerous barrier filled the tunnel completely, and the map showed that, just like Hektor had told me over the vox-net, it formed a sphere surrounding a spot exactly under the location of Skellan's stronghold. It shone with a sickly green light, and as I looked at it, leering faces began to appear, staring back at me with enough malice to extinguish the very stars –
I tore my eyes away, blinked, and the barrier was back to looking like a strangely colored energy field. I really wanted to believe that had only been my imagination, but I knew better. Since leaving the Schola, I had learned more about the Warp than I'd ever wanted to. The fact that I'd been affected like this despite my armor's wards was far from reassuring.
"Yes, I see why you didn't want to wait for us next to it," I said out loud. "It is most unpleasant. Jurgen, could you –"
Before I could finish telling my aide to do something about it (how exactly, I had no clue, but in my experience asking Jurgen to get something done and letting him figure out how was the best way to get results), the barrier faded away, completely vanishing in a few seconds, with a sound like a relieved sigh.
"Jurgen ?" I asked weakly. Maybe, just maybe …
"That wasn't me, sir," my aide replied, sounding as concerned as I felt as he mercilessly crushed the last of my hopes that his powers had somehow grown by leaps and bounds since the last time I'd seen him use them. "Didn't have time to do anything, as a matter of fact."
"That," I said in the silence that followed this announcement, broken only by the slow dripping of unidentified liquids and the groaning of the underhive, "was far too easy."
"You are correct," replied Vlad, frowning. "A trap, then."
Well, let it never be said that the Volkihar Regent wasn't capable of basic pattern recognition, and a more competent strategist than such Imperial luminaries as Chenkov and Karamazov. That was something to be thankful for, I supposed, trying very hard to see a silver lining and not to think about how the mutant noble helping keep a millennia-long conspiracy hidden from the eyes of the Imperium was more competent than a Lord Inquisitor and Imperial Commander.
"That is almost certainly the case, yes," I agreed. "And given that the path opened only after we arrived …"
"… it must be aimed at you," finished the Vampire noble, who didn't sound all too pleased that the ancient enemy of his people apparently saw me as a greater priority than him. That made two of us.
I briefly considered turning back and returning to the spire, leaving this mess to Vlad and the rest. If the enemy wanted me here, then logic dictated that I shouldn't oblige them. It only made tactical sense.
Unfortunately, while running away with my tail between my legs would get me out of danger in the short-term, it would damage my image in the eyes of the USA. And there was also the fact that, if I left, I'd have to take Jurgen and Malicia with me, and either of them could prove to be the decisive factor in the incoming struggle. If the task force failed because I'd removed them from it, then I wouldn't be any safer after all – I would just have lost my chance to stop whatever the Brood was up to in time.
"Well, if our friends have gone through the trouble of setting up such an obvious invitation, it would be impolite to refuse," I said as nonchalantly as I could fake.
"Sir," Mahlone cut in, "with all due respect, I don't think you should lead the way in there. There's no way of knowing what foul sorceries the Nergalites have set up."
I made a show of looking dejected, rather than jumping in joy like I actually wanted to. I'd been fully resigned to leading the charge into unknown peril, but for once, the universe had thrown me an opportunity to let someone else do it without losing face.
"You're right, General. The honor of leading the advance will go to someone else," I said, with as much reluctance as I could fake. "Hektor, if you would ?"
The World Eater bent over, then stood up and threw a piece of rubble through the space where the barrier had been. The rock flew with a speed any urchin would have envied, and smashed against the opposite wall, leaving a dent.
"Can't hurt to be careful," said Hektor in his unnaturally deep voice. "Someone might have been feeling clever and kept the barrier's effect in place, even if we couldn't see it anymore."
I nodded judiciously, as if I had thought of it as well. Hektor went ahead of the rest of the task force : while his power armor wasn't much tougher than that of the troopers, his gene-forged biology was on another level entirely. Even with the Panacea granting miraculous regenerative capabilities, there were limits : Hektor could survive injuries that would kill a normal human outright long enough for his armor to increase the dosage of the substance continually coursing through his system.
"Blood of the Gods, it stinks in here," he called out after a few moments. "But I don't see any traps or ambush, and I can hear something coming from deeper in. Chanting, I think."
Oh, brilliant. A Nurglite stronghold whose sorcerous protections went down the moment I got near, with its inhabitants chanting. The trap couldn't have been more obvious, but walking away and letting the Broodspawns finish whatever they were doing unbothered would only be worse in the long run.
"All USA units, activate void-protocols and move in," I ordered, before turning to Vlad Volkihar. "Your soldiers cannot follow us in there, I'm afraid. Their equipment won't protect them from that kind of environment."
"That might be so, but I am immune to such poisons. And before you ask," he added with a smile that showed teeth too pointy to be reassuring, "yes, that extends to the vile contagions of the Brood. We have tested it over the centuries : as long as I don't actually drink their blood, I will be safe, and I assure you I've no intention of sullying my tongue like that."
There was little I could say to that, and having another body to put between me and danger was always nice, especially since Vlad had his own reasons for being on the forefront of the advance, so I nodded sombrely and we all went in.
Soon, it became clear that the Brood of Nergal had claimed a long-abandoned, hollowed-out machine as their lair. What purpose it had served in the early days of Cassandron's colonization, I could only guess. Given its age, and the further defilements the Broodspawns had inflicted upon it, I doubted even the borgs could have identified it.
Everywhere I looked, I saw signs of the Lord of Decay's influence. Crude renditions of the three-pustuled rune of Nurgle had been carved into the rusted metal by Broodspawn claws; swarms of bloodflies and other infested vermin had to be cleansed before our advance with flamethrowers; and rotting corpses hung from meat hooks, twitching in a morbid parody of life as their liquefied insides were devoured by Warp-born pathogens.
I didn't need to be a psyker to feel the rage radiating from Jurgen at the spectacle. After the Cleansing of Skitterfall, the hatred of all things related to Nurgle had become deeply engrained within the USA, but even the Khornates' wrathful disgust paled compared to my aide's far more personal enmity toward the servants of the Dark God of Decay.
"Stay calm, Jurgen," I urged him. "Losing control here will only serve our foe."
He nodded stiffly, but didn't respond aloud, which I had to guess was good enough.
Just like what had happened in Skitterfall, the vox stopped working as we went deeper into the Nergalites' lair. Without the Liberator Armor or Mahlone's command tank, we were cut off from the ansible network (I had made sure to inform Harold beforehand to keep him or Krystabel from panicking at my silence and do something stupid, like flood the planet with summoned daemons looking for me).
We were reduced to shouting and hand gestures, but human armies had managed just fine with those for millennia. Once again, the USA's training aboard Emeli's Gift was proving its usefulness, as even after years of work by the borgs, there remained entire sections of the Space Hulk where conventional methods of ranged communication were disabled by the alien nature of the walls.
Soon, I too could hear the noises Hektor was talking about. It was like chanting from many voices, but only if the throat of every singer had been cut and sewn back together by someone with only the most basic understanding of surgery beforehand.
We came out into a large open space, which was nearly filled with hundreds, thousands of Broodspawns – the source of the dreadful singing we'd heard. Surprisingly, despite the fact there was no way for an army of USA troopers to advance stealthily, none of them were looking in our direction : they were all turned toward the other side of the cavern, where a crude altar had been constructed by piling up pieces of broken rockrete and rusted metal. Another Nergalite stood atop the altar.
All at once, the Broodspawns each turned to face one of their kind, and simultaneously plunged their claws into its chest before tearing out their hearts. Black, rotten blood flowed onto the ground from the ripped organs and the holes they had left behind, completely covering it in a repugnant tide.
For a moment, we simply stared in shock. Then the coin dropped, and I understood what had just happened with sickening certainty.
"They're offering themselves up as sacrifices !" I roared. My little detour to the stronghold of Skellan and his folks had prevented the Brood from slaughtering the civilians and harvesting their deaths, so instead, they were using their own members. To what end exactly, I hadn't the faintest idea, but I knew it couldn't be good for me or Cassandron.
"Kill the priest, now !" I shouted, joining action to word and bringing up my bolt pistol.
Without hesitation, the troopers opened fire, and despite the distance, a large portion of the shots were on target. But the space around the witch was distorted, and not a single las-bolt hit.
I cursed silently. There was nothing for it : we'd have to get this done close and personal, despite the obvious danger of such a course of action.
"Charge !" I shouted, joining deed to word, all too aware of the hundreds of eyes watching me. To my relief, Malicia overtook me almost immediately, as did Hektor and Vlad, their inhuman bodies granting them speed far beyond even what was possible inside a suit of Slawkenberg-made power armor. And behind them, bless their insane souls, every single trooper followed, bellowing Khornate war cries and my name as they did so.
Exactly seven seconds after we'd started our charge, however, the gory mess under our feet flickered with a familiar greenish light, and I saw Jurgen flinch in the corner of my eye. Before I could call out a warning, a hand burst out of the ichor.
A humanoid figure with one grotesquely large eye, a single broken horn, and the skin of a corpse that had stayed underwater for months pulled itself out of the pool of gore – though of course, that was merely how my mortal senses interpreted the manifestation of the lesser daemon of Nurgle. It held a sword in its hand that looked so rusted it would fall apart at a stiff breeze, but as it brought it up to strike at me with surprising swiftness and I parried it reflexively with my chainsword, it held fast against the whirring adamantine teeth.
That didn't stop me from chopping the daemon's head off with my return strike, but even as I did so, I noticed many more of its kind rising from the mire.
Plaguebearers. I knew of them from that time a holo supposed to depict the events of Adumbria had become a gateway to the Warp due to some moron using actual footage of the Infected. In the aftermath of that particular clusterfrak, I had asked Krystabel and Jafar for information on that breed of Neverborn, reasoning that since I'd pissed off the Lord of Decay, I might as well know my enemy.
It had predictably led to several nights of difficult sleep, especially since I couldn't use alcohol to drown the terror like I'd done earlier in my inglorious career as a traitor to the Golden Throne. While Plaguebearers were among the lowest servants of Nurgle, they were, supposedly, each the soul of a mortal who had died to Nurgle's Rot, a truly horrific Warp-born pestilence which tainted the soul as well as the flesh.
Of course, since absolutely nothing remained of the mortal within the Plaguebearer, I suspected that the stories were complete grox-shit. I didn't doubt that the victims of Nurgle's Rot were the source of the Plaguebearers, but in the same way a caterpillar infected with the eggs of a parasitic insect was technically the source of the resulting creatures. The deluded followers of Nurgle might believe that their Dark God granted them immortality by helping them ascend to a lesser form of daemonhood, but in truth, they were only food for his legions.
I had shared that theory with Jafar, who had stared at me with a look of mixed horror and awe before rushing out to try to confirm it. Since summoning daemons was still forbidden on Slawkenberg, the opportunities to run proper, 'scientific' (I had no idea what that word meant, but it was important to the borgs and magi alike) experiments were rare, but he'd later come back to tell me that, at the very least, nothing in their existing knowledge outright countered it.
Regardless of their true nature, the Plaguebearers were a dangerous foe. Their Warp-forged blades could cut through power armor in blatant mockery of the laws of physics, and the numerous infections of the weapons could strain even the Panacea's healing properties. Soldiers in crimson fell and didn't rise, though few of them died outright : the remainder were left to twitch on the ground in agony, their bodies turned into a battleground between the Nurglite sicknesses and the Panacea their gear had automatically injected them with.
"Form up on the Liberator !" shouted Mahlone. As a member of the Liberation Council, the General's duties left him little time to train, but while he couldn't go through the same insane training program as the USA's common troopers, power armor was a great equalizer, and he could still direct the men and women around him with his voice when the vox didn't work. "The daemons are converging on him !"
I had hoped it was my paranoia talking, but of course it wasn't. I was the one who had thwarted the Plague God's schemes on Adumbria, after all; the one who had found the Panacea aboard Emeli's Gift, and the one who had shared it with the Imperium.
Still, facing the undeniable evidence that one of the Dark Gods had it out for me wasn't a pleasant feeling.
My own armor had been enhanced with sorcerous wards crafted by Krystabel and Jafar themselves, in one of the rare instances of the two of them working directly together. In theory, these protections could turn around the Plaguebearers' blades as if they were mundane weapons, but I would much rather avoid testing it. So cowering behind a hundred armored troopers sounded very appealing at the moment.
However, my reputation, the only thing which kept the heretics I was surrounded by in check, demanded that I respond to Mahlone's orders. I cut down another Plaguebearer with my chainsword and kicked its lower half away, before pointing the weapon, dripping with infernal ichor, toward the altar :
"Keep moving !" I roared. "Take down the source of the summoning !"
We pushed through the mass of daemons, but for every one that fell, two more rose up to take its place. Even inside my unpunctured armor, I could smell the foul stench of the creatures, its supernatural nature ignoring the fact I was breathing recycled air only. With a blink-click, I activated the Panacea injector, reasoning there was no such thing as being too cautious in this situation. Fresh strength filled my tiring limbs, and my growing nausea faded away.
I kept on fighting, allies at my side, but though we were still making progress, it was agonizingly slow, a grinding battle of attrition which favored our enemy. Malicia could have crossed the remaining distance thanks to her superior agility, but her duties as my bloodward demanded she stay near me : it would do her no good if she killed the Broodspawn witch, only for me to be slain in the mean time. As for Jurgen, he was already using his powers liberally, striking at the infernal host with bolts of Warp-energy and telekinetic force that obliterated handfuls of the monsters at a time. But I knew that, in surroundings such as these, this was straining him, and the closer we got to the witch the worse it would get, as the God of Decay's influence got stronger and stronger.
Hektor, however, was unbound by any such restrictions, and so were Vlad Volkihar and Jon Skellan. The World Eater bellowed oaths to the Blood God as he cut down swathes of Plaguebearers with his great chainaxe, and the two Vampires followed one step behind him. The Regent fought with a deadly elegance that seemed to be a mix of Malicia's fluidity and Hektor's raw power, while Skellan fought with the same kind of ruggedness I'd witnessed in the most vicious and tenacious underhive gangers in my youth.
Together, they carved a bloody path through the Plaguebearers, until Hektor climbed atop the altar where the still-chanting witch stood and, with a single blow, bisected it vertically.
For a single heartbeat, I dared to hope that this was over. Then Jurgen started shouting again :
"Something is –"
Whatever warning my aide wanted to give, he didn't have time to finish speaking it. The dead witch, its two halves still standing up by some grotesque miracle, detonated with enough strength to send Hektor, Vlad and Jon flying, and force every trooper in the room to the ground. Thankfully, the Plaguebearers were also affected, or we would surely have suffered grievous casualties.
By the time I returned to my feet, unsurprised to find Malicia already standing guard over me, the daemons of Nurgle were gone, vanished as if they had never been here. A quick look told me that Hektor was still alive, albeit embedded in a wall on the other side of the room, which he was trying to pull himself free of with only limited success.
I was about to order some troopers to go assist him when I saw something which chilled me to my core.
Smoke was rising from where the Nergalite witch had stood – except it wasn't smoke, I realized, but a cloud of buzzing flies. Before my eyes, the Warp-spawned insects coalesced to form a humanoid figure over five meters high. The resolution, for lack of a better word, was extremely poor : it was like looking at a low-quality, glitchy hololithic. Yet the vision was still terrifying enough as it was. I could catch glimpses of bony spikes piercing through skin, a pair of curved horns, and eyes that burned with the same fell light as the barrier which had protected this place.
It looked like no daemon of Nurgle which I was aware of. The figure's appearance must have been familiar to Vlad, however, for I heard the Volkihar Regent gasp from where he had landed :
"No," I heard Vlad say, shock and horror clear in his voice. "It can't be."
"But it is, little Vlad," the sorcerous projection purred, speaking through the swarm's buzzing. "Surely you recognize me ? It has been many years, and you were still untainted by Cassandron's curse, but it was a most memorable night, was it not ?"
"Talk to me, Regent," I snapped in my best commanding voice, hoping to drag the Vampire out of his shock. "Who, and what, is that ?"
"It is the Thrice-Damned," replied Vlad, still sounding out of sorts. Then he snarled, using anger to overcome his surprise (or at least making a good show of it) : "You are dead, abomination. Dead and gone these last four thousand years !"
"I was," easily admitted the specter. "But Lord Nergal gave me a second chance, once I had done my penance in His bountiful garden."
"If you truly believe that, then you are even more of a fool than you look," I cut in.
Drawing the creature's attention to myself was the last thing I wanted to do, but I was confident it wasn't really present in the room with us (although that might have been the case had we not stopped the Broodspawns' ritual in time).
"Nurgle – sorry, Nergal – is merely using you as a tool to further his ends, nothing more," I continued, playing into the part of the Lord of Decay's enemy which I had unwillingly stumbled into years ago, all too aware of the dozens of USA troopers staring at their Liberator in awe.
"And hello to you too, Ciaphas," the repugnant apparition chuckled, and I shivered when I heard it speak my name. "Your blasphemy is expected. Gurug'ath sends his regards, and his fervent wish that everything you have built and everything you love will crumble before your eyes, before they too rot and fall out of their sockets."
"I see that in addition to his numerous character flaws, he is a sore loser as well," I replied, forcing my tone to remain light. "I can't say I'm surprised about it, or that the two of you are acquainted. You certainly are as ugly as he was before I cut him apart and sent him to the Warp."
"Acquainted ? We are kin, he and I, in the eyes of our lord," the Thrice-Damned boasted. "I met him in the Garden, when he delivered your Slaaneshi friend's message."
It was then that the realization hit me like a power hammer. In hindsight, I really should have got it the moment Vlad identified the creature as the Thrice-Damned. This wasn't some sorcerer playing with forces he didn't understand, nor a minor daemon manipulating the Brood to its advantage. Throne, it wasn't even a Greater Daemon like the one responsible for the Infection of Adumbria.
This was a Daemon Prince, a being which had once been mortal (or as mortal as the Vampires were), before being elevated to daemonhood by his patron deity. Like Emeli, whom the Thrice-Damned apparently knew – although I couldn't say I was surprised she'd been making waves in the Immaterium : she was just that kind of woman.
This was bad; really, really bad. I wasn't clear exactly how the infernal hierarchy worked between Daemon Princes and Greater Daemons, but I knew that Emeli, at least, was powerful in the court of the Dark Prince, unless she'd managed to deceive both the Handmaidens and Tzeentchian magi regarding her power (but, since she'd pulled a frakking Space Hulk out of the Warp, I was inclined to believe she'd been truthful). If the Thrice-Damned had ascended to the same level of power, but aligned with Nurgle, then this didn't bode well for Cassandron, and more pressingly, me, since I was the poor frakker who had spread the Panacea as far as I could.
Then I remembered my words to Gurug'ath, spoken in the throes of a frenzied rage which had somehow let me defeat the Greater Daemon responsible for the Infection of Adumbria, and my stomach dropped even further. In my brief fit of insanity, I had threatened Nurgle, the Dark God of Decay, himself. The fact that I hadn't immediately keeled over and managed to stay alive since then was a miracle I had tried very hard not to dwell on over the years, but now I was face-to-face with a Daemon Prince of Nurgle.
But no. This wasn't a Daemon Prince in front of me, I told myself, merely a projection, like what Emeli sometimes did to speak with me without manifesting on Slawkenberg in all her dark glory. If I could deal with Emeli, then I could deal with this.
"Is that so ? I must say, I'm curious," I said, half playing for time so that everyone who'd been thrown off their feet could get back up, half fishing for information. "If the story we were told are true, you were a Vampire when you turned to the Lord of Decay. What I don't understand is why. You were already immortal and powerful. Was it simply not enough ?"
Again, the monster gave a chuckle.
"Do you know, little heretic, you are the first one to actually ask me this ? Back during my first rise, the Ancients merely came in weapons bared."
"Hardly surprising, given you were trying to turn their people into monsters and kill them all," I pointed out. "In my experience, you don't ask questions to a plague : you burn it out."
"True, but as you well know, it doesn't always work. As for your question, the answer is simple :Vampires are abominations." The Thrice-Damned's eyes flared with mad zeal as he spoke, and the fact he was hovering atop an altar gave the whole scene the appearance of a crazed prophet addressing a crowd of unbelievers. "I saw how our very undying existence is an affront to the natural order, and wept for us all. But Lord Nergal forgave me, despite my blasphemous nature. He welcomed me and all of the Ruthven Coven into His embrace. The Covens tried to erase me from history, to strip me of my very name, but they failed to realize that they only made me stronger by cutting off the last remaining ties to my former, pathetic self."
The projection raised his arms in a morbid parody of a Ecclesiarch giving a benediction :
"I am Hash'ak'gik, and all Cassandron shall be remade as I have been remade, in Great Nergal's embrace."
"Not if we have anything to say about it. And as you can see," I gestured to the charnel house surrounding us, "we've already thwarted your schemes here."
"Here, yes. But elsewhere ?"
Oh, I didn't like the implications of that. Despite the helmet and armor I wore, he must have felt it, for he chuckled again.
"Come find me if you dare, Ciaphas," he taunted. "It will end where it all began, and when it is over, my lord will have His due, and you will pay for your childish defiance of the inevitable."
'Inevitable'. That word again. I was getting really tired of it. What was it with every frakking spawn of Nurgle that crossed my path using it to threaten me ? Was it due to their fundamental belief that all things ended (which made sense enough to me) and it was thus better to embrace entropy, rot and decay, and spend a marginally longer existence in horrid agony so that when death finally came, it was a release (which most definitely didn't) ?
Or was it something else, something related to the monster that haunted my nightmares from time to time, and stared back at me with my own eyes ?
It didn't matter. There was only one acceptable response, and for once, it was one I and the Liberator agreed on.
"Nothing is inevitable," I snarled. "Jurgen, disperse this specter. We've wasted enough time here."
"Right you are, sir," replied my faithful aide as he stepped forward. Hash'ak'gik's gaze turned toward him, filled with open contempt, but before he could say anything, Jurgen slapped his hands together in front of him with a thunderclap.
There was a pulse of energy and the smell of ozone, and the flies which had made up the Thrice-Damned's projection fell to the ground, dead, even as the unholy pressure which had been weighing us all down since entering this place slowly began to dissipate. It would take a lot more than Jurgen's little trick to cleanse the corruption here, I knew : I was under no illusion that, for all his power, the main reason Jurgen had succeeded in ending the Daemon Prince's transmission was that he'd already said everything he wanted to say.
"It's time for us to leave," I told everyone. "We must re-establish contact with the rest of our forces and figure out what this all means."
Because off course, of course it couldn't be as simple as a traitor in the Volkihar ranks taking advantage of the situation and manipulating the Broodspawns in a bid for power, before being predictably double-crossed by the Nergalites and almost unleashing an apocalypse on the very Hive-city he presumably wanted to rule over.
If I somehow ended up facing this Mannfred character before this was over, I was going to give him a piece of my mind, and have Malicia give him as many lethal injuries as it took to put a permanent end to his stupidity.
Victory was theirs, though the revelation of the Thrice-Damned's return had cast a pall over it. As they left the Brood's lair, consigning it to fire, Vlad Volkihar mused on what had happened this day, and what it would mean both for Cassandron in general, and the Covens' alliance with the Cainite Protectorate in particular.
In all his centuries of life, Vlad had never seen an Eldar fight, though he had heard their kind had raided the Sanguia system for generations. He had heard that even their lowliest warriors were supposedly the equal of a score of human soldiers. And while he had disregarded the tales as obvious exaggeration at the time, having seen the lady Malicia fight, he was forced to reconsider.
Cain's bloodward was a dancing terror, cutting down the foe in droves as she dodged or turned aside every attack that came her way, her cruel laughter echoing down the tunnels of the underhive as she fought with an elegance that wouldn't have looked out of place in the ballrooms of the highest spires. Should it come a battle between the two of them, Vlad was confident he could win, but only if he had time to call upon the fullness of his Gifts to push himself to her level.
Hektor had been equally impressive, but then Vlad had expected nothing less from a Space Marine, even one who had turned against the Emperor. The Covens' contacts in the Imperium kept them informed of the various potential threats to their existence, and Vlad's office contained a sizeable dossier on the capabilities and tactics of the Astartes Chapters operating in the Damocles Gulf – just in case they one day needed to fight them. Hektor was, perhaps, a tad more aggressive in his way of fighting, but he still fell within the bounds of Vlad's expectations.
Cain's aide, the psyker Jurgen, was more difficult to analyse. Vlad wasn't unfamiliar with psykers, of course : Cassandron paid its tithe to the Black Ships like any other Imperial world (though the Regent had a feeling things were going to change in the future). And, just like any other Imperial world, there were those psychically gifted who sought to avoid being shipped off-world. Inevitably, such individuals came to the attention of the Covens, who had a strict policy of dealing with them swiftly as part of their general goal of keeping the Imperium from investigating the planet.
During his rise to the rank of Regent, Vlad had fought such wild psykers several times, their meagre powers proving no match for the strength of the Blood. But it was clear that Jurgen was something else entirely, if the way he'd dealt with the Thrice-Damned's sorcerous projection was any indicator.
And then, of course, there was Cain himself. By all rights, the Liberator should have been the least of his party's fighters, by virtue of being, as far as Vlad's eyes could tell, an unaugmented human. But Cain had fought like a man possessed, showing physical abilities far beyond those Vlad had seen from the USA troopers, who used more or less the same armor as their leader. Every blow of his chainsword had been perfectly aimed, and every shot of his bolt pistol had felled at least one of the Nergalite daemons.
The Volkihar Regent suspected that whatever changes had made Cain's blood so delectable to his Maker were also responsible for his incredible martial prowess. Surely, the Liberator was no mere man, unless his power armor was somehow far more advanced than that of his soldiers, which didn't fit with Vlad's observations.
Even the underhive Vampire, Skellan, had proven interesting. One of the few things Vlad regretted about his ascension to Regent was that his duties kept him in the spires of Hive Primus, surrounded by the nobility of the Coven. And while all of them had proven their worth before being Turned, there was a part of him that missed the simplicity of battle, and the simple camaraderie that could be found between soldiers.
Skellan was no soldier, but he was a fighter to be sure, a gem in the rough that Vlad believed could serve the Volkihar Coven much better than by remaining in the underhive as a vigilante.
Among the Covens, influence had to be backed with personal power : it was a tradition harkening back to the first days of their kind, according to the lessons Lady Akivasha had taught him. Supposedly, it was linked to the mysterious origins of their race, of which even Vlad knew little, but the Regent suspected it had more to do with legitimizing the rule of the Ancients, who wielded absolute power over their descendants.
They linked up with the Cassandron PDFs who had established a cordon around the Broodspawn lair, and began their ascent back up the hive. Within an hour of forced march (the USA troopers handling the rapid advance remarkably well, even taking their power armor into account), vox contact was re-established with the rest of the planet.
The good news was that the rest of the planet still stood. The bad news was, nobody could say whether that would stay the case for long.
The Thrice-Damned has returned.
The thought kept repeating in Mannfred's mind as he was once again forced to flee for his life to escape the flames of the burning Nergalite stronghold. Once he was out of immediate danger, he moved through underground passages that, unless he was already lost, should lead him to the wasteland beyond the borders of Hive Primus. He had a safehouse there, kept stocked with frozen blood – not nearly as satisfying as drinking it straight from the vein, but it would sustain him – and a small flyer that could take him anywhere he chose on the planet.
Even boosting his speed with his powers, the journey there would take him several hours at best, giving him plenty of time to ponder what he had witnessed.
After making his way down the hive to avenge himself on the Broodspawns who had dared manipulate him, Mannfred had found his way blocked by sorcery. His efforts to break through or find a way around the barrier had been in vain, but they'd kept him occupied long enough to hear the approach of the PDF and Protectorate forces. Since the Cainite heretics had clearly a more advanced knowledge of sorcery than anyone on Cassandron, he'd kept watching, and sure enough, they had brought the barrier down and went inside to confront the source of the Brood in Hive Primus.
During the fight that had ensued, Mannfred had managed to stay hidden, drawing on the Talent he had learned from a Jacaerth centuries ago, as payment for erasing evidence of the other Vampire's involvement in some scheme or another (he didn't remember what exactly, not that it mattered, since the Jacaerth had gotten killed a few decades later in an unrelated power struggle within his Coven). Being able to completely erase his presence, to the point that not even a Vampire's enhanced senses could detect him, had taken a lot of practice, but the benefits were well worth the effort. Especially since it seemed that his ability had even worked on the daemons which the Broodspawns had summoned with their own sacrifice.
Thanks to this Talent, he'd then been able to listen in on the exchange between his Maker, Cain, and the arcane projection. Part of him wanted to dismiss the spectre's outrageous claims, but another part of him knew, deep within his blackened heart, that the creature had spoken no lie when it had declared itself to be the Thrice-Damned returned.
It was clear now that Mannfred had been manipulated, instead of being the manipulator as he'd thought. The fact it had been done by none other than the legendary renegade Regent of the Ruthven Coven was poor consolation. His goal had always been to rule Cassandron, and he couldn't do that if the Nergalites consumed it under the leadership of Hash'ak'gik – and joining them straight up was out of the question, he had too much self-respect for that.
The thought struck him that he could just leave. From the vox-chatter he'd been able to intercept before getting too far from the allied forces, it seemed that the situation in Hive Primus was repeating itself across the rest of the planet, with Nergalite outbreaks rising up from the underhives.
With every hive-city in chaos, Mannfred was confident he could quietly vanish, either in the underhive of Primus, or by securing passage to another Hive, where his Maker's influence wouldn't reach. Now that Cassandron seemed on the verge of reconnecting with the rest of the galaxy, he might even be able to escape off-world and start over, creating an entire new lineage of Vampires who regarded him as their progenitor. That firebrand Jakob had supposedly done so on some distant world called Necromunda, though given the circumstances of the outcast's departure, there was little information about him going around even for a spymaster such as Mannfred.
But … no. Even as the idea came to him, Mannfred knew he wouldn't do it. It would be too much like giving up, like admitting defeat. Mannfred was many things, but a quitter wasn't one of them. He would rule Cassandron : nothing else was acceptable.
Which meant that he had to find the opportunity that surely must exist within that chaos. And there was only one place he could think of where he was guaranteed to find it : where the Brood of Nergal had begun, and where, according to the myths of the Covens, its remains yet lingered.
He would go to Hive Septimus.
Notes:
AN : For those who are curious, Hash'ak'gik is a name from the Legacy of Kain video game series, whose lore had no business rocking as hard as it did. As I mentioned on the SB thread, in the first draft of this chapter, the Thrice-Damned's name was actually Mogh, from Elden Ring, but I changed that when the DLC came out and revealed some truths which meant it no longer fit.
And yes, the actual, pre-daemonhood name of the Thrice-Damned will be revealed at some point in the story. And also yes, it is a name I shamelessly lifted from existing Vampire fiction. I wonder if anyone will manage to guess it.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts. Next up will be an update to A Young Girl's Weaponization of the Mythos : its next chapter is almost complete as of time of writing this.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 32: Chapter 31
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Cassandron was in turmoil.
Across the planet, the Brood of Nergal had risen. In every Hive, they had come from the depths where they had laid hidden for centuries, quietly building up their strength, occasionally sacrificing a nest or two to their enemies, so that they would continue thinking them contained.
Now, the time for secrecy had passed. Their lord, Hash'ak'gik, had called to them from beyond the veil, commanding them to rise up and pave the way for his return. His will flowed down the Brood's hideously warped ties of blood and into the shattered psyches of the Broodspawns, and they could do naught else but obey, whether they had dwelled in darkness for centuries, growing in strength and corruption, or been Turned only a few hours ago and were still new to their damnation.
Thousands of souls were hurled into Nergal's clutches as the bodies hosting them were transformed. Their suffering threw the Immaterium into a frenzy, drawing the eye of the Gods and allowing for lesser daemons of Rot and Decay to manifest alongside the hordes of the Brood. With every footsoldier of Ruin which made it to Cassandron, the veil grew thinner, making it easier for the next one to come through.
Amidst this nightmare, the Vampire lords of the Covens were leading their forces to purge the Broodspawns and their infernal cohorts from their territories. Whether due to the demands of honor, or the risk of appearing weak in front of their kin, the Regents and their courts led from the front, wielding their mighty Talents in open battle against the Nergalite hordes. The masquerade of the Covens had been temporarily cast aside : the Vampires fought openly in front of the PDF and household troops, who regarded them as legends come to life.
Blood flowed in torrents, the tainted ichor of the Brood and the vitae of Human and Vampire alike mixing together on the streets. But for Hive Primus, which had already been cleansed, all of Cassandron was as a single body fighting against a virulent sickness, the Hive-cities its organs, their labyrinthine alleys and avenues its veins. Win or lose, the symbolism of the struggle was by itself pleasant to the God of Decay, a ritual that was as grandiose as it was monstrous.
Whether it would succeed or not remained to be seen, however. For despite all of its now revealed strength, the Brood had powerful enemies, including ones come from beyond Cassandron in the Hive-world's hour of need.
When the war council reconvened in the spires of Hive Primus, it became clear that the situation was even worse than I had expected from Hash'ak'gik's parting words. Our trip back up the hive had gone smoothly : we'd even been able to recover the Liberator Armor we'd left behind. To my vague surprise, it had been completely untouched, presumably because the scavvies had wisely run as far as they could when the Brood had risen up and hadn't yet come back.
After a thorough decontamination process, we'd met up with Krystabel and Areelu. The two of them had been schmoozing with the elite of the Volkihar Coven while I was fighting the Brood in the underhive (and, looking back at it now, I still thought I'd gotten the better option), and promptly shared the most relevant items of intelligence they'd gleaned. Harold had come down from the Fist of the Liberator in person, looking more worried than I had ever seen him before.
Information about what was happening had been sent back to the Protectorate through the ansible network. I had made it clear that the existence of the Covens was to be kept out of the news reports : doing otherwise would have been an egregious breach of trust, and we really couldn't afford division at the moment. As far as the civvies on Slawkenberg and Adumbria knew, we had come to Cassandron to deliver food supplies, only to find a Nurglite cult, and had joined forces with a surprisingly competent noble caste to fight them.
Based on Jafar's response, the very idea of competent nobles was something the masses of Slawkenberg had difficulties wrapping their heads around. The same would've been true of the USA troopers, but they knew about the Vampires (and had been told to keep their mouths shut about it until it became public knowledge, which I wasn't feeling very confident about).
The fact that the Khornates found the notion of blood-drinking immortals being better rulers than Imperial human nobles perfectly understandable said something. I didn't know what exactly, but it definitely said something.
I sighed internally (I couldn't show any sign of weakness, not in front of that crowd), and returned my full attention to the room. I could already tell this was going to end with me being forced to risk my life once again, so I might as well get all the intel I could get beforehand.
Vlad was here with his wife (and despite having seen the Regent fight in the underhive, I was still not quite sure which of the pair was the more dangerous) and a group of Vampire and Human hanger-ons, and Akivasha sat on her chair in a way that made the mundane piece of furniture (by the standards of the aristos, at least) look like it was just one step removed from the Golden Throne itself.
Skellan, standing with his back to the wall, looked like he clearly had no idea what he was doing here, and was pinching the clothes Vlad had asked a servant to procure for him like he was estimating how much he could get by pawning them off. So, at least there was one other sane person in the room with me, even if he was also a blood-drinking mutant with a history of violent underhive vigilantism.
We started with a quick recap of the situation planet-side. As it turned out, coordination between the hives was fragmented : it had been millennia since they had faced a common enemy, and the power plays and schemes of the Covens' shadow wars had long eroded the protocols put in place during the first rise of the Thrice-Damned.
Despite how annoying it was at the moment, I still found the fact the Vampires' politics were as fractious as those of the Imperium vaguely reassuring.
Even with such limited information as was available, it was clear that the ritual we'd disturbed in the depths of Hive Primus was far from being the only problem Cassandron faced. Every hive-city was subject to its own Brood uprising, and while none of them had to deal with another traitor like Mannfred smuggling Nergalites up the spires, their military forces weren't doing nearly as well as the collective might of the Volkihar PDF and USA troopers had managed.
And, of course, the rise of tens of thousands of Nurgle-corrupted mutants was only a sign of greater trouble to come.
"It's all part of a giant, planet-wide ritual," Harold said once the PDF officer who'd lost the office politics and been selected to do deliver the bad news was done and had retreated to the back of the room, visibly relieved nobody had torn his head off in a fit of rage. "The aetheric currents around Cassandron are in uproar, and they are all gathering in the ruins of Hive Septimus."
"That wretch Hash'ak'gik seeks to manifest in full," growled Hektor. Despite not being any kind of sorcerer himself, he was the one among us with the most experience fighting the Neverborn thanks to his time in the Eye of Terror – except maybe for Suture, but he wasn't talking. "And if he does, then preventing this world from being utterly consumed by the Warp will be … difficult."
"Are Daemon Princes truly this powerful ?" asked Vlad. The Vampires had little experience with daemons, which was another point in favor of their sanity.
Hektor glanced at me, but I waved him on. My own experiences with Emeli weren't something I wanted to talk about in present company (or ever, if I was being honest), and in any case, I was fairly certain she was too much of an edge case to serve as a useful point of comparison in this instance.
"There is no such thing as a 'typical' Daemon Prince," the World Eater warned. "But every one of them achieved that status by earning their patron's approval, and that is no small feat. The hierarchy of the Realms of Chaos is incomprehensible to us mortals," nevermind the fact that both Astartes and Vampires were present : compared to the Neverborn, they were indeed as mortal as the rest of us, "but even the weakest of them is a terrible foe. If the situation escalates to the point Hash'ak'gik can manifest on Cassandron, then his mere presence will damage the veil between the Materium and the Warp even more. I have seen it happen before : past a certain threshold, it's impossible to turn back the tide."
"Furthermore, there are additional factors at play," said Harold. "The Plague God's influence in the Damocles Gulf has diminished in recent years. That is not something the Rotten One will let pass."
"So he'll cheat and put his hand on the scales," I ventured a guess. "Granting greater boons and more power to his slaves than usual."
"We believe so," the magus nodded.
"Defeating the Thrice-Damned was difficult enough the first time," said Akivasha, speaking up for the first time since her arrival – and immediately and effortlessly drawing everyone's attention to her. "It took the combined efforts of several of my peers to slay him, and if I understand things correctly, then he'll be even more powerful now."
"There are other Volkihar Ancients currently slumbering in Hive Primus, aren't there ?" I asked. "Could we awaken them to ask for their assistance ?"
I was reaching for a solution that didn't have high chances of ending up with me facing off against a Daemon Prince of Nurgle. But I knew I was clutching at straws, and Akivasha's answer crushed those frail hopes :
"If you were willing to bleed over their coffins, my brethren would no doubt rise as swiftly as I did," she admitted, licking her lips hungrily at the recollection, a sight that sent a shiver down my spine – and not the pleasant kind. "But despite what it might have looked like, it took me some time to properly awaken and regain the fullness of my powers. No, I do not believe this to be the correct course of action."
I was really hoping she was being truthful and not lying out of some desire to keep my blood all to herself. Given that her entire planet was at risk, I was reasonably sure this was just my paranoia talking.
"How much time do we have before Hash'ak'gik manifests ?" I asked.
"It is difficult to say," replied Harold, "but based on the Aetheric currents, mere hours at best."
"Flying to Hive Septimus will take several hours, and finding the summoning location in the ruins could take days," said Vlad with consternation.
"I don't suppose orbital bombardment from the Worldwounder and every other ship in orbit is a viable option ?" I hazarded, phrasing it as a joke.
"I'm afraid not, my lord," replied Harold with a thin smile. "Based on our divinations, the ritual site is deep below the surface, buried under the ruins of an entire hive-city. We don't have anything that can penetrate through such a thick layer of rubble, not in the time we've got or without setting off catastrophic climate changes across the planet in the process. Well, maybe apart from the Fist of the Liberator's main gun –"
"We are not firing a superweapon we still don't understand at a friendly planet," I immediately cut that line of thought down, ignoring the surprised and worried looks my words drew from the locals and Areelu. "Apart from that, what do you suggest we do, Harold ?" I asked, hoping that the magus hadn't come to this meeting without a solution.
"A repeat of what was done years ago, when the Imperium sent its dogs to burn Slawkenberg." Harold glanced at our recent allies, who had no idea what he was talking about, and explained : "When Inquisitor Karamazov decided to subject our world to Exterminatus for the crime of daring to defend itself, Lord Cain and a party of USA troopers were teleported aboard his ship through a sorcerous ritual. It was then that the Liberator fought and slew the mad Inquisitor, while the rest of the team sabotaged the vessel."
The Rogue Trader and Vampires looked at me with renewed awe, but much as I enjoyed people overestimating me (since it kept the chances of them trying to kill me low), I found it hard to enjoy it at the moment. I was too busy trying to think of a way to get out of this suicidal mission, but couldn't find any which wouldn't ruin the image I'd cultivated since being forced to assume the mask of the Liberator.
"It seems to be our only option. General Mahlone, you will lead the USA troops in a surface assault on Hive Septimus : either you'll distract the Brood and keep them from overwhelming us with sheer numbers, or you might provide assistance if we require it."
"I would appreciate if we all stayed together this time," I said in a half-joking tone.
"Our mastery of the arcane has grown considerably since then, my lord," Krystabel assured me, smiling at my 'joke'. "I swear to you that will not be an issue."
Knowing that Hash'ak'gik was sure to have arranged for the same kind of barrier which had guarded the Broodspawn lair in Hive Primus to be erected around his most important stronghold, I doubted it would be that easy. But showing doubt in my subordinates' capabilities was a good way of making them perform less well, and since my life and soul would depend on the magi doing their job properly, that was best avoided at the moment.
"Will you still require Jurgen's assistance to power the ritual ?" I asked.
"No, my lord. However, we'll be restricted to sending nine souls across."
I briefly considered having them use Jurgen's help to power up the ritual anyway, so I could bring more meat shields to hide behind, but discarded the notion. The USA troopers had done well against the Brood, but against a Daemon Prince, they would be worse than useless. As a psyker, Jurgen's presence would be an additional risk, yes, but I had a feeling that my odds of surviving this mess would be even lower if I didn't take it and bring him along.
Instead, I looked at Krystabel. "Has there been any contact from Emeli ?"
She shook her head. "The Warp around Cassandron is contested, but the Rotten One has the advantage at the moment. Our lady cannot reach out to us, though she is fighting to help."
Frak. Teleporting aboard the Pyroclast Retribution had already been more than risky enough with Emeli's assistance, and we wouldn't even have that now, even as the Warp would be far more agitated than it had been back then.
But there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn't even pray for help : the God-Emperor was unlikely to answer any plea for aid with anything other than a laugh at best and a righteous smiting at worst, and despite everything that had happened over the last two decades, I still wasn't so lost I would ask the Dark Powers for succour.
All I could do was play along with everyone's expectations and hope that Krystabel and Harold were as good as they thought themselves to be.
"If we stop whatever ritual the Broodspawns are planning to summon Hash'ak'gik, will that be enough to prevent the threat ?"
"The Nergalites will still be there," answered Harold with a small shrug. "Depending on when you strike, Hash'ak'gik might be able to make another attempt somewhere else. But, well …"
"Doing nothing isn't an option," I finished. "Very well. Then let's decide who will be part of this little adventure."
"I will go with you," said Areelu, drawing every eye in the room to herself.
"Are you sure ?" I asked.
I was glad she'd volunteered : in my opinion, you could never have too many witches with you when confronting a Daemon Prince, and the additional Astartes (for surely Suture would follow) wasn't anything to scoff at either. But I had to look reluctant, and, judging by the small smile on her face, I managed it well enough.
"I owe you for saving my daughter," the Rogue Trader replied. "And I owe the Rotting One a lot for hurting her in the first place."
Well, vengeance was as good a motivation as any as far as I was concerned. Although, given that Areelu's daughter was waiting for her aboard the Worldwounder, I had no doubt she'd put her own survival ahead of anyone else's, but I could hardly blame her for that.
"Alright," I said. "Who else ?"
I then had to spend several minutes rejecting volunteers and trimming down the numbers to the allowed nine. It was moments like these that reminded me that, for all that they might appear reasonable from time to time, I had truly surrounded myself with lunatics.
Teleportation was unlike anything Areelu Van Yastobaal had ever experienced in her decades of life. For all her wealth and power, for all the technological wonders the Van Yastobaal Dynasty had amassed over the centuries, such a thing had been beyond her, whether by technology or sorcery – although she suspected there was less difference between the two than the Adeptus Mechanicus would ever admit.
As the assault team gathered inside the ritual space, she took a long look at the circle, memorizing as much of it as possible. It was an impressive piece of spell-work, and the fact the Slawkenberg rebels had been able to perform something similar to it mere months after their uprising was another sign of the favor the Chaos Gods held for them.
She recognized maybe two out of every three words of the magi's chant, and then they were cast across the Sea of Souls. In that timeless moment of incorporeality, Areelu felt the gaze of innumerable entities looking down upon her. Her closest point of comparison was these brief instants of transition when Worldwounder entered or exited the Warp, except now there was no Geller Field between her soul and the denizens of the Empyrean.
One of those watching denizens, she knew, was Emeli, the Daemon Princess of Slaanesh whose ascension had come thanks to Cain. That gaze was distant, for the Daemon Princess of Slaanesh was engaged in a struggle with the legions of Nurgle gathered around Cassandron, waiting for their mortal puppets to open the way for them. She saw, then, that it was due to that struggle that only a few Plaguebearers had yet managed to make it through. But the Rogue Trader could still feel the amusement in Emeli's scrutiny, which she found vaguely reassuring : at least it wasn't jealousy, unlike Krystabel's thoughts whenever she saw Areelu close to Cain.
The passage through the Warp ended as abruptly as it had begun, and Areelu stumbled as her feet were suddenly on solid ground once more, nearly falling to her knees. The Rogue Trader had come in her full panoply of war : she was wearing a suit of crimson and purple armor made of articulated ceramite plates, whose servos purred softly as she moved, perfectly maintained by the tech-priests aboard Worldwounder.
On its own, it wasn't as good as the power armor of the USA, but the forcefield generator and wards added to it made it all but impossible to penetrate, and the rebreather she wore should be proof against Nurglite poisons. And even should she be affected by anything, or hurt in any way, she was carrying a batch of Panacea injector on her person, as was every member of their group – including the Vampires, at Cain's insistence that there was no such thing as over-preparation when dealing with the slaves of the Plague God.
In her right hand, Areelu was holding a staff that had once rested in the deepest chamber of an ancient temple on a jungle planet whose human colonists had mysteriously disappeared centuries before the Imperium had even come into existence. The staff was a length of cerulean metal two meters long, topped with a symbol which had served as the religious focus of that long-extinct human civilization, and which Areelu knew to be their best efforts at giving form to one of the innumerable names of Tzeentch.
Breaking the artefact to her will had been the work of several weeks, but she'd managed it eventually. It was a potent focus for her sorcery, allowing her to cast spells which would normally take several minutes of preparation in mere seconds.
There was Cain, towering over them all in the Liberator Armor. His bloodward stood next to him, the Drukhari looking almost comically small in comparison. Hektor and Suture had both recovered from the teleportation faster than the rest of the group, and were keeping watch on their surroundings, wary of an ambush (which, given the sorcerous capabilities of their foe, was a very real threat).
Akivasha, Vlad Volkihar and Jon Skellan had all made the journey unscathed as well. The last one's addition to the party had been a last-moment thing : that Vlad had asked for Skellan to accompany them instead of selecting a higher-ranking member of the Volkihar Coven had been a surprise, but one Areelu had welcomed. She could sense the weight of fate around the underhive-born Vampire, for it had been no coincidence that he'd fought side by side with Cain before.
The Volkihar Paragon was wearing a black, skin-tight bodysuit made of a material Areelu couldn't identify, which reached up the Ancient's throat and clung to her figure in a very flattering manner. Based on the various devices attached to it, she believed it to be some priceless piece of archeotech, and she filed that detail into her growing collection of facts about the Vampire Covens and their suspected origins. Since Isabella had admitted the Covens themselves didn't know the origins of their kind, the Rogue Trader had been determined to figure that particular mystery out, if only to ensure there weren't any unpleasant surprises further down the line now that the Cainite Protectorate had allied itself with the Vampires.
The Ancient wasn't carrying any weapons, but then she didn't need them. Areelu remembered how easily Akivasha had dispatched the Broodspawns ambushers, mere moments after awakening from a centuries-long sleep. The fact that any living creature could wield such power while not using the Warp in any way, as far as Areelu could tell, was another reason she was so interested in the Covens' origins. For now, all she had were theories, each of which was more exciting than the last.
Together, the nine of them were a considerable fighting force. Still, the Rogue Trader knew better than to get overconfident or underestimate their foe. The Brood of Nergal had managed to survive for thousands of years on a planet dedicated to its destruction, and now that they had the favor of their Dark God once more, there was no telling what horrors awaited them further in.
The depths of Hive Septimus were even worse than she'd imagined. The stink of death and decay was omnipresent even through her rebreather, for it was a spiritual taint as well as a physical one. The death of billions during the Thrice-Damned's first rise had marked the Warp in ways that even the fires of the Purge and the passing of thousands of years hadn't been able to scrub clean.
Really, that the corruption had been contained to the ruined hive-city was a point in favor of the Covens' rule over Cassandron : on most Imperial worlds, the Inquisition would have had no choice but to sentence the planet to Exterminatus to keep the Brood of Nergal from spreading once it had gotten to the point of claiming Hive Septimus.
Bracing herself against the corruption of her surroundings with a whispered prayer to Tzeentch, Areelu cast a spell of divination. Even through the fog of ancient Decay, it didn't take her long to find the information she'd been looking for.
"We are very close to our destination," she announced, looking at the rest of their party. "And the Aether is vibrating in anticipation, so I'd say we have very little time."
"Yes," said Jurgen, his voice tense. As a psyker, and one who had history with the servants of Nurgle to boot, Areelu could only imagine how much worse being here was for Cain's aide, yet he bore any discomfort he might be feeling stoically. "I can sense it too."
They immediately set off. The group stayed close to each other as they advanced through the ruined, half-collapsed tunnels, Areelu using her spells to guide them through the maze. On more than one occasion, Cain had to carve a path for his large armor, but his strange black blade cut through all obstacles without issue. Areelu could sense no sorcerous component to the weapon, but she didn't know enough about tech to identify whether it was from the same source as the Liberator Armor (presumably the cache of archeotech technology that the Panacea had come from) or from an even more exotic source.
"I know it's been millennia, but I'd expect to see some trace of the billions of people who died when the Hive fell," remarked Cain as they advanced.
He was right, Areelu realized. Despite the psychic stink of decay, they'd yet to encounter a single human remain. They might be deep in what would have been the underhive before the Purge, but there should still be plenty, especially since the human survivors would have sought refuge here when the Brood had started propagating from the spires – and then the Nergalites would've done the same as the other Covens cleansed Hive Septimus with fire and blade.
She could think of several reasons why there was no trace of their corpses, and none of them were good.
"Well," said Suture drily twenty minutes later, as the tunnel they had been following finally ended. "I suppose that answers the question of where all the bodies went."
A dozen meters below them, down a sheer cliff, was spread an immense open space paved with human bones – thousands, millions of them, carefully assembled in what must have been the work of centuries. Rows of skulls looked down upon the arena from their perch at the top of the surrounding walls, each and every single one of them marked with the tripartite rune of Nurgle engraved on its forehead.
Areelu tentatively extended a tendril of her perceptions toward the skulls, and promptly recoiled in disgusted horror. They weren't haunted by the souls of their former owners, not really – that would have been a nightmare that would truly have warranted an Exterminatus – but whatever the Nergalites had done had trapped an … echo, an imprint, a simulacrum, upon them all. All of the people whose mortal remains had been used in building this structure had died due to the Thrice-Damned's heresy, whether at the fangs of the Brood or in the purge that had followed.
The whole thing was an amplifier for the energies of the Warp, a grand temple dedicated to the Rotten One. And, in the light of hundreds of torches, it was clear that its congregation was plentiful, for thousands of Broodspawns were in attendance, standing on the ground below, all of them turned to face something at the center, and chanting the name of their master over and over again. Areelu couldn't use her mask's built-in binoculars, not without the Broodspawns becoming invisible to her, but she could boost her natural vision with another incantation.
It was an altar, constructed of the same ivory material as the rest of this place. And on the altar, bound with the type of chains used to keep tanks in place during transport, was …
"Mannfred ?" she heard Vlad whispering in shock.
Hmm. She might have underestimated how sharp a Vampire's perceptions could become.
This wasn't what Mannfred had in mind when he'd decided to go to Hive Septimus.
The trip to the ruins had been uneventful. Air traffic across Cassandron had been suspended in order to deny the Brood another avenue of propagation, and his flyer had the best stealth systems influence and money could obtain, so he'd been able to go in a straight line to Hive Septimus.
Passing through the quarantine cordon had been more difficult. The PDF regiments stationed around the ruined hive took their job seriously, even more so today – they could tell that something was going to happen here, even if they had no idea what exactly. But they were still mortals, and so Mannfred had slipped into the ruins with only a couple of murders (whose fresh blood had made for a nice meal – waste not, want not, after all).
From there, he had scouted the ruins, searching for signs of Nergalite activity. Instead, within a few moments of his arrival, he had been ambushed – a perfect trap, sprung by only a handful of Broodspawns, and which had caught him completely by surprise through the use of sorcery to befuddle his senses.
They had pressed something foul to his face, and all strength had deserted him. He hadn't fallen unconscious, exactly. A strange sensation, which he only now realized had been nausea – something he hadn't felt in centuries – had overcome him, his every sense drowned in wild, painful flashes as his Vampire biology fought off whatever poison the Nergalites had used on him.
When his perceptions had cleared, he'd found himself in his current predicament : chained atop an altar, with a gag in his mouth, Broodspawns moving all around him, and a figure standing over him.
The creature was even more hideous than the other Broodspawns : Mannfred assumed it was an elder of the fallen Coven, whose body had spent centuries slowly rotting away under the influence of their tainted blood. Trinkets of bone hung around its stick-thin arms on loops woven of human hair, and despite its apparent frailty, it radiated an air of confidence and strength.
In one hand, it held a staff of rusted metal which doubled as a walking stick. In the other, it carried a short piece of sharpened metal that didn't have a handle : its blade was buried into its fingers, to the point that the injury had scabbed over the object, making the hand useless for anything other than wielding it.
"My kindred !" It spoke, and the words echoed across the large chamber, carried by some frankly impressive acoustic work. "Long have we dwelled in the shadows, biding our time and spreading the sacred word and gifts of Nergal to those few souls we could reach. But our time of tribulation is at an end ! Our lord has called upon us to rise, and we have answered !"
"Already, the eternal servants of Nergal have come to stand at the side of our brave warriors as they battle the unbelievers," the priest continued. "Now Hash'ak'gik himself rises, to deliver us onto Nergal's glorious kingdom !"
"Hash'ak'gik ! Hash'ak'gik ! Hash'ak'gik !" the crowd of Broodspawns chanted, over and over again, with eerie synchronicity.
Mannfred had seen the Nergalites act in unison before, driven by the curse which had consumed their bodies and minds, but this was something else entirely. Moving his head around as much as his bindings allowed him, he saw that they moved like a single organism with many bodies, like the appendages of some extra-dimension creature – which, he realized, was exactly what was going on.
There was a growing sensation of pressure on his skull, which reminded Mannfred of what he had felt in the lair beneath Hive Primus. This was a sign that sorcery was happening, and, based on what he'd just heard, it wasn't difficult to imagine its purpose. Mannfred strained against his bonds, calling upon the Talent of Puissance to boost his physical strength as much as he could, but either he was still drugged, or the chains had been reinforced somehow, for they barely creaked.
Then the Nergalite priest looked down at him. He saw that its eyes were glowing under its mask, and when it spoke, its voice echoed with a familiar tone.
"You're finally awake," chuckled the priest standing near the alter. "Good. You've served me well, Mannfred Volkihar, and it is only right that you be aware of it before the end."
Mannfred growled through the gag. Amused, the Broodspawn removed the obstruction, and Mannfred spat, trying in vain to get the tissue's foul taste out of his mouth.
"You manipulated me," he cursed. "You arranged things so I'd bring your servants to the spire, so that I'd be forced into exile, and eventually come here."
It was the only thing that made sense. Mannfred's knowledge of the Warp was limited : even the Progeny of a Regent could only find so much restricted lore on Cassandron. But he knew that time worked very differently in the Immaterium, allowing its infernal denizens to weave plots that would be impossible to conceive of for those trapped in the Materium.
Again, the priest chuckled, and there was no ignoring the mockery in the sound.
"You give me too much credit, dear Mannfred," the possessed prelate of putrescence replied. "I had no need to manipulate you. You came to the Nergalites in Hive Primus out of your own will, without me needing to so much as whisper the notion into your heart. You betrayed your duties, your Maker, your Coven, out of your own selfish desires."
"I knew you would come to this place. Your nature would allow for no other course of action."
No. No, the Thrice-Damned had to be lying. Mannfred refused to believe he was so simple, so predictable.
"In another life," the vessel gloated, "your selfishness, arrogance, ambition and total lack of scruples would have made you a powerful champion of Tzeentch. That makes this all the sweeter."
Before Mannfred could say anything – a curse, a plea, a wordless roar of horror and rage – the priest of Nergal plunged the shard of metal embedded into its hand into Mannfred's chest. The frail-looking blade cut through his armor as if it weren't there, and when he instinctively called upon all his mastery of the Defiance Talent to harden his flesh it still pierced through his skin, between his ribs, and into his heart.
There was a brief flash of pain – and then the real agony started, and despite his best efforts, Mannfred screamed.
And, just before the darkness consumed him and dragged him into an entirely new realm of torment, he heard a thudding sound, as if something heavy had fallen from a great height.
Jon Skellan wasn't sure what exactly he was doing here. He was willing to do his part to help save the world, obviously, since Cassandron was where he and everyone he cared about lived, and from what he'd understood there would be nowhere to hide if the Thrice-Damned managed to return.
But he couldn't help but think this whole mess was way over his pay grade. Fighting gangers ? He could do that all day. Fighting other Vampires ? He'd spent years hunting down the bastards who'd ruined his wedding and Turned him. Killing Broodspawns ? That was a new one, but he demonstrably could do that, too.
Using some magic ritual to go straight into the heart of the Nergalites' ruined domain and fight their not-so-legendary leader, returned from the dead thanks to the unholy blessings of his Dark God ? Now that was another story. But, well, what was he supposed to do ? Stand up in the middle of the meeting and say 'good luck with that, could I please get a ride back to the underhive' ?
Yeah, right. That would have gone well. The bloody Regent of the Volkihar Coven himself had asked him to accompany him, because apparently he'd 'proven his mettle' in the underhive, and he might have only known Vlad Volkihar for less than a day, but he already knew the elder Vampire wasn't the kind of man you refused.
The other Vampires hadn't exactly been happy about it. They'd already been glaring at him, except for Vlad's wife, who'd looked at him the same way Lizbet had looked at him when he'd brought home a half-starved canid he'd found wandering the underhive. But Lady Akivasha had taken a look at him and declared that he had 'a warrior's heart', whatever that meant, and they had all stopped protesting real quick.
(Jon was pretty sure that was partly because him being recruited into the teleporting group meant none of them had to volunteer, though.)
The Lady Akivasha was another reason he felt so out of place. He'd heard of the Ancients before, but hive-rats like him could never hope to meet one of the Coven's elusive leaders. He had no idea how he was supposed to act around Akivasha, so he'd tried to do whatever he thought Stefan would do at the time, and so far, he hadn't been killed on the spot for showing disrespect.
At least the gear was good. Before the ritual had started, he had been handed a suit of armor from the Volkihar armories exactly his size, along with a power hammer and several tall glasses of blood that tasted better than anything he'd ever drunk in his life.
And it looked like he was going to have the chance to test it, because holy Throne, there were a lot of Broodspawns down there. Jon could only assume they didn't really need to drink blood to survive somehow, otherwise he couldn't imagine how they'd survived down here.
Then, only a few seconds after their group had reached the ledge giving onto the temple, the Vampire chained on the altar – the traitor Mannfred, based on Vlad's reaction – started screaming.
"Frak," cursed Cain. "Move in, everyone !"
Then the Warmaster was leaping over the edge of the cliff, his armor crashing onto the temple's floor and causing a cloud of bone dust to rise. His xenos bloodward was right behind him, followed by the two Space Marines.
Before his good sense could reassert itself and stop him, Jon jumped, reinforcing his legs to absorb the impact – the armor was good, but gravity was gravity regardless of what you were wearing. The rest of the party came behind him, the Rogue Trader landing last, her fall slowed down by a spell.
By then, the vanguard was already in motion, led by Cain himself. They were charging straight at the altar, but no matter how fast they were, the temple was simply too vast, and they had arrived just too late.
A part of Jon, the part of him that was still human, still mortal, felt the fell energies gathering in the air reach their peak, and all of a sudden, the Broodspawns … melted. There was no other word for it. Only those who stood at the very edge of the crowd – those who, Jon realized, must have stood lowest in whatever passed for Nergalite society – were spared. The flesh of the large majority sloughed off their bones, which fell to join those of the ancient dead on the ground, and ran like a river of refuse across the cavern and up the altar, toward the now levitating form of Mannfred Volkihar.
There, they formed an immense sphere of gore, which reminded Jon of the lizard eggs he'd scrapped off the underside of metal plates to eat back when needed food other than blood. The comparison was apter than he thought, because just as Cain's crimson armor reached the mid-point between their landing and the altar, the sphere hatched to reveal a vision out of the darkest nightmare.
It resembled the ghostly figure which had appeared when the ritual underneath Hive Primus had been stopped, but this one was horribly solid. It was huge, even bigger than the projection had been – twice, perhaps thrice as high as the Liberator Armor, Jon judged. Four great bony wings erupted from its back, tearing through flesh in a shower of gore as they grew. Its body was covered in a set of robes made of rotting skin, and Jon had to fight back the unfamiliar urge to puke as he realized the skin was that of the faces of every Broodspawn which had been sacrificed to bring the creature into being, smiling in religious ecstasy.
"I am Hash'ak'gik," the monstrosity bellowed, and the sound of its voice made Jon stumble, and nearly brought him to his knees. "I am Nergal's Prophet, Herald of the Glorious Decay. I …"
Suddenly, it stopped talking, and turned its head down. Jon followed its gaze, and saw that, somehow, Cain hadn't stopped running toward the manifested Daemon Prince.
Hash'ak'gik snarled, the sound like a dozen underhive levels collapsing, and moved to meet the Warmaster's charge. Drawing strength from Cain's example, Jon forced himself to move, and he saw in the corner of his eye that the rest of the group were doing the same. Despite everything, the Vampire smiled.
He had never thought he would end up being a hero, and yet here he was, alongside figures of legend and champions from other worlds.
Lizbet, he silently swore, I will win, and I will come back to you.
And if Hash'ak'gik thought it could stop him, then to the Warp with it.
Notes:
AN : And with that, all three of my main ongoing stories (CCWC, DCRSL, and AYGWM) are at a point where the next chapter will be a big epic battle sequence. I didn't plan this, it just happened on its own.
Hmm. It might be time to finish that chapter of A Blade Recast that's been waiting for me to really focus on it for several months ... Nah, I'm frakking with you. I think DCRSL will be next, but we'll see what the Muse decides, as always.
If you're reading this on FFnet or AO3, I remind you that there are a great many Omakes written by the readers on the SB thread, and I recommend you check them out. For instance, someone started a List of Things Anakin Is No Longer Allowed To Do on the DCRSL thread, and it is really funny. And if you have an idea for an Omake of your own, then please don't hesitate to write it !
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 33: Chapter 32
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
I would like to say that I had a plan as I charged the freshly summoned Daemon Prince of Nurgle head-on. I would like to say that I had a cunning scheme in mind, some grand stratagem to leverage the strengths and skills of the powerful allies I had brought with me into this deathtrap in order to seize victory from what was, to all appearances, a rather terrible situation.
I would like to say that, but it would be a lie. The truth was, as Hash'ak'gik rose up in all his awful glory, I kept running towards him because I was too terrified that, if I stopped, I wouldn't be able to start moving again, and Hash'ak'gik would simply cut me down where I stood. Whereas, by engaging him now, I might have a small, infinitesimal chance of managing to change my seemingly inevitable demise.
Usually, a Daemon Prince would grow weaker the longer they stayed in the Materium, like any daemon once it left the Warp. It was one of the reasons for which Emeli couldn't pop up on Slawkenberg whenever she pleased, so I was familiar with (and very grateful for) the concept.
But Hash'ak'gik had plotted his manifestation for a long time, and wasn't going to simply pop up on Cassandron for a quick chat with his followers before being dragged back into the Warp. The Brood of Nergal were thinning the Veil across the entire planet, and his arrival had punched a hole right through it, from which the energies of the Empyrean could pour freely as long as he remained on Cassandron.
So, having missed our chance at preventing the manifestation completely (by so short a margin I wanted to scream in frustration and not just in abject terror), and with no way to get off-planet before the minions of Nurgle caught up to me, the next best thing was to take him down here and now, before he could grow even stronger and turn Cassandron into a daemon world.
Which was why, despite every instinct in my body screaming at me to run away even if I'd to hack a path through the bony walls of this dark temple with Liberation's Edge, I was instead running at Hash'ak'gik, hoping against hope that this would somehow end in a repeat of the confrontation with Gurug'ath in Skitterfall, instead of what had happened to the minions of the Giorba who had had the misfortune of barging in during Emeli's ascension to daemonhood on Slawkenberg.
Although most of them had been consumed to create the Thrice-Damned's enormous body, some of the Broodspawns yet remained. They were utterly unconcerned by the fact that their vaunted prophet had devoured their kindred, and because they'd surrounded the altar prior to the summoning, that meant I had to punch through the thin cordon of them that still stood in my way.
They hurled themselves at the Liberator Armor, shrieking wordless oaths of devotion to their foul divinity, but they might as well have been throwing rocks for all the good it did. The Liberator Armor was a true masterwork of the borgs, and I didn't slow down as I crushed or cut them down with my blade, not even feeling the impact of their rotten bodies as momentum carried me through.
Any sense of victory was swiftly crushed, however, since getting past them merely meant I was closer to the real threat. Hash'ak'gik sneered down at me as I rushed through the final meters between us, a third eye slowly opening on his forehead, pushing aside an eyelid made of congealed blood.
"Ciaphas," he began, using my first name in what was probably an attempt to get under my skin. Good luck with that : I'd heard it spoken by Emeli far too many times to worry about it now. "As I expected, you're right on time to witness my ascension –"
I didn't let him finish, and swung Liberation's Edge at him. The dark matter blade (which the borgs still hadn't come any closer to replicating after over a decade of studying it, much to their disappointment) cut right through the skin of his left wrist, causing a stream of black ichor to erupt. But he was so large that the injury was little more than a nick, and to my dismay, it started scabbing over immediately, leaving behind a scar that, while it looked infected with enough pathogens to kill a grown man ten times over, didn't appear to hinder the Daemon Prince whatsoever.
Brilliant. I could only hope that healing the cut had depleted his stores of Warp energy somewhat, but I'd a sinking suspicion that nothing less than a decisive blow would truly harm him – and, given his size, that was a daunting proposition.
Hash'ak'gik screamed in outrage at my audacity, and before I could blink, his right arm was moving toward me, holding a giant club made of rotten wood and rusted nails he'd pulled out of nowhere.
I leapt, keeping the blow from punching my head off. I really wished I could've kept my flesh-and-blood body inside the belly of the armor, where it would be safest, but I needed to look out of the helmet's eye-lenses to be able to see the Broodspawns, instead of using the armor's elaborate sensor array and internal display – especially since for all I knew, Hash'ak'gik had kept the Vampires' ability to avoid detection by any form of technology : it seemed like the kind of cheap move Nurgle would encourage. So I'd kept the armor in the same configuration in which I'd fought in the underhive of Primus, meaning that the helmet actually contained my fragile skull now.
Unfortunately, while my powered jump undeniably saved my life, it didn't completely clear the blow, which took the Liberator Armor in the side with enough strength to send it flying across the vast open space and crashing onto the ground.
Without the many layers of protections around me, I would have been dead on the spot, reduced to soup inside my armor. As it was, I felt several of my ribs break, but the pain was immediately quietened as the Panacea auto-injectors went to work.
I hissed between clenched teeth (no matter how much Panacea was in my system, the feeling of bones knitting themselves back into place could never be made comfortable) and forced the Liberator Armor into a roll, briefly turning off Liberation's Edge before I cut myself to pieces with it by accident. I eventually came to a stop some forty meters away from where I'd previously been, and rose to my feet, immediately igniting my blade again.
My vision was blocked by the cloud of bone dust my fall had created, but it suddenly parted, pushed aside by an unexpected air current. I looked up, and saw Hash'ak'gik stalking toward me far faster than anything that size ought to be able to move, dragging his club behind him, murder in his infernally burning eyes. Judging by the fell-colored steam that was pouring out of his nostrils, I'd found the source of the wind which had cleared my sight just so I could see death come for me.
Well, frak, I thought. But before panic could completely seize me, something smashed into the side of Hash'ak'gik's skull, sending him reeling into an undignified tumble that crushed several of the surviving Broodspawns under his monstrous bulk. In the brief moment of impact, I saw Akivasha, flying through the air and punching the immense Daemon Prince with her bare fists.
Crazy people. I was surrounded by crazy people.
Vlad had never seen his Maker fight in the fullness of her power. The only time she'd needed to while he was alive had been during the Thrice-Damned's first rise, and back then, Vlad had been kept well away from the fight, along with every human soldier. Lady Akivasha had spent most of the millennia since slumbering, but even when she'd been awake, there had been none foolish enough to challenge her, and casual demonstrations of her immense might were all that was required to keep her lessers in line.
Now, however, the Paragon was holding nothing back. She was completely focused on Hash'ak'gik, ignoring the Broodspawns as she flew around the Daemon Prince.
The whole thing was a combination of Talents, pushed to their maximum, in a way only a Paragon could manage. Akivasha was flying using her telekinesis, boosting her reflexes using Quickening so she could manage the incredible speeds at which she was moving, while boosting her physical strength with Puissance and, if Vlad's guess was right, further amplifying her punches with Haematurgy by moving the blood that was still in her arms.
Any single mortal enemy would have been obliterated by such a combination instantly. But Hash'ak'gik was no mere mortal.
"Do you really think you can defeat me, Akivasha ?!" roared the Thrice-Damned. "You, a mere consort, who was only Turned because of your beauty ?"
"Strong words coming from you, Thrice-Damned," retorted the Paragon, dodging the Daemon Prince's return strike. "At least I wasn't Turned because my sibling took pity on me."
Hash'ak'gik's reply was an anger-filled shriek. As if in answer, the air ripped apart, creating dozens of openings into a realm Vlad's senses perceived only as a perfect, infinite blackness, and daemons began to emerge. Most were akin to the footsoldiers they'd faced in the underhive, but there were other types as well : enormous flies, huge slug-like tentacled things, and swarms of foot-high cackling fiends, which charged the party along the surviving Broodspawns.
Vlad chuckled. And to think, he had been worried he wouldn't have anything to contribute to such a clash of titans.
Wielding his power sword in a two-handed grip, a war-cry which hadn't been used by anyone living in centuries on his lips, the Volkihar Regent waded into the melee.
Hektor and Suture fought back-to-back once more, falling into the easy coordination that was ingrained into every Space Marine, regardless of bloodline or allegiance. Together, they formed a whirlwind of death as they tore through the remaining Broodspawns, keeping them from swarming their more fragile allies, before punching into the newly-arrived daemons.
Hektor wielded his great chainaxe two-handed, while Suture held a chainsword in one hand and a bolt pistol in the other – the standard equipment of an Astartes for ten thousand years, both weapons clearly having gone through as many cycles of damage and repair as their wielder, with their origins equally impossible to identify.
Despite everything – the entire planet at risk, the Daemon Prince's summoning, how, even after the mass sacrifice, they were still morbidly outnumbered – Hektor couldn't help but smile under his void-sealed helmet.
It had been so long since the World Eater had fought with a brother at his side. Working with the Unified Slawkenberg Army had reminded him of the brotherhood the Twelfth Legion had lost when it had succumbed to the Nails, but despite all their martial excellence, the USA troopers couldn't match a true Space Marine.
Still, there was something strange about this. Every Space Marine's fighting style bore the mark of his initial training : a Dark Angel fought very differently from a Space Wolf or a Thousand Son, and the thin-blooded Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes fought very differently from the old Legions, due to being meant to prop up a failing Imperium instead of pushing its borders forward in glorious conquest. But there was nothing in the way Suture fought that gave Hektor any clue as to the other warrior's past, which could mean one of two things : either this was a deliberate effort to obfuscate his origins, or he'd once belonged to a Chapter Hektor had never even heard of.
Oh, well. Cain trusted Van Yastobaal enough to bring her with him on this little hunting expedition, and the Rogue Trader obviously trusted Suture with her very life. Hektor would leave the mystery of his cousin's origins for those better suited to such investigative work : he'd never been an intellectual sort, even before the Nails had been pounded into his skull.
For now, there was plenty of enemies to kill, and more coming through the Warp portals. If not for the Daemon Prince and the risk of doom to the entire world, this would be as close to paradise as the World Eater was ever going to get.
"Blood for the Blood God !" he roared, ripping a Beast of Nurgle in two. "Skulls for the Skull Throne !"
And let the fires of Liberation spread across the galaxy entire, he added silently.
Jurgen had trained during the last seven years since he'd last faced a greater daemon of Nurgle at the Liberator's side. As the aide to Slawkenberg's supreme ruler and assistant caretaker to young miss Zerayah, his duties didn't leave him much in the way of free time, but he'd still spent many hours sharpening his psychic talents, with the help of the magi of Tzeentch and Slaanesh both.
Despite the birth of many psykers in the years since the Uprising, Jurgen was still the most powerful psyker in the Protectorate, at least in terms of raw power. He wasn't a man much given to pride, but there was a certain satisfaction in the knowledge that he possessed qualities that made him uniquely suited to stand at the Liberator's side.
But against the might of Hash'ak'gik, that power meant very little. He tried to hurl bolts of Warp-energy at the Daemon Prince, but they fizzled in the air before hitting him, dissipated into nothing by his greater influence over the Empyrean. He wasn't even distracting it from Lady Akivasha's own efforts – which, truth be told, weren't doing any lasting damage, regardless of how impressive they looked.
He was considering running through the battlefield to where the Liberator Armor had fallen when a hand fell on his armored shoulder, and he turned to see Areelu Van Yastobaal looking at him with a focused expression on her face.
"Listen to me carefully," said the Rogue Trader. "I think I can perform a ritual of banishment, and if we work together, we can make it powerful enough to affect even a Daemon Prince."
Well, that was more than Jurgen was achieving on his own.
"What do you need me to do ?" he asked.
She thrust her staff between them. This close, Jurgen could feel the power of the object, as well as the ancient, alien sentience dwelling within, subjugated to Van Yastobaal's will but ever waiting for its chance to break free.
"Hold this with me," she instructed him, "and when I give you the order, channel as much power through it as you can. Oh, and if it talks to you, don't listen to it."
"Alright, ma'am," replied Jurgen, nonplussed. He'd already heard that sort of warning plenty of times before when working with the magi of the Liberation Council, although he had a feeling Lady Van Yastobaal's gear was of a much higher quality and danger level than anything they'd been able to obtain on Slawkenberg.
Surrounded by death and Decay, Malicia Mortalyss danced as she had never danced before. She had discarded her ranged weaponry due to the press of the melee, and mutants and daemons alike fell to her blade and whip, while none of their pathetic blows landed on her person.
She felt the brand of Slaanesh on her chest burn with heat as it kept her safe from the unnatural sicknesses and contagions of her foes, that she might continue fighting alongside Cain. Emeli wouldn't let her die from something as mundane as a plague, even one brewed in the Rotten One's own cauldron – not while her beloved Ciaphas still might need her help.
Although she would never admit so out loud, the Vampires made Malicia nervous. Not because they were mutants : Commoragh was full of horrors spawned by the Haemonculi, from the Scourges to the Grotesques, and the countless other creations of the Drukhari surgeons' demented minds. No, it was their power which unsettled Malicia. The bloodlines of the Covens, the different Talents and how they grew with time, their immunity to being detected by technology – it all spoke of a deliberate design. And that design had to have a purpose. Akivasha's brief exchange with Hash'ak'gik had all but confirmed it.
But what was that purpose ? Weapons seemed the most obvious choice, but what enemy could require the creation of the Vampires ? Malicia was no scholar, and her people had little interest in the affairs of the mon-keigh in any case. Even the infamous Heresy of their mightiest warlord, which had sundered their upstart empire and doomed it to a slow, painful demise, was barely a footnote in the histories of the Dark City : the past of Cassandron (since it seemed the Covens hadn't spread beyond it) wouldn't even register.
Which was a shame, because she was certain the arenas of Commoragh would have paid a fortune for Vampire fighters. Even in the Dark City, lair of a thousand Kabals and a million times that number of hardened killers, sights like Akivasha flying around the colossal Daemon prince and punching him with her gloved hands were very rare. Surely, even the Queen of Knives would find her a worthy opponent.
And then, right as that thought crossed Malicia's mind, she saw Hash'ak'gik cast some kind of spell from his left hand, which stopped the Ancient in place. It only lasted for a moment, but that was enough for the enormous club the Daemon Prince was wielding in his other hand to connect, and Akivasha was hurled to the ground.
"No more flying around," Hash'ak'gik laughed, walking ponderously to where his opponent had fallen and was struggling to get back up, her regeneration straining to overcome the damage. "Now, you wretched courtesan. Time to break; time to scream; time to die !"
Malicia evaluated her options. Her odds of breaking through the press of the melee and getting to Akivasha before the Daemon Prince were good, but she didn't think there was much she could do even if she managed it. She could carry Akivasha, but that would make her much slower, and she didn't think she could buy enough time for the Ancient to recover. But if she died, then they would lose the one combatant who had managed to even keep up with Hash'ak'gik so far, and –
"NO !" roared Hash'ak'gik suddenly, turning away from the down form of his old enemy. "I will not be denied again !"
Surprised – but not enough not to sever the heads of three more Plaguebearers and kick the eyes of an enormous fly-thing with enough strength to make them burst – Malicia looked in the direction Hash'ak'gik was moving, and saw that the Daemon Prince had started running toward Jurgen and the Rogue Trader witch, who were holding Van Yastobaal's staff together.
There was nothing she could do, Malicia realized. She was too far to intervene, and Hash'ak'gik wasn't moving slowly anymore. A quick glance showed her that the two Astartes and Vampires were also otherwise engaged.
And then Cain was there, straight in the Thrice-Damned's path, that scavenged blade of his held defiantly aloft, and Malicia's blood froze at the sight of the mon-keigh she was soul-bound to protect throwing himself into such lethal peril.
As I stood between Hash'ak'gik and where Jurgen and Areelu were doing whatever it was they were doing, I swore I could hear the Emperor laughing at me. But I had no choice : fighting the Daemon Prince regularly clearly wasn't going to work, not with even Akivasha failing to inflict any real damage.
We might be able to eventually wear him down, but all it would take was one mistake, one lucky blow, like what had already happened to Akivasha, and our numbers would go down – and then it would all spiral into a complete defeat. Death was already something I was rightly terrified of under most circumstances, but dying here and now, with the local Empyrean so clearly dominated by Nurgle, wasn't something I wanted to even think about.
So, once again, I was forced to balance the chances of my likely and painful death right now against those of certain, agonizing demise followed by an eternity of torment in the Garden of Nurgle, later.
The Liberator Armor was still functioning, and the Panacea had only needed a few moments to heal the various bruises, broken bones and internal injuries Hash'ak'gik's blow had inflicted upon me. I had been fighting the Daemon Prince's minions, hoping that Akivasha could somehow win – certainly her powers were even more impressive than I'd expected. But that hadn't panned out, and now I was forced into this desperate gambit.
The smart move would have been for Hash'ak'gik to simply ignore me, to just move around or even above me – it would have opened him to a few strikes with Liberation's Edge, but he'd already proven he could take those without issue. So, I needed to do something to make sure he wouldn't do that, and unfortunately, I knew exactly how to draw his attention away from Jurgen and Areelu.
"HASH'AK'GIK !" I bellowed, pushing my armor's vox-speakers to maximum volume and using all of my many years of experience lying to people I was terrified of to keep any of my fear from being audible in my voice. "Face me, you coward ! Face your doom, slave of a false god !"
He should have ignored me and kept going for the other two. It would've been the logical, rational, sane course of action, and if he had done it, he would have won the day.
But if Hash'ak'gik was sane, he would never have turned to Nurgle worship in the first place, and I was betting on the God of Decay's grudge against me overcoming his slave's common sense.
And, much to my resigned horror, it worked. Glaring at me, his three eyes literally glowing with hatred, Hash'ak'gik snarled and struck with his club, all thoughts of Jurgen and Areelu seemingly forgotten. But this time, I was ready for his physics-defying speed. I ducked under the blow, and managed to score another cut with Liberation's Edge on his wrist as the weapon passed over me with enough strength that even my armor stumbled in its wake due to the air displacement alone.
Moving fully on instinct, for to think in this situation would have paralysed me with terror, I stepped closer to the monstrosity, giving him less space to swing his club. Before he could recover his balance, I stabbed my blade into his chest, plunging it almost to the hilt. But what would have been a killing blow on any living creature was only painful to a Daemon Prince.
At least it made sure he was focused on me and ignoring (what I was really hoping was) the real threat, I told myself, though that was poor consolation as I had to jump to the side to avoid being stomped by Hash'ak'gik's free hand as he slammed it down, pulverizing the bones of a hundred poor souls in the process. The mortal remains didn't merely break apart under his punch, however : the corruptive energies which dripped from the daemon's incarnation seeped into them instead, and I watched in horrified fascination as they twitched in a sordid parody of life, assembling to form grotesque, headless centipede-like creatures that crawled on limbs made of finger bones.
Thankfully, I was promptly distracted from that dreadful sight by Hash'ak'gik's continued attempts to kill me, and was too busy staying alive to think about this latest piece of nightmare fuel. I knew I couldn't keep it up for long, but all I could do was hope whatever the two witches behind me were doing would work, and quickly enough to save my miserable hide.
Areelu had underestimated how powerful Jurgen really was. She didn't think anyone had truly realized the depths of the psychic potential of Cain's aide, except perhaps for the Warmaster himself. The fact Jurgen was casually throwing around the kind of psychic manifestations which would require a focus item of great power for most psykers to even attempt should have been all the hints required, but the way he carried himself and fought with a las-weapon had distracted her.
Now, however, as Jurgen channelled raw Warp energy into her staff, the two of them holding the artefact up together, she was faced with incontrovertible evidence. She wondered whether Jurgen had always been that powerful, or if his proximity to Cain had caused his psychic rating to increase over the years due to the favor of the Dark Gods.
In addition, the flow of power had spiked when Cain had interposed himself between them and Hash'ak'gik, risking his life without hesitation to protect them. Areelu wasn't the kind of woman to swoon, and this was hardly the time for it anyway, but she had to admit the Liberator had impressed her yet again.
Whether Jurgen's sudden increase in, for lack of a better term, psychic output, was due to the added motivation of seeing his lord in danger, or because the Dark Gods themselves had taken notice of the Warmaster's heroism and sought to reward it, Areelu wasn't certain, but it didn't matter right now (although she was going to investigate that question later, because it sounded very interesting either way).
Right now, as the energies within the staff reached critical mass, Areelu cast her mind down mental paths she had carved through her own mind over her decades of following Tzeentch. As she was no born psyker herself, the only way Areelu could manipulate the currents of the Sea of Souls was through rigorous discipline, and by following the metaphysical grooves left in the Empyrean by untold magi before her. One mistake, one misstep, and the powers she sought to wield would destroy her instead. It was a ridiculously dangerous path, only slightly less so than the life of an unbound psyker (since she could stop and step away from the Warp for a time, whereas they were always linked to the Sea of Souls).
Blood dripped from her mouth and nose as she continued the incantation, for all such sorcery was, at its core, an attempt by mortals to impose order on Chaos. As such, it was by nature imperfect, and Areelu's body was paying the price for her temerity.
But this was a path she'd walked willingly in order to save her daughter, and if there was one thing the Rogue Trader had in spades, it was willpower. She had sworn to assist Cain in this battle, and now and always, Areelu Van Yastobaal would keep her promises. So she ignored the pain, knowing that any damage could be healed by the Panacea as soon as this was done – but only if they won.
She spoke the words of banishment, pouring every bit of the gathered power into them. Her mind extended through the staff, and she saw the torn fabric of the Materium where Hash'ak'gik had punched a hole through in order to manifest his essence on Cassandron. She saw, too, how ragged the veil between dimensions had become, not just here, but across the entire planet. Cassandron wasn't a Daemon World yet, but like Harold had warned, it was well on its way to becoming one.
But a gateway could be used both ways, and as Areelu finished her incantation by speaking nine of the names of Tzeentch she had learned during her studies, she turned that simple principle to her advantage.
The many Immaterial rifts through which the daemonic reinforcements Hash'ak'gik had summoned were pouring through suddenly pulsed and fused together, becoming one single, immense Warp portal. Areelu, whose mind had been opened to the secret truths of the universe by her occult studies, caught glimpses of the things that dwelled on the other side – vast, unspeakable shapes in nameless colors, endlessly surging and retreating, pushing against one another in an endless struggle.
As if caught by a gravity well that only affected him, Hash'ak'gik's back end lifted in the air toward the portal.
"NO !" screamed the Thrice-Damned, letting go of his weapon to claw at the bony ground in a desperate attempt to keep himself in place. "NO, NO, NO, NO, NOOOOOOO !"
Taking advantage of his foe's distraction, Cain strode forth, his armor sparking from the damage it had suffered as he somehow single-handedly held the Daemon Prince at bay, and swung his black blade in a horizontal arc that severed Hash'ak'gik's hands at the wrist.
With one final shriek, full of hatred and terror, the Daemon Prince of Nurgle was dragged back into the Empyrean, his incarnated form immediately ripped asunder by the anarchic energies which held sway in that dimension.
"CURSE YOU, CAIN ! I SWEAR YOU –" he howled, right before his head passed through the gateway and dissolved in the kaleidoscope of madness that was visible through the hole in reality.
Without taking a breath to celebrate her and Jurgen's exploit, Areelu immediately began to recite an incantation to seal the portal, but the words turned to ash and died on her tongue, as she saw what now stood on the other side, looming over Cain.
Jon was certain that he was going mad. As he kept fighting, kept smashing monsters with his power hammer, he couldn't help but think him going insane was inevitable.
After all, how could anyone face the horrors he was seeing and not go mad ? The Broodspawns were bad enough, but the daemons – many of which somehow looked even worse than the ones they'd encountered in the Nergalite lair under Hive Primus – were nightmares given form.
Yes, you'd need to be some kind of monster yourself not to go crazy. It was only the thought of Lizbet, of his promise to come back to his wife, which kept Jon fighting instead of freezing in place and being torn to pieces by the horde.
Then Hash'ak'gik was cast down into the hell from which it had come, and the daemons – which, by this point, were all that was left of the enemy, the last Nergalite having been felled some time before – followed suit. They moaned and shrieked as they were swallowed by the rift, and for a moment, Jon dared to hope that this was over.
But as Hash'ak'gik's body dissolved and his essence was dragged back into the Empyrean, another face appeared in the great breach between realms. It was …
It was …
It was huge, larger than a hive-city. It was ugly, in a way even the worst of the Brood and their infernal allies couldn't compare to. It was powerful, more powerful than anything the Vampire had ever seen, heard or dreamt of. It was a nightmare more horrible than what happened on the day of Jon's wedding, except it didn't and would never end, would never relent, would never leave even the hint of a possibility of things getting better.
It was, Jon knew in his heart of hearts, Nergal, and it was smiling. But there was no joy in it, only the pretence of it, a facsimile as false as the immortality promised to those who swore allegiance to it. It was a bitter and hateful thing that enjoyed only the suffering of those it tricked into worshipping it, an endless downward spiral that sought to draw all things into its spiteful embrace.
It was looking at Cain, and in that moment, Jon Skellan had never been grateful for anything more in his entire existence than the fact it wasn't looking at him.
CAIN, the visage of Decay said, and its voice made Jon want to puke, to weep, to start screaming and never, ever stop. Yet the Liberator stood his ground in the face of this horror.
"Nurgle," Cain replied, his voice betraying no fear, no hesitation – only cold wrath and contempt.
It smiled, showing teeth which were the gravestones of worlds :
INEVITABLE, it said, and the word buried itself into Jon's mind like a rusted, filth-covered knife. He fell to his knees, weapons slipping from his fingers – but he couldn't take his gaze away from the horror.
"Liar," declared the Warmaster, and fired his wrist-mounted gun into the face of the horror.
It didn't do anything, of course, but Jon felt that, in this case, the intent behind the gesture mattered more than its effect. And as the visage dissipated with one final bark of laughter, before the tear in reality imploded with a crack of displaced air, Jon thought he could hear a hint of frustration behind the mockery.
Silence fell in the wake of abruptly ended battle. Everyone had fallen down when the manifestation of Nergal had appeared, even the Astartes and Lady Akivasha – everyone but Cain, of course. Slowly, they rose to their feet, shaking off the paralysis that had befallen them when the … the thing had shown itself, and, at least in Jon's case, doing their very best to suppress that memory.
The two unaugmented humans in their group took out Panacea injectors and immediately used them on themselves, as did the two Space Marines, the one in red handing one to the other. A few seconds later, they started moving much more freely, and Jon felt distantly jealous, as his own regeneration was taking a lot more time to repair the various injuries he'd received during the fight – and the resulting thirst wasn't helping, either.
"Harold, this is Cain," Jon heard the Warmaster speak. "Hash'ak'gik has been dealt with. What's the situation on the rest of the planet ? Did it work ?"
Thanks to his enhanced hearing, Jon was able to hear the response :
"We're detecting a steep decrease in Empyric energies planet-wide, my lord. The Broodspawns are still fighting, but their daemonic allies are already starting to discorporate."
"Of course. It'd have been too easy if they'd all just fallen dead the moment the Thrice-Damned was banished." Cain sighed. "We can only hope Emeli is able to save as many of the poor bastards' souls from Nurgle as possible."
Wait, what ? Like everyone else, Jon had assumed the Broodspawns' souls were damned, lost to their foul god forever more. Did Cain really think they could be saved ? And who was this 'Emeli' he was talking about ?
"What about our extraction ?" continued Cain. "I don't think we'll be able to make it to the surface in anything less than a few weeks, and I'm afraid we didn't pack nearly enough rations."
"Help is already on its way, Lord Liberator," assured the magus. "Stay where you are, please."
"That won't be a problem. Thank you, Harold."
"Of course, my lord. If I may, congratulations on your victory."
"It was a team effort, but thanks. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to check on how everyone's doing."
As the group began to gather, having miraculously not lost a single member despite the overwhelming odds they had faced, Jon had many, many questions he burned to ask. But he also had a feeling none of the answers would help him in the short term, and might end up bringing him more trouble than they were worth. So, as he wearily made his way toward his allies, he instead asked the most pressing question on his mind :
"Anyone got any spare blood ? That was thirsty work."
Hash'ak'gik's first realization upon returning to awareness was that he was surrounded by metal in all direction. He blinked, and his second realization was that he now only had two eyes.
He looked down at himself, and froze in horror at the third and most terrible realization. Instead of the mighty, glorious body Nergal had bestowed upon him, he was a barely pubescent human male. He raised a trembling hand to his head, and instead of the great horns that had crowned him as a Prince of the Warp, he felt only soft curls.
"Hello, little Armand," purred a voice that seemed to come from all around him.
"My name is Hash'ak'gik !" he roared, or at least tried to. The voice that came out of his small, frail frame was puny and weak, and he despised it.
"That is the Name that Nurgle bestowed upon you, but it isn't your True Name, is it ? Merely a mask to hide your true nature. Armand. Little Armand, too weak and frail to fight in the war that consumed everything around you. So afraid, he begged the one family he'd left to share the Gift with him, even though he had done nothing to deserve it, only to regret it as the centuries passed and betray everyone you knew and offer up the very sibling who granted your request to Decay."
"How ?! How do you know this ?!"
There had been no witnesses to his actions, apart from those who had become members of the Brood afterward. He had made sure of it, knowing that even his mantle of Regent and his status as brother to the mightiest of the Ruthven Coven's Paragons wouldn't have protected him if his intentions had been discovered.
"All things are possible through the power of love," replied the voice, and there was something in her tone – a hint of an obsession so strong, it went beyond madness and circled back to a terrible form of sanity – that sent shivers down the memory of a mortal spine he now possessed. "It took me quite a lot of work to uncover the truth, but the Ancients of Cassandron still remember you for what you once were, even though they erased all traces of your previous existence, seeking to expunge the shame of your betrayal. I reached into their dreams of blood, and plucked the knowledge from their slumbering minds."
"Who are you ?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
"I am Emeli, little Armand, and you are mine to do with as I please."
Emeli. He knew that name, from his time in the Garden. Gurug’ath had named her when he had finally made his way back to Great Nergal’s domain after his own defeat at Cain’s hands. And then, more recently, she had been the one leading the Legions of Excess against Hash’ak’gik’s own daemonic hosts, fighting him in the Empyrean. Her efforts had failed to keep him from manifesting, but now, with his hold on Cassandron broken and his essence freshly cast back into the Sea of Souls, he was weaker than he had ever been.
An unfamiliar emotion, which he eventually recognized as fear, crept on him as he realized just how much trouble he was in.
"I cannot destroy you, much as I want to," there was a sudden surge of blackest anger in the words, before the voice returned to her sweet mockery. "But I can imprison you here for the rest of eternity."
"You cannot do this !" screamed the Thrice-Damned. "Nergal won't allow it !"
"Oh, poor Armand," Emeli laughed. "Haven't you realized already ? Nurgle has abandoned you. You had already failed him once, and the only reason you were elevated to daemonhood was because the God of Decay foresaw that my beloved Ciaphas' path would lead him to Cassandron, and he needed a weapon to aim at his direction. Now that you've failed even in that, the only reason Nurgle would want you freed from my clutches is so that he could punish you himself."
No, she was lying, or just – just wrong. He had served Nergal faithfully ! He'd done everything his god had asked of him, and when he'd failed, he'd done his penance and been forgiven. He would suffer again, yes, as was only right, but then Great Nergal would give him another chance to spread His glory in the Materium.
"Your god had his chance to recover your essence when you were banished," Emeli mercilessly continued, crushing that hope. "Instead, he attempted to scare my beloved – in vain, I might add. That is how important to him you are, little Armand. He discarded you just for a chance to make Ciaphas fear him."
No. No, it couldn't be. Everything he had done to earn Nergal's favor, to escape the miserable stasis of the very body he was now back into … it couldn't have all been for nothing.
"But don't worry. I wouldn't be so cruel as to leave you trapped all alone without company."
The wall in front of him parted, and a monster stepped through, stopping right in front of the disgraced Daemon Prince – not because it wanted to, but because of a silver chain wrapped around its neck which held it in place.
The beast was huge, especially compared to Arm – no, Hash'ak'gik's small stature. It was naked, revealing ivory-white skin and hideous, wiry muscles. Its upper limbs were a pair of black, bat-like wings, while its lower limbs ended in clawed feet, but it was the monster's skull that drew the Thrice-Damned's attention the most. Warped and twisted by bestial hunger it may be, but he still recognized it as that of Mannfred Volkihar, the fool he'd manipulated and used as a sacrifice to bring about his return.
"It turned out a little of Mannfred's soul survived your summoning," gloated Emeli. "Truly, you must admire his resilience, if nothing else. Of course, his intellect didn't survive the process, but when I realized it had come along with your essence due to how your sacrificial ritual intermingled the two, well. I just had to do something with it. Have fun !"
And with that, the presence of the Daemon Princess of Slaanesh vanished, leaving Hash'ak'gik alone with the bestial specter of Mannfred, who stared at the reason for his hideous demise with a hunger that had nothing to do with revenge – and, somehow, that made it worse.
The silver chain started to fade away, and Armand turned and ran, hoping to lose the monster in the labyrinth long enough to figure out a way of escaping this predicament. He didn't find any, for the labyrinth had been built to be as inescapable as the maze of madness in which the Brood of Nergal had been trapped by his betrayal.
And though his rejuvenated body was weak, deprived even of the strength granted to the weakest and most newly-Turned Vampire, he still ran for a long, long time, driven by fear. But eventually Mannfred caught up to him and ripped him to pieces – and, stripped of his Talents and of Nergal's blessings, Armand felt every injury in full. Then he woke up back where he'd started, his spiritual body perfectly healed. For a moment, he merely laid still, until he heard the grunts of Mannfred in the distance, echoing across the twisted corridors, and the hunt started again.
And again. And again. And again …
The thought that Mannfred would be horrified by his transformation was a poor comfort to the being who had betrayed his Coven to the God of Decay in order to escape his eternally immature body. But then, Emeli hadn't intended to offer any comfort to one who'd come so close to truly harming her beloved Ciaphas.
Notes:
AN : This chapter was brought to you earlier than anticipated by the announcement of Soul Reaver's remaster, which I saw as a sign of the Muse.
As I said in the last Darth Cain chapter, action scenes aren't exactly my forte, but I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and advice on how to improve. And yes, Mannfred's transformation is basically a Vargheist from Warhammer Fantasy / Age of Sigmar. It seemed only fitting, and I really like the design of these monsters for some reason.
Next chapter will wrap up the Cassandron mini-arc, which, as someone on the SB thread reminded me, is only a sidequest in the greater Torredon Arc. But then, Cain wanting to ignore the main quest to go on a seemingly safe sidequest that ends up being absurdly dangerous is very in-character for him. That chapter will also contain bits of the lore of the Covens I made up - like the list of the Covens, their respective Talents, and what those are capable of. The origin of the Vampires, which was teased at in Malicia's POV, will be something to explore further in the story.
The next chapters of AYGWM and DCRSL should be finished soon, but I make no promises. I have finally gone back to playing Baldur's Gate 3, and it is consuming my free time at an alarming rate.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 34: Chapter 33
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Slowly, but with gathering momentum, Cassandron pulled itself away from the abyss it had so nearly plummeted into due to Hash'ak'gik's schemes.
With the fall of their infernal master, the Broodspawns lost their daemonic allies as well as their preternatural coordination. They reverted to the bestial mindset the Covens were used to, and to which their tactics and weaponry were well-suited. One by one, the Nergalite uprisings were put down, and one by one, the hive-cities of Cassandron called to their sisters and declared themselves victorious. The surviving Broodspawns fled back to the depths from which they'd risen, pursued by an army of wrathful hunters, but while many would be tracked down and slain in the coming weeks, few dared to hope that the scourge of Nergal's Brood would be wiped out completely.
Meanwhile, through the wonders of the ansible network, the population of Slawkenberg had been informed of the operations ongoing on Cassandron nearly in real-time, the only delay being caused by the Liberation Council needing to ensure the news were safe for public consumption. As past experience had shown, the Rotten One could spread his poison through even the most innocuous of knowledge, and Chief Clerk Jafar had also been told to keep the nature of the Covens a secret for now, as per the Vampires' request. No outright lie would be told to the masses, for such deceit was the way of the Imperium, but state secrets were still an accepted part of life in the Protectorate.
While the ansibles delivered a treasure trove of information, the divination rites of the Tzeentchian and Slaaneshi magi revealed even more. They knew that the Liberator had not just defeated a Daemon Prince of hated Nurgle with his allies, but faced the God of Decay himself when he had briefly shown himself to threaten Cain with his terrible vengeance. And while they were awed, they weren't surprised : to them, this was simply further confirmation of their glorious leader's greatness.
Soon, the news spread across Slawkenberg, and celebrations began immediately. In the temples of the various creeds, prayers of thanks were given for the Liberator's triumph over the hated Rotten One, while alcohol flowed in taverns and soldiers whose units hadn't been selected to accompany Cain commiserated over their having missed the action at Cassandron before throwing themselves back into training with renewed vigor. In the church of the God-Emperor in Cainopolis, Father Anthony knelt before the stone statue of the Master of Mankind and silently prayed for the Liberator's safety.
And, in the chambers of the Liberation Palace, where only those who were most trusted by the royal-in-all-but-name family of Slawkenberg were allowed, one girl who was much more than she seemed clutched her father's old cape and vowed that one day, she'd stand by his side as he fought against the galaxy's evils.
If there is one good thing about fighting a Daemon Prince of Nurgle before enduring the scrutiny of the Rotten One himself, it is that, in the vanishingly unlikely case you survive, nobody will think less of you when you ask to rest afterwards, regardless of the reputation you've unwittingly accrued.
And I definitely needed rest, that much was blatantly obvious. Black spots danced in my vision, and no amount of recaf could banish the bones-deep exhaustion that had crept up on me with the inevitability of the sun setting on any world that wasn't Adumbria.
Facing off against Nurgle, even that small, infinitesimal fragment which had been visible through the rift to the Warp, had been enough to give me enough heart attacks and other ailments that the Liberator Armor's supply of Panacea had been completely empty by the time the opening had mercifully shut. One more second, and the others would have needed to pry my twitching, dying form out of the armor and inject me with their own stock before I succumbed – if I was lucky.
Much as I didn't want to dwell on how close I'd come to death, the whole incident was a sobering reminder of just how powerful the Dark God I had somehow ended up declaring the enemy of the Protectorate really was – not that I had really forgotten, despite my best efforts to the contrary. Still, looking back, I couldn't say I would change that if I could : the Liberation Council's shared hatred of the God of Decay had done a lot to keep my so-called subordinates from turning on one another (and more importantly on me), as well as provided a target other than the Imperium.
Of course, that wasn't how my companions had seen it. In their eyes, I had bravely put myself between Hash'ak'gik and our two witches, then punched the Daemon Prince back into the Empyrean before shooting Nurgle himself in the face after talking back to him. How people who had demonstrated their skills and intellect could be so stupid when it came to me, I still had no idea.
Jurgen, Areelu and even Hektor had ended up having to give blood to our Vampire allies to keep them standing once the dust had settled on the bone temple. Akivasha especially had drained her reserves badly in the fight against Hash'ak'gik, as she'd needed to use every trick she'd learned during her long life to match the Thrice-Damned. While there was something obscurely reassuring in the knowledge that she couldn't pull those kinds of moves for long, it was clear my hopes of winning through attrition had been foolish, which I really should have known from the start given we were fighting a Daemon Prince of Nurgle.
She also hadn't looked very pleased when she'd drunk from the others, sending glances in my direction – but it was clear I wasn't in any state to give blood, and she hadn't pressed the matter.
I'd been worried we would be stuck underground for days (something I'd have been more or less comfortable in other circumstances, but not in such a state and with such thirsty company). But Harold and Tesilon-Kappa had come down from orbit to lead the rescue efforts in person and between the Tzeentchian magi's divination rituals, the chief borg's engineering skills, and me leading our party out of the bone temple and up the passages the Nergalites had used to navigate their subterranean kingdom, they had been able to dig their way down to us in just a few hours.
Within moments of my return to Hive Primus, Jurgen had passed along a request for a meeting from the ambassador of every one of the six other Covens. Not in the mood to receive them all one by one, I had summoned them all together in a room provided by Vlad, with the Regent himself in attendance, along with his wife Isabella and Akivasha herself. I hadn't tried to conceal my exhaustion, which had helped ensure that the meeting hadn't gotten bogged down, as nobody present was willing to risk drawing my ire by keeping me awake longer than absolutely necessary.
The end result of the meeting was a set of two separate treaties. One of them, which would be made public, was that Cassandron would join the Protectorate, in return for access to the Panacea STC and the borgs' help in solving the hive-world's food supply issue. That meant allowing the heretical faiths of the Liberation Council to start proselytizing, as well as beginning reforms to bring the hive-world in compliance with the standards of the Liberation when it came to the treatment of the lower classes – a process I was confident would take decades, even if the Covens cooperated fully, which in my opinion was far from guaranteed.
The other treaty was between the Protectorate and the Covens themselves, and would remain a state secret until the Vampires felt comfortable revealing their existence. There was an entire section left to be determined about who exactly would be told of the blood-drinking mutants' existence, but that was for the bureaucrats to hash out later. The meat of the treaty, and the one which worried me the most, was that each Coven had pledged a contingent of Vampire warriors to accompany me when the fleet left Cassandron and went back to fighting pirates (which, after the nightmare that this supposedly tranquil detour to help prevent mass starvation had been, a perverse part of me couldn't help but look forward to).
Since we'd have to feed these Vampires, I had asked that the Covens only send us the most elite of the warriors they could spare, making up some story about wanting to show the galaxy only the best of our new allies to pave the ground for their eventual reveal. How exactly were these Vampires supposed to fight without breaking the very secrecy which the Covens had asked for in the treaties wasn't clear to me : I presumed we would have to pretend they were all a very specific kind of psyker, or that their equipment was much more advanced than it appeared. But, to be honest, I was too exhausted to think about it as much as the question probably warranted.
Each Vampire group would be accompanied by a PDF detachment, taken from whatever passed for the elite of their respective hive-cities. I didn't have high hopes for the soldiers : they weren't bad for PDFs, but their equipment was undeniably inferior to that of the USA. Still, a few thousands more bodies to put between myself and the pirates of the Torredon Gap were always welcome, and we had more than enough space to accommodate them aboard the fleet.
At some point during the discussions, Jon Skellan had said his goodbyes, slipped outside and gone back to his family in the underhive with his brand new armor and weapons, leaving the spires and the Volkihar Coven's high-ranking business behind – thus proving himself to be the smartest man I had met since leaving the Schola Progenium. I wished I could follow him and disappear in the underhive as well, but alas, that path was closed to me. All I could do was shake his hands as he left and wish him and his family all the best.
With all the urgent business I could think of handled or handed off to someone else, I finally let myself be dragged to a room provided by the Volkihar servants by a fussing Jurgen and put to bed. In my state of exhaustion, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. My last thought before unconsciousness claimed me was that I was pretty certain the Emperor would approve of what I'd done on Cassandron.
Yes, I'd allied myself with a race of blood-drinking mutants, but I'd done it to fight a Nurglite plague which might well have equalled the one that'd brewed on Adumbria in terms of how dangerous to the Imperium it might become. Surely me doing the job His servants were apparently too busy to do and striking a blow against the schemes of one of the Ruinous Powers had to count for something.
The spires of Hive Primus were abuzz with activity. Though the Brood of Nergal had been put down, the rulers of Cassandron still needed to deal with the aftermath. There were entire sections of the hives in need of cleansing, and the total death toll had yet to been fully tallied, while Vampires who had displayed their prowess in battle immediately started capitalizing on their exploits to increase their status in the Covens' endless struggle for dominance.
At the moment, however, Isabella Volkihar didn't care about the thousand plots and schemes which kept the wheels of Vampire society turning. All she cared about was that her beloved husband had come back from what, despite all the confidence everyone involved had shown, they'd both been afraid would prove to be a suicide mission.
The married couple sat on an embroidered couch, resting against each other, their fingers intertwined in their laps. Their personal quarters were located near the top of Hive Primus' highest spire, near the ones reserved for the human Governor. Much of the space was taken up by art pieces they'd collected over the centuries, with the centerpiece being a painting of the day of their wedding, where they'd both stood under the sun in a display of their mastery of the Defiance Talent.
With mirrors no longer reflecting their image, that painting was even more important to the two Vampires than it would've been to a human couple – though it was far from being the only portrait either of them had commissioned over the centuries.
"You should have seen him, dear," said Vlad. "He charged straight at that monster, without hesitation, while the rest of us – yes, even Lady Akivasha ! – were frozen in place."
Isabella smiled at her husband's enthusiasm as he continued to recount the tale of his adventure. Now that it was over, she could enjoy the story, but from the moment Vlad had vanished in a flash of unearthly light as the teleportation ritual was completed to when she'd been informed the attack party had succeeded without a single casualty, she had been a veritable ball of nerves. Things had gotten to the point she'd given genuine consideration to joining the fray herself : while she wasn't a soldier like her husband, she knew how to use her Talents to defend herself.
Fortunately, victory had come before she'd gone that far, and now Vlad was back where he belonged : at her side. Still, there was no denying that things would change on Cassandron in the coming nights, no matter how much Vampiric nature, even more so than the Human one, rejected changes to its established routine and familiar patterns.
After the last war against the Broodspawns, the Covens had managed to maintain their cover by swearing the soldiers involved to secrecy, through a combination of threats, bribery and Mesmerism. Few enough had survived the scourging of Hive Septimus that this had been a viable option, especially with the promise of Turning dangled before the worthiest survivors – such as Isabella's dear husband. The Nergalite attacks across the planet had been blamed on a mutant uprising, and the truth of their daemonic allegiance kept secret.
That option wasn't viable this time, as the infernal allies of the Brood had been sighted at their side all over the hive-world. Nearly every PDF soldier who'd seen action in the last few days had also seen a daemon of Nergal (or Nurgle, but honestly, who cared).
Which, according to their Protectorate allies, was going to be an ongoing problem, as the human mind was a fragile thing, and such contact with the minions of Decay could leave lingering wounds – wounds which, if left untreated, would fester and become a seedbed for corruption. Fortunately, the Slawkenberg magi also had a series of tests and treatments to share, based on their own encounters with the servants of the Dark God of Decay.
Which brought things back to how things would have to change if Cassandron was to survive, let alone prosper. In the interests of keeping their existence hidden from the rest of the Imperium, the Covens had learned more about the Inquisition than most – certainly more than the Holy Ordos would be comfortable with if they knew about it.
And if the Emperor's hunting hounds ever learned that a Daemon Prince had manifested on Cassandron, however briefly, while the PDF fought a combined mutant and daemonic horde, it was almost guaranteed that they would subject the planet to Exterminatus. The very knowledge of the existence of daemons was ground for summary execution in the Inquisition's eyes, after all. Isabella had read reports of entire Imperial Guard Regiments being wiped out after successful operations against the forces of the Ruinous Powers, with their very existence and legacy being burned from the Imperial records to conceal the truth.
What had happened on Cassandron was several magnitudes worse, and it was clear from talking with the Protectorate's magi (as well as the few psykers kept in the Covens' personal employ, just to double-check – not that Isabella doubted the word of their stalwart allies, of course) that there would be no hiding the fact that a daemon incursion had nearly taken place on Cassandron. The psychic resonance of Hash'ak'gik's summoning and defeat, as well as whatever it was that'd happened right after (Vlad had tried to describe it to Isabella, but for once, words had failed her husband, and when she'd seen how distressed the mere recollection of it was making him, she hadn't pressed him) had echoed in the Immaterium with enough force that not even the Warp storms shrouding much of Torredon would prevent it from being detected by the Imperium.
Even in the miraculous case that Cassandron was judged clean of daemonic taint without requiring purging on a level that would effectively destroy the planet's economy, such a judgment would only come at the end of a prolonged investigation which was sure to discover the Covens' existence. Keeping the peons from discovering the truth about their secret masters was already going to be difficult enough with all the PDF soldiers who'd directly witnessed the use of Talents against the Broodspawns : the Covens were under no illusion their millennia-long masquerade would withstand the close scrutiny of the Holy Ordos.
Thus, it was clear that the Covens' best chances of long-term survival laid in binding their fate with that of the Cainite Protectorate and ensuring the rest of the Torredon Subsector followed suit. Hopefully, the Imperium would remain too preoccupied by the many other threats besieging the Damocles Gulf to spare the enormous amount of resources that would be required in reclaiming the Torredon Gap.
In the meantime, the benefits to Cassandron were obvious, immediate, and considerable. The distribution of nutrient paste to the population had already started, as had the construction of new recycling machines in every hive. These would prevent the mass starvation that had loomed over the hive-world's horizon since the collapse of Torredon's trade, and the Cainite tech-priests were already working with Cassandron's own Martian adepts to improve and expand the few gardens and other 'natural' food production facilities present on the planet.
Along with foodstuffs, the Protectorate had also brought the wonders of the Panacea with them. Freely shared with the PDF, the miraculous substance had saved the lives of thousands of soldiers wounded in battle with the Brood of Nergal : not only could it heal all wounds, it could even prevent the contagion from taking root – although only if it was injected soon enough, and even then, it wasn't a sure thing, for the curse of the Broodspawns was no mere disease.
Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, Isabella wondered how much of this had been planned by Cain. She didn't think the Liberator had somehow orchestrated the rise of the Broodspawns and Hash'ak'gik's return : his opposition to the Brood's foul deity was too firmly established for that to be the case. The idea of a false flag operation was utterly ludicrous : regardless of Cain's favor with the Dark Gods, the notion that one of them would play along to such a scheme was unthinkable, even with Isabella's limited knowledge and understanding of the Ruinous Powers.
But the possibility that Cain had learned of the Thrice-Damned's machinations was another matter entirely. Isabella had already suspected that the Warmaster had known of the threat to Cassandron in advance, and events since had only reinforced her suspicions. Even if the man himself didn't possess oracular abilities (which was far from certain), he had people like Sieur Harold in his employ who most assuredly did, and could have given him forewarning.
In all the years she'd spent wandering the galaxy, first as a grieving, vengeful mother, then as the Rogue Trader of the Van Yastobaal Dynasty and a secret heretic, Areelu had never fought a battle like the one she'd just survived.
She'd come face to face with daemons before, but those had been lesser aspects of the Ruinous Powers. Horrifying to the common folk, yes, and disturbing even to her, but dispatched easily enough through precise spellwork – or, barring that, the application of overwhelming firepower.
Hash'ak'gik had been something else entirely. The thought that the monster they had fought had once been human, before becoming first a Vampire and then a Daemon Prince, was one Areelu still struggled to fully comprehend. Her knowledge of the Warp only made her more aware of the seeming impossibility of such a transformation, even though she knew it had happened numerous times before, as the Dark Gods rewarded their most successful champions with apotheosis – both so that they would continue to serve them forever in the Great Game and, the Rogue Trader suspected, as a lure to draw other ambitious souls to dedicate themselves to the Ruinous Powers with the promise of immortality and eternal power.
"Tell me, Suture," Areelu addressed the tall, armored giant who stood next to the door, ever-vigilant. "Have you ever seen someone akin to our dear Warmaster ?"
In her experience, extracting information about Suture's past before coming into her service was like pulling teeth out of a grox during mating season, but the scarred Astartes could be coaxed into sharing pearls of wisdom from time to time that, while never revealing anything about his own history, hinted at a long and eventful life.
"A few times," replied Suture. "Rarely among standard humans, though. It takes a particular kind of hubris to walk the tightrope he's merrily dancing on."
Areelu raised an eyebrow at her transhuman protector's choice of words, and gestured for him to elaborate.
"He has the favor of three of the Four, and after today's events, I think it's safe to say he also has the eternal enmity of the fourth," Suture explained. "That's a dangerous path to walk. Cain isn't the first to try to balance the favor of the Dark Gods to his advantage. Many have tried before him, and apart from Abaddon himself, they've all either died or ended up serving one of the Four above the others. And I'm not convinced the Despoiler won't go the same way as all the others eventually – he's just too big a prize for the Dark Gods to let any of the others win him over."
"Cain only has to balance between three, though," Areelu pointed out.
"Yes, and as I said, every servant of Nurgle in the Segmentum will be gunning for him because of that," countered Suture. "Setting up a bidding war between the gods for your soul sounds nice in theory, but the danger is that you have to keep being worth the effort on their part. The Gods will test him, tempt him, and if he fails or stumbles at any point, they will destroy him, completely and utterly, as an object lesson to the next bright spark who gets the same idea in their head. It is their way, and they will not change."
"What Cain and this Protectorate of his have achieved is remarkable," Suture allowed. "And his bravery and strength are undeniable – even with that armor of his, I don't know of many Astartes who could have challenged Hash'ak'gik like he did. But might alone isn't enough to keep the Gods satisfied, and that's not taking the Imperium into account. Liberating Slawkenberg was one thing; saving Adumbria from certain death another. But stealing an entire Subsector, even one the High Lords had given up on ? When they finally hear about it, there will be a reaction, you can bet on it."
It was all true. There was a reason Areelu valued Suture for more than his martial prowess : his advice was brutally pragmatic, and he never hesitated to give it to her, even when he knew it wasn't what she wanted to hear. In the life of a Rogue Trader, such honesty could be more valuable than adamantium, and it had helped save Areelu's life several times in the past.
And yet, this time, Areelu knew she couldn't heed the unspoken warning hidden under her bodyguard's words.
"I owe him," Areelu murmured. "He saved Lucia."
She had called her daughter over the vox, once before joining Cain on the expedition to Hive Septimus, and once again right after returning to Hive Primus. She hadn't told her beloved child what was going on, of course – she didn't want to scare her, if only because Worldwounder might not have survived Lucia panicking without her mother being her to calm her down.
"He didn't ask for anything in exchange," Suture pointed out, having heard her words without issue thanks to his superhuman hearing.
"And ? Should I merely accept his generosity and not do anything to repay it ?" Areelu snapped back. "I think not. Even before I seized the Warrant of Trade over the corpses of all other claimants, I made a point of keeping my word and paying back my debt. And the debt I owe Cain is more than I can ever repay, because he saved my daughter's life."
Suture inclined his head, saying nothing. The bond between parent and child was one that few Space Marines could understand, Areelu knew. Most of them forgot their childhood during the psycho-indoctrination which turned strong, healthy male children into transhuman killing machines fanatically loyal to their Chapter, and the closest thing an Astartes could claim to a father figure were the Primarchs, who had long since vanished from the galaxy – and, based on what Areelu had parsed from the legends, hadn't exactly been shining examples of parenthood while they'd been around either.
"I promised to assist the Protectorate in liberating the Torredon Gap from the shadow cartels, and I will keep that promise," the Rogue Trader said, more calmly. "Once that's done, if we're still alive, then it will be time to consider what form our alliance with the Protectorate will take. But there will be an alliance, Suture, you can be sure of that."
"As you say, Rogue Trader. As you say."
In a way, Areelu reflected, she really had become a Rogue Trader : she was putting the interests of the Van Yastobaal Dynasty over everything else. It was just that, in her case, her Dynasty was limited to herself and Lucia, her daughter and heir.
And, yes, some of her distant relatives might argue with her about that due to her areas of research and the company she kept. But they weren't the ones with the Warrant.
Sat on her throne, Akivasha Volkihar, Ancient and Paragon of her Coven, contemplated recent events. Sensing her mood, the younger Vampires had deserted the room, leaving her alone to think.
So few of her peers remained now. Not even immortality could last forever, she had learned : she'd lost her contemporaries one by one to war, treachery, suicide, and endless slumber. Yet somehow, against all the odds – she certainly wouldn't have bet on it herself all these ages ago – she endured.
Akivasha was old, older than the Warp storms which had defined the Gap since the Imperium had claimed it. Her memory of that time were distant, obscured by the fog of ages. She remembered a war that had left scars across the entire Torredon Gap, glimpses of battles that made the Broodspawn uprising look like a minor skirmish in comparison.
For all his many mistakes, Hash'ak'gik had been correct in one thing : back then, she had indeed been Turned because of her beauty, by one of the First Generation Vampires looking for a companion. But, like everyone else, she'd been forced to learn to fight in order to survive, and come into her Talents in an age of war and strife that had consumed all that had come before.
None of the First Generation remained now. They had been targeted by the enemy above all others, Akivasha remembered that much. Her own Maker had died saving her life and the lives of millions, buying time for … for something. She didn't remember what exactly, just like she only had the faintest impressions of her Maker left. She knew they had loved her, and presumably she had loved them as well, but little else – not even their name.
The Covens believed that the Ancients kept the truth of the Vampires' origins from them as a means of control, but they were mistaken. The truth was, the Ancients didn't want their descendants to realize just how much they no longer remembered, out of both shame that they'd forgotten something so important, and fear that their children's children would turn on them when they realized their Vampire parents were as fallible as their Human ones after all.
Even the present became difficult to hold onto after long enough. The years faded into one another, and the hour of a Governor's coronation seemed to happen right at the same time as his period of mourning. When Akivasha had last gone into slumber, she'd struggled to distinguish the centuries that had passed since the fall of the Ruthven Coven – that one event, at last, had inscribed itself into her memory.
But now, the fog had lifted. She was fully aware of her surroundings, of the last few days, and when she thought of the future, it didn't stretch out in her mind's eye in an endless repeat of the past.
In fighting the Thrice-Damned, Akivasha had felt alive for the first time in millennia. She had been pushed to her absolute limits, and had been found wanting : if not for the sorcerous intervention of her allies, the Thrice-Damned would have destroyed her there and then.
Despite the danger, despite how close she had come to true, final death, it had been … exhilarating. And that battle had only been the latest apex of her new lease on life, which had begun right when she'd awakened in her sarcophagus, driven out of her torpor by the Liberator's vitae dripping down from where he fought the Broodspawns.
Cain's blood had tasted achingly familiar, and it was that fact as much as the strength contained within the crimson liquid which had awakened Akivasha. She remembered a time when every human on Cassandron had possessed similar vitae, healthy and clean of any taint or pollution.
This was the true reason why the Ancients slept while the Regents ruled, beyond sheer boredom : the thin blood of Cassandron's current inhabitants simply couldn't sustain them. Awakening them from their slumber required days of work, distilling the blood of hundreds of people in order to produce something potent enough, and the same was required to keep them fed afterwards. It wasn't sustainable, not without the risk of drawing attention as thousands disappeared to feed the Ancients.
With the Protectorate freely sharing the secrets of the Panacea, and the borgs working with the tech-priests of Cassandron to draw plans to build up their meagre depollution efforts, that might change. Once the human population was healthier, perhaps Akivasha's peers would be able to remain awake for longer : the impact this would have on the Covens was difficult to predict. But even then, Cain's blood would remain a rarity : the touch of the Panacea lingered in it from frequent use, no doubt a result of how often he threw himself into danger, or from training his body to the point of breaking.
And soon, that blood would be beyond her reach, as Cain left Cassandron to continue his campaign across the rest of the Subsector. Even with the new treaties binding the hive-world to the Protectorate, it would be years, if not decades, before Cain returned to the planet – decades before Akivasha could taste that particular blood again, and the very idea was nigh-on unbearable to the Ancient.
Part of her wanted to compel Cain to stay at her side, but she knew it was impossible. Not only had the Liberator resisted her Mesmerism right after she'd awakened, but his allies were sure to act to stop her, and not even she could be sure to survive the mayhem that would ensue.
But there was another option, one that became more and more tempting every time her thoughts circled back to it. For the first time in her millennia of life, she could leave Cassandron. She could go with Cain, follow him in his war against the shadow cartels and beyond. He had witnessed her prowess against the Thrice-Damned with his own eyes : surely he'd jump at the chance to keep him at his side, even if it meant letting her drink his blood from time to time.
As for Hive Primus, Vlad was more than capable of managing the Volkihar Coven without her. He had done so for hundreds of years while she slumbered, after all. And while the possibility of awakening her had helped maintain the balance with the other Covens, the Volkihar had other Ancients, and the balance was going to be completely upset by their alliance with the Protectorate anyway. If anything, her being close to the Liberator would reinforce Vlad's position, would make it clear that the Volkihar were the ones who had engineered the alliance which had saved Cassandron.
Yes, Akivasha decided. In the morning, once Cain had recovered, she would go meet him, and announce her intent to join the other Vampires who would follow him into the stars.
Just as victory had been achieved on Cassandron, but its aftermath was still being handled, in the Realms of Chaos, Emeli's work was not yet done. Sat upon a throne made of the prayers and offerings of every citizen of Slawkenberg who'd ever bowed before an icon of her, the Daemon Princess of Slaanesh directed her minions as they scoured the aether, extracting the lost souls of the dead and bringing them to her.
Although the Broodspawn uprising on Cassandron had been swiftly crushed by her beloved and his allies, it had still claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of hivers. A small fraction of the hive-world's population, yes, but each and every soul lost to the Brood was one more with which Nurgle could fuel his next plot against Ciaphas, and that couldn't be tolerated. So Emeli had set her minions to work harvesting the newly dead, whose souls shone with the dark light of their final moments' pain and terror. There was a distinct quality to the spirits of those who'd been touched by the Nergalite plague in their last moments, which made it easier to find them in the churning seas of the Immaterium.
That the daemons of Nurgle had been able to manifest on Cassandron at all was testament to the level of involvement of the Grandfather. The Warp storms of the Subsector were special in that they made daemonic incursion more difficult instead of easier, but Nurgle had brute-forced the issue by pouring power into his pawn Hash'ak'gik – power which had completely vanished once Ciaphas had sent the Thrice-Damned back into the Empyrean, leaving him completely vulnerable to Emeli.
By the time Emeli was done trapping the fallen Nurglite Daemon Prince in a labyrinth made from countless hivers' nightmares of being hunted by faceless horrors in the darkened tunnels of their homes, her servants had gathered nearly every such soul.
Usually, Emeli would simply have devoured the souls thus acquired, or handed them to her daemonic servants to feed upon so that they might grow stronger and serve her better. But Ciaphas' words after defeating Armand – for he no longer had the right to bear the name of Hash'ak'gik, not after his defeat and abandonment by Nurgle, and with that name had gone his power – had given her another idea. Instead, she had gathered all the souls she'd recovered and placed them in what, to a mortal mind lucky enough to gaze upon her slice of the Dark Prince's Realm, would have looked like a glowing orb.
Inside, the spirits of the dead Broodspawns and their victims were kept safe from torment and dissolution. The orb shone like a lamp with the sheer relief that their torments were at last ended, and they sang their thanks to Emeli, who they knew only as the one who'd rescued them from a most grim fate in the Garden of Nurgle. The positive emotion created a feedback loop in the sphere, keeping the souls happy and the orb radiant.
Honest gratitude was a rare emotion in the Empyrean, and while less powerful than the heights of agony and ecstasy to which the Slaaneshi damned were usually subjected, Emeli felt as if she could extract it from the souls of Cassandron's dead indefinitely. The memory of her skin tingled at the light's touch, the sensation just on the right side of painful for the Daemon Princess of Excess. It paired deliciously with the screams coming from the various prisons of Karamazov, Vileheart and Armand.
Emeli sighed in mixed delight and longing, her thoughts inevitably turning from her latest acquisition to her beloved. Once again, dear Ciaphas had proven himself worthy of all her love, and shown that he was well on his way to joining her in the Empyrean for all eternity. How else could his steadfast defiance in the face of even a fragment of the God of Decay's attention be explained ? The souls of lesser mortals had been obliterated by such an awful vision, and while Emeli had done all she could to prevent the Grandfather from exerting as much of his influence as he could in the effort, she was still only a Daemon Princess.
The temptation was there to simply let go of the flow of linear time, to embrace the Warp's timelessness so that her beloved could be at her side without all these years of painful waiting and separation, with only brief interludes of union thanks to faithful Krystabel's service. But, for all that giving in to temptation would be a very Slaaneshi thing to do, the anticipation of each such reunions made them all the sweeter, and once Ciaphas joined her in eternity, such simple joys would be beyond her reach forevermore.
So Emeli would savor the pleasures of the moment, and take steps to ensure the ones she dreamt of would come to pass.
The Externus Exterminatus, personal starship of Inquisitor Amberley Vail, sailed through the Sea of Souls, its prow sending waves as it ploughed through the tides of the Empyrean.
Journeying through the Warp was always a perilous endeavour, even with the protection of a Geller Field and the best Navigator and enginseers influence could procure – and Amberley had a lot of both these days, and wasn't shy about using it. But this particular journey, though it had started relatively well, had nearly ended in catastrophe when the ship had been struck by the psychic shock of some distant phenomenon which had carried across the Empyrean and slammed against the Externus Exterminatus' protective bubble of reality like a tidal wave against a cliff.
Whatever had happened, every astropath aboard the vessel had sensed it, and it had taken every bit of the Navigator's skill to avoid being cast adrift by the disturbance – especially since, according to the three-eyed mutant, it had seemed particularly drawn to their ship for some reason ('as if there was a resonance or symbolic link', the Navigator had managed to describe it in Amberley's brief chat with him over the vox before he'd needed to return his full focus to his task).
They had been lucky in the end : only half of the astropathic choir had succumbed to the strain, their bodies melting in their communion thrones into piles of vile goop which had needed to be purged with holy flamers. But all of the survivors had needed to be taken to the medicae for treatment, with generous injections of Panacea being the only thing which had kept them from succumbing to the numerous plagues which had suddenly manifested within their frail bodies.
The fact that all astropaths had suffered was very concerning, as were the two words the survivors had managed to make out : 'Cain' and 'Inevitable'. And that had made Amberley darkly suspicious of what the 'resonance' the Navigator had mentioned might be, for her path had crossed that of the Liberator years ago, and that meeting had dramatically changed the course of her life ever since.
Tracking the origin of the disturbance had been difficult, but eventually, the astropaths had identified it as coming from the Torredon Subsector. Amberley was familiar with the name, of course, as well as the recent changes in the region.
There was no denying that stripping the Torredon Subsector of all its Navy assets had prevented a major disaster at Simia Orichalcae. With the information available at the time, Amberley was confident she'd have made the same decision as Inquisitor Lorquai. But she'd known the consequences would come back to haunt the Imperium eventually – just like Lorquai herself doubtlessly had when she had made the call. What she hadn't expected was that Cain would be involved.
When Amberley had met the Liberator of Slawkenberg, he hadn't struck her as a Warp-frothing lunatic, ready to unleash catastrophic forces into the Materium in the pursuit of his ambitions. But for all that he'd looked and sounded reasonable (except when he'd brazenly declared his intent to wage war against the Chaos God Nurgle himself) Cain was still a heretic and enemy of the Imperium, who had made unholy alliances with the denizens of the Empyrean.
Throne, Amberley had seen the Black Commissar call forth a lesser manifestation of a Daemon Princess with her mortal name and an offering of Drukhari souls.
(Black Commissar – what a ridiculous title. Had the Munitorum forgotten that every Commissar wore black as part of their uniform ? It honestly wouldn't surprise her, given the kind of incompetence Zyvan always complained about when the two of them met to discuss the business of the Panacea Cabal. Even now, with the STC safely in the Adeptus Custodes' hands and copies of the technology spreading every further in the Ultima Segmentum, the circle of allies she'd created after her 'escape' remained in close contact, their coordination helping to keep the Sector afloat.)
She sighed. She needed more information. If Cain was in Torredon, then that meant he had expanded his ambitions beyond Slawkenberg itself. The road his forces had taken to get to the Subsector had to be found, quickly, to identify which other systems might be in danger. Once the astropaths recovered, she would have them send messages to her contacts in the Gulf, but until then, there was one other source she could consult.
"Tell me what's wrong, Rakel," said Amberley as gently as she could. "Tell me what you hear."
The Inquisitor's psyker was huddled on her bed, inside her room aboard the Externus Exterminatus. She had stayed inside since the disturbance, with other members of Amberley's retinue bringing her meals at regular intervals (the regular crew of the ship were scared to get anywhere near her room at the best of times, let alone now).
"The voices are screaming," she moaned. "A thousand thousand voices, howling as one. Fear and shock and exaltation, a chorus of ruin !"
"What do the voices say ?" asked the Inquisitor, bracing herself. Even at a remote, the predications of the Warp were not to be faced slightly.
"Praises and curses, laughter and weeping. Rotten blood flows on an altar of old bone, and salvation comes from nine dark champions," babbled Rakel. "In her palace of fantasies and delusions, the beloved crafts a beacon of stolen souls. The eldest children of war rally to a new master's banner where he stands, wreathed in shadow, roaring his defiance of the inevitable."
Inevitable. That word again. It had to mean something, but Amberley didn't know what. If it was related to Cain, though, then one possible interpretation of the psyker's ramblings was that the Liberator of Slawkenberg had faced a champion of Nurgle with allies at his side and triumphed – but not without something happening which had echoed across the entire Sector to reach the Externus Exterminatus, something clearly aligned with the Plague God given what had happened to the astropaths.
The use of 'war' and 'master' in the same sentence was worrying too, and Amberley had a good idea of who the 'beloved' was. But the meaning of the rest – and it did have meaning : every single time Rakel spoke like this, her words were always laden with meaning, even if Amberley too often understood it only in hindsight – eluded her for now.
"There is a light – a dark light, a shadow light," continued Rakel. "It is a torch that threatens to set the galaxy aflame in the wrong hands, but can any living hands be the right ones ? Retribution leads the way to it, justice brought at last to a world that has suffered its absence for so long. But who will hold it in the end is yet to be decided. The master of war, who desires peace above all else ? His servant, walking ever at his side ? The architect, now bound to him by a loyalty only one thing can ever break ? Or the traveller, returning from his journey beyond the reach of the light ?"
Rakel's voice had grown louder and louder as she ranted, until she was almost screaming the final words. Then, all of a sudden, she deflated and collapsed back on her bed, unconscious. Amberley check on her pulse, which was strong if quick, and made her drink a bit of water laced with a cocktail of medication that should help her sleep without the Warp tormenting her too much.
Once she was done, the Inquisitor left the slumbering psyker's chamber, but her mind lingered on her words. The 'master of war' had to be Cain, and his assumption of the mantle of Warmaster didn't presage anything good. The Imperium had faced many self-proclaimed Warmasters of Chaos over the ages, and while only the Despoiler had remained a threat for thousands of years, many others had inflicted great harm to the galaxy before being finally brought to justice.
Parsing the rest of Rakel's ramblings was more difficult, but Amberley was now certain he'd defeated some manner of Nurglite plot in the Torredon Subsector, earning yet more allies and power in the process. Given the term used, 'eldest children of war', those allies were most likely affiliated with the Blood God – hopefully mortal cultists or mutants, for the thought of the Cainite heresy being reinforced by Chaos Marines was a terrifying one.
Unfortunately, she wouldn't be able to immediately go off and investigate. The situation on Abraxus couldn't be ignored any longer. The Nurglite uprising there was threatening to fully consume the planet, and the Damocles Gulf couldn't afford another front opening.
According to Amberley's operatives on Abraxus, the cults of the Dark God of Decay were growing in strength at an alarming rate, and had subsumed all other heretical mouvements which had formed as fear and doubt spread due to the Imperium's repeated setbacks in the region. They had targeted the construction sites for new Panacea production facilities, publicly claiming that the miraculous substance was but a ploy to poison, sterilize, mind control or genetically modify (the details of the claim changed depending on the day and the speaker, never made any sense whatsoever, and rejected all demonstrations no matter how public) the population instead.
This wasn't the first Nurglite plot to appear in the Damocles Gulf in response to the spread of the Panacea. With Amberley's associates at the ready, the Imperium had crushed them all, leading to a weakening of the Dark God's influence in the entire Sector, according to Inquisitorial diviners who were trusted enough to even dare contemplate such things. But Amberley knew all too well how lowering their guard, even for a moment, could lead to catastrophe. Decay's influence was much like the diseases which accompanied its followers in that regard, able to make a comeback as long as even a piece of it remained undestroyed.
And so, Abraxus would take priority for the time being. But one of the perks of being an Inquisitor who spoke regularly to the most powerful commanders of the Eastern Fringe was that, when she'd a necessary task she had no time to take care of herself, she could always find someone to off-load it to.
In his personal quarters, deep within the recesses of his research facility, Ernst Stavros Killian was concerned. Since learning of Smile's demise and Slawkenberg's alliance with Adumbria, the undercover Inquisitor had attempted to track the Black Commissar's movements, so as to know where to send his hand-picked team of psychic killers once they were ready.
The heretic fleet would have to pass by Dis Station if it followed the path Smile's ships and the Rogue Trader had taken. From there, while the aetheric maps of the Torredon Subsector were even less reliable than those of most of the Imperium due to the nigh-permanent Warp Storms, there were only two directions it could take : to Sanguia, where that brute Balor had gone to crush the local resistance, and Cassandron, a hive-world that, cut off from trade, must surely be little more than a graveyard haunted by cannibals by now.
The Bloodied Crown had never been able to get a foothold on Cassandron – nor, to Killian's knowledge, had any of the other shadow cartels. The hive-world's rulers were annoyingly competent at tracking down off-world attempts at infiltration, and had kept their domain surprisingly clean of the criminal influence which pervaded the rest of the Subsector.
So, in order to keep track of the arch-heretic of Slawkenberg, Killian had set a group of psykers whose talents laid in the domain of divination on the task. But, while they'd been able to detect the passage of the Protectorate fleet from Adumbria to the Dis system, results had been much more mixed afterwards. Killian would be the first to admit that the psykers artificially awakened by the Shadowlight were far from the most stable of witches, if such a thing could be said to exist. The ancient relic was a temperamental thing, even with all the progress Magos Galerion had made studying it after he'd lost Metheius' research on Periremunda.
But he'd been able to use the seers to spy on the activities of the other Directors semi-reliably before, which had been of great use in securing his place in the cartel. However, when he'd tasked them with tracking Cain's location directly, they had become useless, babbling nonsense about a vast shadow obscuring their sight. Reasoning that Cain must be using some heretical witchcraft to protect himself from divination, Killian had then had the Emperor-inspired genius idea of telling his seers to look at Sanguia and Cassandron instead.
When the latter attempt had failed in the exact same way, he'd been able to deduce the Black Commissar's location. That Cain had ignored the atrocities Balor was no doubt committing on Sanguia to harvest the riches of a dead hive-world had been of little surprise once Killian had taken the time to think about it. Cut off from the Imperium and the Mechanicus for over two decades, Slawkenberg's economy had to be in shambles, desperately needing whatever resources could be plundered from Cassandron's ruins.
Once Cain was done with Cassandron, Killian had no doubt he'd go to Sanguia next. Having defeated Smile's fleet of killers, the arch-heretic must be swollen with arrogant confidence, certain that he could triumph over the rest of the Bloodied Crown. The Inquisitor had begun planning for this eventuality, while ordering his seers to keep an eye on the dead system to warn him when the Black Commissar started to move.
Except, now they were all dead, having died in a most explosive fashion, screaming about some manner of apocalyptic conflict taking place in the Warp and 'the gaze of the Dark Gods descending upon the Grave of the Covenant'. The entire wing had needed to be purged, its contents vented into the void before the shapeless things which had emerged from the psykers' corpses could rampage across the rest of the facility.
As a member of the Ordo Hereticus, Killian was well-versed in heretical practices, his mind and soul shielded from the corruptive influence of such fell lore by the shield of his faith and the armor of his contempt. With such knowledge, it was easy for him to guess what had happened : Cain had performed some manner of foul ritual on Cassandron, desecrating the graves of billions in ways it was best not to dwell on, all in order to briefly draw the gazes of the infernal deities he served.
And there was no doubt in Killian's mind that the purpose behind such a monstrous act had been to beseech the Dark Gods once more for the location of the Shadowlight. None of his contacts across the Subsector had reported anything else amiss, so this was the only logical conclusion.
Killian would have to make doubly sure that his team of assassins were fit for the task of eliminating Cain, if the Black Commissar had such potent sorceries at his disposal. The Inquisitor thought back to some of the notes Galerion had shared with him, describing certain processes by which the magos believed the psychic potential of their subjects could be pushed even further.
It would be too risky to perform it on every member of the team when the risks laid out in Galerion's writings were so severe, Killian decided. Even the test subjects who'd survived the procedure hadn't done so for long, their enhanced abilities swiftly consuming them from the inside out. But the facility had several stasis pods used to contain the most interesting yet volatile specimens of Magos Galerion's research. Perhaps one or two might be sacrificed in the Emperor's name to make sure the enhanced assassins survived long enough to reach their target and perform their holy duty.
After that, well, they were doomed anyway, as Cain's minions were certain to avenge their master. So their lifespan was of no concern – really, they should thank Killian for giving them the chance of making their pitiful lives matter in the grand scheme of things.
But, of course, the Inquisitor had long grown used to the ungratefulness and small-mindedness of others, even in his fellow Inquisitors, who had the audacity to deem him Radical for daring to find a way to save their species from its inevitable doom. In all his life, he'd only met a few souls with the kind of vision required to understand the necessity of his work, and unfortunately, circumstances had forced him to kill most of them.
This wouldn't be any different. And, as he typed the instructions to Galerion on a data-slate, he also made a mental note of making sure the Warp-capable craft his party of assassins would use couldn't be traced back to this base. A little bit of sabotage should do the trick.
Notes:
AN : In the first draft of this chapter, Akivasha wasn't going to join Cain, and Jon Skellan and his merry band would come with him instead. But I decided that 1) it was funnier if Jon, having survived fighting Hash'ak'gik, longed to return to the (relative) peace and quiet of the underhive, and 2) Akivasha joining up instead would cause the Liberator a lot more headaches.
Will I regret this later on, when I need to scale up combat encounters to account for the presence of an uber-powerful Vampire Queen ? Yes, almost certainly.
There will be an Informational post on SpaceBattles later with the lore I've built up for the Vampire Covens of Cassandron. Crucially, that lore dump won't contain the explanation of the Vampires' origins, because that's going to be revealed in-story.
I'm still playing through Rogue Trader as Ciaphas Von Valancius, and enjoying myself a great deal so far. As a result, I'm having a lot of ideas for this story, right as I planned to focus on AYGWM - because of course I am. Truly, the Muse is a fickle beast.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 35: Chapter 34
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
On the bridge of the Rossinante, Pelton stood at attention right behind the command throne where General Balor sat and, not for the first time this day cycle and certainly not for the last, fought down the urge to draw his sidearm and shoot the bastard in the head.
That Pelton was battling these feelings wouldn't have surprised many of the bridge crew, for the Ripper General wasn't the kind of man who inspired loyalty, even in his closest subordinates : like every higher-up in Torredon's shadow cartels, he ruled through a combination of fear and appeal to the greed of others. The hung corpses of the last batch of fools who had disappointed him still hung from the bridge's ceiling, long since dessicated.
What would have surprised the crew was the knowledge that Pelton, who had served as the aid of the Bloodied Crown's director for months now, was actually an undercover agent of the Adeptus Arbites, sent to infiltrate the criminal organization years before the Navy had withdrawn and the whole Subsector had gone to the Warp faster than you could say 'the Emperor protects'.
Pelton knew he would never return to the Arbites. He had been gone for too long, had done too many things he could never take back in order to maintain his cover – some of which would haunt him to his dying day, and for which he would have to answer to the God-Emperor after.
Besides, with the Imperial rule crumbling to pieces all across the Subsector, his already sparse lines of communication with his superiors in the rest of the Damocles Gulf had become unavailable. They probably thought him dead, and even if, by some miracle of the Emperor, he managed to escape the Gap, reach one of the Judges' Precinct Houses and prove his identity, he would most likely be executed as a deserter for failing to follow procedures by not reporting for so long, and probably being compromised anyway.
A smarter man might have accepted the change in his circumstances and tried to make the best out of a bad situation by embracing his cover identity, taking advantage of his relatively prestigious position in the Bloodied Crown for personal gain. But Pelton hadn't joined the Arbites because he was weak-willed or prone to succumbing to temptation. He believed in the Lex, in bringing the Emperor's Justice to those members of the Human race who thought themselves beyond His reach.
He also didn't believe in laying down his life for nothing, which was precisely what shooting Balor right now would achieve. Once, when his superiors had started talking about pulling him out (something he dearly wished they'd actually ordered before the Navy had abandoned the Subsector), Pelton had drawn up plans to kill Balor when he was meeting with another director and framing a third one for the deed, making it look like some kind of play for Jabbus' seat as the Chairman. He had it all set up in his head (he wasn't stupid enough to put such a scheme to parchment, or on a data-slate any renegade tech-priest could have accessed), but that was all for nothing now.
In the current situation, all killing Balor would accomplish was replace one monster with another. The Ripper General had selected second-in-commands who were all cast in the same mould as himself : violent, cruel brutes. Pelton himself had been spared from having to play the part only because what Balor looked for in a personal aide was different than what he wanted in his sub-commanders, and the director had made sure that Pelton couldn't kill him and take over himself – not that he would have tried if he could. The very idea that he might be able to do good by taking over the warband was patently ridiculous : either he would lose his soul and become a monster just as bad as Balor or worse, or he would be killed by another of the Ripper General's subordinates looking to ascend to the directorate by stepping over his corpse.
The viciousness of these men had been proven again by their actions in the Sanguia system. In the months following the arrival of the fleet and its complete annihilation of the local Space Defense Force, the Ripper General's warband had waged a brutal campaign of terror and subjugation upon the world. Pelton had listened to the reports from the troops on the surface, and silently prayed for the people of Sanguia even as they bravely held on against the shadow cartel's reavers.
However, the Bloodied Crown's depredations had abruptly ended a few weeks ago. There were still isolated packs of raiders on the planet, keeping the natives busy and disorganized, but the bulk of the shadow cartel's forces had been recalled to the fleet when the Chairman himself had arrived to Sanguia, bringing both his own fleet and news to share with the Ripper General.
Thanks to the psykers procured by that heretic bastard Jereb, Jabbus had learned that the fleet which had defeated Smile at Adumbria was on its way to Sanguia, having made a detour to Cassandron first. The idea of the cost of such knowledge made Pelton shudder : he had managed to keep close of the mad witches Jereb sold to the other directors, thank the Throne, but he knew they were far from reliable, even by psyker standards.
The intel must be good, though, because Jabbus had taken his fleet with him to Sanguia to reinforce Balor's, with the goal of catching the Cainite fleet right as it exited the Immaterium. Learning that Adumbria was now under the control of the infamous Black Commissar (which, God-Emperor, what had the Munitorum been thinking when it had come up with that name ?), whose slaughter of the Imperial task force sent to reclaim the world he'd usurped from the God-Emperor had supposedly been single-handedly responsible for the mess the defense of the entire Gulf had become in the years since, had been a surprise to the former Arbites.
Personally, Pelton doubted that was how things had happened : it all reeked of someone's efforts to cover their own frak-ups by blaming them on a convenient scapegoat. If nothing else, the fact Cain had killed the Laughing Fiend was a point in his favor. He was still an Emperor-forsaken heretic, of course, but Pelton had been embedded into the shadow cartels long enough to know there were degrees of evil (it was one of the reasons he knew he could never fit in with the Arbites again), and Jeremiah Smile hadn't fallen to the lowest depths of the scale so much as gleefully plunged into them head first.
Due to the Warp Storms which constantly plagued Torredon and the fact that they knew the rebels were coming from Cassandron, there was only a comparatively small region of the Sanguia system's edges through which they could emerge. With the knowledge of how devastating the fighter wings of the renegades had proven at Adumbria, the directors had packed their combined fleet as close to the estimated entry point as possible, in order to overwhelm them with firepower right after their emergence from the Warp, before they could deploy their flights.
Waiting in the void in a state of high readiness for weeks had caused a slew of disciplinary issues, which had been dealt with with typical brutality. Pelton had a hand in that himself, bringing the wrath of his 'master' upon the scum who were getting bored of waiting and clamored for a return to the jungles of Sanguia.
According to Rossinante's chronometers, this was the twenty-ninth day they had spent waiting in the void with nothing happening. So, when the proximity alarms went off, it took a moment for Pelton to realize what was happening – but fortunately, his lapse went unnoticed, as everyone had much more pressing concerns.
"General, we're detecting Warp activity," the Rossinante's Master of Auspex called out. "New ships are arriving !"
"At last," growled the Ripper General. "Sound the general alarm, and send my compliments to Chairman Jabbus informing him that his intel was on point and the heretics are here for us to kill."
Pelton kept himself from scoffing. As if Balor had any right to call anyone a heretic. The man might not openly worship the Dark Gods, but he had broken every oath he'd ever sworn to the Golden Throne more times than anyone remembered long before ascending to the Bloodied Crown's directorate.
The ex-Arbites stayed silent, watching the hololithic projections over Balor's shoulder. To his admittedly limited experience of void warfare, the Cainites' situation was dire. They were surrounded on all sides, caught right after emerging from the Warp, which was when a ship was most vulnerable.
To his own vague surprise, Pelton found himself hoping the heretics would win despite the odds arrayed against them. If nothing else, it would end his current predicament, if only by replacing it with a new, more interesting one.
Areelu Van Yastobaal stood at the helm of Worldwounder as she re-entered realspace, a warrior-queen ready to lead her ship in battle.
With the magi scattered across the Protectorate fleet keeping their ships following Worldwounder's Navigator as they sailed the Sea of Souls, they were able to exit the Immaterium with greater synchronicity than any but the most fine-tuned Imperial fleets could have achieved.
Immediately, proximity alarms began to blare, as numerous ship signatures were detected. The Protectorate fleet had emerged from the Warp straight into an ambush – or so it seemed at first glance. Fortunately, the Protectorate diviners had warned them of the ambush ahead of time. Before they had even left Cassandron, the Tzeentchian magi had performed their rites at the Warmaster's orders, and confirmed his suspicions that the Bloodied Crown had taken advantage of the time they'd spent saving the hive-world from damnation to muster their forces in Sanguia.
A lesser commander might have balked at the prospect of confronting a prepared enemy, but Cain was made of sterner stuff, and regarded the whole thing as an opportunity to break the might of the shadow cartel once and for all instead. As his command, the borgs and tech-priests had spent the journey from Cassandron working to optimize the void-shields' activation sequence and boost them as much as possible, while the crews had run drill after drill until the whole process was a well-oiled, incense-blessed machine.
Meanwhile, no matter how ready the pirates were for their arrival, it was simply impossible to keep an entire fleet with the metaphorical finger on the trigger for the days or weeks they must have been laying in wait. Only a complete fool would try to keep a crew in a state of maximum alert for so long, meaning that either the pirate crews would need to get into position, or they would be suffering from exhaustion – both of which would benefit the Cainites.
It was a race to see whether their shields would come up before the guns of the shadow cartel could fire. Between the trained crews of the Worldwounder and Protectorate ships, and the slaves toiling within the pirate vessels, Areelu knew who she was willing to bet on – and her instincts didn't fail her now. Worldwounder shuddered as her shields were struck by a deluge of enemy fire, but her mistress didn't need to look at the console readings to know that they were still holding strong. She had been captain of the ancient cruiser for decades, and was familiar with her quirks and the song of her hull.
"Void-shields are holding across the fleet," announced the Master of the Vox. The man's role in this battle was of more importance than it had been in most of the previous engagements under Areelu's command : very rarely did Worldwounder fight with so many allies at her side.
"Excellent," replied the Rogue Trader. "Make a note of passing on my compliments to the magi and the crews once this is over, along with double rations for the next cycle as a reward for their hard work. Now, what do we know about our foe ?"
As the auspex returns were processed by the bridge crew with commendable speed, new ship signatures continued to fill in the bridge's central hololithic display, adding to the information available to Areelu. But the Rogue Trader wasn't directly wired into the ship's system like her crew – augmetics, in her experience, tended to interact poorly with warp-craft, though there were whispers that some of the legendary Dark Mechanicum had found a way around this issue.
"We've identified the Rossinante, Balor's flagship," reported the Master of Auspex. "And … yes, we've confirmation from the archives. My Lady, the Jewel of the Void is among the enemy armada."
Areelu's smile sharpened as the two vessels became highlighted on the main display, shining bright crimson amidst the enemy formation. She pressed a rune on her command throne, opening a vox-link to one of Worldwounder's landing bays.
When they had planned their arrival to Sanguia, it had soon become clear that this time, the Liberator didn't intend to spend the void battle safe on a ship's command deck like he'd done at Adumbria : no, this time, he would take the fight to the enemy, leading from the front as he had done so many times before. No one had tried to dissuade him, though Areelu knew many had wanted to. Despite everything, sometimes, it seemed like the Liberator wasn't aware of just how important he was to the cause of the Liberation – his modesty keeping him from realizing what was blatantly obvious to everyone else.
Admittedly, it was one of the traits Areelu found most endearing about him.
"Ciaphas, we have confirmation," she said without preamble once the link was open. "Chairman Jabbus is here."
Areelu's relationship with the Warmaster had evolved during the journey from Cassandron. It had taken some work on her part, especially where Krystabel was concerned, but eventually the Rogue Trader had managed to overcome the Handmaiden's reluctance by making sure she was very involved in the proceedings (the Liberator's own agreement had been much easier to acquire, of course).
The results of all that effort had been well worth it, however, culminating in a series of romantic evenings aboard the ship's spires. Ciaphas had also spent hours entertaining Lucia, who absolutely adored him, much to Areelu's delight. He had mentioned off-handedly that, compared to his own daughter Zerayah at this age, Lucia was much easier to handle. Areelu had to admit that, for all that she loved her beloved child more than anything in the galaxy, she struggled to imagine what a terror Ciaphas' own adopted daughter must have been in her youth.
"Are we sure he's here in person ?" asked the Warmaster – and he was the Warmaster now, his voice firm and commanding.
"The Jewel is Jabbus' personal vessel," Areelu explained. "It's as much a floating palace as a starship. The Bloodied Crown's leader would rather part with his own hands than with it."
Although, considering what she knew of Jabbus, cutting off his upper limbs wouldn't be much of a sacrifice. It wasn't as if he used them for anything, after all.
"Very well. We have the opportunity to break the Bloodied Crown once and for all : let us not waste it. You know what to do, Areelu."
"Yes, Ciaphas." She cut the link, returning her full focus to the battle at hand.
The Protectorate fleet had started to return fire, but was only doing minimal damage to the enemy shields. That was to be expected : apart from Worldwounder, none of their ships had been designed for battle, and there was only so much even the borgs could do to retrofit them in the handful of years they'd had since Slawkenberg had last gone to war.
But, fortunately, the guns of the Protectorate were far from their main weapon when it came to void warfare.
"Deploy the Cainwings," Areelu ordered, her command echoed across the entire fleet.
Within minutes, the void around Worldwounder was full of dozens of Cainwings as the fighters took flight from every Protectorate ship fitted to house them – including the Rogue Trader vessel, which had received a full flight of the incredible engines when the Liberator had taken residency aboard. While Areelu was no expert in void-fighters, she knew enough to understand how devastatingly effective the Cainwings were.
Soon, the viewport was lit by distant detonations as the pirates let loose their own fighter squadrons – which, while much less coordinated and well-equipped than the Cainwings, outnumbered them by an uncomfortable margin. Areelu couldn't waste time watching the deadly ballet, however, for she needed to give orders to the rest of the fleet in order to minimize the pressure the enemy ships could put on any individual Cainite vessel while maximizing the one they gave out in return.
Time seemed to fade away as the Rogue Trader lost herself into her task, until she finally heard someone call out the words she had been waiting for :
"The shields of the Rossinante are down, Lady Captain ! Cainwing squadron's commanders report they estimate the Jewel of the Void's won't be long either."
Areelu grinned. This was the moment she'd been waiting for. They could blow up the two pirate vessels with Worldwounder's guns if they really tried (or if they fired the Fist of the Liberator's main gun, which Areelu had heard a lot about but hadn't seen in action yet), but that wasn't what Ciaphas wanted. The Warmaster hadn't forgotten about the wild psykers Smile had deployed during their last engagement with the Bloodied Crown, or his promise to his aide that they would find out who was responsible for selling them to the shadow cartel.
She opened another link, this one open to everyone in the Cainite fleet even if her message was only addressed to two people, and declared :
"Lord Hektor, the Rossinante's shields have come down : the ship is yours to handle. Do try to take Balor alive if it is at all practical," she reminded the World Eater. "Warmaster Cain, as we decided, you have the Jewel of the Void. Good hunting, Ciaphas," she added.
Krystabel wouldn't be pleased with that last bit, Areelu knew. That was why she'd made sure to broadcast that message to the entire fleet in the first place : the Slaaneshi priestess was surprisingly easy to tease for someone of her vocation.
It would make the victory celebrations all the more enjoyable, the Rogue Trader thought, before focusing all her intention on the battle that still had to be won, even though she knew the lethal blow had already been loosed.
As he charged into another squad of pirates with his chainaxe revving, Hektor reflected that, to Balor's credit, the Rossinante was better defended than the Murderous Jest had been. But not by much, and certainly not enough to make any real difference.
Under the cover of the Cainwings, the transport carrying him and the platoon of USA troopers following behind him had made it aboard without difficulty. The landing bay had been fiercely defended, but they had managed to seize it after painting the deck red. Reinforcements were still landing, as the Rossinante was packed full of bloodthirsty reavers, and Hektor's mission meant that he couldn't spend the time it would take to kill them all himself.
For Hektor had claimed the honor of going for the bridge for himself and his platoon. He was looking forward to facing this so-called Ripper General in person. True, Balor's crimes were insignificant compared to the crowd Hektor used to run with. Yet, from the records of the Worldwounder and Dis Station, it was clear that the man deserved whatever punishment Cain would come up with for him. Balor wasn't as depraved as Jeremiah Smile, but he was still responsible for countless atrocities across the Subsector, and Hektor had something of a personal grudge against officers who didn't care for the lives of the troops under their command, even if said troops were blood-crazed lunatics – perhaps especially when.
Hektor reminded himself that his orders were to take Balor alive. Not that the pirate scum would be glad of it : the Legionary had overheard some of the troopers discussing a betting pool in the USA regarding what fate the Liberator had in store for the Ripper General, once all useful intelligence had been extracted from him. The men and women's imagination had been quite amusing, but Hektor's favorite was that Cain intended to deliver Balor alive to the Imperium's own Commissariat in order to get the bounty on the director's head. It was unlikely, yes, but so was pretty much everything Cain had ever achieved in his life.
The march to the bridge was a long, bloody slog. Even with the Nails silenced by the Panacea in his bloodstream, Hektor could feel the approval of the War God, just as he could smell the chems in the bodies of his foes as he tore them apart. Mere stimulants couldn't come close to emulating the effects of the Nails, but there were still enough of them in the poor bastards' blood that he wasn't surprised they were willing to charge him even after he cut his way through hundreds of their fellows.
Still, there was only way such confrontations could end. A lone Astartes could be brought low by sheer weight of numbers : Hektor had certainly seen it happen before, as World Eaters lost themselves completely to the Nails and charged into the ranks of the enemy until one of them got lucky and scored a killing blow. But Hektor was in perfect control of himself thanks to the Panacea injectors keeping his implants silent, and supported by some of the best soldiers in the entire Protectorate.
Within an hour of landing, the platoon were in front of the reinforced doors leading to the bridge of the Rossinante. They were standing in the bloody remains of the enforcers who had made their last stand here, their heavy weapon emplacements laying down in pieces, their ordnance insufficient to breach through the USA's power armor.
"Breach the door," he ordered, and a pair of troopers carrying explosives immediately set to work.
Hektor nodded with pleasure that the rest of the boarding party stepped back, taking cover without needing to be told. The charges detonated, blowing up a hole through the doors through which Hektor immediately ran through, chainaxe reeving, knowing what an intimidating figure he must make as he emerged onto the bridge.
Immediately, Hektor smelled blood, and the scent of las-burned flesh. Which wasn't unusual, but he'd thought it would only be there after their arrival. Looking around, he saw that the bridge had recently been the site of a fight. Given the position of the corpses, the World Eater could deduce that it had been a brief, violent affair, in which one of the sides had been taken completely by surprise. The survivors were hiding behind cover at the other end of the bridge, except for one, who stood in the open next to the captain's chair – on which was slumped the corpse of a large man dressed in a parody of a Militarum General uniform.
"Did anyone have 'killed by his subordinate before we get to him' in the betting pool ?" asked Hektor in the tense silence that fell on the bridge as the rest of his party followed him and fell into position behind him, weapons aimed but not opening fire.
"I did," replied one of the troopers smugly.
"Congratulations, then," said Hektor with a slight smile, before turning back to the issue at hand. Balor was dead, which wasn't ideal, but on the plus side, he hadn't been the one to kill him, so the Warmaster wouldn't blame him (which was another welcome change from every single commander the World Eater had ever had before).
He was about to address the survivors, to say what he wasn't sure, when one of them slowly stood up, hands held above his head, and walked out of cover. He was young, per Hektor's reckoning (which admittedly wasn't the most reliable, given the paucity of his experience dealing with mortals), with a mop of blond hair which fell in front of his eyes constantly.
"We surrender," said the man, speaking loudly. "Please don't shoot."
Gesturing for the other troopers to stay back, Hektor slowly walked toward the man, until they were less than a meter apart. From this close, Hektor's senses and experience told him many things : most interestingly that, no matter how terrified the man was, he was still holding himself together through sheer strength of will, which was impressive – especially since unlike the dregs they'd butchered on their way to the bridge, his body was clean of combat stimms and other mind-altering chemicals.
"You are the one who killed Balor ?" Hektor asked.
"Yes," the man admitted. "I have wanted him dead for years, and I figured if you were going to kill him anyway, I might as well do it myself."
"Actually, we were hoping to interrogate him," Hektor growled. "He could have provided us valuable intel in our conflict against the Bloodied Crown."
Sure, the Ripper General was a secondary target compared to the Chairman, but taking him alive had still been Hektor's objective. And given the state of Balor's corpse, Hektor couldn't even use his omophagea to absorb memories from the dead director's brain.
"I was his personal aide," the mortal immediately replied. "Everything he knew, I can tell you – and I will, so long as you give me your word we will be spared."
"Hmm. Interesting," Hektor mused. He wasn't lying, and with Balor's reputation, Hektor suspected his personal aide might actually know more about the day-to-day operations of the warband than the Ripper General himself. "Tell me this, then. Why did you betray your master ? So that you would survive ?"
"He was never my master," the man spat. "I had been waiting for the chance to kill him for a long time, and when I realized that your victory was inevitable, I decided I might as well take my shot. He was ranting about how we should fight to the death, and was about to call the rest of the fleet to tell them to blow up the ship rather than let it be captured. I don't know if he planned to go down with it or not – there are escape pods on the bridge, after all – but somehow I doubted he was going to take us with him when he bailed."
Under his helmet, Hektor smiled. He liked this one, and he had a feeling the Liberator would too.
"What's your name ?" he asked.
"Pelton," the man replied, before adding with a weak smile : "but my friends call me Flicker."
"Well, Flicker, I am Hektor of the Cainite Protectorate, formerly of the World Eaters. In the name of the Liberator, I accept your surrender. Drop your weapons and come out," he called out to the rest of the cowering crew. "You will be treated in accordance with the rules of war as decreed by Warmaster Cain, and given a fair trial for any crimes you may have committed under Balor's employ; but unless you really frakked up, you won't be summarily executed."
Which was more than any of them could have expected from the Imperial Navy, whose treatment of captured pirates went from a quick las-bolt to the skull to being handed over the Mechanicus for conversion into a servitor. Some of the crew might be lucky enough to be drafted into the lowest echelons of the Navy instead, especially if they had been civilians who had been forced to join the pirates when their own vessels had been seized, but that was little better given the conditions on the lower decks of most Imperial ships.
Pelton shagged in relief. Not all tension left his body, because he wasn't an idiot, but he visibly relaxed, or at least gave a good impression of it. As the USA troopers advanced across the bridge and began taking the crew into custody as well as seizing control of the Rossinante, Hektor idly wondered how long it had been since a son of Angron had accepted anyone's surrender.
"Worldwounder, this is Hektor," he called out after opening a vox-link to the flagship (technically, Liberator's Fist was the Protectorate flagship, but since Cain was operating from Worldwounder and Van Yastobaal was in overall command, they had transferred the title for the operation). "The Rossinante's bridge has been secured. Balor is dead, but his aide has surrendered and offered to share what he knows."
"That will have to do, then," replied the Rogue Trader's voice. "Send them across as soon as it is practical. Lord Cain is closing in on the Jewel of the Void. This will all be over soon."
Tempting fate like that was usually something Hektor was cautious about : his memories of the Long War were fragmented and tinted blood-red, but he recalled enough to know that the Warp seemed to take words like these as a challenge. But given the Liberator's prowess and the composition of his boarding party, the World Eater couldn't think of anything the Chairman of the Bloodied Crown could have in store which might pose a genuine threat to Cain.
As the Van Yastobaal transport sped through the ongoing void battle toward the Jewel of the Void, I silently cursed the circumstances which were forcing me into peril once again.
It I had my way, I'd much rather have stayed aboard Worldwounder, with a powerful void-shield and several layers of thick plating between me and enemy fire, rather than the comparatively frail shell of the transport. But, once the diviners had revealed that the odds we would face the leader of the Bloodied Crown were non-negligible, my chances of doing so while retaining the respect of the lunatics surrounding me had vanished. Had we been facing only Balor, I could have pretended to grant the honor of battle to one of my oh-so-faithful lieutenants, but with Jabbus himself present, I simply had no choice.
Especially since I had promised Jurgen a shot at the mysterious Jereb Auric, the man who had sold the wild psykers Hektor had faced aboard the Murderous Jest, and the head of the shadow cartel seemed the most likely source of intelligence on the trafficker's location. Since it would have taken an act of the Emperor to make Jurgen leave my side, I had to choose between risking my skin by taking part in the boarding action, or risk earning my aide's contempt.
With what I'd seen Jurgen do in the past, and the other factors in play, I'd ultimately decided that braving the Jewel of the Void was the lesser of two evils. Besides, I told myself, it really shouldn't be all that dangerous.
Of course, I was under no illusion that this would be easy. A man like Jabbus didn't survive without taking his personal security extremely seriously. The fact that he was here at all, within range of us, was a strategic mistake only explained by the fact that he hadn't known we had diviners who could forewarn us of the trap.
Which made sense in my book : the Bloodied Crown were pirates, after all. The most experience they had with witches were the wild psykers they trafficked, and those were as different from the Tzeentchian magi as it was possible to be while still being crazy enough to dabble in the stuff in the first place.
Anyway, the Jewel of the Void was certain to be a veritable fortress, full of the best fighters Jabbus' considerable resources could buy. Still, I had seen the USA take on enough foes by now to be confident they would emerge victorious in the end. Part of me had worried that Areelu might regard my taking USA troopers over her household guards as a slight, but fortunately, she'd been the one to suggest it in the first place, so I was reasonably certain I was in the clear.
Jabbus' caution was manifest in the position of his ship within the pirate fleet. Even though the shadow cartel had been certain they would catch us by surprise, the Jewel of the Void was still hanging in the backline of their haphazard formation. This was the reason why our flight was taking entirely too long for my liking, to the point that Hektor's own boarding party had managed to seize the Rossinante by the time we began our final approach.
I wasn't too surprised about it, to be perfectly honest. They were led by a Space Marine, after all, and one with thousands of years of experience in such actions to boot. The news that Balor had apparently been killed by one of his own people before the World Eater could get to the bridge was more unexpected, but I didn't much care about it, as I was preoccupied by more personal concerns.
Not even the wealth of a Rogue Trader could make the experience of being inside a gunship flying through an active void battle comfortable. Between our power armors' boots being mag-locked to the deck and the transport's gravitic fields, we were spared from being tossed around like peas in a can, but the fraction of the momentum which still bled through to my frail human body inside my wargear was still unpleasant in the extreme.
I forced the discomfort down, all too aware of the fact that I was surrounded by people whose image of Cain the Liberator would hardly benefit from me puking inside my helmet.
I wasn't piloting the Liberator Armor this time : the suit I had worn on Cassandron was still undergoing repairs, and it was ill-suited for operating within the confines of a spaceship in any case. True, such had also technically been the case in the underhive of Primus back on Cassandron, but breaking a wall to make way in a starship was an entirely different proposition from doing the same in the underhive, what with the hull being the only thing between me and the infinite void of space.
Instead, I was clad in my customized suit of Slawkenberg power armor, with my trusty chainsword and trophy bolt pistol hanging from my waist.
Another source of unease was that, from the inside of a transport, there was nothing I could do to improve my odds of surviving the trip. I could only hope that the Cainwings (a name I still regretted not stopping from taking root while I had the chance) would be motivated enough by the fraudulent reputation I had cultivated to keep their precious Liberator safe. But entrusting my life into the hands of anyone else, let alone a bunch of heretics piloting machines designed and constructed by another bunch of heretics, was a challenge to say the least, so I forced myself to stop thinking about it and took another look at my surroundings in a mostly vain effort to distract myself.
Aside from two squads of Khornate soldiers, the transport also carried what had, much to my horror, become my own personal retinue of dangerous, overpowered freaks. Jurgen was there, of course, as was Malicia. Though one of them was an unbound psyker and the other a murderous, pain-feeding xenos, I had (much to my consternation) grown used to their presence, to the point I actually felt relieved by the fact they would be with me in the fighting to come.
However, I could not say the same from the latest addition to my retinue. Akivasha was seated in front of me, wearing the same black bodysuit she'd worn during our raid on Hive Septimus on Cassandron. The Vampire Paragon hadn't asked whether she could accompany me : she had just been in the landing bay when I had arrived. I knew better than to damage my image by unsuccessfully arguing with her, of course, and the appearance of me agreeing to her presence had kept anyone else from trying to dissuade her, which was probably for the best all things considered.
On the one hand, after seeing her go toe-to-toe with a Daemon Prince, I had no doubt regarding her martial capabilities. On the other hand, I was all too aware that the reason she'd joined the expedition in the first place was to maintain access to my blood, which I was very keen on keeping inside me rather than down her throat.
Oh, she had been very diplomatic about it, and certainly hadn't cornered me in a corridor to drain me dry – not that she would have had an easy time of it with Jurgen and Malicia at my side. But I could feel her eyes on me whenever we were in a room together, watching me like a piece of grox-meat, and it wasn't a feeling I enjoyed. Even now, her head was unerringly fixed in my direction.
Of course, had I known what perils awaited me aboard the Jewel of the Void, I would have been much less ambivalent about Akivasha's presence.
Notes:
AN : Happy holidays, everyone ! Barring a miracle from the Muse, this is likely to be the last chapter I publish this year - meaning that, yes, AYGWM will be completed early in January of next year. While it isn't outside the bonds of possibility that the next chapter will be finished before then, there is no way I'll be able to get the epilogue done in time, no matter how many goats are dragged to the Muse's bloody altar.
Initially, this chapter was going to be much longer, but I ended up cutting it as part of a rework and a decision to have more Cain POV, rather than jumping between characters as I had initially planned for Sanguia's events. After all, not knowing exactly what manner of danger Cain will face next along with him is part of the fun of these stories.
So, the next chapter will be mostly Cain POV, and I think I'll try to have more of these going forward. If it doesn't work, I'll get back to a more balanced mix, but that's a problem for my future self.
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and I look forward to your thoughts, theories and suggestions.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 36: Chapter 35
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
From the moment we landed aboard the Jewel of the Void, we were fighting for our lives – or at least that was my impression at the time. The real danger, of course, would come later; but things certainly weren't quiet despite that.
The landing bay in which the gunship carrying me and my retinue had touched down was already a battlefield by the time we got there. Exposed as it was to the open void, the pirates couldn't simply drown us in superior numbers, but there were dozens of combat servitors present, led by renegades in void-suits.
Our own armors were more than suitable for that environment, as was Malicia's, and if Akivasha needed air to breathe her skinsuit must have provided it somehow despite its minimalist design. The borgs had certainly looked fascinated with the piece of archeotech, sending her looks that, if not for how much of their bodies they had replaced with metal, I would have taken for another kind of interest entirely. And while that would have been understandable given the Paragon's appearance, I really didn't need that kind of complication right now (or ever, if I had anything to say about it).
I strode down the gunship's ramp with my chainsword in one hand and my bolt pistol in the other, looking every bit the image of the fearless leader I was supposed to be. Something which had once been a man, but was now a mindless pile of pale flesh and sparking power tools, rushed in my direction. Panic seized me at the sight, and I fired at it reflexively. My suit of power armor absorbed the bolt pistol's recoil, allowing me to land a shot directly in the servitor's scarred skull, turning it to mist. To my horror, it kept advancing, its muscles and augmetics still following the last instructions of its now-destroyed brain.
Then it was struck by the concentrated fire of half a dozen troopers, and what was left of its body finally went down. The whole thing had taken less than five seconds, but adrenaline had made it seem much longer. It was reassuring, in a morbid way, to have confirmation that my estimates of how bad this whole operation would be were on point – though mercifully, I still had no idea of how short of the reality my worst expectations would turn out to be.
The rest of the landing bay was secured in a few minutes without me needing to do anything other than stomp around and wave my weapons threateningly, with only a couple of USA troopers being wounded by the improvised combat servitors. Nothing Panacea couldn't fix right away, but the damage to their armor meant they needed to withdraw to the gunships for the time being. I made a show of checking on them and ensuring they wouldn't suffer from void exposure, which the bloodthirsty morons lapped up without question.
There were no enemy survivors to take prisoner, but I hadn't expected any. Fighting in a depressurised landing bay wasn't exactly the kind of environment suitable for non-lethal takedowns. On a related subject, after the last of the troop transports had landed, one of the borgs accompanying the boarding force went to a console standing against the wall opposite the window into the void and plugged themselves in.
Soon, they had suborned the machine-spirit of this section of the ship (which, based on their angry muttering over the vox-link, hadn't been much of a challenge due to its appalling treatment by its current masters), and begun sealing the landing bay and activating the atmosphere pumps. The process took several minutes, during which I went over our next course of action with the squad commanders.
As was standard practice for boarding operations (at least according to Hektor, and Areelu had confirmed it), half of our force would make for the bridge, while the other would secure the Enginarium. I was, of course, expected to lead the team which would seize the bridge. While both objectives were equally important to taking control of the ship, the bridge was the more glamorous target, and the one where Jabbus himself could be found.
"Be on the lookout for traps and ambushes," I reminded the officer in charge of the other half of the boarding force, one Captain Olivia. Obviously, as far as I was concerned, they could all walk into a plasma reactor, but I would be the one their relatives on Slawkenberg would blame if they died stupidly. "And don't lower your guard for any reason. We know from Smile that there are no depths to which these wretches won't sink."
"Yes, Liberator !" She saluted me, slamming her fist against her chest, the gesture followed by every trooper around her. Her helmet masked her face, but the fervor I could hear in her voice made my skin crawl.
The borg pulled a lever, and the two airlocks leading into the landing bay opened with a hiss of equalizing pressure. Predictably, a hail of las-bolts and small-arms' fire immediately began to pour through the openings. The crew had had time to prepare for us, as we had known they would. Still, less than twenty minutes had passed between the landing of the first transport and the opening of the airlocks, and there was only so fast people could be moved across a voidfaring city to face invaders.
As a result, the next obstacle we faced was a rabble of several scores pirates and void crew, armed with a wide variety of weapons, whose fire pinged harmlessly against our armor. Despite knowing that the odds of them managing to penetrate the suit of power armor around me were astronomical, I still had to fight the instinct to dive for the closest cover, something which I managed through a truly heroic effort of will.
Instead of doing the sensible thing, I raised my sword in the direction of the horde, infusing the gesture with as much nonchalant disdain as I could muster, and declared :
"Kill them all."
Which was an order the maniacs around me were more than happy to obey. Given how laughably outmatched the pirates were, I see no point in describing the utter carnage that ensued : suffice to say that, soon, the decks of the Jewel ran red with pirate blood as we butchered our foes. Within moments, they were all dead, and we continued on our way, with me having no choice but to walk in the vanguard.
The schematics of the ship had been downloaded into my armor from the Worldwounder's databanks, which contained information about every type of vessel in the Imperium. Combined with my hiver's instincts for navigating tight corridors in a three-dimensional space, I had a clear idea of how to get to the bridge without needing to call up the map which had been uploaded to my armor's internal cogitator before leaving the flagship. Not that I had any desired to go there myself, since this was guaranteed to be the most heavily-defended place on the entire vessel, but since I couldn't avoid it, I might as well give the defenders as little time to react to our intrusion as I could.
The most direct route to the bridge was where the enemy would put their strongest defenses, and I had no intention of facing them if I could at all avoid it. I didn't put it like that to my companions, obviously : as far as they were concerned, the path I had selected was merely the one which would bring us to our destination the quickest so we could confront the mastermind behind the Bloodied Crown and all the horrors it had inflicted on the people of the Torredon Subsector.
Out of my three companions, Akivasha alone hadn't fought since we'd landed, preferring to stick by my side. It was difficult to read her body language, as her millennia of existence had slowly eroded away any humanity her transformation into a blood-sucking mutant might have left her with, but I was reasonably certain she considered the defenders of the Jewel of the Void to be beneath her.
In the end, I was to be more grateful for her initial restraint than I could imagine – but of course, I had no way of knowing that at the time.
Despite my best efforts, our progress through the Jewel of the Void was far from unimpeded. There must have been thousands of enforcers aboard the ship, and all of them would be on the hunt for the intruders who had seized the landing bay. We moved quickly enough to keep them from bringing their superior numbers to bear, however, and the few engagements we couldn't avoid ended with gratifying speed, despite my fear that we might be slowed down and eventually overwhelmed.
The higher we went through the pirate ship's levels, the more luxurious our surroundings became. While nothing we saw matched the opulence on display aboard the Worldwounder, it was clear Jabbus had invested much of his ill-gotten gains into making his ship a veritable void-worthy palace. I wouldn't go so far as claim it was comfortable for the common crew, however.
The poor wretches fled from us whenever they caught sight of us (the mere sound of our approach, I presumed, not being enough for them to identify us as intruders rather than more of Jabbus' enforcers). What few glimpses of them I managed to catch were enough to convince me that, despite the differences in their surroundings, they weren't treated any better than the crew of the Murderous Jest.
It wasn't until we arrived into what I recognized as a trophy room that my palms began to tingle, in that way which had often warned me of imminent danger – although, much to my despair, rarely in time to avoid it.
The room was a long corridor, lit up by a succession of chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling. On each side, pieces of jewellery and art were displayed in armourcrys cases, with a little display underneath each explaining its origins and the circumstances of its acquisition, in a sordid parody of a museum which reminded me uncomfortably of Areelu's own Dynastic galleries aboard the Worldwounder. For all that her ancestor had been bestowed a Warrant of Trade by the Imperium, there had been little difference between Jan Van Yastobaal and the Bloodied Crown.
"That's weird," said Lieutenant Nathan, the USA officer in charge of the assault party.
"What is it ?" I asked, raising a hand to forestall any further movement.
"The auspex isn't working right," the officer replied, sounding as pleased about it as I did. "There's some kind of interference in the room that's making all returns nonsensical." He looked at the various display pieces visible from our position at the entrance, and added : "some of these things might be interfering with the auspex : I remember my team and I encountering some weird materials while training aboard Emeli's Gift that had a similar effect."
I had no desire to walk into such an open space, and fortunately the troopers accompanying me were reluctant to let their Liberator be the first to walk into a potential ambush. At a gesture from Nathan, a fireteam ventured into the trophy room while we huddled around the entrance, moving with the kind of speed and precision you would expect from people who had been trained aboard the most dangerous sections of Slawkenberg's very own Space Hulk.
It didn't help them. As their sergeant was about to call out for the rest of us to join them, there was a flash of light so bright it briefly blinded me despite my armor's eye-lenses immediately darkening, and a wave of heat that we could feel even through the layered plating standing between my body and its source.
In the blink of an eye, the entire group of USA troopers were caught in the inferno. They didn't even have time to scream before their armors succumbed to the supernatural heat and the bodies within ceased to be biology and became physics : by the time my vision returned, all that was left of them was a handful of distorted shadows burned into the opposite wall, amidst the melted remnants of some golden sculpture whose aesthetics had only been improved by being melted to slag.
I had seen enough flamers being used in my time at the Schola (Commissarial cadets were supposed to know the basics of every type of weapon commonly in use in the Imperial Guard, and the Sororitas were never shy about providing enthusiastic demonstrations) to know that this was no natural fire, and my bowels spasmed. I had witnessed far more displays of sorcery than I was comfortable with since landing on Slawkenberg with no idea of what I had gotten myself into, but most of the time, those had been performed by people who were, at least in theory, on my side. The only exceptions were the various dupes of Nurgle I had crossed paths with, and those had been more aimed at summoning the footsoldiers of the Lord of Decay than attacking me directly.
So I was familiar enough with psykers to know that such an attack was a sign of an extremely powerful witch. I looked around frantically, looking for the source of the attack. Immediately, my eyes were drawn to a man who had just emerged from his hiding spot between two truly ugly examples of the taxidermist's art.
He was wearing wargear of much higher quality than the cobbled-together wargear common to the pirates we'd crushed on our way through the ship. His body was surrounded by the same kind of haze common on Slawkenberg's hottest days. The effect was especially pronounced around his hands, which were glowing with a fell glow, which was already starting to increase again.
Beyond the raw terror which nearly completely consumed me, part of my mind pointed out that this must be another of the wyrds we knew the Bloodied Crown was trafficking. However, nothing in Hektor's report of those he'd encountered aboard the Murderous Jest had indicated they had been capable of such destruction. Which made sense now that I thought about it : obviously Jabbus would have kept the most powerful feral psykers for his own use.
On the plus side, I thought morbidly, at least the five dead troopers hadn't had time to suffer : their souls had ended up straight in the Warp, probably very confused as to what exactly had happened. I tried not to think about what fate awaited them in the afterlife, and perhaps fortunately, my immediate circumstances provided more than enough distraction.
With an effort of will, I focused on my predicament. I was all too aware that only blind luck and Lieutenant Nathan's caution in keeping an eye on the auspex despite our advance having been all but unstoppable so far had kept me from being obliterated along with the vanguard. For all its added bells and whistles, my armor was not any tougher than that of the troopers around me : all it would take was for the pyrokinetic to unleash another such attack for me to end up having to explain myself to a doubtlessly very hacked-off Emperor.
This was no time for half-measures, and I resorted to use to one of my trump cards immediately.
"Jurgen, kill them !" I shouted, all thoughts of minimizing his use of his psychic powers cast asides in the face of the current danger. His use of the Warp might kill me, but it hadn't done so before, and if nothing was done fast then the pyrokinetic most definitely would. Given the chance between the possibility of death and the near-certainty of it, I would pick the former every time.
I expected the skull of the enemy psyker to pop, or for something else equally unpleasant to happen to him, but a couple of seconds passed (an eternity in battle, as anyone who has ever had to fight for their life will tell you) and nothing happened.
I was about to shout at Jurgen to hurry the frak up, when I heard my aide's voice over the strike force's vox-net. It was strained, as if it were taking a herculean effort for him to speak at all :
"I … can't, sir," he said.
Despite my reluctance to take my eyes off the pyrokinetic, I cast a quick glance backward, and to my horror, I saw that everyone else in the boarding party was still immobile despite the attack we had just suffered – including Jurgen and Malicia. The air around them was crackling with fey lights, and my stomach dropped as understanding dawned on me. The pyrokinetic who had just barbecued half a dozen troopers wasn't working alone : there was at least one other psyker at work here, who had used their own abilities to paralyse the rest of my escort.
Of course it was possible that one single wyrd was responsible for both phenomena, but the idea that we were facing someone so powerful as to be able to use two psychic powers that I knew belonged to different branches of sorcery at the same time was too awful for me to contemplate seriously. If it were the case, I was already dead in any case.
Then, I caught motion in my peripheral vision, and nearly struck with my chainsword before recognizing who it was.
"Stay close to me," said Akivasha, and I nearly collapsed in relief at the realization that, for one reason or another, the Vampire also wasn't affected by the psychic paralysis which had befallen the rest of our group.
Some corner of my mind idly noted that, if I survived this mess, I would need to thank Harold for the wards the Tzeentchian magi had added to my suit of power armor. I couldn't think of any other reason why the spell which had immobilized my companions wasn't affecting me (a more pious man might have attributed it to the Emperor's protection, but I wasn't delusional enough to think He would directly intervene to help me, even before everything in my life had gone so horribly wrong).
As for Akivasha, who knew how her Vampire biology interacted with psychic power ? Honestly, after her display against Hash'ak'gik, I probably should have been more surprised she hadn't instantly turned our attackers into bloody mist.
"Urien !" shouted the pyrokinetic, his face distorted by a grimace of mixed disbelief and rage. "What the frak are you doing ?! Get these two to stop moving too !"
"I'm trying !" responded his accomplice, his own visage (which incongruously reminded me of some of the sneering aristocrats who had been so prevalent in Slawkenberg's high society before the Uprising) twisted in a rictus of concentration, sweat profusely running down his brow. "It's not working ! Something's blocking me !"
"Fine," spat the fire-wielding maniac. "Guess we're going to have to do this the hard way then !"
As it so often does in situations like this, time seemed to slow down to a crawl, giving me time to consider my options. I wanted nothing more than to run back the way we'd come, all the way back to the landing bay and aboard the transport before flying off to the Worldwounder. But that would be foolish. The corridor was packed with immobile armored troopers : finding a way through them would take time, which the pyrokinetic was sure to use to strike me in the back and incinerate me long before I could reach the nearest turn which would cut off his line of view.
Already, more power was gathering in the pyrokinetic's hands, and thanks to all the time I had been forced to spend near psykers, I suddenly realized why he had struck when he had, taking out half a squad of common troopers instead of any of the real heavy-hitters. Energy had to go somewhere : he must have been gathering strength for an attack before we'd entered the room, and had no choice but to let it loose, or he would have blown up in some spectacular and doubtlessly lethal fashion.
Before he could let loose another volley of Warp-fire, however, Akivasha moved with preternatural speed, too fast for me to see. I have no doubt that, had I not been wearing a suit of void-sealed armor, the burst of air from her sudden movement would have made me stumble. One moment she was standing next to me, then she was in front of the pyrokinetic with one hand buried into his chest. With a sound that would echo in my nightmares for weeks afterwards, she ripped his heart out of his ribcage.
The pyrokinetic looked at the bloody organ, eyes wide in shock, mouth moving silently. Then he ignited, as the energies he'd been gathering were abruptly released. Akivasha leapt back just in time to avoid being caught in the blast, which was accompanied by a ghastly chorus of voices that none of my armor's senses recorded but which I heard with painful clarity, before they were silenced, as abruptly as if someone had slammed a door shut on them.
By the time the warp-fire died down, nothing remained of the wyrd but a pile of ash. That was the most immediate threat taken care of, and I let loose a silent sigh of relief. But, as Akivasha began to move back toward the fray, something invisible slammed into the Paragon, sending her flying across the room, and I looked in the direction of the unseen blow to find another witch, who was holding her arms up. She was crying, I idly noticed, before realizing that the tears running down her cheeks were red : blood was pouring out of her eyes, freezing into small crimson crystals as it fell from her skin.
A telekinetic, then, similar to Jurgen – and probably near my aide in strength too, since she was capable of keeping Akivasha in check despite her prodigious strength. Fortunately, that appeared to require her full focus. So, despite my better judgement, I charged straight at the witch, aiming to kill her while she was busy with Akivasha.
I was half-way there when a man dressed in rags emerged from our ambushers' hiding spot, a demented, bloodthirsty smile on his face, which was covered in so many scars I found it difficult to find an unmarked spot of skin. With every step, his body grew, ripping through his tattered clothing and causing the deck beneath our feet to shake.
This particular wyrd must be a biokinetic, capable of shaping his own flesh according to his perverse imagination. There were examples of that type of psyker in the Crèche for the Gifted on Slawkenberg, but none of them could do anything like this – a fact for which I, as well as the luckless souls tasked with taking care of and training the infant psykers, was deeply grateful for.
Looking at him, it was clear that he was powerful enough to not simply transform existing matter, but conjure more from the Warp, as he was growing before my very eyes into a monstrous, hulking form. His head was grotesquely huge compared to the rest of his body, but while the maw full of teeth was very attention-catching in itself, my focus was on the sharp talons that ended his comparatively frail, but much longer arms.
"I'm going to rip you apart !" the beast bellowed. Thick strands of saliva were projected along with the words, and the overall effect was as grotesque as it was terrifying.
"I've killed bigger monsters than you," I riposted. Which was even true : compared to Hash'ak'gik, this mutated freak was downright tiny. Of course, I wasn't inside the Liberator Armor this time, and his claws would kill me just as dead as the Daemon Prince of Nurgle's would have given the chance.
In the end, I believe it was my regular sparring sessions with Hektor which saved my life. Unlike Zerayah, I was under no illusion that I could defeat the World Eater if he ever took me seriously or stopped being intimidated by my fraudulent reputation, but even with him holding back, duelling a Space Marine had sharpened my combat instincts to a level far beyond what old Miyamoto de Bergerac had been able to pound into my skull at the Schola.
It had also made me somewhat used to facing larger opponents, although the psyker's transformed form was far bigger than Hektor. I dodged the first swipe of my enemy's claws, which tore through the metal plating of the deck like it was parchment. Ignoring the vivid images of how easily those claws would rip into my armor if given the chance my imagination was conjuring, I moved closer to the behemoth, hoping to get inside his reach. It was a risky gambit, but something about the way the giant moved made me think that the wyrd wasn't used to fighting in this form, despite clearly being well into adulthood, and presumably having had years to learn to use his unnatural gifts.
I made a mental note of that fact, sure that it would be important later, but at the time I was more concerned with what it meant for my odds of survival. Raising my left hand, I fired a volley of bolter shells in the vague direction of his face. I didn't have time to aim, but at such close range and with such a large target, most of my shots still hit, creating large, bloody craters and causing the beast to recoil, howling in pain and lashing out with his claws, thankfully hitting only empty air.
The wounds I had inflicted, while gory, were all superficial, and started closing before my eyes. Clearly, the psychically-created flesh was tougher than it ought to be, as I knew all too well what a bolt pistol would do to an unarmored human. But while my shots had failed to inflict any lasting damage, they had been enough to create an opening.
Seizing the opportunity while it lasted, I holstered my bolt pistol, shifted my chainsword to a two-handed grip, and struck with all the strength I could draw out of my power armor.
The blade bit deep into the biokinetic's throat. A torrent of foul ichor erupted, drenching my armor, and I could only imagine how awful the stench would be had I decided not to wear my helmet for some Emperor-forsaken reason.
I pushed my weapon deeper, and felt a brief resistance as its adamantium teeth met the monster's spinal column. I pivoted on my feet, moving my entire body around, and with a roar of effort, severed the entire grotesque head from his shoulders. It fell ponderously, hitting the deck with a wet sound, its additional heft already melting away into unidentifiable ectoplasm.
"Kelor !" The telekinetic witch holding Akivasha at bay cried out in dismay.
That distraction proved fatal, as it caused her spell's pressure to weaken just enough for the Paragon to cross the remaining distance between them and tear her head off with her bare hands, before slicing our final foe, the one responsible for paralysing the rest of our group, by slicing him open from throat to belly.
And just like that, it was over. The tension in the air from so many potent psykers using their tainted gifts all at once dissipated, and I only then realized how close we must surely have come to one or more of the wyrds being turned into conduits for the daemons which forever wait behind the veil between Materium and Immaterium for a chance to come across. The whole battle couldn't have taken more than a minute or two between the initial fiery attack and the death of the last attacker, even if it had seemed to take much longer to my panicked mind.
"Thank you, Lady Akivasha," I said to the blood-drenched Vampire. "That was very resourceful."
Without her presence, I was under no illusion as to how this ambush would have turned out. Even with me being able to move while the rest of the group was paralysed, the rest of the psykers would have torn me apart.
Akivasha inclined her head, smugness that all but radiating from her. Well, she had saved my life, so she had more than earned it as far as I was concerned.
"How are you feeling, Jurgen ?" I asked, knowing that a display of concern for my aide would go down well with the remaining troopers, especially right after they'd seen me dispatch a psychically-mutated abomination while they couldn't do anything to help.
"Fine now that gretchin-fondler's gone, sir," the Valhallan spat, in a display of vulgarity quite at odd with his usual attitude. He glared at the disembowelled corpse of Akivasha's latest victim, and I realized he must have been more shaken than I had thought. "That was really unpleasant," he continued. "I could feel him in my head, stopping my thoughts. Took a lot just to be able to talk."
"I see. And you, Malicia ?" I cared even less about my bloodward's comfort, but making it obvious wasn't a good idea given how many blades she was carrying on her person at any given time. And besides, she was a Drukhari with an entirely different biology.
"The same," she growled, clearly as happy about being rendered powerless as Jurgen. "I am looking forward to expressing my displeasure to whoever's responsible for this."
I was about to say something (what exactly, I wasn't sure) when I heard Areelu's voice in my ear.
"Ciaphas, what's going on ? Are you alright ?"
There was an edge of panic in her voice that someone less experienced at reading people than I would have missed, which I found oddly gratifying.
"I'm fine, Areelu," I replied, before inspiration suddenly struck, and I continued, injecting just the right amount of grief in my voice : "But not all of us were so lucky. We're going to need to look into protection from Warpcraft for the troopers if we're going to keep clashing with enemy psykers."
That would play well with my image of a caring leader, while also improving my chances of survival if we ended up facing more demented witches. And, to top it all off, it would divert considerable resources to something which would provide nearly no advantage against the Imperium when the time inevitably came for the Protectorate to be reintegrated into His Blessed Majesty's dominion.
Sure, the Imperial Guard made use of sanctioned psykers, but they were only a minuscule fraction of the resources available to the Emperor's Hammer, and far from the one most commanding officers preferred to rely upon. And it was better for my sanity to have the Tzeentchian work on warding the armor of as many USA troopers as possible rather than continuing their research into things Mankind was not meant to know.
With the psykers dead, the spell which had paralysed the rest of our group faded, and the USA troopers rushed into the room, making sure there weren't any further ambushes waiting for us. I said a few words in honor of the dead soldiers, adapting one of the rote speeches I had been taught at the Schola to fit the circumstances, and after a brief pause during which we all stood up and looked appropriately grave, Lieutenant Nathan barked an order to the remaining soldiers, and we continued our advance toward the bridge.
I don't mind admitting to a renewed sense of urgency as we crossed the remaining distance toward our destination. These wyrds had been far more powerful than the ones encountered by Hektor, which meant that Director Auric, the member of the cartel responsible for their trafficking, was much more dangerous than I'd previously believed (and, given that the man was crazy enough to deal with psykers in the first place, that bar had already been quite high).
Back in Adumbria, I had promised to deal with him mostly to appease Jurgen and keep up appearances in front of my supposed subordinates, but now it was clear that I needed him gone and his operations decisively shut down. That batch of Warp-touched killers had come far too close to succeeding for my liking : next time, I might not be so lucky.
Had I but known the true origin of the Bloodied Crown's wyrds, I would have been a great deal less sanguine about the whole situation, you can be sure of that. But, at the time, I still believed the whole thing to be another psyker trafficking ring similar to the one which had brought Jurgen to Perlia, if clearly more successful and widespread given the number of combat-worthy witches it had been able to procure for the cartel's use.
The reality, of course, was infinitely more terrifying, and would cause me headaches for years to come.
Notes:
AN : Hello, everyone ! A shorter chapter than usual this time, mostly due to being entirely told from Cain's perspective. It was longer in the first draft, but I decided to cut it right after the ambush for pacing reasons.
Next up will be an update for Darth Cain, or maybe another one for ABR - after a year of struggle, getting the latest chapter out seems to have brought the Muse's attention back to that story. But by know, you all know I make no promises.
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and I look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 37: Chapter 36
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
To my complete lack of surprise, the crew of the Jewel of the Void had had the time to mount one last attempt at defense around the entrance to the bridge by the time we got there. Our progress was much slower on that final length of our advance : after the ambush in the trophy room, Lieutenant Nathan wasn't about to take any chances, and ordered his people to advance cautiously, by fire and movement, the whole way. Which was fine by me, although I made sure to give the appearance of indulging the officer's caution out of respect for the troopers he'd lost, rather than because I was a coward who would much rather stay back and let everyone else charge into battle without me.
On our way, we received confirmation that the other strike team had successfully seized the ship's Enginarium. There had been some damage to the machines, and a lot more to the enforcers overseeing the work of the enslaved tech-priests and thralls maintaining the place, but for now, the Jewel was dead in the void, the orders from its bridge going unheeded. Once we captured the bridge, the ship would be fully under our control – save for the little detail of bringing its entire thousands-strong crew to heel, which would take days, if not weeks. Thankfully, that wouldn't be my problem, but I had more immediate concerns.
The moment the forward team poked their head into the long corridor leading to the bridge's blast doors, they were immediately fired upon, and quickly went back under cover. That brief moment had been enough for their armors' sensors to get a picture of the bridge's defenses, which were quickly forwarded to Nathan's and my helmet displays.
Looking at the enemy position with a tactical eye, I reckoned we could simply charge in, and rely on our armor and firepower to carry us through. That would have had a reasonable chance of success, and I still had enough troopers to hide behind that I was all but certain to reach the enemy and start cutting them down with my chainsword. But I didn't like the look of some of these heavy weapon emplacements, and it would only take one lucky shot to pierce my armor and kill me.
Malicia might have been able to dance between the defenders' lines of fire long enough to reach them and start butchering them in close quarters, to say nothing of the slaughter Akivasha could have effortlessly wrought upon them using her Vampiric abilities. But I had a healthy wariness of giving orders to either of them. Malicia was bound to obey my commands by Emeli's mark, but I'd still rather avoid provoking her if I could avoid it. As for Akivasha, after her display against the wyrds, I didn't want to anger her by presuming to command her – she had come onto this boarding party to keep me alive, something I was already more than grateful for, but she had joined our expedition as an ally, not a subordinate.
As always, there was also the matter of my image to consider. I didn't want the troops to start thinking I was reluctant to charge into deadly peril and wanted someone else to take all the risks, no matter how true that might be. Fortunately, there was someone else in my retinue whose obedience I could absolutely rely on to deal with this situation without risking my mask as Cain the Liberator.
"Jurgen, if you wouldn't mind ?" I asked, gesturing in the vague direction of the enemy.
I was still reluctant to have him use his psychic abilities, especially after the wyrds' wild use of theirs had presumably thinned the Veil and drawn the attention of the malevolent predators waiting on the other side, but on the whole I trusted his skills enough that the risk seemed worth it.
"Of course, sir," my aide replied, with the same tone of voice as if I had asked him to dispose of the day's laundry.
"Lieutenant," I told Nathan, "please cover Jurgen while he deals with this little problem for us."
"Yes, sir !" the officer replied with a sharp salute.
On Nathan's signal, a squad of troopers ran into the open, laying down suppressing fire and drawing the attention of the bridge's defenders while Jurgen, undistinguishable from the troopers in his armor, gathered his strength. It only took him a few seconds, during which the rest of the squad took enough damage to make me wince in sympathy for the borgs who would need to repair their wargear – but none of them fell.
Then Jurgen unleashed his might, and reminded me and everyone else of the reason why he was considered a Hero of the Liberation in his own right. On his own, Jurgen was far more powerful than the wyrds who had ambushed us in the trophy room : he'd just been a bad match-up to the telepath who had immobilized nearly our entire strike force at once, as his abilities were telekinetic in nature, while he lacked any talent for the reading and manipulation of minds – something for which I was immensely grateful, as the thought of being near someone who could read my thoughts filled me with abject terror.
The heavy weapon emplacements were ripped from the deck and slammed against the closest walls with enough strength to bend them and turn those unfortunate souls caught in their way into bloody paste. Then, before the shocked defenders could react, half of them turned to red mist, caught between two walls of kinetic energy that crackled with sparks of Warp energy, rendering them barely visible. Understandably, the survivors began to panic at this stage, but the blast doors leading to the bridge at their back were firmly sealed, leaving them nowhere to run but toward the USA troopers.
At least they didn't have to panic for long, as Jurgen raised his hands and pulled them off the deck. Over twenty men and women hovered in the air for a few seconds, before my aide slammed his gauntleted hands together and his helpless victims followed suit, with predictably gory results.
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. I might have underestimated how ticked off my aide had really been at having been unable to assist me during the wyrds' ambush.
"Thank you, Jurgen," I said in the silence that had descended on the scene, as USA troopers gawked at the sight. Only a few of them had witnessed the Uprising over two decades ago, and seeing the real thing with their own eyes was quite different from hearing stories about it. "That was very well done."
"Thank you, sir," he replied, sounding very proud of himself. "Shall I open the door for you as well ?"
I reckoned he could probably manage it too, but by that point I judged he had been sufficiently mollified not to risk it – not when there were more mundane methods available to me.
"I think we can manage that on our own, can't we, Lieutenant ?"
Lieutenant Nathan snapped to attention, pulled out of his awe-induced stupor.
"Right ! Matthew, Carla, put some demo charges on that door !"
Just like I'd hoped, my addressing him directly had refocused his attention on the situation at hand, without me having to berate him for standing there with his jaw dropped like an ecclesiarch who had just seen one of the statues of the Saints come down from its pedestal to smite down the unholy while we were still in the middle of enemy territory. Not that he wouldn't have deserved it, but I wanted to maintain the illusion that I cared for the soldiers charged with keeping me safe, and being a disciplinary martinet would hurt that image.
A few minutes later, we all stepped back from the doors, and the explosives were set off. Immediately, the troopers rushed in, passing through the opening that had formed in the blockade – a tangled mess of sharp edges and burning metal. To my unspoken relief, Nathan was the first one through, moving before I could say anything that would force him to let me go first.
I heard las-fire on the other side, but it didn't last long. Within moments of the Lieutenant's squad going through, he called over the vox to indicate that resistance had been crushed and the bridge was secure. Knowing that I couldn't doubt Nathan's assessment without fatally undermining his credibility to the soldiers under his command, I forced myself to advance, accompanied by my retinue.
The bridge of the Jewel of the Void was very different from that of the Worldwounder, or any of the Protectorate vessels I had been aboard over the years. The overall structure was the same, of course : regardless of its current master, the ship had been built in an Imperial shipyard using techniques which had been laid down thousands of years ago. But where the Worldwounder's bridge was decorated with ancient trophies and the portraits of previous Rogue Traders and crew members who had distinguished themselves in their service, here, dessicated corpses in Imperial Guard and Navy uniforms hung from the ceiling on iron chains, while the floor was covered in a shining yellow metal plating I was almost certain was gold, in a staggering display of bad taste.
Furthermore, instead of the combination of the tech-priests and uniformed officers manning their stations around the captain's command throne, the Jewel of the Void was crewed by a gaggle of armed men and women, with far more stations being occupied by servitors than I suspected was standard protocol aboard a ship of the Imperial Navy. At first glance, there looked to be around a couple hundred crew members on the bridge, most of them cowering behind their stations and looking terrified. Only a handful of enforcers had remained : presumably most of them had been sent outside to defend the door, with only a small cadre left behind to keep the rest of the crew in line and keep the Chairman safe. Their smoking corpses laid where they had fallen, struck down by Nathan's squad without having been able to inflict any damage in response with their sidearms.
My attention, however, was soon drawn to the figure which sat at the highest tier of the bridge, directly facing the breached door on a command throne that had clearly been built specially for its occupant. I had known what to expect from Areelu's intelligence, but Jabbus' appearance still took me by surprise. The chairman of the Bloodied Crown looked like something straight out of the anti-Imperial caricatures depicting the typical Planetary Governor that were so popular on Slawkenberg. He was so grotesquely obese, I was certain Basileus-Zeta would have asked us to keep him alive if only so that he could study how in the Gods' names he was still alive.
Yet for all his ridiculous appearance, there was no hiding the glint of cold-blooded intellect in his eyes, even though they were almost lost under flabs of overstretched skin. I reminded myself that this man had forged one of the mightiest shadow cartels in the Torredon Gap, achieving a position of incredible power within the Torredon Gap, not through the chance of birth as the Giorbas and so many Imperial nobles had, but through an absolute willingness to do whatever was necessary to achieve his ends, no matter how cruel or depraved.
A pair of pale, androgynous youths stood next to Jabbus' anti-gravitic chair – the only way the poor piece of furniture could possibly withstand his weight. While the rest of the bridge crew were cowering in fright, they stared at us with impassive eyes, and I shivered despite myself. I had seen servitors with more emotion in their gaze than these two creatures.
The strike force fanned out around me, while the three members of my retinue stayed close at hand, ready to intervene should any danger to my person reveal itself.
"Chairman Jabbus," I called out, using my armor's vox-speaker to amplify my voice and make sure it reached across the bridge, so that even the crew hiding behind their console stations near the occulus could hear me clearly – a cheap bit of theatre, but I didn't want any of them do something stupid. "I am Ciaphas Cain, here on behalf of the Liberation Council of Slawkenberg and the greater Protectorate. I am prepared to accept your surrender."
I paused briefly, just long enough to let my words sink in, then added :
"It would be in your best interests to take that offer."
"Cain," Jabbus repeated my name. Reading his expression under all the fat was difficult, but I could tell he wasn't happy with the situation. Well, tough luck : if he didn't want a bunch of people armed with big guns to storm his bridge, he shouldn't have gotten into piracy to begin with. "I should have known Auric's freaks wouldn't be able to stop you."
"Yes, you should have," I said, glossing over the fact that they had come far too close to doing precisely that for my peace of mind. "But you are fortunate, Chairman Jabbus. Much as you and your activities disgust me, I am more concerned with this whole psyker trafficking the Bloodied Crown has involved itself with. You will tell us everything you know about Auric's operations."
"And if I don't ?" he asked, raising a flabby eyebrow in challenge.
Perhaps he expected me to threaten him with the wrath of the Dark Gods, or lose my temper at this defiance of my authority like so many petty tyrants, used to being surrounded by toadies who couldn't tell a sentence in plain Gothic if their lives depended on it, would have done.
"Malicia," I asked softly, and the Drukhari Wych stepped forward to my side. I forced myself to ignore the alien fluidity of her movement, and suppressed the reflex to strike at her with my chainsword, with an ease born of long practice, and asked her : "Tell me, how long did it take you and Krystabel to convince Smile to cooperate again ?"
"Only a few minutes before he started begging to talk," my bloodward replied, her wicked grin audible despite the translator she wore. "And a couple of hours to make sure he was sincere."
"Thank you," I told her with a nod, before returning my gaze to Jabbus, who looked significantly paler than before. "Now, you were saying ?"
He hesitated, weighing his options. As the leader of a shadow cartel, he doubtlessly knew more about xenos than the typical Imperial citizen, and in the years since Vileheart's raid on Slawkenberg, I had learned that Malicia's dark kin were infamous for their depredations among the void-born. Being taken alive by the Drukhari wasn't quite as terrifying to these superstitious sailors of the stars as being claimed by the daemons of the Warp, but it was a close thing.
"I don't know much," he admitted after a few tense seconds. "Auric is very paranoid about keeping his operations concealed from everybody, including the rest of the directorate. I tried to find out more, of course, but he's very good at hiding his tracks, and with how useful his work has been to the cartel by giving us our own star-speakers, I was wary of provoking him."
'Star-speakers' was another term for astropaths, I knew. That explained how the Bloodied Crown had been able to prepare an ambush for us in Sanguia : back on Cassandron, my paranoia had pushed me to ask the magi to investigate, but I'd been as surprised as everyone else when they'd confirmed my paranoid imaginings. I had assumed the shadow cartel had made use of captured Imperial astropaths, forced to assist their captors under threat of death or worse : I knew just enough about astropathy to understand that it was a much more complex matter than the simplistic, brutish use of power used by the wyrds Hektor had faced on the Murderous Jest. Still, however unreliable such bootleg astropaths might be, they had to be faster than sending messenger ships through the Warp, especially in this storm-wracked Subsector.
I mentally raised my evaluation of Auric's threat level another notch. If he could create false astropaths good enough to coordinate the activities of the Bloodied Crown, then he was even crazier and more dangerous than I'd thought.
"The psykers who attacked us," I said. "Where did they come from ?"
"They arrived in the system a couple of weeks ago," Jabbus replied. "Auric had told me about them over our pseudo-astropathic network. They were supposed to deal with you if you escaped our ambush by attempting to board my ship."
"I thought he was being overly cautious," he sighed and shook his head, the motion sending spittle and sweat flying as well as making the flabs of his neck giggle in a nauseating manner. "Then you smashed our trap as if it were nothing, killed Balor, and tore you way through my ship. I really underestimated you, didn't I ?"
"Yes, you did," I replied. "What happened to the ship that brought them here ?"
"It's somewhere inside one of our hangar bays," he told me. "No idea which one, but it should be in the cogitators if your hereteks look for it. They barely made it to Sanguia before the wretched mutant thing they used instead of a Navigator died, and we'd to tow them inside."
"I see. Thank you for your cooperation, Jabbus. Now, you will be brought to our flagship, and detained until I decide what to do with you."
Which would probably be killing him sooner or later, I knew, although I would probably make it quick, if only so that the other Protectorate leaders wouldn't think it was acceptable to torture surrendering enemies. I didn't want any of them to start developing that kind of habit if I could help it.
"I don't think so," the Chairman of the Bloodied Crown said, surprising me with his sudden vehemence. "I have been an outlaw for decades, Cain. I knew full well what fate awaited me if I was ever captured by the Imperium, or fell into the hands of one of my rivals, for that matter. I've told you everything I know about Auric out of respect for beating me, and because I find the notion of dragging the smug bastard down with me amusing, but I'm not going to let you give me to your xenos pet, or whatever else you intend for me." Jabbus didn't so much straighten up on his resting platform as raised his head, lifting his innumerable chins with what must have been considerable effort, before adding loudly : "Execute protocol seventeen-delta."
The two emotionless youths suddenly sprung into action. Moving with a speed that belied their previous immobility, they drew blades from their sleeves – but, instead of jumping on me, they leapt on their master's grav-chair and, with eerie synchronicity, stabbed their weapons deep into his eye sockets. The long, thin blades pierced through the eyes and into the Chairman's brain instantly, fast enough that he wouldn't have had time to feel anything before death.
Before anyone could react – except maybe Akivasha and Malicia, but the former didn't bother, and the latter was too interested in watching the spectacle – the two killers drew their weapons out and turned them on themselves, cutting their own throat with the same utter lack of emotion they had shown the entire time.
I sighed dramatically, trying to mask my shock, and opened a vox-link to the bridge of the Worldwounder.
"Areelu ? This is Cain. Tell Hektor to be careful with his prisoner : Jabbus took the easy way out, so Sieur Pelton is going to be our main source of intel on the shadow cartel's operations."
"Understood, Warmaster," came the Rogue Trader's reply.
A couple of hours later, I was back on the Worldwounder, sitting inside a conference room with the rest of the war council around me, either in person or by hololithic projection. With the capture of the Jewel of the Void, the rest of the void battle had ended quickly, with the remaining pirate ships breaking off and fleeing for the Mandeville Point. Not many had managed to escape the guns of the Worldwounder or the bombing runs of our fighter wings, and the void was littered with the burning hulks of pirate vessels as well as many escape pods, which were even now in the process of being collected by our people, their occupants given the choice between captivity and death by suffocation or starvation.
All in all, the whole operation had gone about as well as I could have hoped for. Considering we had run face-first into an ambush and then had to deal with a party of powerful wyrds, I counted myself lucky to have survived, let alone won what everyone around me considered a great victory for the Protectorate.
"Now that the welcoming party is over," I declared, drawing a series of dutifully sycophantic chuckles, "it's time to address the rest of the situation here. Lady Van Yastobaal, if you would ?"
The main hololith at the center of the table was displaying a three-dimensional map of Sanguia, the sole inhabited planet of the eponymous system. I had read the briefing on the planet on the way here, wanting to know everything I could in case this turned out to be another Cassandron. The records available on the Worldwounder's databanks had made for informative reading, if a tad depressing.
Due to its proximity to its star, Sanguia was a very hot planet, but not to the point of being a scorched desert. Instead, what would be tropical jungles on more temperate worlds covered nearly the entire planet. Imperial settlements dotted the emerald orb, the largest approaching the size of what would be a mid-sized township on Slawkenberg. Most of these settlements, however, were in various states of abandonment and disrepair.
By itself, Sanguia wasn't a death-world : the local fauna had some impressive predators, but nothing like the legendary horrors of dread Catachan. However, for some reason nobody knew (except maybe the Inquisition, but if so, they weren't sharing and nobody was stupid enough to ask), Sanguia had been plagued by Drukhari raids for hundreds of years. The xenos raiders would simply appear in system every few decades, smash aside or simply avoid any defense fleet present in the system, and hunt the people of Sanguia for sport for a few weeks before leaving with their holds full of slaves who would never be seen again, long before any Imperial response could arrive.
As a result of this, Sanguia's population was the kind of hardened men and women the Imperial Guard loved to recruit from. The planet needed every defender it could get, of course, but that hadn't stopped the Munitorum, and the Sanguian Commandos were reputed across the Damocles Gulf for their lethality as much as for their simmering rage at being taken away from their homeworld. Even I had heard of them back at the Schola, though for some reason my lessons hadn't included the history of their world and how stupidly short-sighted the whole thing was.
Between the Drukhari raids and the Imperial Tithe, Sanguia had been slowly bled dry of manpower for centuries, caught in a downward spiral as more and more settlements had to be abandoned with every generation, or were left empty of anything but tortured corpses by Dark Eldar raiders. In typical Administratum fashion, the Imperium's response to this situation had been to send new colonists to Sanguia every few years. Those pilgrims didn't live for long, with only the strongest or luckiest managing to survive the raids.
That spiral had seemingly been interrupted in recent years, as the xenos raids had stopped around two decades ago. The Sanguians, to whom paranoia had become a survival trait, hadn't relaxed their guard in that time : if anything, they had used every day to prepare for what they saw as the inevitable return of their ancient tormentors. Supplies had been stocked, weapon caches had been prepared, defenses had been built up, shelters had been dug out, and all the while, every man and woman of fighting age had continued to train.
These preparations had served them well when the Imperial Navy had abandoned the Subsector and the shadow cartels had been given free reign. For obvious reasons, Sanguia was a lot less dependant on interstellar trade than most Imperial worlds – few Chartist Captains were willing to risk being captured by a raiding Dark Eldar party, and when forced to cross the system by the Warp storms plaguing the Gap, most did all they could to make their stay in the system as short as possible.
After learning all this, a thought had taken root in my mind, and I had gone to Areelu for confirmation. As it had turned out, my theory had been correct : the Drukhari responsible for the Sanguians' misery had been none other than the Kabal of Murderous Death, those xenos slavers who had attacked Slawkenberg at around the same time the raids on the jungle-covered Imperial world had ceased. I didn't expect the people of Sanguia to be grateful, or to even believe us if we told them it was thank to us they had been saved, but it was still nice to know some good had come from these days of terror and bloodshed.
Areelu was just finishing recapping all of that for those in the audience who hadn't read the briefing materials on the way to the system, and moving on to the new intelligence we had obtained since arriving.
"When the Bloodied Crown arrived in the system after the Navy's withdrawal and demanded the planet's surrender, Governor Arnauld Schaefer told the Ripper General to go frak himself and activated Sanguia's anti-raid protocols," said the Rogue Trader. "The population evacuated the cities and scattered into the jungle, taking refuge into the shelters concealed there, while the PDF started a guerilla campaign against the pirates once they had landed. From the intelligence we have pulled from the cogitators of the Rossinante and Jewel of the Void, and what Sieur Pelton told us, the Sanguians gave as good as they got."
That was technically the case on every Imperial planet, of course : there was a reason the titles of Imperial Governor and Commander were equivalent. According to my Schola tutors, however, in practice the Governor tended to focus on civilian affairs (which I had taken to mean plotted and schemed with the local nobility to maintain his power, while throwing a lot of parties), and the PDF's top officers ran the military on his behalf. At least that was the case on most worlds; but Sanguia was an exception. The planet's culture had been shaped by generations of xenos raids, and the meaningless concerns of the Imperial nobility had been cast aside in favor of the practicalities of survival.
Here, holding the title of Governor basically meant having a big target on one's back during the next Drukhari raid, as the xenos delighted in targeting the leaders of their victims, both for the pragmatic purpose of throwing them into disarray, and because, according to Areelu (and not denied by Malicia), they enjoyed putting those who believed themselves above their fellow down.
Human nature being what it was, there had never been a shortage of candidates anyway, but simple process of elimination had resulted in them becoming true military leaders of their people, and the current incumbent was supposedly the most dangerous one yet.
According to the Van Yastobaal archives, Arnauld Schaefer had apparently won the position due to the prestige he'd obtained by orchestrating an ambush during the last Drukhari raid that had wiped out an entire squad of the pain-feeding xenos, culminating in him decapitating their leader in single combat. I was sceptical that events had unfolded in precisely that manner, being all too aware of how quickly rumors and reputations could snowball, but the man certainly knew his stuff, given he'd held against the Bloodied Crown's occupation for months with a PDF that had been bled dry by repeated Guard tithes.
"What else has Sieur Pelton told us ?" I asked.
At the moment, Balor's renegade aide was enjoying the Worldwounder's hospitality. I had discreetly checked that this wasn't some kind of euphemism, and been relieved to learn that no, the man was actually being treated well, although obviously his comfortable guest suite was locked from the outside – there was a difference between being hospitable and being a fool, and Areelu was far from the latter.
"He confirmed our suspicions about Auric's activities," replied Areelu, looking preoccupied. "That madman isn't just kidnapping psykers and training them into killers or pseudo-astropaths and Navigators for the shadow cartel's use. He is actively making them, turning latent psykers into active ones. I don't need to tell you how impossible that is, yet Pelton was adamant that he knew some of the wyrds you faced aboard the Jewel of the Void before they were sent to Auric's facility, and none of them had shown any sign of psychic talent."
I blinked, and felt a pit form in my stomach as the implications dawned on me. Before I could descend into a gibbering panic, however, I was distracted by Jurgen tensing next to me, although this time he kept a tight leash on his powers and didn't disturb the meeting with a supernatural manifestation of his displeasure.
"Do we have any idea as to how he is doing this ?" I asked, looking between Areelu, Harold and Tesilon-Kappa. They all looked at one another, before the borg leader took the lead and replied :
"No, Lord Liberator. Our knowledge of such things is admittedly limited, but we've never heard of anything like it."
"It happens in the Eye of Terror sometimes," said Hektor, surprising us all. "Occasionally, people without psychic powers will develop them once they are exposed to its mutagenic touch. I have known humans and Astartes alike to develop such abilities, although whether they were latent psykers beforehand I have no idea."
"So," I said faintly, "our only theory is that a member of a shadow cartel figured out a way to replicate the effects of the Eye of Terror in a lab somewhere. Wonderful."
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, fighting my rising panic. Much as I wanted to turn back and return to Slawkenberg, leaving the Torredon Gap to its fate, I couldn't. Jurgen wouldn't forgive me, for one thing; for another, allowing such a threat to come to pass so close to where I lived (on a galactic scale, Torredon was just next door to Slawkenberg) was unacceptable.
"With the deaths of Jabbus and Balor, the Bloodied Crown is down to four Directors, none of whom hold the same influence as the previous Chairman," I said. "Without a clear line of succession, we shouldn't have to worry about any more coordinated ambushes like the one we just dealt with. Our current priorities, then, are twofold. Harold, Tesilon-Kappa, I want you to check the assassins' ship for clues. If Auric is as paranoid as I think, he will have made sure to wipe the cogitators, but maybe he forgot something, or you can use divination to trace back its path."
"Yes, Lord Liberator," they replied in unison.
"While you are doing this, we need to clean up the mess here." My gaze swept the other faces at the conference. "The cartel fleet is broken, but there are still warbands on the planet, and the people of Sanguia have already suffered long enough without help. Lady Van Yastobaal, have you managed to contact the locals ?"
"I have," she replied. "While I never did business with them before, Worldwounder and the Van Yastobaal's name are known to them. As we discussed before, I haven't told them about my alliance with the Protectorate."
"Good. Ask them if they need any help : we might as well be polite about this. Once they agree, General Mahlone, I need you to coordinate with them and start seek-and-destroy operations against the remaining pirate forces planetside as soon as possible."
"It will be done, Warmaster !" the Khornate General saluted me.
Taking down a bunch of disorganized, leaderless pirates in the middle of a jungle wasn't exactly my idea of a good time, but after a Daemon Prince of Nurgle and a bunch of Warp-touched killers, it sounded positively restful.
And, to my surprise, it was. I didn't even have to set foot on the planet : as Sanguia had little to offer the Protectorate, I was able to convince the rest of the war council that it was in everyone's best interests to continue hiding the true allegiance of their rescuers and have us play the part of reinforcements the Lady Van Yastobaal had brought back to Torredon to help deal with the current situation. Rogue Traders were infamous for having private armies – you couldn't exactly conquer worlds beyond the Imperium's borders without one, after all – so the lie had gone down without issue.
Krystabel wasn't happy about missing out on an opportunity to spread her heretical beliefs to another world, but I persuaded her that we had more pressing concerns and couldn't spend the months or years it would take to 'illuminate' the locals easily enough.
After all, one of the reasons why we'd come to Torredon in the first place was to bring relief to the people the Imperium had abandoned. By ensuring they knew their salvation had come from Areelu, we could slowly tie them to the Protectorate, without any need for violence. Or so I claimed, at any rate : more likely, the entire Subsector would be reclaimed by the Imperium before long, as I couldn't believe the Sector authorities would just give up on an entire Subsector, even one as minor as the Torredon Gap.
As such, I spent the next week or so aboard the Worldwounder, processing paperwork, sparing with Malicia (I had forbidden her from joining the operations on Sanguia for obvious reasons), enjoying Areelu's extensive amasec collection and her even more agreeable company while everyone else worked hard for the cause of Liberation. While the cleansing of Sanguia proceeded, the borgs directed the repairs of our flotilla : we might have won the void battle handily, but our ships had still taken damage.
There were also the Rossinante and Jewel of the Void to take into account. Both were true warships, a rarity in our haphazard formation of retrofitted merchant vessels. Their crews had been enslaved by the Bloodied Crown, and while there were many among them who wanted nothing more than to get out of the ships and get back somewhere where they had proper ground under their feet and a sun overhead, the core of their population was made up of void-born who had never known any other life, and were just happy to no longer have to fear the depredations of their piratical overlords. With their help, the borgs were certain they could get the two ships ready to accompany us by the time operations in the system concluded, even if they wouldn't be back to full effectiveness.
Supplies were also shipped down to Sanguia from the fleet : food, medicine, and the technology needed to rebuild a functioning civilization. After making a show of reluctance, I had given Areelu my permission to establish a trade deal with the Sanguians. I wasn't so removed from my childhood in the underhive to not realize that giving them so much without asking for anything in return would rightly be considered suspicious : blind charity wasn't the Imperium's way, and neither was it that of any sane Rogue Trader. Especially since I had made sure that the Panacea would be shared as part of the process, and until Inquisitor Vail managed to spread it across the entire galaxy, that technology was priceless.
I was catching up on the latest reports from Sanguia (things were progressing well, and Mahlone was very impressed by the locals' talent for hit-and-run tactics and ambushes) when Harold and Tesilon-Kappa returned with the results of their joint investigation of the wyrds' ship. And, predictably, the news they brought immediately brought me back to my habitual level of paranoia-fuelled focus.
"You have managed to locate Auric's base ?" I asked for confirmation.
The two were standing before me in the office Areelu had provided for my use. Harold looked absurdly pleased with himself, like a pupil who had outperformed his teacher's expectations, while Tesilon-Kappa was as unreadable as ever due to how much metal they had instead of a face.
"Yes," the borg confirmed. "While you were correct and an attempt was made to wipe the navigation data from the cogitators, it was performed by laypeople, not properly trained in the ways of the Machine. We managed to recover enough information for Sieur Harold to use as a basis for his rites, which were enough to recreate the route they took to reach Sanguia."
They plugged one of their mecha-dendrites into the small hololith projector built into the desk (yet another casual reminder of the obscene wealth of a Rogue Trader Dynasty, as anywhere else it would have been an ordinary cogitator screen), and a slowly rotating three-dimensional map of the Torredon Gap appeared in the air.
"We are here," Harold said, pointing out the dot labelled 'Sanguia'. "The wyrds' vessel came to Sanguia by following this Warp route, which is as troublesome as all such routes in the Subsector."
As he moved his finger along the lines linking the stars of the Gap (in what I knew to be a gross oversimplification of the many-dimensional pathways through the Empyrean they represented), Tesilon-Kappa helpfully turned them red to make it easier to follow.
The route passed through a number of uninhabited systems, eventually reaching Minos, before diverting from the main Warp routes and ending up in a system so utterly uninteresting it didn't even have a name, just an identification code : WUN-13.
"What do we know about this system ?" I asked.
"Nearly nothing," replied Harold, shrugging. "Which isn't surprising, given what we do know. The records we've date back to an exploration fleet in M28, and it doesn't look like anyone went there since."
"In other words, the perfect place for a renegade like Auric to hide in and conduct whatever foul experiments let him create psykers," I said.
"That was our conclusion as well," nodded Tesilon-Kappa.
"Then our course of action is clear," I said. "We must strike there as soon as possible."
My eagerness to rush into Auric's lair might strike you as uncharacteristic, but I had a few days to process Pelton's revelation of what exactly the mad Director was doing. From where I stood, Auric had already come far too close to killing me already. If he could truly create psykers somehow, then there was no doubt in my mind that he would eventually send more after me : I had declared myself as the enemy of the Bloodied Crown, and was linked to the death of no less than three of the shadow cartel's Directors.
Rather than wait for the next assassination attempt, I would much rather go on the offensive. Auric's base of operations couldn't be that well-defended : clearly he had relied on secrecy and isolation for protection over anything else. At best, I thought, his lair would be defended by more pirate scum the likes of which the USA had crushed underfoot during the boarding of the Rossinante and Jewel of the Void, and whatever psykers he had kept for his own use.
Which, admittedly, worried me, as there was a decent chance Auric had kept the most dangerous wyrds close to him, either for his own protection or because they were too dangerous to let loose. That would be insanely risky, of course, but if the man was willing to experiment on psykers to begin with, then he was clearly a few Emperors short of a Tarot deck. But there was nothing for it : if I was going to have to deal with this threat anyway, I might as well do so from a position of strength, and without giving my enemy more time to prepare.
For now, however, I had other duties to attend to, as a quick glance at the chronograph in the room reminded me. After thanking them again for their good work, I dismissed the two members of the Liberation Council and left for the chamber where a set of ansibles had been installed by the borgs, Jurgen and Malicia falling in behind me without a word.
It was time for my regularly scheduled talk with Zerayah back home. Now that we were out of the Warp, she would never forgive me if I missed one for anything less than a fight with a Daemon Prince of Nurgle or a visit from the Emperor Himself.
Notes:
AN : This is mostly a transitional chapter, putting an end to the Liberator's misadventures in the Sanguia system. I suppose I could have had him meet Governor Not!Schwarzenegger in person, but that felt forced, especially with such a minor character I came up with in five minutes.
Things are going rather well for dear Ciaphas, aren't they ? I'm sure they will continue to do so for a long time, and that now that the leadership of the Bloodied Crown is broken, there is no other, far more dangerous threat waiting to pounce from the shadows.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and theories.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 38: Chapter 37
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
For the first time in remembered history, Minos was at war with itself.
The vast Manufactoria of the industrial world were dependant on a constant flow of materials from the rest of the Torredon Gap and beyond, from the fuel which kept the gears turning to the raw, unprocessed ore which was turned into weapons and commodities for merchant ships to carry toward distant worlds. But, with the withdrawal of the Imperial Navy and the collapse of order in the Subsector, that flow had petered out almost completely as trade across the Subsector died out. The wheels of industry had ground to a halt, and millions of workers suddenly found themselves with nothing to do.
By itself, this was a problem, as it was a well-known truism in the Imperium that idleness among the lower classes fostered disquiet, and disquiet bred corruption. But then the Administratum lords of the world decided that, since the workers were no longer working, they shouldn't get their food stipends, which they traded every day for the bowls of nutrient paste which fed them and their families. This wasn't a rationing measure meant to stretch supplies : the food stores of Minos were well-stocked, to ward against famine should the Warp Storms or pirates cut the regular shipments from the agri-world of Emperor's Chalice required to sustain its billions-strong population. No, this decision was reached for purely procedural reasons, following the exact letter of regulations instead of exercising even the most basic level of common sense or decency.
As anyone who didn't have their nose stuck in an accounting book could have predicted, the announcement was met with disbelieving shock by the population, quickly followed by panic and outrage. Rumors of the Navy's withdrawal, which had previously been more or less contained through ruthless if typical information control, spread like wildfire.
People could endure hardship. If told that this was the will of the God-Emperor, they would do it gladly, finding pride in their sacrifice. But they would not endure their children starving while food sat on shelves in storage. The first riot happened less than twenty-four hours after the announcement, and while the local law enforcements, called Shieldbearers, managed to disperse it through the liberal use of shock mauls and tear gas, it was far from the last. The fourth riot was the one where the Shieldbearers finally broke ranks and ran for their lives, and the one whose maddened, hungry mob broke into the closest refrigerated warehouse to pilfer its contents.
Chaos didn't truly begin, however, until the building hosting the planetary central administration was stormed by rioters, and the Administratum adepts who had made the decision dragged in the street and beaten to death, along with the Governor and every member of his government who hadn't escaped in time.
After that, civil order had collapsed planetwide, with what cooler minds might have regarded as suspicious rapidity – but by that time, those were few and far between on Minos, and they were preoccupied with more urgent matters, such as survival.
Within weeks, the remnants of the Shieldbearers, the rioters, and the surviving nobles and their personal guards, all clashed in the continent-spanning streets and boulevards of Minos. Manufactoria and hab-blocks were set ablaze. Agitators called for the people to cast off the yoke of Imperial rule, while others prayed to the Master of Mankind for deliverance.
It was mayhem. It was anarchy. And it was to this that the Protectorate fleet arrived one day, emerging from the Warp at the system's edge.
"Well, this is a fine mess," I said out loud, looking at the central hololith on the Worldwounder's bridge.
It would be a lie to claim that Minos was beautiful, even from orbit. Millennia of industrial activity on such a massive scale had turned the planet's seas into toxic sludge, and a permanent pollution cloud hung over the world like a shroud. Not even the vast distances of space could make the swirls of brown and black smoke look like anything less than filthy smears on a once-pristine pearl.
As an industrial world, Minos' continents were almost completely covered in sprawling factories and hab-blocks for the workers, mixed together in ways I couldn't help but think would expose the civilians to unhealthy levels of pollutants. Which was something I knew a truly devout servant of the Imperium wouldn't have let concern him, and I silently mourned how far I had fallen from my tutors' ideals since leaving the Schola Progenium.
The distaste of the Slawkenberg-born around me for the state of the world was obvious on their faces. To them, this was yet another example of the Imperium's corruption, that it would force billions of its citizens to dwell in such a place. Nevermind the fact that the demands of a million worlds and countless war fronts made such places an absolute necessity in order to keep Mankind safe : they were used to the borgs' heretekal approach, which I had deliberately sabotaged in order to keep the Protectorate from being able to resist any real effort by the Imperium to reclaim its territory (with admittedly questionable results).
And then, of course, there was the ongoing civil war, which wasn't doing the world any favor. Telling the proles they couldn't eat if they didn't work and they couldn't work wasn't quite the stupidest thing I had ever heard : I had spent too long on Slawkenberg under the rule of the Giorbas and forced to attend official ceremonies by my position for that to be the case. But it was close to the top all the same. I could only hope that whichever short-sighted, crown-pinching bureaucrat had made the abysmally stupid decision was among those who had gotten lynched in the ensuing riots.
We had arrived in-system a little over twenty-four hours ago, long enough for the fleet to travel from the Mandeville Point to orbit. The local Space Defense Force hadn't even tried to stop us : not only wouldn't they have stood a chance, but Areelu had easily been able to convince their captains that we were on a pirate-hunting expedition across the Gap. She had pointed to the presence of the Rossinante and Jewel of the Void, still bearing clear sign of battle damage but sailing in formation with the rest of our fleet, as evidence of our recent success.
As it had turned out, the Bloodied Crown vessels had passed through the system on their way to Sanguia, and though they hadn't wasted time attacking the system, the SDF were still understandably relieved to hear of their defeat, since they would have been next on the chopping block. Their commanders had bought Areelu's lie wholesale, and were all but stumbling upon one another in their attempts to help us.
Which still left the question of what to do about Minos. There was no way I could justify us simply ignoring it and leaving to pursue Auric, not without doing catastrophic damage to the expedition's morale. In the time since our arrival, rumors of what was happening on the planet's surface had already spread across the fleet, aided by the efforts of Krystabel's and Harold's cultist associates before I'd even realized what they were doing.
Not that making sense of this mess was easy. The SDF had been our main point of contact, as they had stayed out of the civil war by virtue of not wanting to open fire on the planet from orbit (and with the Governor and most of his staff dead, there wasn't anybody left with the authority to order them to in any case). They had done their best to keep track of things, but they weren't trained for that kind of work. They had sent their data over when Areelu had asked, and our social experts (meaning Harold and Krystabel) had been pouring over it ever since, as had General Mahlone's own military analysts.
"Alright," I said, turning to look at the two cultists. "Tell me what we are dealing with here."
They glanced at one another, then Krystabel inclined her head slightly, letting Harold go ahead first.
"By our current best estimates," began Harold, "there are around sixteen different factions present on Minos. The remnants of the loyalist forces are still active and in communication with each other, but they lack a coherent command structure or a plan of action. From the transmissions we've intercepted and decoded, there appears to be a lot of disagreement as to who has seniority and should hold overall command."
The members of the war council were too dignified to snigger at this mention of Imperial incompetence, but I could feel their smugness all the same. I shook my head, letting some of the sadness I felt show on my face – the Liberator, after all, was supposed to care for the people of the Imperium, and such disunity didn't serve anyone.
Well, anyone who wasn't us. Not exactly a pleasant thought, but not one I could avoid, either.
"How disappointingly predictable," I said aloud. "What else ?"
"We believe we've located where the tech-priests have gone to ground," said Krystabel. "They have regrouped inside one of the main generatoria in the northern hemisphere, and their defenses are killing everyone who tries to get close."
"Power is still running through the lines, though," I noted. That much was obvious from orbit, even through the pollution clouds : had the power been cut, entire sections of the world would have been plunged into darkness. I shivered internally at the thought of the panic and anarchy such a thing would cause, and gave silent thanks to the Omnissiah that, despite the madness that had befallen their world, the tech-priests of Minos were keeping to their sacred duties.
"Yes, Warmaster," Harold confirmed. "The tech-priests are broadcasting looped warnings to all the other factions to stay clear of the generatorium, regardless of their allegiance. Several rebel groups which tried to approach were eliminated by combat servitors and arcs of redirected power, and one of the PDF units still active approached before withdrawing without making contact."
"It is doubtful that my brethren care overmuch which faction ends up victorious in the struggle," said Tesilon-Kappa from where they stood. Several of their mecha-dendrites were connected to the hololith, allowing them to upload the data directly into their internal cogitators rather than through what they doubtlessly considered the inferior medium of a visual display. "I believe they are waiting for things to calm down before emerging and start the process of rebuilding."
"Probably the most sensible thing they could do, under the circumstances," I nodded, glad that someone was keeping a level head down there. "Now, what about the rebels ?"
"Unlike our own Uprising, the Minosians didn't have the advantage of the Liberator and his Council to coordinate their efforts in throwing off the yoke of Imperial oppression," Harold replied promptly. I would have scoffed at the blatant flattery, if not for the fact that I could read the Tzeentchian magus' face well enough to know that he was perfectly sincere, as were the looks of respect everyone else in the room cast in my direction at the reminder. "Their rebellion appears to have been entirely spontaneous in response to the decree that would have starved them all to death, with little thought being given to the future."
"Understandable, given they didn't have a future unless things changed," said Areelu. "Even the most desperate will fight with all they have in such a situation."
"Indeed, Lady Van Yastobaal," said Harold with a nod in her direction, before resuming his briefing.
I didn't bother paying attention to the details as he listed the various groups which had formed in the riots' immediate aftermath, once the plebs had realized that they hadn't been immediately slaughtered by the authorities as they had most likely expected. None of them appeared to be harboring heretical sympathies, though as Harold pointed out, that didn't mean much : any group with such leanings would have concealed them to avoid risking uniting everyone else against them.
Given what had happened on Slawkenberg, I had no doubt that the Dark Gods had an eye on the situation, and were already looking for potential dupes to corrupt in order to turn a perfectly understandable overthrow of a regime that had failed its duties to the God-Emperor into a Chaos rebellion.
As I had learned more about the Ruinous Powers than I was comfortable with, I had come to believe that such a thing was tragically common in the Imperium. The moments people turned from the Imperial Creed, regardless of their reasons, Chaos came creeping in through the cracks. The promises of the Dark Gods would sound very tempting to victorious rebels now faced with the prospect of Imperial retribution, and they would embrace damnation one seemingly reasonable step at a time.
With how long the Imperium took to answer most distress calls, by the time a response arrived, the well-meaning rebels, who might have risen up against a genuinely incompetent and corrupt regime (such as the Giorbas, though I suspected they had still been an extreme case), were corrupted into warped parodies of their former idealism. I shuddered to imagine how many times that story had played itself out across the millennia, until the High Lords and other Imperial worthies came to believe every single act of rebellion to be caused by Chaos and deserving of heresy's punishment.
Not that the Dark Gods were above helping such rebellions happen, of course, as I knew better than most. Hopefully, though, we would manage to keep things on Minos from degenerating into blood sacrifices, desecration of Imperial churches, and the rest of the heresies I had worked so hard to keep from happening on Slawkenberg since the Uprising.
Once Harold was done, all eyes turned on me, and I quailed internally at the expectations I could see in all of them. I knew what they were all expecting me to say, what my reputation demanded that I say. But I had no interest in getting dragged into an urban warzone.
This wouldn't be like the Cleansing of Skitterfall or the purge of the Broodspawns on Cassandron, dangerous as both of these fights had been. The factions on Minos were made of sentient, intelligent people – well, apart from whatever bureaucrats had survived, I suppose, but they weren't likely to pick up a lasgun and try to be useful for once – and that would make the planet a deathtrap. I remembered enough of my Schola tutors' lectures to know that there were few battlefields more dangerous than a city, where every window might conceal a sniper, and every intersection was a potential ambush point. The USA's power armor might be proof against nearly every weapon we could expect to find on the planet, but even it couldn't protect its wielder from things like improvised explosives or collapsing buildings.
At the same time, I couldn't simply tell the rest of the war council that this wasn't our problem, or that we had more important matters to attend to, and order the fleet to leave and continue its journey. Fortunately, I had managed to come up with a solution. All I needed to do was present it in a way that the heretics around me would buy it, and after all those years that was something I had become distressingly good at.
"The people of Minos cry out for Liberation, and it is our duty to answer," I began, and everyone nodded approvingly, as I'd known they would. "They need our help, both to complete their breaking free of the Imperium's shackles, but also to survive now that their masters have abandoned them and left them to their fate."
An industrial world couldn't survive without regular food shipments anymore than Cassandron itself could have before we'd shared the nutrient-paste-making technology with its population. Minos' total population was lower than that of a proper hive-world, but it still numbered in the billions, and was far too polluted to support an agriculture capable of feeding itself. The food stores might prevent starvation for a time, but eventually they would run out, and what would happen then would make the current anarchy look like a dispute between court ladies over tea.
Fresh off our efforts to prevent precisely such a nightmarish scenario on Cassandron, everyone present understood that implicitly.
"However," I continued, every eye returning to me at once, "at the same time, the threat of Auric's foul experiments cannot be ignored. Pacifying Minos will be a long and arduous task, and that is time we cannot risk giving the insane Director of the Bloodied Crown."
Again, this was nothing less than the truth. If, as we suspected, Auric had figured out a way to replicate the effects of prolonged Warp exposure on latent psykers, I didn't want to see what he would do once his back was driven to the wall by the death of most of the shadow cartel's leadership.
"Therefore, we will split up our forces," I declared, before forging ahead : "the bulk of the fleet will remain here and proceed with the Liberation campaign, while the Worldwounder will continue the hunt for Auric's laboratory."
While leaving so much of our flotilla behind wasn't my preferred course of action, in this particular scenario, I was convinced it was the right move. If the might of the Worldwounder and the forces aboard wasn't enough to deal with the Bloodied Crown's Director, then I doubted that bringing the rest of the fleet would help.
As the meaning of my words registered, a wave of unease swept over the gathering of heretics.
"My lord," General Mahlone eventually called out to me, looking like he wasn't sure he believed what he'd just heard. "Do you mean to leave Minos to us, then ?"
"Precisely," I nodded. "I have faith that, by the time I return, you will have dealt with the situation here and put an end to the conflict on Minos."
"We won't disappoint you, Lord Liberator," said Mahlone, puffed up with self-importance at the honor he believed I was bestowing upon him and the others. Around him, the rest of the war council followed suit, although I didn't miss the quick glare Krystabel directed at Areelu for some reason.
"I know you won't," I lied with a smile on my face.
It took time to set everything up, of course. Even though I believed it to be the best course of action available to me, the thought of leaving the USA to fight without me being there filled me with dread. I was terrified that, by the time I came back, I would find Minos turned into a charnel pit, with the Khornates piling up the skulls of Imperial citizens in the streets and chanting my name in ruinous praise.
I knew, objectively, that such a thing was extremely unlikely, but I still made sure that the Handmaidens and Tzeentchian magi left behind to help coordinate efforts were fully aware that under no circumstances were they to resort to daemonic summoning or any other sorcerous manipulation of the people of the industrial world. I didn't go quite so far as to tell them I would kill them myself if they broke my proscriptions the moment my back was turned, but I implied it as strongly as I dared.
While I wasn't there, General Mahlone would be in charge of the armed forces and the overall campaign. Krystabel, Harold and Tesilon-Kappa would advise him and spearhead diplomatic overtures to the fractious rebel groups. This would be the first time any of them operated on another world without me present to monitor them, and while in practice this would be little different from how things normally ran on Slawkenberg, all of them seemed to be taking it very seriously.
In addition to the USA, the Minos campaign would also see the first deployment of the Cassandron units which had joined us on the hive-world. The Vampires and their PDF escorts would be under Mahlone's command, and treated the same as the rest of the USA forces which would take part in the planetary operations – albeit with some restrictions to keep the proles from discovering their true nature and descending into perfectly understandable panic at the presence of blood-drinking mutants in their midst.
I worried about all the ways in which this could go wrong, but if the Vampires turned out to be unreliable, then it was better to find out as soon as possible. And, since I wouldn't be there, Akivasha couldn't blame me for any issue – nor would she be able to react violently.
Among the USA, Lieutenant Nathan's platoon had been selected for the dubious honor of accompanying me. From what I'd gleaned in our brief conversation on the matter, they thought it was an acknowledgement of their bravery during the boarding of the Jewel of the Void, and looked forward to getting some payback on Auric for sending the wyrds their way. It was obvious that the Lieutenant was haunted by how there'd been nothing he could do as his people burned to ash in front of him, and how Akivasha and I had needed to deal with the would-be assassins ourselves while he and his unit stood there, paralysed.
I didn't want him to take stupid risks in a misguided attempt to reclaim his honor, though, not while I might need to hide behind him. So I made sure he understood that hadn't been his fault (which was true), and he still had my full confidence (which wasn't, but he didn't need to know that).
Hektor also insisted on accompanying me, and I agreed without hesitation. Suture was already going to come with the Worldwounder and Areelu, and I was of the opinion that one could never have too many Astartes to hide behind.
"You will need to be cautious," I advised Mahlone during our final meeting. "I suspect there is more at play here than what we can see."
I had little idea at the time of how prescient those words would end up being : mostly, I was unsuccessfully trying to convince myself that surely the Administratum wasn't that incompetent as to lose an entire world to rebellion in such a stupid manner, and there was something else at play. The rest was me covering my own backside by making a show of worrying so that no one could blame me if things went wrong in my absence – and if they didn't, I was confident nobody would remember my overabundance of caution.
Before we left, I gave one last speech that was broadcast across the fleet, telling them that while I regretted not being able to lead them in battle once more, I trusted them to do the Protectorate proud. I played into my image as a modest leader, joking that they didn't need me to hold their hands, before reminding them that the people of Minos weren't the enemy, and that we were here to help them, not kill them.
The last thing I did before departing the Minos system was contact Zerayah back on Slawkenberg. I'd already informed Jafar that I'd be out of touch for some time, but I wanted to tell her in person too. She wasn't happy about learning that I would be unable to call her again, but she understood that it was inevitable. She did extract a promise that I'd be careful when dealing with Auric, which I was all too happy to give her.
And then we were gone. The Worldwounder entered the Warp, and we were cut off from the rest of the expedition and the greater Protectorate for the duration of the trip. The Navigator wasn't sure how long the journey would take, as the route we were following barely existed at all. I found that rather worrying, but Areelu assured me her three-eyed mutant knew his craft well enough to see us through.
Once again, the sudden isolation really helped me realize how used I had become to the ansibles' miraculous technology. For the rest of the galaxy, star-spanning communication was a matter of weeks if not months, using astropathic choirs to relay messages across the void's unthinkably vast distances. Not for the first time, I resolved to make sure that the Imperium gained the benefits of this amazing technology as soon as possible.
Days passed aboard the Rogue Trader vessel, indistinguishable from one another. To keep my mind from wandering into places I'd prefer not to visit, I busied myself as best I could, spending my days training, walking around the ship, talking with the USA officers present aboard and making sure they believed I trusted their skills, and entertaining little Lucia by drawing on my experience with Zerayah at her (apparent) age, while my nights were almost uniformly spent in her mother's company.
It was during one of these nights that I was suddenly awakened by what I can only describe as a sudden lurch in the very fabric of reality. One moment I was sleeping, Areelu in my arms after a very pleasant evening, and the next she and I were both wide awake, our hands moving to the weapons we both kept close to hand out of not-so-paranoid habit.
"What was that ?" I asked.
Before Areelu could answer, the door to the chamber slammed open, and Jurgen and Malicia burst in, weapons at the ready. Before Areelu or I could say anything, they checked the room, before Malicia moved on to the rest of the suite while Jurgen stayed close by.
"What's going on ?" I asked him. Neither Areelu nor I were outraged at this breach of our privacy, but we were surprised all the same.
"Warp-breach, sir," replied Jurgen. "Daemons. I can feel them."
Well, frak. Next to me, Areelu let loose a stream of curses of surprising viciousness for a lady of her prestigious position.
"Bridge, this is the Lady Captain," she called out after putting her comm-bead into her ear. "Tell me what's going on."
There was a brief pause during which she listened to the report of her crew, then she turned toward me, her expression grim :
"Jurgen is right. The Geller Field was briefly breached just now. It was only a temporary breach, thank the Gods, but we have reports of daemonic presence in the lower decks. They haven't got to anywhere important for now, but it's only a matter of time – and they are killing my crew. I have to to go down there and banish them."
"I'll go with you," I told her, and she nodded as if that had never been in doubt – which, truth be told, it hadn't. No matter my feelings on the matter, I simply had no choice. I had to join the fray, or risk losing the respect of not just Areelu and Jurgen, but every single person aboard the Worldwounder who had bought the lie of Cain the Liberator. In addition, it was a given that our best warriors would go, and I'd feel a lot better having them around me rather than sitting alone in a room, wondering if the next incursion would happen right there.
Thankfully, Jurgen wouldn't let me go without first putting on my armor, so I didn't have to charge into a daemonic incursion while in my nightclothes. Areelu also put on her own suit of gently purring armor and grabbed her blue metal staff out of the sealed vault in which it rested in between her needing it. The artefact gave me the creeps, but if we were going to face daemons, I wanted her to have every one of her witching tools with her.
By the time we were prepared, Areelu's people had finished putting together a purging force which would hopefully be enough to deal with the situation, and which had gathered in a nearby hall where we rendezvoused with them. They were armored with shock mauls, boarding shields, shotguns, and flamers : the kind of wargear you would need for the close-quarters battle of the inside of a starship, as well as for the cleansing that would follow.
Suture and Hektor were there too, having apparently been training together when the breach had happened, as well as a contingent of Van Yastobaal household troops. Lieutenant Nathan had also arrived with his full platoon, bringing our numbers to just under a hundred armed men and women, and I was beginning to feel cautiously optimistic. The USA had fought daemons before : first in Skitterfall, and more recently on Cassandron, and acquitted themselves well in both cases.
Akivasha also suddenly appeared – one moment I had been considering whether to risk sending someone to her quarters to ask for her assistance, the next she had been there, causing Malicia to nearly draw her blades in surprise, which would have ended badly for her, before checking the movement as she recognized the Volkihar Paragon.
Together, we marched toward the depths of the ship, following the household troops, who knew the ship better than any of us. We walked down corridors lit with the red of emergency lumens, and went down mass conveyors normally used to carry cargo across the ship – the elevators used by the crew weren't large enough to accommodate our war party all at once, and none of us were stupid enough to split our forces unless there was no other choice.
The lower decks of the Worldwounder reminded me a lot of the underhive of my youth, all cramped corridors and ancient technology none of the locals understood. Said locals were cowering in the darkness, hiding from the monsters rampaging in their home. I felt a sudden, unexpected spike of anger at the thought : regardless of how well Areelu ran her ship, these people's lives were already difficult enough without being hunted by infernal horrors.
The deeper we went, and the closer to our destination, the more signs of the breach we could see. I could glimpse faces on the metal walls, contorted in agony and weeping bloody tears. I was certain I could hear whispers in the constant background noise of the ship, which I'd long since grown used to, but whenever I tried to isolate them and determine their source or meaning, they faded away.
Despite their training, it was clear that the rest of the group was also spooked – even Areelu and Malicia, the former probably because she knew what these signs portended, the latter because Drukhari had little experience with matters of the Warp. Only Hektor and Suture looked unconcerned, but given that one of them had spent an eternity in the Eye of Terror and the other was a renegade Astartes of unknown origins, that was little comfort.
I was rescued from these dark thoughts when, suddenly, next to me (a position I'd assumed as naturally as I could, since it let me stay in the middle of our group while looking like I was protecting her) Areelu cursed, before signalling for a halt and turning in my direction.
"I've just heard from the bridge," she said. "There has been another breach."
"Where ?" I asked, fearing the worst.
"The Enginarium," she told me.
This wasn't quite the worst case scenario (that would have been the bridge having already fallen), but it was close. If the Enginarium fell, then, if we were very lucky, we would be forced out of the Warp in the middle of nowhere. With the ansibles and Areelu's knowledge of sorcery, we might be able to get help before starving to death. Far more likely, however, we would all die in a fiery explosion as the immense reactor serving as the beating heart of the Worldwounder was damaged by the daemons, with the survivors ending up thrown into the Warp, unprotected and at the mercy of its denizens.
Needless to say, something had to be done, and fast. But the Enginarium was too far from our current position. My hive-rat's instinctual grasp of three-dimensional spaces told me as much. We would never make it in time, even if we ran all the way there – which would only make us too exhausted to be of use in any case.
There was only one option, I decided. I turned toward Akivasha, trying to think of the best way to phrase my next words. Out of all of us, she was the only one likely to reach the Enginarium in time and still be able to deal with whatever daemonic horrors awaited there.
"Lady Akivasha," I began, but before I could beg her, she nodded, frowning with displeasure, but clearly knowing what I was about to ask and why it was necessary. She glared at Jurgen and Malicia in silent warning not to let me die while she was gone, and left without a word, disappearing down the maze of corridors.
I blinked, surprised despite having already seen what the Paragon was capable of several times, then shook myself. I had to trust that Akivasha would be able to deal with the situation in the Enginarium – in the meantime, I had my own Warp breach to deal with, no matter how much I didn't want to.
"Let's keep moving," I told everyone else, and we resumed our descent into the bowels of the Worldwounder.
Almost an hour later, we found the daemons inside a vast space that appeared to have been a chapel to the God-Emperor before its desecration. Despite Areelu's allegiance to the Chaos God Tzeentch, I knew that most of her crew was ignorant of their mistress' heresy, and she let them worship as they pleased rather than go on a purge of her own people – not out of any lingering loyalty to Him on Earth, mind you, but rather out of simple pragmatism. Replacing the Emperor-worshipping crew would be a costly endeavour, and their presence helped hide her own treachery when dealing with the Imperium.
The statue of the Emperor at the far end of the chamber had been thoroughly desecrated now, however. It was daubed in blood and gore, and its face had been broken off, leaving the icon faceless, unable to witness the carnage wrought upon His domain. My gaze was quickly drawn away from the sight, however, as far more dangerous blasphemies attracted my attention.
Tall, hulking figures with red scaled skin, hoofed feet, and long black horns and longer black blades stalked across the deck. The air shimmered around them like it did above the roads of Slawkenberg on a warm summer day. Even from this distance and through the rebreather on my helmet, I could smell the appalling stench of carnage and furnace heat that emanated from them.
"Bloodletters," grunted Hektor. "The footsoldiers of the War God."
"I don't care what they are," hissed Areelu. "They have killed my crew. They'll pay for that."
The amount of spite in her voice surprised me. Looking around, I saw the same expression of barely controlled fury on the exposed face of every Van Yastobaal guard, in the way the USA troopers were clutching their weapons tightly. And, though they were silent, I read the tension in Suture's and Malicia's body language, the barely restrained urge to charge and start killing. But it wasn't until my eyes fell on Jurgen and I saw the faint traces of lightning crackling around his armored hands that my stomach dropped.
Something was very, very wrong here. Anger in the moment before battle was a perfectly natural response – at least it was for humans : I'd no idea whether the same applied to Drukhari. But this was more than that. My escort, on whose effectiveness depended my safety, was behaving like a bunch of penal troopers hooked up on slaught.
Given we were approaching a nest of daemons spawned in the depths of the Warp as echoes of fury and bloodshed, it didn't take an Inquisitor to figure out what was going on.
"Control yourselves, all of you," I barked in my best Commissarial voice. "Don't let these creatures' influence twist your will. You are soldiers, not barbarians ! Act accordingly !"
There was a pause, during which I worried my authority wouldn't be enough to drag them back to sanity, but then, by the Emperor's grace (or that of someone else), it worked. Nobody relaxed, we were still faced with a bunch of soulless monsters from the Sea of Souls, but some of the crazed tension dissipated and discipline reasserted itself.
"Thank you, Ciaphas," said Areelu bashfully.
"You're welcome," I replied on reflex.
Unfortunately, while my outburst had prevented the forces around me to turn into battle-crazy lunatics, it had also attracted the attention of the Bloodletters away from their play with the corpses of their victims. They turned in our direction, their monstrous faces contorting into what a madman might have considered smiles – but before they could charge us, one stepped forward, and they all recoiled, letting it go first.
It was tall. Taller than me, taller than the other daemons around it, taller even than Hektor and Suture. In its left hand, it held a blade like that of its kindred, though larger and decorated with metallic spikes that would have looked ridiculous on a mortal weapon. From its back hung a cloak of skulls, Human, Ork, Eldar, and many other xenos breeds I didn't recognize.
Tall as it might be compared to its already far too large kin, it was still far smaller than Hash'ak'gik or Gurug'ath had been. And since its manifestation hadn't required massive, planet-wide rituals, it had to be less powerful than either of the two greater servants of Nurgle I had fought in the past.
And yet, looking upon it, I felt a sense of dread deeper and more visceral than even these two had conjured within me, impossible though it seemed. It looked straight at me with eyes that were twin pits of hellfire, and terror came over me like a suffocating shroud. I stood there as darkness closed in around me, until there was only the infernal champion and the promise of death it exuded.
Then it opened its mouth, revealing impossible long fangs, and spoke :
"I am U'Zuhl," it called out, each syllable clawing at my brain. "Skulltaker, Herald of the Blood God and His Sacred Executioner. And I have come for you, Ciaphas Cain."
Notes:
AN : As I thought when the Muse first demanded it, having Akivasha accompany Cain is proving something of a challenge, since she is very, purposefully overpowered. But if I remind myself that the Liberator's enemies presumably know about her, I think I can justify stuff like the breach in the Enginarium. Yes, it's blatantly done to draw the scary Vampire Paragon away. But wouldn't you do the same if you were in U'Zuhl's place ? Exactly.
We'll see how much I can stretch this particular joke at Cain's expanse before it gets old. In the meantime, he has a Herald of Khorne to deal with.
One of the criticisms I've seen often levied against 40K is that every rebellion against the Imperium turns out to be caused by Chaos or xenos infiltration. Personally, I've always thought there are two ways to think about this : the first is the one described by Cain in his inner monologue, where the Dark Gods are watching for any successful rebels and turn them to Chaos through their manipulations. The other is more subtle, and it requires you to remember that the Imperium is, above all, good at one thing : keeping its people in line. The entire modern Imperial hierarchy is built to prevent another Horus Heresy, and after ten thousand years, it has gotten very, very good at keeping order. Would-be rebels face impossible odds, and in such a situation, they need any help they can get to succeed. There are probably countless rebellions across the Imperium unaligned with the Ruinous Powers or the various xenos races, but we never hear about them because they fail and get mercilessly crushed.
(This last paragraph/rant may or may not be foreshadowing about Minos.)
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and suggestions.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 39: Chapter 38
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Surprisingly, it was Hektor who pulled me from my terrified stupor. Not through any encouraging word or reckless act, no : instead, the World Eater fell to the blood-slick ground, twitching and growling. His weapons slipped from his grasp as he clawed at his helmet with trembling hands, and I realized what was happening to him with a shiver. Somehow, this creature of the War God, this U'Zuhl, had activated his cortical implants, despite the constant flow of Panacea into his body.
The thought that it might succeed in undoing the World Eater's medically-induced restraint chilled my blood, and that was enough for me to shake off the dread caused by U'Zuhl's approach. I stepped forward, breaking the shocked silence that had descended on us all and drawing all eyes (except Hektor's, who presumably were screwed shut under his helm) to me.
"You are hurting my companion," I said, inclining my head in Hektor's direction (I was damned if I was going to take my eyes off the monster).
"He has spurned the Blood God's gifts," it hissed. "Turned away from the Eightfold Path of sacred slaughter by embracing the false peace you granted him using the gift of the Dark Prince's newest courtesan. Now he pays the price for his disobedience."
I let out a bark of laughter, not bothering to pretend it was sincere. Cain the Liberator wouldn't find one of his friends was writhing on the ground, the pain engine in his skull biting at his brain, amusing – and, truth be told, neither did I.
"Gifts ?" I scoffed. "Is that what you call these barbaric implants ?"
"Through them, his bloodline is elevated in the Blood God's eyes," the daemon proclaimed, and there was something of a mad prophet's tone in the nightmare that passed for its voice. "A blessing and a collar, delivered by the Messiah of Blood onto his sons."
"A curse, nothing more, and one self-inflicted through sheer stupidity," I countered. "Hektor told me the story of his Legion, daemon. Nothing forced the War Hounds to mutilate themselves like this, apart from their adoration for their Primarch. I have no idea what Angron was thinking when he subjected his own gene-sons to the same torment he'd endured – I suspect it was his own brain damage at work – but all he achieved was turn an entire Legion of disciplined Space Marines into compulsive killers."
"They gained strength from the Messiah's gift," Skulltaker denied. "Through pain, their minds are stripped of unnecessary distractions, brought closer to the purity of rage where mortal souls are closest to the true state of the universe : conflict, bloody and everlasting."
Madness. Complete and utter madness. But then, only a fool would expect rationality from an infernal minion of the Chaos Gods.
I sighed theatrically. "They murdered each other and abandoned all tactics, leading to them suffering easily avoidable casualties, you mean. But that's enough wasted time discussing the failings of Angron and his sons. You said you've come for me," I challenged it, gesturing at the blood-drenched room, "and yet it is the crew of my companion's vessel who have suffered for your presence. If you wanted an audience with me, there were more civilized ways to get one."
"You have denied the Blood God his due, Cain," said the daemon. "You have shackled His servants among your followers, kept them chained and refused them the baptism of bloodshed time and time again. And so I have come, to give you a simple choice : embrace the Eightfold Path, or be judged through the trial of battle. Either way, Khorne shall have His due."
I wanted nothing more than to tell Jurgen to rip the creature apart with his mind, or to order Malicia to cut in to ribbons. But I held back from giving voice to the command that I knew either of them would obey without question (although for very different reasons).
In Jurgen's case, this was because of the spiked black collar around U'Zuhl's throat. I knew enough about the denizens of the Warp to know that this must be one of the infamous Collars of Khorne, bestowed by the Blood God upon his favored slaves to protect them from psychic powers. As for Malicia, I was keenly aware of the presence of the USA troopers watching the drama unfold with keen interest. Truth be told, if Lieutenant Nathan and his men and women hadn't been here, I'd have been perfectly content with throwing my bloodward at the problem : it was quite literally what she was here for.
But I couldn't, because that would be showing weakness to the Khornates. Which, considering how dangerous U'Zuhl looked, I would ordinarily have been perfectly fine with, if it weren't for the fact that U'Zuhl was a daemon of the troopers' patron god.
I could feel the troopers' hesitation, their sudden doubt at the creature's words. On Slawkenberg, the War God was worshipped by the former PDF as a martial deity, one that prided strength and valor in battle – not the fanatical bloodshed U'Zuhl was preaching. Hektor's own understanding of Chaotic theology was exactly as advanced as you would expect from a man who had put a pain engine into his brain in order to impress a broken madman, so, even though I'd been worried at first, he'd converted to the USA's own interpretation of Khorne without issue.
How much of that had been a genuine change in his beliefs, and how much had been simple pragmatism and not wanting to anger thousands of soldiers in power armor, however, I had no idea. Frankly, so long as he didn't rock the boat, I'd been fine leaving him to his own devices.
But the fact remained that, if I allowed it, U'Zuhl would undo everything I had done to prevent the madness of the cults I'd unwittingly allied myself with from consuming the Protectorate. Worse, if I gave in myself and accepted its thinly-veiled ultimatum, I would start walking the path that led to the vision that had haunted my nightmares for years.
So, once again, I was forced to do something I really, really didn't want to, and which would put me in immense personal danger. Although, for once, it wasn't so much to save my own skin in the long term as it was to save my soul – and the lives of Emperor alone knew how many Imperial citizens, I supposed.
"No," I snarled. "The Protectorate belongs to its people, not to the Gods. The blood it sheds is at my command, not for Khorne's pleasure. The Blood God can either accept that and take the worship he is given, or he can join bastard Nurgle among its enemies !"
I heard the sharp intake of breath through the vox-speakers of the USA troopers' armors at my apparent blasphemy, but I didn't let it stop me.
"I know the War God has been feeding on an orgy of mindless carnage wrought by Hektor's Legion since the Heresy," I continued, improvising wildly, hoping against all hope that my web of lies wouldn't collapse now and leave me alone and surrounded by madmen. "Ten thousand years of brutish slaughter, driven onward by the bite of the Nails. But I will not partake of that same poisoned cup which has corrupted Khorne and stripped him of all honor ! We fight for Liberation, for the freedom of all Mankind from the Imperium's tyranny and the Lord of Decay's corruption !"
I sensed the shift in the USA troopers as they listened to me. Their posture straightened as I shamelessly called on their military pride. Those of them who had been alive during the Uprising had joined the cause to protect their people and avenge the many wrongs they had suffered, and those who had come after had done so after having been exposed to the Liberation Council's propaganda for years, if not their entire lives in the case of the youngest. They fully believed in the lie of Cain the Liberator, and I had no issue using that to keep them from becoming the kind of blood-crazed lunatics the Ravagers had been by the time they had died on Adumbria.
I had made my case, dropped my challenge. Now all I had to do was survive it.
"You spoke of a trial, didn't you ?" I swept my chainsword through the air with a flourish, ending the movement with the blade aimed straight at the daemon. "Very well. Let us begin, then. The sooner this is over with, the better."
U'Zuhl made a sound which might have been laughter, and then it leapt at me, and I was stuck in the single most lethal duel I'd ever fought in my disreputable career as an unwilling enemy of the Throne.
From the first clash of our blades, I knew with absolute certainty that I couldn't defeat U'Zuhl through mere martial prowess. Even with my power armor augmenting my strength far past the limits of my human flesh, the daemon was taller, larger, and stronger than me. And unlike Malicia or Hektor during our practice sessions, it had no reason to hold back against me.
In addition, U'Zuhl didn't fight like a mortal being, or at least not a sane one. It spared no thought for defense, focusing instead wholly on the attack, on tearing me apart with that baleful blade it wielded. Any human duellist using such a fighting style would have been eviscerated within seconds of the battle's start had they faced anyone but the most inexperienced of novices, but the daemon's sheer speed and power made it impossible for me to take advantage of the holes in its guard. Instead, I had to draw on every bit of experience I had from my regular sparring sessions with the likes of Hektor and Malicia, whose physical abilities far surpassed mine, just to stay alive.
After several seconds of increasingly desperate parries, blocks and dodges that turned the two of us round and round in the small arena that had formed in the desecrated chapel, surrounded by our respective escorts, an idea took root in my mind. My previous encounters with powerful Neverborn had shown that they were capable of something mimicking emotion – and the battle against Hash'ak'gik had proven beyond doubt that they weren't beyond being manipulated by a mere mortal either. Maybe, just maybe, if I could force U'Zuhl to make a mistake by losing what passed for its temper, I just might have a chance of surviving this.
"You know," I gasped as I barely parried another blow that would have taken my head clean off, "I've just realized something. You are afraid of Akivasha, aren't you ? That's why there was another breach in the Enginarium. You knew she was coming with us, and you were afraid of facing her. For all your words about honor and glory, you cower from any fight you can't fix."
"The Vampire is not my prey," it hissed. "She and her kind are of no particular interest to the Blood God. Their war is over, and the part they have to play in galactic history would be nothing but a footnote if not for your interference."
"Sure," I laughed, putting as much mockery in the sound as I could manage. "Keep telling yourself that. I'm sure the rest of Khorne's hunters will believe you, and not think you were afraid of her."
"I fear nothing !" it roared. "I am the dread that stalks the cowardly, the bane of the weak and the death of the false !"
My provocation had worked, but it wasn't giving me the opportunity I'd hoped for. Instead, U'Zuhl redoubled its assault, forcing me to give ground. Soon, I'd find myself with my back against the wall with nowhere left to go, and then it would only be a question of how many seconds I could keep my skull where it belonged.
I was going to die, I realized. This creature, this daemon of the God of War to whom countless heretics across the galaxy had sold their souls, was going to kill me, and the entire USA would fall under its influence. My imagination provided me with an image of crimson killers in power armor reaving their way across the Damocles Sector, slaughtering billions in the name of mindless carnage.
In the years to follow, I would never know whether the sudden surge of rage I felt at the thought was caused by U'Zuhl's infernal aura, or a perfectly natural response to my situation. What I do know is that, as it descended upon me, it made me consider a course of action so risky, I'd never have thought about it if I'd been in my right mind.
As I caught another blow that would have cleaved my head from my shoulders on my chainsword, I deliberately let go of the weapon. The moment it left my hand, U'Zuhl's black blade bit into the metal and cut right through the whirring chainblade, sending the pieces hurtling along the floor. Something like surprise flickered across its face, and in that briefest of openings, I drew the overly decorated bolt pistol that hung at my hip and aimed it straight at its skull, nearly point-blank.
We froze, like two actors in a mummer's play when a displeased troupemaster calls for a pause because one of them flubbed his lines.
"Fool," the Skulltaker hissed through needle-point teeth. "Do you really think a mere gun will be enough to defeat me ?"
That was a painfully good point. I dredged through all the forbidden lore I'd unwittingly absorbed through my long association with the likes of Krystabel and Jafar, searching for any straw to grasp to. And, thank the gods, once again inspiration struck me like a lightning bolt from Jurgen's hands.
Symbolism. Symbolism was key. A single daemon's power, once manifested in the Materium, could vary wildly depending on the circumstances. The same creature which could withstand artillery shells without harm due to how removed and emotionless the weapons were would be much more vulnerable to swords and flamers.
"The first time I held that weapon, I used it to kill a tyrant who thought he could force his will upon my people in the name of his god," I told it. "And after that, I used to execute a man who thought he could reduce war to butchery and earn honor and glory through sending others to their deaths."
I drew on all the skill at deception I'd cultivated over my years of serving as the Liberation Council's figurehead to project an image of absolute confidence and certainty. When it came to the Neverborn, and the Warp in general, perception shaped reality. Right now, U'Zuhl was being perceived by myself, but also by everyone else in the chamber. If I could persuade our audience that what I was saying made sense, then maybe, just maybe, if I understood the unholy metaphysics at play correctly, I just might stand a chance of surviving this day.
And if I didn't, if I was completely wrong, then at least I wouldn't spend my last moments of life in undignified begging. Not that I wouldn't have gone down on my knees and grovelled if I'd thought it'd make the slightest difference, but it was rather obvious the Skulltaker wouldn't have been impressed.
"Now here you are," I finished. "Trying to compel me into turning my comrades into butchers, in a vain attempt to earn glory through massacre. What do you think is going to happen when I pull that trigger, 'Skulltaker' ?"
The daemon cocked its monstrous head to the side, considering my words. I followed its move with the barrel of my bolt pistol, my finger tight on the trigger. To my own amazement, my grip on the weapon was perfectly steady, my hand entirely free of the shaking I'd have expected from the level of abject terror I was experiencing.
"No," U'Zuhl snarled, after what felt like an eternity. "I shall not accept this !"
Then, lightning-fast, it moved, bringing its sword up to strike at my heart. On reflex, I pulled the trigger, and the bolt shell pierced through its red eye and detonated into its skull right as the blade was starting to pierce through my armor.
The daemon's body was blown back by the strength of the detonation. Even though my shot had decapitated it, I still heard it scream as its body dissolved, its essence dragged back into the Empyrean until all that was left behind was U'Zuhl's black blade, laying across the deck from where it had fallen after coming so close to killing me. I took a deep breath, not quite believing that I was still alive, then noticed that the rest of the Bloodletters were still here, and looking very ticked off (although I struggled to imagine them with any other kind of expression).
"Oh, nads," I muttered under my breath.
For the first time in years, the Nails were pounding, pounding, pounding in Hektor's skull.
This close to Skulltaker, they could no longer be silenced. The Panacea injectors around his wrists were still working, but this was more than a physical pain : this was a divine punishment, levied against him by the Herald of Khorne for his perceived transgressions.
He had forgotten how painful it was. After ten thousand years, less than a decade of blessed relief had been enough for him to forget.
No, he realized dimly through the red fog of agony. He hadn't forgotten. His eidetic memory wouldn't let him, damaged as it was by what the Nails had done to his brain matter. He had merely suppressed the memory, for the sake of his recovering sanity, the same way all remembered pain faded from the human mind with time.
But now, the pain was back. It demanded that he kill, that he spill blood and claim skulls in the War God's name. That he surrender to the crimson haze of rage and agony. He could feel the impulse to stand, to leap at the very companions who had come with him into the depths of the Worldwounder in order to satiate the never-ending thirst of the Nails with their blood.
No. No, he wouldn't. Never again. No matter what it took, no matter how much it hurt, no matter whether it displeased Khorne or not. He would not go back to the mindless brute he had once been. He would rather die, and as the Nails bit deeper and deeper, seemingly responding to his defiant thoughts, he felt as if he very well might, though he knew from his experience languishing in the fields at Skitterfall's gates that the Nails could never actually kill their host, merely make them wish for death.
Slowly, his muscles twitching, Hektor pushed himself off the deck, but not to leap at his allies and start butchering them to appease the Nails. Instead, he kept his gaze resolutely fixed toward the center of the room, where Liberator and Skulltaker were battling.
Hektor had heard U'Zuhl's name before. In the Eye of Terror, the names of the Dark Gods' most infamous daemons were passed around warbands, as potential allies and (far more often) enemies to avoid. The World Eaters had less time for such gossip than the rest of the Nine Legions for obvious reasons, but the legend of the Skulltaker had still spread within their ranks.
Chaos Lords beyond number had perished under Skulltaker's blade, yet now, Hektor watched as Cain held his ground against Khorne's Executioner, but despite his prowess, the Warmaster was forced to give ground time and time again. It seemed that Cain's death was inevitable, and through the pounding of the Nails, Hektor despaired that the time he'd spent in the Protectorate might have only been a brief, wonderful interlude in the end.
And then he watched as, against all sense and reason, the Liberator defeated the Herald and sent it howling back into the Sea of Souls, putting it down with a single bolt shell as if the daemon was nothing more than a mad dog.
The pain of the Nails faded away, grudgingly diminishing like a retreating tide as the World Eater's bracers injected him with more Panacea to repair the damage they had inflicted on his brain. He shivered in blessed relief as clarity returned to his sight, just in time to see the rest of the Bloodletters charged at Cain, howling oaths to Khorne that Hektor instinctively understood despite having no idea what infernal language they were using.
Without missing a beat (indeed, if anything he seemed annoyed more than anything else) Cain kicked the black sword of U'Zuhl up into the air and snatched it into his free hand, and the blade ignited with warp-fire the moment his hand closed around its hilt.
Hektor rose to his feet, chainaxe roaring, and leapt to the Liberator's side, joined by Malicia, Jurgen and Suture. Sorcerous lightning crackled overhead as Lady Van Yastobaal unleashed a spell on their foe, quickly followed by a volley of las-bolts as the troopers opened fire.
Then the Bloodletters were on them, and there was only the rush of close-quarters combat. As he fought, Hektor saw Cain wield Skulltaker's blade, the Slayer Sword which had claimed the lives of so many of the Blood God's enemies, as easily as he did the chainsword the World Eater had seen him practice with so often since joining the Protectorate.
Truly, thought Hektor as the last of the Bloodletters was dispatched, the Liberator had earned the favor of the War God this day – proving his worth not through worship and submission, but through martial prowess and courage. And with it, he'd proven too the superiority of the path he'd chosen for the USA; the path of honor and triumph over that of mindless bloodshed.
After all, as Hektor knew all too well, power was the only currency that truly mattered when it came to the Dark Gods.
U'Zuhl fell through the Sea of Souls, burning and howling in rage and thwarted bloodlust. Never before, in all the uncounted ages of his service as Khorne's Executioner, had he been defeated by a mere mortal.
Much to his chagrin, U'Zuhl was forced to admit that it had been surprised by Cain's prowess. One of the many gifts the Skulltaker had received from its master in order to fulfil its duties was the ability to sense the weaknesses of any combatant he faced, so long as they had earned the Blood God's displeasure.
That gift had utterly failed the Executioner when it had faced Cain. The Skulltaker wasn't sure whether that had been because the mortal was still favoured by the Lord of Skulls, or because of the strange shadow that covered his entire existence. But even with that boon denied him, he should still have triumphed over Cain – would have, if not for the trick the man had pulled at the last moment. He yearned to call it dishonorable, but the mere fact that it had worked and the bolt shell had unmade his corporeal form instead of bouncing harmlessly against his head was proof that Khorne had approved.
After an interminable descent, U'Zuhl essence came to a sudden stop in the Formless Wastes. Had a mortal mind been able to witness the scene without immediately going mad, they might interpret it as a crimson meteor falling from the skies and slamming into the ground, before a fuming Bloodletter wearing a cloak of skulls crawled out of the crater.
U'Zuhl would have to make the trip back to the Skull Throne, fighting his way through the throngs of daemons and damned souls waging endless war in Khorne's shadow, so that he could present himself to his lord and answer for his failure. His clawed hands closed into fist on reflex at the thought, and his rage burned even hotter at the sudden realization that the Slayer Sword, another of the Lord of Skulls' gifts to him upon his ascension, was gone, left behind in the Materium as a trophy for the one soul who had defeated him.
A shadow fell upon U'Zuhl, and he looked up from his empty hands to see a tall, lithe figure with emerald eyes and flowing black hair.
"Emeli," the Herald of Khorne snarled, recognizing the creature from the many battlefields of the Great Game.
"Skulltaker," the Daemon Princess of Slaanesh hissed. "You tried to kill my beloved Ciaphas."
"I did." U'Zuhl wouldn't lower himself to lie, even to a spawn of the Dark Prince, and he most definitely would never beg. "Did you really think you could protect him forever ?"
"You fool. He doesn't need my protection," she spat. "I merely give it to him because I love him. He beat you without my intervention, did he not ?"
"He did defeat me," U'Zuhl admitted, though it burned it to its core. "And in doing so, earned a reprieve, and the token of my power I left behind as his rightful reward. But so long as he rejects the Eightfold Path, the Lord of Skulls will keep sending challengers his way, until he kneels or dies."
"I know. Already, Khorne is orchestrating a trial at the foot of his throne to determine who will follow up on your pitiful attempt on my beloved's life. But whoever they are, they will fail too."
"Such faith. Such certainty. Tell me, whore-princess, before we get to it : what is it that you see in this mortal to cause such devotion ?"
The daughter of the Youngest God smiled, and despite everything it had witnessed, U'Zuhl felt a twinge of apprehension at the sight. He had fought countless Slaaneshi daemons before, and witnessed the depravities of the Silver Palace itself during one of the Blood God's attacks upon the domain of his rival, but he'd never seen any of the Dark Prince's infernal choir show that kind of expression.
"I see someone worth loving, little killer," replied Emeli. "Now, it is your turn to answer a question of mine : who sent you after him ? I know the strength of the little void-queen's ship. Its wards wouldn't have parted to allow you and your coterie passage so easily, not without the intercession of some mortal conjurer to facilitate it."
U'Zuhl exposed his teeth in a threatening snarl.
"If you want to know, then you will have to force the answer out of me."
Emeli was still smiling, but her expression was now one U'Zuhl was much more familiar with.
"I was hoping you'd say that," she purred. "I have a lot of frustrations I need to work out."
When the nearby cogitator started beeping in alarm, Killian was in his office aboard the WUN-13's research facility, looking through Magos Galerion's latest reports. He immediately put down the data-slate and turned on the shrilling cogitator, using his credentials to access the station's network.
Within moments, he had accessed the station's auspex. The long-range scans had detected a single ship appearing at the system's Mandeville point. A few typed commands focused the auspex array on the unknown vessel, revealing its identity : the Worldwounder, flagship of the Van Yastobaal Dynasty and scourge of pirates across the Torredon Gap.
Well. That wasn't good. Killian's first thought had been that one of the other Directors of the Bloodied Crown had managed to locate his base of operation and was dropping in to intimidate him or steal his work, but this was much worse.
He hadn't heard anything from the psykers he'd sent to Sanguia with orders to kill Cain several weeks ago, nor had he received any transmission from the Chairman or the Ripper General. It was clear now that they must have failed, for the Black Commissar was there. But only the ship of his pet Rogue Trader was visible on the auspex : he must have left the rest of his fleet behind, or perhaps they had been lost to the Warp while their master rushed to claim the Shadowlight.
Killian didn't know how the arch-heretic had managed to discover his location – his best guess was that the assassins had betrayed him, or that Cain had offered sacrifices to the Dark Gods in exchange for the information. But regardless of how the Black Commissar had found out, he still needed to deal with the situation.
His Righteous Punishment was in the system, waiting for its master's return. The ship could escape WUN-13 without being caught by the Worldwounder, so long as the heretics focused on the station – but that would mean leaving Galerion's research behind. Even just moving the Shadowlight to the ship would take time : there were procedures required to safely transport it without its carriers dying horribly, and none of those had been kept ready to use. A quick mental calculation told Killian that, by the time the psychic amplifier was safely aboard His Righteous Punishment, its odds of escaping the Worldwounder would be unacceptably low.
The good news was that the heretics were unlikely to simply blast the station apart with the cruiser's weapons. Having survived uncounted aeons of erosion and geological pressure, Killian didn't doubt for a moment that the Shadowlight would survive such a thing, but the heretics might not know that, and finding the device in the rubble would be difficult. Which meant that the Black Commissar would launch boarding parties, and would probably lead them in order to claim the honor of seizing the priceless artefact himself (as well as the prestige of killing Killian with his own hands).
There was a small security force on the station, of course, but it was meant to deal with escaped test subjects. Secrecy had always been Killian's best defense, it was why he had gone to such lengths to hide the location. That only left one option to the Inquisitor, distasteful though it was.
With a muttered curse, Killian opened a vox-channel to Galerion's laboratory.
"Magos," he began without preamble, "we've been discovered by heretics, and are about to be boarded. How quickly can you get your latest project ready for combat ?"
Notes:
AN : I hesitated about whether to give Cain the Slayer Sword or not after discovering that Skulltaker's weapon is a named artefact in the lore. To decide, I consulted the Trinity of Tenets :
1) Does this make Cain more powerful ?
2) Will this cause Cain problems in the future ?
3) Will this make Cain more stressed ?
If at least two of the three Tenets are correct, then that's a good sign that the idea is a good one. In this case, 1 and 3 are certain, and I'm sure I can figure out a way to make 2 come true as well, so here we are. Looking at the most recent rules for the weapon in 40K (thanks to the Internet), the Slayer Sword is powerful, sure, but not game-breaking, which seems in line with its (admittedly rather limited) lore.
Next chapter, the attack on the Shadowlight research station. Surely nothing will go wrong !
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 40: Chapter 39
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Sixteen days after the daemonic incursion, according to the ship's on-board time-keeping, the Worldwounder returned to reality in the XUN-13 system.
I watched the translation take place from the bridge, sitting on the throne which had been added for me next to Areelu's own. Given what we expected to find, I was wearing my suit of power armor, with my bolt pistol at my hip – along with the Slayer Sword.
I would much rather have been carrying a chainsword, but that was sadly impossible. Once the fighting in the profaned chapel had concluded with the banishment of the last of the Bloodletters, I had asked Areelu if she had another sealed box like the one where she kept her staff. She didn't, but it hadn't taken her long to create a warded chamber where I could leave Skulltaker's sword, and pick up a much more reasonable chainsword from the armory.
Except, during my next training session, the moment I'd drawn the weapon from its scabbard, I'd found myself holding the Slayer Sword instead. It had taken every bit of self-control I possessed to not drop it immediately in front of my aide and bloodward. Upon checking, I'd found the box I'd left it in was empty, with no sign of what had happened to the chainsword.
After the fourth time this had happened, I had given up. There was no point wasting perfectly good chainswords on me being stubborn. Instead, I had asked Areelu to check that the weapon couldn't affect my mind (I hadn't heard any whispering voice trying to push me to slaughter when holding it, but perhaps it was just being subtle). Once she had confirmed that the weapon appeared to be as ordinary as a blade forged by infernal smiths at the foot of the Skull Throne and infused with a fragment of the Blood God's authority could be, I had commissioned the artisans onboard the Worldwounder to craft a customized scabbard for the sword.
I had been forced to adapt my training regimen to my new weapon. For all that the Slayer Sword was perfectly balanced and overall an improvement on my wargear (if not for the fact that it was a relic of the Warp, and that merely touching it was probably cause for execution by the Inquisition), it was still a change I needed to get used to. That had been a challenge, as it didn't exactly have a non-lethal option for sparring.
Which, yes, applied to a chainsword as well, but leaving the weapon unpowered made it a lot less dangerous. With the Slayer Sword, suppressing its tendency to erupt into Warp-fire when I drew it required a constant effort of will. But Hektor and Malicia were just as willing to serve as my sparring partners as before.
Fortunately, the sword didn't have the same effect on Hektor's implants as its previous owner had, and its size had changed when I had picked it up in order to defend myself from U'Zuhl's cohorts into something more suitable for my human hands. It also served as a powerful symbol for the Khornates, a permanent reminder that I had triumphed over one of their god's mightiest servants. Sure, I had arguably cheated by bringing my bolter into a swordsman's duel, but combat pragmatism was one of the USA's great virtues.
Throne, I still couldn't believe I'd managed to survive that fight. U'Zuhl had been absolutely terrifying, surpassed only by the terror I'd felt when facing the image of Nurgle through the Warp rift on Cassandron. Never before had I been more thankful for my training regimen, and the fact that circumstances had forced me to regularly spar with the likes of Hektor and Malicia. Even then, if the Skulltaker hadn't hesitated when I'd pointed my bolter at its head and gone straight for the kill with its full momentum, the best I could've hoped for was a mutual kill.
At least the Slayer Sword wasn't talking to me like I'd feared it might when I'd picked it up to defend myself from a pack of enraged Khornate daemons. If it had, then I'd have locked it away and never touched a melee weapon for the rest of my life, regardless of the damage it might have done to my reputation.
I forced my thoughts away from the infernal blade and back to the current situation. The translation back to the Materium was as gut-wrenching as ever, but from what I understood of the various reports – more the tone of the officers than their words – everything had gone well. The main occulus opened, revealing a system that was almost completely lifeless.
Almost, but not quite. On the main occulus was a picture of our target. The void station was about three kilometers long, orbiting around a gas giant. From the scanners, it appeared to be an old mining station, though numerous later additions to its defenses systems were visible.
"We have an identification," called out the Master of Auspex. "This station is broadcasting its identity as the Golden Hand. No record of its construction can be found in our data-stacks, but it appears to be relatively recent – a couple of centuries at most."
By the standards of the Imperium, that was positively new. Most ships and void-stations were centuries, if not millennia old. As the implications of that sank in, the palms of my hands began to itch. It wasn't uncommon for the Imperium to forget about the existence of space stations – such was the Administratum's bloated size, entire worlds were said to sometimes disappear in the error margins of some petty bureaucrat.
But how had Auric managed to get his hands on the Golden Hand without the Subsector authorities noticing, at least before the collapse of Imperial governance following the Navy's withdrawal ? This spoke of a level of influence beyond a mere pirate lord, and I mentally revised my estimate of Auric's threat level, which had already been far too high for my peace of mind, given the man's willingness to dabble in psychic matters, which were no business of sane men, honest or otherwise.
"How many people can we expect to find onboard ?" I asked, knowing the answer would be very relevant to my ongoing survival before too long.
"A station this size could support perhaps a couple hundred people at most," replied one of the bridge crew. "More than that, and the life-support systems would struggle to keep the air breathable."
"Lady Captain," the Master of Auspex called out. "The ship is broadcasting an identification code as Wickedness' Reward, but that's a false identity. We've pierced through the encryption : its true name is His Righteous Punishment."
"That doesn't sound like the name of a pirate ship," I noted.
"It has to be a captured ship," explained Areelu. "Almost every vessel of the shadow cartels is the same, except for a few whose name are kept the same for one reason or another. What's interesting is that I don't recognize the name His Righteous Punishment. Anything in the archives ?"
"No, Lady Captain," replied another crew member.
"Pelton didn't know where Auric came from, did he ?" I said, trying to remember the details of the voluminous material that had been sent to me after the renegade's debrief was finished. "He suddenly appeared a few years ago and bought a position on the board of the Bloodied Crown. He must have come from far away and brought the ship with him."
"Even so, the Van Yastobaal's archives contain knowledge from all across the Eastern Fringe," replied Areelu, frowning. "I find it strange that they don't contain even a single reference to this ship."
Wonderful. But then, someone dabbling in experimentation on psykers would need to be secretive : there were few threats that the Imperium took more seriously than witches.
"Lady Captain, Warmaster, we are being hailed by the station," the Master of the Vox called out.
"Accept the link," replied Areelu without bothering to ask me permission – but then, this was her ship and I was merely a guest, who'd been shown tremendous courtesy by being invited to the bridge at all.
A face appeared on the hololithic projection. I was able to recognize him from Pelton's description as our primary target : Jereb Auric, director of the Bloodied Crown shadow cartel. He was tall, imposing, and showing signs of middle age, although there was something in his gaze that made me think he was much older than his appearance suggested. The fact that a pirate lord had apparently access to top-of-the-line juvenat treatments only added to the pile of evidence that there was something very wrong going on here.
"Ciaphas Cain, we meet at last," he said, in the voice of someone who was used to getting his own way and expected that to continue for years to come. "I knew you would come. And the Lady Van Yastobaal, too. I confess, I was surprised when I learned you had thrown in with heretics."
"Director Auric," I nodded. "I will give you the same opportunity to surrender I gave Chairman Jabbus."
"Surrender ?" He laughed, and there was more than a hint of madness in the sound. "Never ! I know why you have come, Black Commissar. You will never get your hands on the Shadowlight !"
The link went dead. In the middle of the silence that had fallen on the bridge, I turned toward Areelu and asked :
"What the frak is the Shadowlight ?"
She shrugged, clearly as lost as I was. "It must be related to the psychic awakening experiments he is conducting," she guessed. "We theorized he had found a way to replicate the effects of the Eye of Terror on latent psykers : maybe the Shadowlight is some artefact that allows this ?"
"That sounds dangerous," I said with what I felt was commendable understatement.
"It most definitely is," she agreed. "If you find it, be careful and don't mess with it."
And there it was, the unquestioned certainty that I would be part of the boarding party. I had known it was coming, of course : I would have needed to shoot Jurgen to keep him from taking part, and I couldn't send my aide off without me. I had been trying to figure out a way out of it since we'd left Minos, eventually giving it up as a pointless exercise in frustration.
"I'll be careful," I told Areelu with absolute sincerity, before standing up with an appropriately dramatic cape swirl. "Jurgen, Malicia, let's get to the landing bay. And someone ask Lady Akivasha whether she would like to join us. Hektor, I assume you will be accompanying us ?"
"Of course," replied the World Eater, smiling the kind of smile that would make children (and most adults, to be honest) cry out in terror. "I wouldn't miss this for anything."
Which was proof, if proof were needed, that every single warrior of the Twelfth Legion was mad long before the Nails were hammered into their skulls. But I had more sense than to say that out loud.
Thirty minutes later, I was aboard the same troop transport which had delivered me and my retinue to the Jewel of the Void. Thanks to my armor's vox-system, I knew that the Wickedness' Reward had moved to the other side of the station from the Worldwounder. With it gone, our approach to the Golden Hand was virtually unopposed. The station did have some laser batteries as point defenses, but these were meant to deal with the occasional asteroid drifting too close, and they were quickly disabled by our fighters, which also blew open the landing bays.
Our goals were simple : find and capture Auric, rescue the test subjects, and secure the mysterious Shadowlight. Areelu had remained aboard the Worldwounder to keep an eye on the Wickedness' Reward, and Suture had stayed by her side as her bloodward, but I was far from unprotected. Not only were Jurgen, Malicia and Hektor present, I had brought Lieutenant Nathan's unit along once more : by now, I was familiar with their skills in battle, and trusted them to obey my orders without question even if they seemed to go against the bloodthirsty principles of the USA.
We were bringing one of the borgs along, on Areelu's recommendation, as we might need technical assistance in understanding the psychic research taking place aboard the Golden Hand. Demetrius-Delta had been a participant in the Uprising, and was one of the borgs who had dedicated himself to remaking his body completely into something equally capable of combat as research, so that he could defend the cause of Liberation with his own blood and oil if need be. To me, he looked like a pile of threatening augmetics in the vague shape of a man covered by a red robe marked with the cogwheel symbol of the Mechanicus and the quadripartite orb of the Liberation Council.
Finally, just as we were boarding the transport, Akivasha had arrived and joined us without a word, either from her or from anyone else dumb enough to protest. The Vampire Ancient had been very peeved to have missed my fight with U'Zuhl. She had dealt with the daemons in the Enginarium with ease and minimal casualties among the menials – who, according to the gossip Jurgen had passed on to me, were now worshipping her as some kind of vengeful spirit, building small shrines in the lower decks. If the Paragon was aware of it, she didn't seem annoyed, so I'd decided to leave well enough alone.
In any case, I was moderately happy to have her at my side for this. If we had to face another psyker capable of paralysing everyone else with their mind, I wanted Akivasha to be as close to me as I felt comfortable with (which, given that she had requested a drink of my blood several times over the course of our journey, admittedly wasn't all that close).
It was a decision that would be vindicated sooner than I thought.
Killian watched the security feeds on half a dozen monitors, and tried not to let his worry show to the pirates who were manning the other stations of the Golden Hand's command center.
The heretics had landed aboard, and were cutting their way through the meagre security forces of the Golden Hand with almost insulting ease. Given that the thugs had been sourced from the rest of the shadow cartel and were only meant to deal with the latent psykers provided by the rest of the shadow cartel and the occasional failed experiment, that was hardly surprising.
But still, the heretic troopers were far more skilled and well-equipped than he'd anticipated. They were wearing what looked like suits of power armor akin to those of the Sisters of Battle (Killian was well familiar with those thanks to his association with the Order of the White Rose, back on Periremunda), which the guards' sluggers were completely unable to penetrate.
And that was to say nothing of the Chaos Marine who was part of the arch-heretic's retinue. The sight of the brute reminded Killian of the Space Marines who'd ransacked his previous base on operation at the command of that she-wolf Vail, though the giant lacked any of the grace and nobility that the true Angels of Death displayed, even when they were being misled by the weaker-minded members of the Holy Ordos.
Cain himself was easy to identify : he was leading the heretics from the front, flanked by a man and a woman and wielding a blade whose sight, even through a pict-feed, was enough to make Killian's skin crawl. Whenever he swung it, it cut through flesh and bone as easily as any power blade Killian had ever seen.
The Inquisitor wondered if that infernal weapon was the reward Cain had received for whatever desecration he'd committed in the ruins of Cassandron while his forces plundered the hive-world's carcass for resources. Certainly, seeing it was more evidence that Cain's offer of surrender had merely been a ruse – not that Killian needed it.
Glancing at the holographic map of the station that showed the heretics' advance, he saw that they were running out of time, and opened a vox-channel to the laboratorium.
"Magos Galerion," he asked without preamble "is your subject ready for deployment ?"
"Yes, Director," came the reply, Galerion's voice as calm as ever. Whether this was because the magos was genuinely unaware of how much danger they were all in, or because the vox-speaker that had replaced his vocal chords years ago was unable to display emotion, Killian didn't know and cared less. "I've finished the final adjustments and informed him of the situation. I was just about to contact you."
"Then send him out immediately !" Killian ordered. "The heretics are closing in on your location as we speak !"
"Yes, Director," answered Galerion, still in that same infuriatingly placid tone, and the vox-link went dead.
Killian took a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm. Everything was going to be fine, he told himself. He'd read Galerion's reports on his masterpiece : the psyker was far more powerful than those who had failed to kill Cain at Sanguia. The most complicated step would be keeping him under control afterwards, as Galerion hadn't had the time to install the explosives at the base of the neck that had initially been planned, but Killian was confident he could out-think a psyker any day, especially an arrogant, self-centered fool like Gratiano.
He returned his attention to the monitors. If nothing else, he reflected, this should make for a fine field test of Galerion's work. After all, Killian's plan for the Shadowlight had always been to create an army of loyal, obedient psykers to use against the hordes of the Despoiler.
If only so many of his so-called peers in the Inquisition weren't blind fools clinging to outdated principles even as the Imperium stood on the brink of annihilation, then he wouldn't have needed to acquire the artefact by force, or be exiled to this miserable corner of the galaxy, forced to consort with the likes of the Bloodied Crown to get the resources his great work required.
After so long in Magos Galerion's laboratorium, Gratiano delighted in the simple pleasure of stretching his legs through the station's corridors. He'd spent the last three months going from the operating table to the life-support recuperation pod, and then back again as soon as he'd fully healed from the latest round of surgery.
Not that he resented the Magos, far from it. Gratiano was the masterpiece of Magos Galerion, the pinnacle of the cyborg's research into psychic enhancement. And he looked the part : slabs of vat-grown muscles hung over his frame, reinforcing his body so that it could withstand the awesome psychic power coursing through it.
Unlike the wretches that made up the bulk of Magos Galerion's test subjects, Gratiano had already been a psyker when he'd arrived to the station. For years, he'd avoided drawing attention to his talent, knowing that it'd get him sent to the Black Ships. But then, he'd drawn the attention of the Arbites (for something completely unrelated to his psychic abilities) and needed to get off-world, fast. His criminal contacts had helped arrange it in exchange for a huge chunk of his accumulated reserves of cash, and he'd eventually made his way to the Bloodied Crown, where his powers had been very useful in securing a comfortable position among the pirates.
Admittedly, he hadn't expected that to eventually lead to him being sent to the Golden Hand and having his powers increased through repeated exposures to the Shadowlight along with a cocktail of various chemical compounds and other, often painful treatments, but he couldn't complain about the results.
Now, he had been given the opportunity to prove that all the effort Magos Galerion had invested in him hadn't been a mistake. This wasn't going to be the first time he fought with his increased abilities, of course : Galerion had tested him intensely using combat servitors and failed experiments in between rounds of augmentation. But all these tests had taken place under controlled conditions : this would be the first time he actually fought since coming aboard the Golden Hand.
"Cain !" he said, loudly enough to make the bulkheads vibrate. "Come and face me !"
Gratiano turned around a corridor, and there, at last, was his target. Cain was accompanied by a gaggle of armored troopers whom Gratiano dismissed at once, secure in the knowledge that the kinetic shield he was maintaining around himself could absorb anything up to an anti-tank shell. Instead, he focused on the warlord's immediate retinue : an Astartes, a pair of women whose skin-tight armor made it clear they were Cain's concubines rather than true fighters, and one man who held a heavy multi-barrelled weapon and radiated psychic power.
Gratiano smiled, eager to test his strength against such worthy opponents. Before he could issue his challenge, however, one of the two women at the arch-heretic's side called out :
"Let me handle this one," she said. Cain turned to look at her for a second, before nodding :
"By all means. He's all yours, Paragon."
Gratiano sneered at the insult in Cain's dismissal. Very well, then. This would be quick : he would dispose of this insolent woman right in front of Cain, and then deal with the real opponent that was the other psyker. Cain would regret underestimating him, Gratiano would make sure of that before the Chaos warlord finally died.
He began to draw on the limitless energies of the Warp, ready to incinerate the woman right where she stood next to Cain.
Then she moved, and it all went horribly, horribly wrong.
I watched in horror-stricken awe as Akivasha methodically tore apart the freakishly huge wyrd with effortless ease. I'd been all too happy to indulge her request : anything that meant I didn't have to fight a towering, psychically augmented brute was fine by me. But I'd been grimly convinced that I'd need to step in at some point, given the results of our previous encounter with Auric's artificial wyrds and the fact that this one was clearly a cut above the assassins we'd faced aboard the Jewel of the Void.
Instead, Akivasha closed the distance to her foe in less time than it took to blink, her feet leaving imprints in the deck where she'd been standing from the sheer kinetic force she'd exerted. Her first punch removed his lower jaw in a shower of gore and broken teeth that also caused a sonic boom as the strength of her punch overwhelmed whatever kinetic barrier he'd been keeping up. As he recoiled, in shock, she pressed her advantage, clawing out his eyes with a single sweep of her left hand, before breaking his right knee with a vicious kick.
As he fell down, she seized his already ruined head in her hands and smashed it against her knee, once, twice, three times in quick succession. Then, she seized his grotesquely muscled arms and kicked him in the sternum, with enough strength that the arms were torn off his shoulders as the rest of his body went flying through the corridor, slammed against the wall, and slowly slid to the floor, unmoving except for the spurts of blood from its many, many wounds.
"Thank you," I managed to say once she was done. If not for my helmet filtering the air I breathed, I would probably have felt even more nauseous than I already was. The whole thing couldn't have taken more than a handful of seconds, the wyrd unable to muster even a single use of his psychic powers before being dismantled by the Paragon. "That was very … thorough."
"I think he had some biomanipulation ability," she replied, sounding inordinately smug. "His biology didn't make sense otherwise. So I had to make sure he wouldn't be able to regenerate."
"I don't think that will be a concern," said Malicia, who was still staring at the display of carnage with a strange expression on her face.
I kept my opinion that she'd been lucky her victim had been so arrogant and clearly lacking in combat experience to myself. If the wyrd had possessed the common sense of a grot, he'd have used his psychic abilities as soon as he'd seen us, rather than striding to us and challenging me to a fight, and we'd all have been in trouble.
"Based upon the state of the individual prior to his demise," began Demetrius-Delta, stepping forward to inspect the remains of the wyrd with his augmetic senses, "I would theorize that he was in a state of suspended animation until very recently in order to recover from extensive bio-augmetive surgery."
I took a moment to internally translate the borg's jargon. "So, if we follow his trail, we should find where they are experimenting on psykers ?"
"That is a logical inference, yes," nodded Demetrius-Delta.
I turned to Akivasha, still covered in the gore of her victim. "Can you do that, or should I ask Magos Demetrius-Delta ?"
"It has been some time since I've last needed to follow a trail," she mused. "But that should pose no issue. That wretch had a … peculiar smell to him."
"Lead on, then, if you please," I told her with all the politeness I could conjure.
Akivasha led us through the corridors of the station. Despite the forbidden experimentation which had taken place aboard it, the Golden Hand looked very ordinary. There were no eight-pointed sigils of Chaos or other anti-Imperial slogans plastered on the walls, and it was kept in a much better state than the pirate ships of the Bloodied Crown we'd captured since the Protectorate had first clashed with the shadow cartel.
"Hostiles !" called out Lieutenant Nathan as we drew near to the source of the chemical smell, according to Akivasha.
I suppressed my first instinct to dive for cover, trusting that my armor was more resilient than the walls of this station, and assessed the situation. The hostiles the Lieutenant had noticed were combat servitors, armed with repurposed power tools which would no doubt do very bad things to naked flesh, but were little threat to us.
"Dispose of them, Lieutenant," I ordered in my best dismissive voice, and within moments, the coordinated las-fire of the unit had reduced the lobotomized cyborgs to ruin.
We pushed past this ill-fated last line of defense and into a vast lab, with row after row of glass tanks full of preserving chemicals, in which hung dozens of preserved corpses. Many of the corpses bore signs of mutation – an additional limb, freakishly enlarged skulls, scales and furs, that sort of things – and none of them looked like they had died easily.
The more we saw, the more I could feel Jurgen's anger increase, a physical pressure on the back of my skull as the Warp reacted to my aide's fury. One of the reasons why we'd even bothered boarding the station instead of blowing it up to bits with the Worldwounder's guns was because of the possibility there were people to rescue here. Sure, the artificial wyrds we'd encountered so far had obediently followed the orders of the Bloodied Crown, but that didn't mean there weren't unwilling participants in whatever foul experiments were taking place here.
Now, it looked like there would be no rescuing the captives, as our scans of the Golden Hand had failed to detect any concentration of life-forms that may be a prison, and our surroundings made it clear what had happened to the rest of the test subjects.
"Commissar Cain," said the tech-priest who stood in the middle of this house of horrors. "We meet at last. My apologies for the combat servitors outside : I'm afraid I couldn't deactivate them without Director Auric getting suspicious. I'm sure they were no trouble at all for you, though."
Gesturing for everyone else to hold their fire for now, I took a good look at the man, if such a word could be said to still apply to someone like him. His robes had been white originally, but they were covered in old biological fluids. Most of the stains were clearly blood, but not all of them, and I'd a feeling the vestments would have been burned as a health hazard in any institution at least passingly concerned with contamination protocols.
"I am Magos Galerion," he greeted me with a deep bow, apparently unconcerned by the many weapons aimed at him, or the glare Jurgen was sending in his direction. "It is an honor to make your acquaintance."
"I wish I could say the same," I replied, my left hand falling to the bolt pistol at my belt by reflex. "You are Auric's tech-priest ? The one who worked with him to awaken latent psykers ?"
During our brief exchange over the hololith, Auric hadn't struck me as a member of the Cult Mechanicus himself, renegade or otherwise. For one thing, he'd lacked the copious amount of augmetics most Martians went for.
"I have been working with Director Auric for some time now, yes," he replied. "Since his arrival in the Subsector and initial recruitment by the Bloodied Crown. Chairman Jabbus introduced me to him, and our partnership has been a fruitful one. But I cannot claim to be the source of this research : I was merely hired to continue it. However, I am not blind to how the situation has changed with your presence here."
"What do you mean ?" I asked, though in truth I had a feeling I already knew what he was about to say – and, as it turned out, I was right.
"I know you've come here not just because of your conflict to the Bloodied Crown, but because you, too, see that the Shadowlight is an artefact of immense potential, and seek to harness it for your own ends. I believe that I can be of great use to you in that regard if you spare my life and allow me to continue my work under you. Already, I have been able to increase our understanding of psychic awakenings by an order of magnitude by studying its effects."
"And what about all these people ?" I said, gesturing at the rows of preserved corpses all around us. "Would you expect me to provide you with more test subjects to continue your 'work' ?"
"Progress requires sacrifice," said the heretek with a shrug. "They helped me increase my understanding of the Shadowlight, and paved the way for our great work. It is regrettable that they had to die in the process, yes, but it is a small price to pay, given the potential implications of mastering the process of psychic awakening. Surely, someone of your stature must be aware that sacrifices are sometimes required."
I hesitated. Not because I was tempted by his offer, of course : the man was clearly mad, and the last thing I wanted was for the Protectorate to get even more unstable Warp-conduits, or to start thinking human sacrifices were acceptable in any circumstances while there was a bunch of Chaos-worshipping cults active in it. But if he had worked with Auric this long, he might have information we could use, and I knew Malicia was very good at extracting intelligence from captives – although with how little of Galerion's original flesh appeared to be left, even she might find him a challenge.
On the other hand, I knew Auric was on this station from the vox-transmission he'd sent us before we'd boarded. Whatever Galerion could tell us, it would be irrelevant the moment we cornered the Director and I put a bolt through his skull.
Since leaving the Schola, there had been a rare few occasions where preserving my own skin and doing my duty to the Emperor had coincided. This was one of them.
"Jurgen," I heard myself say, "kill him."
Galerion's eye-lenses widened.
"Wait –"
Magos Galerion's death was swift, if not painless. In a flash of cerulean light, my aide tore him apart on the molecular level, flesh and augmetics alike, reducing him to a pile of dust that slowly drifted to the floor before being covered by his suddenly empty robe.
In the ensuing silence, broken only by the sounds of machinery all around us, I stepped over the remains and took a good look at the source of all the horrific experiments which had taken place here. It rested at the center of the lab, surrounded by a vast array of devices the purpose of which I couldn't even begin to guess at.
For all the trouble it had caused, the Shadowlight didn't look like much at first glance. It was a smooth slab of stone, vaguely rectangular and about three times as high as it was wide. Then I noticed that it wasn't a trick of the lab's illumination that made it seem so black it swallowed all light that touched it, but some property of the object's material itself. Furthermore, the longer I looked at it, the more disturbed I felt on a deep, primal level. There was something unspeakably alien about it which I couldn't put into words : the closest I could come to it was that it seemed to be more real that everything around it, including myself.
Had I known then how much trouble the artefact would bring me in the future, I would have ordered it left there as we blew up the station around it, or thrown it into the system's sun and forgotten about it. These days, I know that it probably would have survived even the latter without a scratch, but it would have put it beyond the reach of anyone else.
I tore my gaze away from the unsettling object with more difficulty than I cared to admit, and found Malicia staring at it with a slack-jawed expression I didn't think I'd ever seen on her face.
"What is it ?" I asked my bloodward. "Do you recognize it ?"
She shuddered slightly, the xenos equivalent of shaking her head to clear it.
"No," she replied, "I have no idea what its precise nature was. But I can sense its age and its power even so. This is ancient even by the reckoning of my people, let alone that of your short-lived species."
In the years of our unlikely association, I'd found that there were very few things which unsettled Malicia. In every case, those things deserved extreme caution, even if one had ended up being my adopted daughter, and I resolved to be even more careful than I had already planned to be in regard to this strange, alien device.
"We still need to find Auric," I said, before Demetrius-Delta could start poking around at the room's console. I was fairly certain that, if I let him begin, I would need to shoot him to get him to stop before he was satisfied or accidentally killed us all by fiddling with the wrong stick. "Lieutenant, leave a squad to guard this place; the rest of you, with me."
I was glad to put some distance between me and the Shadowlight. A part of me felt reluctant to turn my back on it, but I silenced it : while it made perfect sense not to show one's back to a threat, the Shadowlight was contained for now, while Auric was still out and about, and might still have access to some kind of self-destruct mechanism he could use to take us all out with him.
Killian ran, navigating the corridors of the Golden Hand toward the custom evacuation pod he'd arranged to have installed in the station. The pod's stealth generators should be enough to escape the auspex of the Worldwounder and let him get away from the heretics ransacking the place.
The station, which he'd acquired years ago as a possible bolthole (always a good idea to have a few of those when you were an Inquisitor) was lost. Galerion was dead, and his supposed masterwork had failed miserably, completely annihilated by what could only be another unbound wyrd the Black Commissar kept at his side, heedless of the risk of doing so. At least Cain had saved him the effort of executing the incompetent bag of bolts by killing him himself.
But this wasn't over. The events of today were a great setback, yes, only a fool would deny it, but as long as he lived, not a fatal one. He could still escape, reach His Righteous Punishment, leave the system, then get in touch with the surviving directors of the Bloodied Crown through what remained of their artificial astropathic network. With their help, he could reclaim the Shadowlight from Cain : sure, it would cost the lives of untold thousands of pirates, but that was just an added benefit as far as the Inquisitor was concerned. And as long as he had the artefact, everything else could be –
He stopped dead in his tracks. Ahead of him, the air of the corridor rippled, and a figure appeared, cast in darkest shadows, save for a pair of burning eyes that pinned Killian in place.
"My lord," he gasped, nearly completely overcome with terror. "I promise you –"
His pleading ceased, not willingly, but because he suddenly couldn't speak.
"You have failed me for the last time, Killian," said the distorted voice of the Inquisitor's master. "I won't risk you falling into the hands of my enemies and sharing what you know with them."
The last moments of Ernst Stavros Killian, Radical Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus, decreed Excommunicate Diabolus by the Concilium Ravus, were spent in abject agony and horror as his body melted like wax, his awareness preserved the entire time by the very sorcery that was killing him.
By the time we finally found him, there was hardly enough left of Auric to identify him. If not for his clothes – a black tabard which had no doubt been of very fine make prior to being covered with its owner's insides – I would have struggled to be sure the puddle of biological matter spread across several meters of corridor was our man.
The walls, floor and ceiling were covered in a thick layer of frost, which cracked under our boots as we cautiously approached. The sounds echoed in impossible ways that made my head ache as I instinctively tried using them to map our surroundings.
"I can feel a disturbance in the Warp," said Jurgen, which was hardly some grand revelation. Even a blind, deaf fool would have been able to tell that there was such a disturbance at play here. "Whatever did this, it used some powerful sorcery … but I think it's gone now."
"A daemon, do you think ?" asked Lieutenant Nathan, who, like the rest of the troopers, was keeping his las-gun at the ready. "Something dredged from the Warp by all the experimentation that took place on this station ?"
"That's possible, I guess," said Jurgen, not sounding convinced. "We'll need to ask Sieur Harold's people if they can investigate to be sure, though."
"I'll contact them over the ansible as soon as we are done here," I declared. I was about to say something else when Jurgen abruptly seized up.
"Jurgen ? What's wrong ?"
"I … I don't know, sir," my aide replied through clenched teeth. "Something … something just happened, but –"
Whatever he was going to say was cut off as Areelu's voice erupted in my ear, sounding urgent :
"Ciaphas, Wickedness' Reward just detonated its Warp core without any warning."
I stood there, dumbfounded, for several seconds before managing to say : "… what ? Elaborate, please."
"There's nothing else to tell," she replied, sounding as frustrated by that fact as I felt. "The ship was staying out of range of our guns when it suddenly exploded. No escape pods, no survivors, nothing. I don't think the poor bastards aboard had even the chance to realize what was happening before the core exploded and they were all dragged into the Warp."
I shuddered inside my armor at the thought of those hundreds, if not thousands of people suddenly being cast into the Immaterium without the protection of a Geller Field.
"I see," I said out loud. "This might be related to what we found on our end."
"What are you talking about ?
"Auric is dead," I told her, before explaining what had happened.
"This looks a lot like someone trying to clean up loose ends," she mused once I was done. "Someone with access to a lot of dangerous knowledge and power, to be able to do something like that, presumably without being in the system."
"I agree," I said, feeling very uneasy about this whole situation. "There's clearly something going on here beyond a random crime lord finding a xenos artefact and poking it with a stick to find out what it does. We will have to investigate, in case they come after us for interfering with their repugnant experimentation."
I took another look at the melted corpse of Jereb Auric, and grimaced.
"For now, Lieutenant, please dispose of these remains. We don't need for whatever did this to use them to manifest."
Once a couple of Nathan's men had reduced Auric's corpse to ash with flamers, we made our way back to the lab, while more personel were brought aboard the Golden Hand from the Worldwounder to assist in looting the station. Once there, Demetrius-Delta extended a mechadendrite and connected to the cogitators. Thanks to the ansible that had been temporarily added to his augmetics before our expedition, he was able to relay that connection directly to the Worldwounder, bringing the ship's complement of tech-priests and analytical engines into the equation (or so I'd been told, not that I cared how the borgs did their work).
"The link is established," called Areelu. "Our lexmechanics are making contact with the machine-spirit remotely."
Predictably, it took the tech-priests several minutes to get anywhere, during which I busied myself checking on the teams deployed across the station. The surviving pirates were surrendering in droves now that word of their leader's death was spreading over the vox, along with confirmation that the heretics boarding the Golden Hand were in fact willing to take prisoners and not immediately executing everyone who tried to surrender.
"This database is protected by an Inquisitorial encryption," said Areelu when she called me back, sounding as surprised as I was. I didn't ask where she'd encountered that type of encryption before to be able to recognize it, confident that I didn't want to know. "Unless you've got a rosette of the Holy Ordos laying around somewhere, it will take us years to break it and access the data."
I blinked, not believing what I'd just heard for a moemnt.
"Funny you should mention that," I began.
Notes:
AN : Gratiano VS Akivasha is basically what's going to have to happen whenever Cain's opponent doesn't prepare to handle the uber-vampire properly in advance, going forward.
And Cain has gotten his hands on the Shadowlight ! I'm sure that won't cause him problems going forward. It's not like, in the canon timeline, Abaddon sent an entire fleet to recover it while he was in the middle of his Thirteenth Black Crusade and, one assumes, needed all the assets he could gather under his banner.
Oh, and Killian was working for someone else, who can apparently kill him and blow up his ship from very far away. I'm sure that's not important.
Thank you all for your comments on this story. I continue to be blown away by how much you all seem to enjoy it, and by the number of Omakes on the SB thread, which certainly help keeping the Muse interested in this story.
The Torredon arc is far from finished. After all, from Cain's perspective, killing Auric (did you notice he never even knew Killian's name ? I'm sure you did) was merely a side-quest. We'll get back to Minos in the next chapter, and learn what happened there in Cain's absence. Place your bets now !
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 41: Chapter 40
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
From War in the Labyrinth : A detailed account of the Minosian Campaign, by Alfonso Sallust. Published by Cainopolis Academic Presses 951.M41.
The Liberator's words of warning to General Mahlone before his departure from Minos would soon prove to be as prescient as one would expect from a man of his great wisdom. At the time, all Protectorate analysts and diviners, whether they followed the Lord of Joy or the Great Architect, agreed that there was no evidence that the unrest on Minos was anything but the result of Imperial incompetence and passionless cruelty. Yet even a cursory glance at the fragmented intelligence gleaned from the Minosian SDF was enough for the Liberator to see that there was more at work in the system than it seemed.
As the Protectorate fleet took position above the planet, contact with the disparate factions warring for control was swiftly established. Through the efforts of Sieur Harold and Lady Krystabel, the anti-Imperial groups were quickly brought to heel, happily joining forces with the Protectorate in return for their aid in bringing peace, prosperity and liberation to their world. Units of USA troopers were dispatched to the surface, along with medical and food supplies, which were distributed to both the rebels and civilians, whose safety remained General Mahlone's first concern.
Attempts to negotiate a ceasefire with the Imperial remnants failed, as their indoctrination proved too strong to overcome once they realized the new arrivals hailed from Slawkenberg. The Imperium's propaganda of what had taken place on the Protectorate's capital world had spread far across the Damocles Gulf, and violence soon erupted once more. Restrained by the need to avoid further collateral damage where at all possible, the USA did not immediately crush the Imperials as was well within its power : instead, General Mahlone opted for a more cautious strategy of isolating and defeating each Imperial force in detail.
The surface of Minos was a battlefield unlike anything the United Slawkenberg Army had previously encountered. The continent-spanning city was crowded and polluted, home to billions of scared and hungry civilians along with the numerous warring factions. Over thousands of years of urban decay and periodic renewal, the world had become a maze to all off-worlders – in truth, even the locals rarely knew more than the immediate surroundings of their dwellings, and the paths leading from their ramshackle homes to their place of labor.
Fortunately, the hyper-realistic training which Lord Hektor had insisted the USA men and women go through on Slawkenberg proved itself worth the cost many times over. Though the Bringers Of Renewed Greatness' construction efforts weren't an exact match for the urban environment of Minos, it provided a solid foundation for the troops, while the wargear of the opposition was far inferior to their own.
Thanks to the disunity which had arisen in the wake of the Imperial overlords' demise, this strategy proved wildly successful, and great swathes of the urban megacomplex were pacified, though small-scale acts of insurgency and terrorism continued. For a time, the USA continued its campaign, as of yet unaware of the greater threat lurking beneath the surface conflict.
It was during the third week of the hostilities that something occurred which would throw the course of the entire campaign off-track. During a routine patrol in one of the secured areas, a USA soldier was ambushed by a large, four-armed creature, whose claws pierced right through his power armor as it dragged him into the shadows.
No doubt the soldier would have succumbed to the creature's assault, if not for the Panacea auto-injectors of his armor, which were triggered by the attack. The life-saving compound freed the soldier from the torpor induced by the creature's venom, and he cried out to his comrades over the vox even as he struggled in the four-armed grasp of the beast. This act cost him his life, as the creature tore him apart once it realized its prey wasn't pacified like it had thought. Later discoveries would reveal that, though tragic, this fate was far kinder than what would have happened to the soldier had every suit of USA power armor not been equipped with an automatic Panacea injector by express request of the Liberator.
None of the soldiers present had any idea what this creature that had killed so many of their comrades was, but as images were sent up the ranks, one captain spoke up. This veteran was one of the few elect soldiers to have accompanied the Liberator during the first exploration of Emeli's Gift, and he recognized the body as resembling that of a pack of xenos monstrosities that Cain had encountered and slain while separated from the rest of the exploration team. The story was well-known among the common troopers, but the realization that the Liberator had triumphed over several of the beasts after just one had proven so lethal, reminded all warriors of the Protectorate of their leader's prowess.
With this information, Magos Tesilon-Kappa was able to identify the beast as a Genestealer, one of the Tyranid Hive-Fleets' most devious combat forms : a vanguard organism tailored to infiltrate human societies, infecting hapless men and women with its taint and enslaving them to the will of the Hive-Fleet. Their presence on Minos cast the entire insurrection into a different, far darker light …
General Mahlone stood at attention, along with a hundred USA troopers, as the Liberator's transport descended from the skies to land on what had, until a few months ago, been a large public square in the largest of Minos' cities, full of statues of the planet's previous leaders. By the time the Protectorate had arrived, the statues had all been cast down by one of the rebel factions, the metal melted down into weapons for the civil war.
Many of the planet's starports had been damaged in that brutal conflict, and those which remained were already in use by the USA, turned into fortifications following the landing of the first wave of troopers. The Liberator could have requisitioned the use of one for his own descent, of course, but as was typical of the great man who led the Protectorate, he had instead chosen to come directly to his people using a transport capable of landing into more or less any open space.
The transport landed, and the boarding ramp came down. As Ciaphas Cain strode down and stepped onto the surface of Minos for the first time, the General's eyes were immediately drawn to the blade that hung at the Liberator's side. After so many years of being close to Cain, he almost expected to find the familiar chainsword, despite knowing better – but there was no mistaking the sheathed sword for any common weapon, even one crafted by the best borg artisans.
Although its blade was covered, there was no denying that the Slayer Sword was a magnificent thing, a display of purest lethality rendered into a weapon worthy of the Liberator's martial excellence. But more than that, according to the reports he'd received from the USA units which had been lucky enough to be chosen to accompany Cain, it was a gift from the War God himself, claimed in honorable single combat as the Liberator proved the righteousness of Liberation's cause.
All the USA knew of Cain's prowess with a blade, of course : stories of his sparring matches with the likes of Sir Hektor or Lady Malicia were swapped between troopers all the time, and the pict-record of his duel against the hated Inquisitor Karamazov had been watched countless times by millions of citizens. But to have triumphed over a Herald of Khorne himself was a clear sign of their leader's supremacy, not just among mortals, but among the exalted servants of the Pantheon as well.
The War God had sent one of his mightiest champions to test the Liberator's commitment to his path of honor and dedication to the people, and Cain had prevailed. Mahlone had also received a transcript of the Liberator's speech to the Herald before their duel from the soldiers who had witnessed it in person, in which he had revealed his belief that Khorne himself had been poisoned by hated Nurgle, his nobility and honor tainted by the Rotting One's corrupting influence.
The USA hadn't taken the revelation well, and numerous oaths of vengeance against the Plaguefather had been sworn on Minos since the news had spread. But they were determined to keep to the precepts by which they had lived since the Uprising – and, one day, they would liberate the Lord of Battle himself. The theology of it all had yet to be written down, but of the factions which made up the Liberation Council, the USA had always been the most informal in their worship anyway. Khorne favored deeds over words, and the Liberator had proven he was equally adept with both.
"Welcome to Minos, my lord," said Mahlone as he saluted, the gesture echoed by all the soldiers in attendance with gratifying synchronicity.
"It's good to see you again in person, General," said Cain with his usual smile, a mix of confidence and respect. "I hear you have been busy in my absence."
"No more than you, my lord," Mahlone replied.
"Nonsense. You have been fighting on this world for weeks, while dealing with Auric only took a few hours," said the Liberator with typical self-effacement. "Although the journey was long and, as you know, somewhat agitated." Cain's hand briefly touched the hilt of his blade – a casual reminder that while Mahlone was leading the USA in a xenos hunt, he was duelling one of the War God's champions – before moving away. "In any case, we have much to discuss."
"That we do," Mahlone nodded. "Follow me, please."
I made small talk with Mahlone as he guided us across the USA base, Jurgen and Malicia following close behind me, along with Hektor and Lieutenant Nathan's command squad. The latter was more here to honor their contribution than because I expected to need their presence : if there was still anything on Minos that could threaten me, I was relying more on my aide and bloodward to keep me safe than another bunch of grunts, no matter how skilled the Lieutenant's people had proven to be.
Akivasha had remained aboard the Worldwounder. The Paragon had no interest in Minos, and she trusted Malicia and Jurgen to keep her source of Panacea-rich blood safe.
Thanks to the ansible network, the General had already been informed of most of what had transpired in XUN-13, although there had been a few details missing from the official report. Not because I didn't trust him with the information, although I absolutely did not, but because the implications of what had happened were so huge that Areelu and the others had understood my reluctance to limit the chances of it spreading.
As it had turned out, Jurgen had put the Inquisitorial rosette I'd taken off the corpse of Fyodor Karamazov with us when we'd left Slawkenberg, putting it into my luggage along with a bunch of other personal effects. When I asked him why, he shrugged, and said he had 'a feeling' that it might be useful. Knowing better than to push further, I'd handed over the rosette to Areelu's tech-priests.
With it, the borgs had been able to decrypt the data of Galerion's lab. Which was fortunate, given that according to the logs, attempting to move the Shadowlight without proper shielding was liable to kill everyone in the immediate vicinity, unless they happened to be latent psykers, in which case it was credits to carrots that it would still kill them or gift them a seemingly random minor psychic ability.
Right now, the artefact was secured in the Worldwounder's vault, well beyond the reach of any of the borgs who might feel like taking up the unlamented Magos Galerion's research. After talking with Areelu about it, I'd put a squad on duty guarding the room at all times, with strict orders to give exactly one warning to anyone trying to get close to it, then to shoot to kill. I didn't expect things to come to that, but I'd rather not find out I was wrong with one or more borgs melting themselves trying to study the thing.
I had no doubt whatsoever that it would end up causing me trouble later down the line, but for the moment, I'd more pressing concerns I needed to deal with.
We made our way to the command center of the USA operations on Minos. Until the civil war which had torn the planet apart, it had clearly been some kind of warehouse used to store shipments from orbit before they were distributed across the rest of the planet. Now, there was a large hololithic projector, enough chairs for all of us, and a recaff pot, which Jurgen made a beeline for and began serving everyone before anyone could say anything.
Harold and Krystabel were already present, and they greeted me in turn – the latter with admittedly a tad more enthusiasm than was proper, but nobody said anything and I chose not to make a fuss about it, even as I made a note to arrange to spend some time with her later, before her Slaaneshi tendencies pushed her to do something I would regret.
"So," I said, once we were all sitting down and I sipped at the cup Jurgen had handed me, mentally comparing it to the stuff I'd gotten used to aboard Worldwounder. "Genestealers."
After dealing with the Golden Hand, I had read through the reports which had poured through the ansible network as soon as the Worldwounder had emerged from the Warp in the XUN-13 system. Learning that there was a xenos infestation on the Imperial world whose liberation I'd left in the hands of a Khornate lunatic hadn't been the relaxing read I'd been hoping for, and I'd very politely asked Areelu how quickly we could get back to Minos.
Things didn't seem to have gone too wrong since then, though. In fact, as I was debriefed on what had happened since I'd been out of reach due to being in the Warp, things seemed to have gone almost suspiciously well. I was hoping nobody had tried to hide anything from me, and that Mahlone wasn't about to reveal that they were keeping a lid on a desperate situation to keep the plebs from panicking and making it worse.
Fortunately, he didn't.
"Yes, Genestealers," said Mahlone, his expression serious. "Though we lost several dozens troopers to the beasts, we believe we've successfully eradicated their presence from Minos. Our Cassandron auxiliaries especially performed very well", the General said, nodding toward the Vampire officer in full body-covering armor who sat with the rest of the USA's representatives to the meeting.
His name, if I wasn't mistaken, was Morin, and he was one of the Volkihar Coven, although not high-ranking enough to be allowed to take the Coven's name for his own yet. He had been selected as representative of the Cassandron contingent on the war council mostly, I suspected, due to Akivasha's presence, although given the way everyone else looked at him he must have the competence required for such a position.
"Once we established the beasts' presence on Minos, they requested that we entrust the hunt to them," Mahlone explained. "Most of the Genestealers on the planet were slain by the Vampires."
"Is that so ? Well done, Sieur Morin," I said with an approving nod in the Vampire's direction, who didn't quite preen at the praise; most likely he was too experienced for such an obvious tell. "From my experience with them, Genestealers are hardy foes."
It wouldn't hurt to remind everyone that I'd supposedly found and killed an entire nest of the monsters aboard Emeli's Gift during the first expedition. No one besides me knew that they had all been dormant at the time, save for the final one, which had still been sluggish from Gods knew how long in hibernation.
"Thank you, lord Cain," the Vampire replied, his Low Gothic strangely accented in the way most Volkihar did – except Akivasha, for reasons I felt it was best for my peace of mind I did not question. "We are happy to serve the Protectorate in any way we can."
I had to admit that was some smooth boot-licking. Then again, Vampires were used to a hierarchy where rank wasn't determined by which side of the bedsheets you had been born on, but on personal as well as political power – meaning that an angry superior could tear you apart with their bare hands, rather than ask a minion to beat you up or have you shot like on civilized Imperial worlds.
Also, my association with Akivasha was probably akin to someone being on a first-name basis to one of the mythical Primarchs from his perspective. I would need to speak with him more to figure out whether he was being obsequious out of fear, ambition, or both, but later.
"Are there any Genestealers left on Minos ?" I asked, making it sound as if I was eager for a spot of hunt myself.
"We do not think so," replied Harold. "Our divinations told us the last purestrain died a couple of weeks ago. However, their infected puppets remain, and they still follow the last instructions of their alien masters."
Ah, there it was. The true threat and reason why the discovery of the Genestealers on Minos had been so worrying. By themselves, the xenos were dangerous, yes, but it was their ability to subvert their victims which truly made them a threat to the Imperium itself.
"Our analysts are pretty sure the beasts arrived on the planet only a few months back, aboard one of the last ships to pass through the system before trade collapsed in the Subsector," finished Mahlone as he reached the end of his explanation. "They moved across the urban landscape and infected many people from all ways of life, bringing them in their mind-controlling web of influence."
"Fortunately," said Tesilon-Kappa, "the Panacea is capable of curing such implantation and freeing the victim from the xenos' mind-control, although the experience is quite traumatic for them."
"I can imagine why," I said grimly, speaking truthfully for once. The idea of having one's free will subverted like that, turned to the machinations of the Great Devourer, filled me with an entirely different kind of horror than the one I was all too familiar with.
"Do we know whether the bureaucrats who made the decision to starve the population were infected ?" I asked.
"Given the state of their bodies once the insurgents were done with them, that is impossible to say, Lord Liberator," said Harold with a tight smile. "For the sake of bringing back order and avoiding long-lasting grudges, we've played up the possibility in our exchanges with the local factions."
Blaming everything on the Genestealers felt cheap, but if that kept the population from burning their own planet to the ground, then I was perfectly fine with it.
"And what of our relationship with the Minosians ?" I asked.
"Most of the locals still have no idea who we are," said Krystabel. "As far as they know, we are off-worlders come to help them. The faction leaders know more, but they're too grateful to us to cause trouble."
I had to assume she meant they knew we were rebels who had broken off from the Imperium, rather than Chaos-worshipping heretics. I would have been informed if any of the rebel leaders had turned out to be secret followers of the Dark Gods : so far, it seemed that Chaos had nothing to do with the situation on Minos … well, prior to our arrival, at least, but I tried not to think too hard about that.
"Even with their support," Mahlone continued, "we barely managed to stop a panic when the news of Genestealer infiltration spread to the general public."
I shuddered to imagine what that would have looked like. At first glance, there was nothing distinguishing someone infected by the Genestealers from an uninfected person : a medicae's inspection might locate the bite and implantation, yes, but only for a few days following the bite. Somehow, I couldn't imagine a mob taking the time to gene-scan everyone : much more likely, there would have been lynching of anyone suspected of being infected, with the most tenuous 'evidence' being seen as a good enough reason to murder scores of innocent folks, all while the cultists themselves remained hidden and used the panic to foment further chaos.
"How exactly did the news reach the population ?" I asked evenly.
"One of the leaders with whom we had been in contact turned out to be a Genestealer plant," Mahlone explained. "She was the one to spread the rumors : no doubt the brood mind sought to use the panic as a cover. She tried to bolt when we started gene-scanning people, but got captured and injected with the Panacea immediately."
"How is she doing ?" I asked, because that was what everyone expected from the Liberator.
"Not well," Mahlone winced. "She remembers everything she did under the influence of the brood mind. I have had her on suicide watch since she woke up and tried to cut her throat with a shard of broken glass."
"See if there's a priest we can send her way to help," I ordered. "An Imperial one, mind you : that poor woman isn't in any state to learn about the Powers right now. I assume you are taking precautions to avoid similar incidents with the other afflicted ?"
"We are," Mahlone nodded firmly. "It has added another complication to something which, frankly, has been a logistical nightmare to orchestrate. If we are to ensure there is no remaining infected, everyone on the planet needs a shot of Panacea. Given the size of the population, that means we're going to need production facilities on the planet, as well as access to the records to know how many people there are and where. There're groups resisting the Panacea on claims that this is some heretical conspiracy to mind-control them or some other nonsense, but they've all been started by Genestealers' puppets, so we're ignoring them."
Nobody voiced the fact that this had given the USA the perfect excuse to forego negotiations completely, as they couldn't be sure they weren't talking to a xenos puppet until they'd received treatment; at which point, the Protectorate forces could hardly be expected to simply let them go and resume their previous activities. I was sure Krystabel and Harold were already working on selling that narrative to the plebs.
I took a moment to consider what I had learned. We had been very lucky the Genestealers had only been here for so short a time prior to our arrival. Knowledge of the xenos' insidious corruption was unavailable to the public, but Areelu's archives contained plenty of knowledge the Inquisition would frown on even a Rogue Trader possessing, and she had lent me the relevant texts once we'd heard of the beasts' presence on Minos, as well as sent copies to Tesilon-Kappa through the ansible network to complement his own research into the cadavers we'd brought back from Emeli's Gift years ago. They had made for educational, if not comforting, reading on the return journey through the Warp.
If the Genestealers had been present on Minos longer, their infected puppets would have started having children, whose genetic material would have been irrevocably tainted by the Tyranids. They would have been born into the brood mind, forever enslaved to the purpose of the Great Devourer. Gene-scans would have been able to discover them, but I didn't fancy the thought of having to order the USA to go through the planet and drag men, women and children out of their homes for execution – which I knew was what the Imperium had to do when uncovering a Genestealer Cult.
My image as a protector of the people would have taken a hit if I'd given that order. I still would have done it if need be : the alternative was letting a bunch of xenos-tainted mutants live, while their very presence acted as a beacon to the Hive-Fleet. For all the unexpected victories the USA had won since the Uprising, I strongly doubted they could stand up to even the weakest of the splinter fleets which had escaped the destruction of Behemoth at Maccrage.
"We're trying to trace which ship the Genestealers came from," Harold picked up the conversation after a moment of silence. "Given the sheer number of ships which used to come to Minos and the damage the civil war has done to the Administratum, finding the records we need for the investigation has proven … challenging."
Which, given the kind of things the Tzeentchian magi had ferreted out in the time I'd been acquainted with them, told you everything you needed to know about Imperial bureaucracy.
"It's still important that we find out," I said, frowning. "If there's a Genestealer Cult elsewhere in the Torredon Gap, we need to know."
"Our best current guess is that the Genestealers came from the Imperial-Tau front," said Harold. "It seems that a cult was responsible for the escalation of hostilities between the two factions."
"So the Imperium was telling the truth this time," I mused, eliciting a chorus of sycophantic chuckles around the table.
After purging Adumbria of the Infected, Vice-Queen Kasteen had told us more about the situation in the rest of the Sector, including the fact that the long-standing cold war between the Imperium and the Tau xenos had escalated suddenly and without warning – something about a Tau ambassador being murdered at an Imperial gala, if I remembered correctly.
"Speaking of the Imperium's many failings", Harold went on. "We have also received troubling echoes from the Warp : some astropathic sendings, others the result of our divination. Something foul is taking place on Torredon, Lord Liberator."
"Elaborate," I said, raising an eyebrow to signify my interest while fighting to keep the surge of premonitory dread I felt from showing on my face with the ease of long practice.
"According to our debriefing of Sieur Pelton, one of the three remaining Directors of the Bloodied Crown, Valusios the Serpent, was sent to Torredon with orders to spread rebellion among the Beastkin of the Subsector's capital," the Tzeentchian magus said. "The Beastkin, a mutant underclass that has coexisted with the Imperium more or less peacefully for the past ten thousand years, rejected his attempt as they did the previous ones, fully aware that the pirate lord only intended to use them as sacrificial pawns in the cartel's efforts to seize the system. But this time, Valusios got himself captured, and was executed by the Governor along with most of his lieutenants, while his ships fled the system."
That sounded like good news to me, but I had a feeling there was more to the story – and of course, I was right, as Harold continued, sounding genuinely outraged :
"And for some insane reason, the Governor decided to tell the rest of the population that the Beastkin were actually working with Valusios, and are somehow responsible for the departure of the Imperial Navy from the Subsector. By what torturous line of reasoning he's arrived to that conclusion, we've no idea : our leading theory is that the man is merely letting his own prejudice and hatred of the Beastkin color his judgment, and constructing justifications to do what he wished to do from the moment he assumed the governorship."
Oh, nads, I thought. I knew where this was going, and try as I might, I couldn't think of a way out of the trap.
"Our divinations are clear," Harold continued, his expression becoming grave. "If nothing stops him, Governor Claudius Frollus is going to enact a monstrous pogrom, slaughtering millions of the Beastkin in his demented quest for the God-Emperor's forgiveness. The Neverborn whisper of it, of the desolation to follow as Frollus destroys the very foundations of his own kingdom out of hatred."
I closed my eyes. I didn't need my sight to feel the outrage the magus' words had roused in the hearts of everyone present. The Uprising had given them a taste for fighting what they perceived as Imperial injustice and oppression, and from what Harold had described, this was exactly what was going on here. I didn't know why the Imperial Navy had withdrawn from the Torredon Gap, but I was fairly certain killing a bunch of mutants wasn't going to miraculously bring them back.
As for myself, I had no desire to risk my life for these Beastkin. Sure, it sounded like they'd gotten a rough deal, but the galaxy was big place full of such injustices, and not even the Emperor could fix them all. Yet I couldn't exactly say as much to the heretics around me : such callous cowardice would ruin my fraudulent image.
"Then we have no choice," I said with all the determination I could fake, dramatically opening my eyes as if I was done mourning the corruption of the Imperium and had decided on a course of action. I felt like a mummer in a third-rate mystery play acting it up for the back row, but they all lapped it up. "As soon as the situation on Minos is stable enough that we can trust the locals won't start killing each other or starve to death the moment we are gone, we will leave for the Torredon system."
"Yes, Lord Liberator !" everyone in the room chorused, with smiles that ranged from the determined to the downright bloodthirsty.
And just like that, I knew, I had condemned myself to yet another foolish adventure, trapped by my own reputation. It would be a challenge to stop the Governor before he could go on a genocidal rampage against his own citizens : given the high level of piratical activity in the Subsector, I had no doubt that the Gap's capital possessed a strong military. Our best chance was probably gaining orbital superiority and leveraging that advantage, but I didn't need access to the Worldwounder's archives to know Torredon was going to be well-defended against precisely that sort of things.
Worst come to worst, I could always try to convince Akivasha to just make planetfall and kill the Governor herself. The clean-up would be difficult, but I was confident we would be able to find a suitable candidate among the local aristocracy willing to work with us if it meant becoming the next Governor – and not being the next target of a homicidal Vampire Paragon.
Convincing the rest of the Protectorate this was preferable to trying to conquer another world would also be difficult, but I was confident I could manage it. After all, every world the Protectorate had come to so far had a good reason to want to join – Adumbria, Cassandron, even Sanguia and Minos, all had been rescued from greater peril by our arrival. Things would be different on Torredon.
Then, I told myself, this expedition would be over, and I could return to Slawkenberg, where my greatest worry was whether Zerayah would have a bad day at school and I had to convince her not to eat her classmates.
Of course, it wasn't going to be that simple, and I already knew it back then – though how complicated things were going to get, and what galaxy-shaking revelations I would face before finally returning to what I had reluctantly come to think of as my home, I had no clue.
For the first time in decades, Magos Negando was running away from a fight instead of standing his ground and crushing the vermin who dared defy him – or, better yet, striding forth on the attack at the head of a horde of his followers, as befit a lord of raiders and pillagers who had left a trail of ruin and plunder behind him across the entire Subsector. Yet the Director of the Bloodied Crown felt no shame at his flight through the corridors of his own flagship, the Ghastly Skull.
The alternative would have meant certain death, after all, and notions such as courage and heroism had never dwelled within his cold, calculating mind. Negando had never fought a fight he didn't know he could win – yet much to his discontent, he had been forced into exactly that from the moment his fleet had arrived to Yawrmoth's Bounty.
Yawrmoth's Bounty was a system full of broken worlds, an asteroid field of mind-boggling proportions. Nobody knew what cataclysm had caused this, though rumors and legends aplenty circulated among voidsmen – of a war waged between ancient and long-forgotten empires, of ill-understood cosmic phenomena, of the Warp somehow seeping through the veil between Materium and Immaterium to briefly unmake the laws of physics. Personally, Negando had always thought the Mechanicus must know the truth, and it must have been terrible indeed : why else would they have scorned the system, despite the opportunity it represented ?
For the system's devastation mattered little compared to the resources it offered to the Imperium, as the various minerals that had been located hundreds of kilometers below the surface of the broken worlds were now scattered in the asteroid fields. For thousands of years, the voidborn mining clans of Yawrmoth's Bounty had operated hundreds of space stations of various sizes, performing the exceptionally dangerous work required to exploit the mineral resources of the system and preparing them for shipping to the rest of the Subsector in return for the supplies they needed to maintain their habitations.
With such wealth flowing in and out of the system, the Warp routes around it had predictably been a target of choice for the shadow cartels. With the withdrawal of the Imperial Navy, it had become open season on the trade convoys. This made Yawrmoth's Bounty vulnerable, if not to direct assault, then to besieging out.
Negando had brought his flotilla to the system in order to claim it for the Bloodied Crown. Since the last gathering of the shadow cartel's directorate, he'd been busy engaging the flotillas of the other cartels, and his own required repairs and refuelling, both of which could be obtained at Yawrmoth's Bounty.
If anything, Negando had expected the mining clans to welcome him. They depended on imports for much of their food requirements, and the Director had made sure to have plenty of cargo to 'trade' at extortionate – but still preferable to starvation – rates.
Then the news of Jabba's and Balor's demise had reached him, and strengthening his fleet had become even more important. He'd no intent of tangling with the force which had defeated the combined flotillas of his fellow Director and the Chairman, but he'd need supplies if he was to enact his plan to escape the Gap completely and start raiding elsewhere. Losing the chance to turn the Subsector into the Bloodied Crown's personal fiefdom had rankled, but at least he would still be alive, and with a chance for revenge further down the line.
And then, the moment his fleet had emerged from the Warp, it had all gone horribly wrong. They had expected to find perhaps a handful of mining vessels and well-defended orbital stations. Instead, as the fleet made its way from the Mandeville Point, they had been ambushed by an immense battleship of no type recorded in the Ghastly Skull's cogitators. Half of Negando's ships had been destroyed in the first moments of the engagement, their weapons unable to pierce the void leviathan's mighty shields.
The Ghastly Skull had been boarded soon after, its shields collapsing from sustained bombardment that Negando knew had been precisely calculated to pop the shields without doing too much damage to the vessel itself. Usually, Negando would have trusted the heavily-augmented cyborgs on his ship to deal with the boarders, but he'd seen them through the ship's internal surveillance network, and known at once the ship was doomed.
Negando had barely made it out of the bridge in time, fleeing down the evacuation passage he'd installed aboard the captured warship years ago. He'd left his cyborgs behind, using his command protocols to override their survival instincts and force them to fight to the last breath in order to buy him time.
Negando was painfully aware of how thin his chances of making it out of this trap were. Even if he reached an escape pod, he would only trade the perils of the Ghastly Skull for those of the void war raging outside its hull. But a small chance was still better than none at all. Maybe he could steer the craft toward the mining clans' holding : if he landed on an asteroid, his body was capable of surviving void exposure for several hours, which would hopefully be long enough to reach a sealed hab-unit and force his way inside before going to ground.
The Director was less than ten meters from his destination when a single shot resonated through the corridor and something punched him in the back with enough strength to send him crashing to the ground. There was no pain : Negando had removed his ability to feel such things years ago. But a flurry of damage reports flowed across his augmetic sight.
He turned his head around one-hundred-eighty degrees on mechanical vertebrae, and beheld his murderer, towering over him, looking down at him with glowing eye-lenses. The figure was enormous, taller even than Negando would have been standing up despite his numerous enhancements. Its armor was the black of the void, edged in bloody red and marked with glowing symbols that made the Director's optics glitch as he tried to focus on them.
Astartes, Negando knew. Though he'd never seen one of the so-called Emperor's Finest in person before, he'd seen pict-recordings of them in action. This one was very different from the recordings, true, but there was no mistaking the shape of the armor, even under the heretical markings.
As the last spark of life within the discontent tech-thrall who had claimed a title he didn't have any right to faded, his dying mind overheard his killer speak :
"This is Saidan of Third Psalm. Inform Lord Astyanath that the leader of the piratical vermin is dead."
"Good," another voice said in one of Negando's rapidly shutting down receiving systems, distorted by vox-corruption. "Second Psalm has secured the bridge and the slaves are working on bringing this ship under the control of the Brotherhood of Darkness. Return to the Sightless Godling, brother. There is much work left to be done before we can continue our crusade."
And then there was only silence and darkness, as Director Negando died, his skull idly crushed by the Chaos Marine as he walked away from his latest kill.
Notes:
AN : What, did you really think the enemy Cain knew about was the one he would really have to worry about ? Come on, now. That's not how these things go and you know it. Look at every single Cain novel and tell me I'm wrong.
Anyway, please welcome the Brotherhood of Darkness, a canon Chaos Space Marine warband with very little lore and one of the edgiest names this side of the Kabal of Murderous Death - except theirs is canon ! Never change, GW. Or, actually, do.
The Minosian Campaign could, as implied by this chapter's introduction, will an entire book by itself. If you want to write Omakes taking place during the first joint operation of the USA and the Cassandron Vampires, fighting Imperial loyalists and Genestealers and their infected puppets, feel free.
While writing this chapter, I realized once again that Genestealers are terrifying. I know, I know : big shock. But seriously, the brood mind and their ability to convert people is objectely a horrifying thing, even before you get into the whole breeding and genetic corruption aspects. They are an intelligence agency's wet dream (or nightmare, depending on which side of the line they're on), all in the service to the Tyranid hive-mind's goal of eating everyone and everything. Just for its ability to heal those who're implanted by the Genestealer's Kiss, the Panacea would be a treasure beyond value in canon 40K.
Also, did I insinuate in this chapter that anti-vaxxers are pasties for Genestealer Cults ? Why yes, yes I did. It's either that or Nurgle cultists.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 42: Chapter 41
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
For eight weeks, the Beastkin of Torredon had kept the assault of Governor Claudius Frollus' troops at bay.
Ever since the Governor had extracted a confession of working with the Beastkin from the verminous accomplice of Valusios the Serpent, the Torredon PDF had laid siege to the agri-moon which had been entrusted onto the Beastkin thousands of years ago. Despite the rat-like mutant being completely different from the reptilian Beastkin, and clearly some wretch Valusios had found during his travels and recruited as his aide as part of some twisted joke, Frollus had taken the 'confession' as incontrovertible proof that the Beastkin had allied with the shadow cartel, with the intent to rebel against the Imperial government in Torredon.
And the entire population of Torredon Majoris, whether out of hatred or fear, had followed the Governor in this madness. For generations, the Beastkin's treatment by their Imperial masters had grown steadily worse, despite the ancient writ granting them sole dominion over the first of the system's agri-moons, signed by one of the God-Emperor's own divine sons in the distant past. They had endured the disdain, the whispers, the insults and the increased tithes, all too aware that things would be much, much worse everywhere else in the Imperium. But it hadn't been until Frollus' ascension to the seat of Planetary Governor and sole ruler of the entire system three decades ago that this simmering contempt and exploitation had turned into outright, violent hatred.
As far as the Beastkin could tell, there was no reason for Governor Frollus' hatred of them. The Governor had never set foot on their moon, had never so much as seen one of them with his own eyes – it had been many, many years since the last time a Beastkin had been allowed to journey to the system's main inhabited world.
But that didn't matter to the zealot, who had preached hatred of the Beastkin for years before ascending to the throne of Governor in the succession crisis that had followed the demise of the previous incumbent. When the Imperial Navy had left without explanation (or at least none which had been shared with the common folk), Frollus had blamed the Beastkin, proclaiming that it was the Gap's tolerance of their existence which had caused them to lose the God-Emperor's favor and resulted in the departure of the fleet on which the Subsector's safety and economic stability had depended.
As far as the Beastkin could tell, that was utter nonsense, but the Governor's supporters had lapped it up, eager to find a justification for their sudden abandonment, especially one that could be corrected. Still, Frollus hadn't ordered an outright genocide until the Serpent's elimination. The leaders of the Beastkin weren't sure whether he hadn't been ready yet, had needed a final excuse to convince those who still resisted his insanity, or – the most disturbing possibility of all – whether he truly believed the lies he had woven out of whole cloth.
In the end, it didn't matter. Whatever the reason, thousands of PDF had descended upon the agri-moon with orders to 'eliminate all rebels', which their commanders had interpreted as 'shoot every Beastkin in sight until you run out of ammunition'.
Not that they'd had the opportunity to try : Althea, champion of the Beastkin, had led her people's defense of the Deep Wells, those vast passages that, in better times, had carried the produce of the great underground farms to the surface. Though the minions of the Governor were far better armed and equipped than the Beastkin, Althea's leadership and the Beastkin's greater physical abilities allowed them to suffer only slightly greater casualties than the invaders, and to keep them at bay from the men and children as they evacuated deeper into the underground complexes of Torredon Minoris-One.
What only a handful of Beastkin leaders knew was that Frollus' own ruthless purges of the PDF's higher ranks over the years had led to the ascension of a number of military officers whose sole reason for advancement was their lavish loyalty to the Governor rather than any true skill. When Frollus had given the order to purge Torredon Minoris-One, they had hurried to obey without considering the logistics of the endeavor, and their soldiers had paid the price.
And so, for eight weeks, the Beastkin held their ground. Through it all, their prophet, Tarek, exhorted them to keep holding on. He preached of the coming of the Liberator, as he had done for over a decade, promising his people that salvation would come. Few still believed his words, though Tarek was respected for his service to the community, his constant efforts to calm down flaring tempers and help organize the people who'd been displaced by the PDF's advance.
And then, on the first day of the ninth week, word began to filter down the ranks of the underground's defenders, first in disbelieving whispers, then it excited shouts.
Help had arrived.
After emerging from the Warp, the Protectorate fleet sailed toward the heart of the Torredon system, ignoring the orbital stations around the system's gas giants as we went straight for the hive-world and its trio of agri-moons.
Once again, Areelu had come through for us. In truth, while I had vaguely known of the Rogue Traders before, I hadn't grasped the influence and authority they wielded in the Imperium (though I suspected most Rogue Traders weren't like Areelu, and not just because of her heretical leanings). The last the Torredon SDF had heard, she and the Worldwounder were off hunting pirates, and now she was back with a fleet of unknown origins accompanied by the captured flagships of two of the Subsector's infamous crime lords. Thus, when she put on her best aristocratic manner and demanded that the system boats patrolling the Mandeville Point let her pass, they were only too eager to get out of her way.
It was only once we were close to Torredon Majoris that we let our deception slip, though the locals still didn't know our heretical nature. Areelu simply sent a broadcast announcing her disagreement with the Governor's decision to exterminate the Beastkin, and that she would be sending her forces to the agri-moon in order to enforce a truce while she and Frollus 'talked things out like properly civilized servants of the Throne'.
Officially, it was our hope that the Rogue Trader would manage a diplomatic resolution. Unofficially, ever Slawkenberg native was certain it wouldn't work and we'd end up having to shoot the Governor, and none of them felt bad about it. I wasn't so certain myself, but I was self-aware enough to know my own hopes might be affecting my judgment in the matter.
In any case, as the infamous arch-heretic who had led an anti-Imperial rebellion and killed an Inquisitor, my presence wouldn't have contributed anything to these talks. As isolated from the rest of the Imperium as the Torredon Subsector had been even before current events, if the people of Dis Station had heard about me, then the Subsector's capital definitely had. And so, I was once again left with no choice but to lead the troops from the front; or, at least, give the impression that I was doing so.
As our transports sailed through the void and toward Torredon Minoris-One, I reflected on what I knew of the mess we were about to stroll into. On our way to Torredon, Basileus-Zeta had been given access to the Worldwounder's archives (which had proven their usefulness many times since the beginning of this campaign) regarding the Beastkin. After spending over two weeks absorbed in his studies, the Magos Biologis had emerged and summarized his findings for the rest of us in the ship's strategium.
The Beastkin were, according to Basileus-Zeta, 'a sub-species of Humanity displaying extreme gender dimorphism'. Translated into Gothic, that meant that while the males were basically humans with scales, slitted eyes, and venomous fangs, the females had snake tails instead of legs and were a lot taller. Unlike the male Beastkin, whose bodies were humanoid but completely covered in scales, the females of the breed had completely human upper half, apart from their slitted pupils and forked tongues.
In addition to the females being proportionally stronger due to their size, the eyes of the Beastkin were well-adapted to their low-light conditions : they could see heat, along with a myriad other colors we baseline humans had no name for and couldn't hope to perceive without replacing our fleshy eyeballs with augmetics. Intellectually, they were the equals of baseline humans, although they'd been kept to a primitive level of education even by Imperial standards for generations.
How exactly this made sense from a biological perspective was beyond me, and the Magos Biologis was fairly certain they were the result of some ancient techno-lord meddling with the human genetic code. When I had asked him why, he'd shrugged, and told me that he'd no idea either. For all we knew, some pre-Imperial geneticist had just been unhealthily fond of snakes.
"I remember them," Akivasha had said suddenly, staring at the projected images of the Beastkin on the room's central hololith.
"You do ?" Basileus-Zeta had asked, clearly surprised. "Curious. There is no evidence of the Beastkin's presence outside of the system."
"I … My memories are vague," the Paragon had admitted, "but I recall fighting alongside them, long, long ago."
"Against whom ?" I'd asked, more than a little worried.
"I don't recall," she'd replied, obviously frustrated. "But it was the Enemy against whom my entire race fought at the time."
Despite the (very polite and restrained) questioning of Basileus-Zeta, Akivasha hadn't managed to remember anything more. Which worried me more than I cared to admit.
We'd already known the Vampires had been created to fight in some ancient, apocalyptic war, of course : Akivasha had told us after our battle with Hash'ak'gik, who had apparently been a relative of one of the first Vampires turned out of pity, instead of a recruit to help fight this mysterious 'Enemy'. To be perfectly honest, the notion of a foe so powerful it had required the creation of not one, but apparently two stable mutant breeds terrified me. I'd asked whether Akivasha thought this ancient war had any link to the legendary Horus Heresy, but she'd told me she was fairly certain it didn't. After ten thousand years, her memories were foggy at best, something which frustrated her to no end but was apparently common among the oldest Vampires.
After spending several long hours staring at a wall in my quarters, trying to imagine what manner of conflict could have pushed the ancients to create the Vampires and Beastkin, I'd decided to put the matter firmly out of my mind as long as I could help it. The one thing Akivasha remembered with certainty was that they had won, so I didn't need to worry about whoever or whatever it was they'd been fighting. And the Beastkin had supposedly been recognized as part of the Imperium by a Primarch during the Great Crusade. If a son of the Emperor thought they deserved to be part of the Master of Mankind's subjects, then that was good enough for me, and really should've been enough for Governor Frollus as well.
But, for one reason or another (I was leaning toward sheer stupidity myself), it hadn't been, and so I was forced into danger once more. At least this time it would be far less dangerous than the fighting on Cassandron : if the PDF had been held back by a bunch of mutants without any weaponry more advanced than sharp metal sticks, they were unlikely to be much of a threat to me inside the Liberator Armor.
I was right, but as it turned out, the PDF would be the least of my worries in the Torredon system.
We landed on the moon's surface, which was a desolate plain stretching from horizon to horizon. Around me, thousands of USA troopers disembarked from their own transports, immediately settling into formation.
"Attention, all Imperial forces. A cease-fire has been declared by the Lady Van Yastobaal," I declared, broadcasting my words on all frequencies. "All PDF units presently on Torredon Minoris-One are to withdraw to the nearest spaceport immediately, pending a return to orbit as soon as possible. Anyone refusing to comply shall be met with the full might of the Rogue Trader's armies."
While this was a slight twisting of the truth, I thought it had much better odds of working than telling a bunch of PDF trolls who'd spent the last years being fed a steady diet of religious craziness by their Planetary Governor than loudly announcing a bunch of heretics had come to the rescue of the mutants they had been taught to hate. Once I'd phrased it as putting the safety of the Beastkin as our greatest priority, the rest of the war council had agreed without comment (besides Harold praising my foresight and understanding of the Imperial mindset).
"Most of the PDF are retreating to their transports," reported General Mahlone a few minutes later. The USA commander was keeping watch on the overall picture from the safety of the Lord of War, coordinating the various task forces moving across the moon. "But we're seeing some units holding their ground at the tunnel entrances."
"Poor discipline, that," I said, frowning. "They should either all leave or, if they're going to reject the cease-fire, all stay to fight us off."
"Based on the vox messages we've intercepted, it looks like their officers are arguing about what to do," the Khornate General explained. "To be frank, none of them sound like proper military to me."
"Careful, General," I warned him. "Underestimating the enemy is one of the worst mistakes a commander can make. For better or worse, these people managed to maintain order in the system after the Navy's departure despite the rampage of the shadow cartels."
"Of course. My apologies, Lord Liberator."
Given the number of shadow cartels preying on the Subsector, I found it hard to believe that the PDF were completely useless. Then again, until recently, the cartels had been restricted to small-scale operations, which would be met with the deployment of comparatively small PDF detachments : maybe the lower ranks of the chain of command knew what they were doing, but the higher-ups could coast along on connections and bloodline without needing to actually do anything. According to what I'd been taught at the Schola, it was a common issue, and one whose recommended solution was mass execution of said higher-ups and the field promotion of competent replacements.
In any case, I grieved the fact that I was left with no choice but to lead Chaos-worshipping loonies in battle against servants of the Golden Throne whose only sin was to have bad luck in commanding officers. But I had no choice, and if I was on the frontline, then at least I'd be able to argue for mercy as I'd done on Slawkenberg against the Valhallan 18th.
I brandished Liberation's Edge in the direction my suit's helm display told me was where the closest entrance to the underworld was located in a suitably dramatic gesture.
"Onward !" I bellowed, my armor's vox-speakers amplifying my voice so that it boomed across the field.
We crossed the distance in less than an hour, the troopers swallowing the kilometers at a rapid pace that I knew from their training regimen they could maintain for the better part of a day and still be able to fight at the end.
The PDF scattered before our advance like startled avians the moment they realized their las-rifles couldn't penetrate the power armor of the USA troopers. I heard over the vox that the same thing was happening on every other site; likely, whoever was in command of this rabble would be working hard (or have their aides work hard, at any rate) to gather the disparate forces into a single cohesive unit, which would then wait for orders from the Governor.
That wasn't the case, however. They were simply breaking and running, despite only having sustained minimal casualties. The Commissar in me was appalled at the display of cowardice, even though it was the most intelligent thing they could do in this situation. I suspected that whatever high-ranking officer had ordered them to hold their ground might have suffered from an unfortunate case of friendly fire after refusing to order a retreat. And, sure enough, one of the squads reported in that they'd found the corpse of someone in a fancy uniform with a bunch of medals and traces of a las-bolt to the back of the skull.
Soon, we'd secured the entrance to the underground. After leaving a rearguard to defend the passage in case of a counter-attack, however unlikely, we followed the rails leading down into the depths of the agri-moon. We passed empty cargo trains meant to carry the produce of the underground to the surface, where it could be loaded for transport to the hive-world and distribution to the billions of hungry mouths that inhabited it.
The part of me that remembered growing up in the underhive couldn't help but think of how many people on Torredon Majoris were already suffering due to Frollus' decisions. Keeping a hive-city reasonably fed was a delicate balancing act at the best of time : since the Uprising, I'd become more familiar with the logistics of ruling than I'd ever wanted to, and Slawkenberg was much simpler in that regard. Yet the Governor had cut off a third of his world's supply of foodstuffs in what, from everything I'd heard so far, had been nothing more than a fit of pique, and at a time when trade with other systems had been brought to a screeching halt by the Navy's departure and the shadow cartels' depredations.
Of course, it wasn't like Frollus and his direct acquaintances would be the ones going with empty stomachs as a result : no doubt they were still feasting like kings on preserved foodstuffs. But I wondered whether the Governor had even thought about it when he'd given the order from his palatial residence atop the highest spire of Torredon Majoris.
The deeper we went, the more signs of battle were in evidence. Bodies littered the ground, and there were plenty of scorch marks on the walls. Surprisingly, none of the bodies were Beastkin : apparently, while the mutants had reclaimed their fallen after every engagement, the PDF had left them to rot after scavenging what equipment they could.
Any half-competent officer would have known this was a terrible idea, as the sight of their comrades' corpses without any visible enemy casualties would do catastrophic damage to the soldiers' morale, but I was beginning to think that was par for the course with the Torredon PDF.
"Our hosts are waiting ahead," said Akivasha after some time, moments before the troopers carrying auspex devices began announcing they were detecting strange heat signatures approaching. The Beastkin didn't register as humans on the devices due to their deviant biology, but the borgs had adjusted the sensors before we'd landed precisely for this scenario.
"Keep your weapons down," I ordered. "We don't want any misunderstanding."
Joining action to words, I deactivated Liberation's Edge (not that I'd needed to use it so far) and mag-locked it to my waist. Around me, Jurgen and Hektor did the same with their own weapons. Akivasha and Malice hadn't drawn their own since landing : in the former case, she wasn't carrying any, nor did she need them to be the single most dangerous being in the entire system.
Moments later, the locals came into view. They were guarding a barricade made up of metallic containers, no doubt once used to carry the produce of the underground farms to the surface. I could see a dozen of them standing atop the containers, holding bows and scavenged las-weapons – males only, judging by their humanoid bodies.
I blink-clicked on my helmet's display and zoomed in on the face of the most visible one. He was as Basileus-Zeta had described, and I wondered which Primarch had seen such blatant deviation from the human form and decided it was acceptable. I was sure that legendary figure had good reasons, and from what I knew the Beastkin hadn't proven him wrong until Frollus had started his tantrum, but it still seemed to go against Imperial policy to me.
I raised my hand, and the entire column came to a stop behind me, with a synchronicity that would have made the drill abbot back at the Schola proud.
"Greetings, people of Torredon Minoris-One !" I called out, my armor amplifying my voice. "We come in peace, and wish to speak with your leaders."
There was a moment of silence, and then, a tall figure slithered out from between the metal boxes. Once, I would have found the motion disquieting. But after all that I'd seen since landing on Slawkenberg, it barely registered, and I silently bemoaned the state of my soul.
Her lower half was covered in black scales, while her torso, head and arms were of the same darker hue common in the southern regions of Slawkenberg. She was carrying a pair of chainswords that, judging from their markings, had been looted from the PDF. The weapons looked like short swords against her bulk.
Her upper half was beautiful, in a statuesque, amazonian manner.
More female Beastkin emerged from the barricade to stand at her side, forming a line directly between it and us. I was grateful for the Liberator Armor's bulk, as standing before these towering amazons in my standard suit of armor would have been rather intimidating.
One of them slithered ahead of the group and gestured at the obvious leader before declaring :
"Before you stands Althea, Chieftess of the Beastkin !"
I exchanged a glance with Jurgen, and nodded slightly. Understanding my meaning at once, he stepped forward, and I braced myself :
"Greetings, Lady Althea ! I present to you Ciaphas Cain, the Liberator, Warmaster of the Protectorate, head of the Liberation Council !"
Althea blinked, and I suppressed a shiver as I noticed that her eyelids were horizontal rather than vertical.
"The Liberator ?" she asked, speaking for herself this time. Her voice had a rough edge to it, which I recognized as coming from having shouted a lot in recent days.
"That is a title I have the honor to bear, yes," I replied cautiously. The Beastkin were whispering to each other, and while I couldn't make out their words without using the more advanced functionalities of my armor, I could tell they were excited about something.
"So it is true," she whispered, still looking shocked, before shaking her head and straightening herself. "Welcome, then, Liberator. We welcome your coming and your assistance against the minions of the mad Governor. Our Prophet, Tarek foretold your coming for years, though I'm ashamed to admit I didn't believe him."
My stomach dropped further and further down as she spoke. Great. Another seer, and one powerful enough to have known I would eventually arrive to this system long before the Imperial Navy had even withdrawn from the Subsector. From what Althea was saying, he'd bought into the lie of Cain the Liberator as much as the cults back home, but the addition of another soothsayer I needed to keep in the dark about my true nature was hardly welcome news.
The ansible network connected my armor with the rest of the fleet, and I heard Harold's excited voice in my ear immediately :
"A prophet who knew we would come to this system ? My lord, if true, this is an incredible discovery."
"Remain calm, magus," I commanded the Tzeentchian, before switching channels to speak aloud :"It would be my honor to meet this Prophet, and to discuss our cooperation with you, but this is hardly the place for such talks."
"Ah," she blinked again, and looked around. "You're right. Follow me, please. I'll bring you to our nearest settlement … But I'm afraid the rest of your forces will have to stay here. Seeing them will cause panic among my people."
"That is perfectly understandable," I reassured her. "Lieutenant Nathan, you are in charge. Set up a defensive position around our hosts' defenses. I'll take my retinue with me – I trust this is agreeable, Lady Althea ?"
She glanced at each of the figures which had stepped out of the ranks to stand at my side – Jurgen, Malicia, Akivasha and Hektor. Given that she looked like she knew how to fight, I'd no doubt that she'd realized each of them was very dangerous, though not as dangerous as they really were.
"It is," she accepted, with the tone of someone bowing to the inevitable.
"Then lead the way," I said.
It immediately became obvious that the Liberator Armor wouldn't be able to pass through the opening in the barricade. I could have smashed my way through, of course : tactically, it wouldn't have made much of a difference now that the USA had arrived. But it would have been gauche, to say the least, and the Beastkin seemed friendly. So, with great if hidden reluctance, I stepped out of the towering suit and followed on foot, doing my best to ignore the looks every Beastkin was casting in my direction.
It took us about an hour to reach the settlement Althea had mentioned, during which we discussed the situation of the Beastkin. Once we arrived, I paused to take in the sights : we were standing inside a large cavern, which had been further expanded over the generations of occupation. Fluorescent moss and small fires provided a weak illumination (which was no obstacle to my helmet's enhanced vision), and I could see mushroom fields in the distance, where several dozen Beastkin were standing up from their work to look into our direction.
The mutants lived primitive lives, yes, but their standards of living were still a step up from what I remembered of the underhive. If nothing else, they didn't seem to be lacking for food, which any hiver will tell you is the most important thing standing between civilization and frenzied madness; well, except for faith in the God-Emperor, of course.
We passed by field hospitals where wounded Beastkin were being treated with primitive medicine. There were many wounded, showing signs of having been shot with las-weapons.
"If you wish, we can help with your wounded," I told our guide.
I didn't know whether the Panacea would work on the Beastkin, but it was worth testing, and even if it didn't, we had plenty of other medical supplies (I had insisted on it, claiming that depending on the Panacea for everything was a recipe for disaster while my real objective had been to keep the USA from packing even more borg-made weaponry into the stores of the fleet).
"We would be grateful," said the Beastkin chieftess, before stopping and pointing out at one of the buildings around us. "This is it. Tarek should be waiting for you inside."
The Prophet's house was no different from the rest of the settlement : it was built from a combination of stone, woven fibers, and recovered panels of metal.
"Hektor, stay outside," I commanded the Astartes, who was far too bulky to step through the doorway. He gave a grunt of acknowledgement.
Bracing myself, I stepped through the entrance, and prepared to do my absolute best to make sure this Prophet didn't realize my true nature.
In his home, Tarek, Prophet of the Beastkin, Herald of the Liberation, 'that annoying preacher', and many more nicknames, was on the verge of panicking. A runner had just left, having delivered a message to him that the Liberator was coming to see him. The young Beastkin had been breathless, and very excited to bring Tarek the news – which only made sense, given what he knew.
For over a decade, Tarek had preached of the coming of the Liberator, who would deliver the Beastkin from the oppression of the Imperium. Over the years, he'd woven ever more elaborate and grandiose descriptions of what that event would look like, each more implausible than the last. He had claimed that the Liberator would lead a mighty host which would crush the Imperial forces serving the mad Governor of Torredon Majoris; that he would bring an end to the tithes which, as they increased over and over, had brought the Beastkin painfully close to the edge of famine; that he would be the greatest warrior to have come to the Torredon Gap since the mythical Primarch who had granted the Beastkin the right to live as part of the Imperium.
It all sounded ridiculous, and for good reason : it was all bollocks. Tarek had made it up from whole cloth, desperate to find a reason, any reason, for his people to not throw themselves at their Imperial overlords in revolt. If they thought salvation was coming, he'd reasoned, then they wouldn't be so eager to doom themselves in futile defiance.
While Tarek understood why his people hated the Imperial regime, he also understood that trying to fight it was a doomed endeavor. The Beastkin didn't have any industry, depending on regular delivery from the Mechanicus enclaves in the system for the technology they needed to tend the underground farms. They also didn't have any spaceships, so any rebellion would be confined to their own moon, unless they could seize one of the cargo haulers – but such a ship would easily be shot down by Torredon Majoris' orbital defenses.
Of course, most Beastkin didn't know about such things : they didn't know anything beyond the caverns in which they and their ancestors had lived since time out of mind. The only reason Tarek knew more about the universe beyond the caves was because, as a youth, he'd been picked up by a tech-priest to serve as their assistant for a couple of months, and the Martian had been amused enough by his questions to indulge his curiosity.
Tarek had still been a child when Governor Frollus had ascended to the governorship and things had started to really go bad for the Beastkin. Increased tithes, beatings, imprisonment in the spaceports' jails at the slightest provocation (or what the enforcers insisted were provocations, at least) … it was no wonder that talk of rebellion had begun to spread. Tarek had known he needed to do something, and one day, as he passed a shrine to the God-Emperor in the spaceport, inspiration had struck. Ironically, it had come from overhearing a speech from none other than Frollus, who had been preaching (ranting, really) about the Master of Mankind and how He would one day raise up all of His faithful to sit at His side.
To Tarek's mingled relief and astonishment, his desperate ploy had worked. The Beastkin had never been a religious people (being looked down by the Imperial Creed for countless generations hadn't made them favorably disposed toward the one religion they were allowed to practice), but harsh circumstances had a way of driving people to faith. The belief that the oppression of Governor Frollus would end someday had given strength to thousands who would have despaired otherwise.
Except, now it turned out it was true. The Liberator was real, and he had come to help the Beastkin in their hour of direst need. Which was great news, of course, because while the PDF had prosecuted the Governor's orders in a rather lacklustre manner, Tarek knew they couldn't hope to stand up to the hive-world's superior resources forever. He just wished the salvation of his people hadn't come about in a way that risked revealing his lies for what they were.
Tarek took a deep breath as the curtain blocking his home's entrance was swept aside and the Liberator stepped in. He was was clad in armor the color of fresh blood, and carried the biggest handgun Tarek had ever seen on his hip, along with a sheathed sword that made the Beastkin's eyes hurt when he looked at it. With him was a man in the same type of armor with a huge cannon strapped on his back and two women in light armor, each of whom made Tarek's instincts scream at him that they were incredibly dangerous.
"Greetings, Lord Liberator," said Tarek, bowing deeply.
"Hello, Tarek," said the man. His voice was surprisingly gentle : Tarek had expected it to be full of fury, the voice of a warlord willing and able to wage war against the Imperium. "I am Ciaphas Cain. You are the Prophet ?"
"That is what my people call me, yes. But please, call me Tarek."
Cain smiled. "Then call me Cain. I've been told that you foresaw my coming to this system years ago. Is that true ?"
"I had dreams," Tarek said. "They were vague, but I clung to hope, and did what I could to share it with my people, who needed it badly."
Both sentences were true. Tarek dreamt, like everyone else, and those dreams were vague and quickly forgotten. And he also had clung to the hope that something would happen that would change his people's fortune : maybe Frollus would slip in his golden bath and break his neck, or one of his political rivals would poison one of his dozen daily meals, or something. If Cain decided to link the two sentiments together, then that had nothing to do with Tarek.
"Interesting," said the woman in the black bodysuit. "I wasn't aware that the Beastkin could be psychic. From what I remember, none of them were."
"It has been ten thousand years, Akivasha," replied the Liberator. "Things change."
"I suppose so," said the now-named Akivasha, still staring at Tarek as if Cain hadn't just casually implied that she was ten thousand years old.
"I would like to introduce you to my own seers, so that they can evaluate your abilities," said Cain. "They are very interested in meeting you and discussing things with you."
Crap, crap crap. Actual, proper seers were sure to see through Tarek's lies. But try as he might, he couldn't think of any way to refuse that wouldn't be taken as an insult or draw suspicion.
"It would be a great honor," he said.
Hopefully, he would think of something before it was too late. Because while Tarek was not sorry to have lied to his people in order to keep them from killing themselves, he was much more ashamed of the fact that at least half of his motivation had come from a desire to protect his own skin in the process. And he had a feeling that the leaders of the Protectorate wouldn't look kindly on such base motives.
"No !" roared Claudius Frollus, appointed Governor of Torredon by the will of the Master of Mankind. "There'll be no ceasefire ! You will remove your ships from my system, Yastobaal, or the wrath of the God-Emperor shall strike you down !"
Above the hololithic projector, the image of Areelu Van Yastobaal frowned.
"Be reasonable, Governor. You are acting against an edict that was signed by one of the God-Emperor's own Primarchs."
"Lies ! I have seen that so-called 'edict'. It is nothing more than lies, fabricated by the animals in order to continue corrupting us !"
"Emperor's blood," Van Yastobaal breathed. "You actually believe that, don't you ?"
"Your words won't shake my faith, witch," Claudius spat.
"Very well," sighed the harlot. "The consequences of this are on your head, Claudius."
The link went dead, and the image disappeared. In a fit of disgust, Claudius threw his goblet of amasec at the device, causing it to spark and make worrying noises which the Governor completely ignored as he turned to his aides, who were cowering near the door of the luxuriously appointed room :
"Summon my generals !" he ordered. "It is time for them to actually start doing something instead of sitting in my palace drinking my wine and eating my food !"
Maybe he should just have all of them executed, he thought as the aides scurried to do his bidding. After all, these incompetents had spent nearly two months failing to defeat a bunch of Warp-touched animals, only to break ranks and flee at the first sign of serious resistance.
But tempting as the idea was, Claudius suppressed it. The middle of a holy war was hardly the best time to replace the leaders of the PDF. Once this crisis was over and the heretics and mutants were purged, however, there would be a reckoning for those who had failed in their duties to the God-Emperor.
Then, he'd be able to remake Torredon into a perfect world, one free of the taint of these filthy, filthy beasts. Then the Imperial Navy would return, and bring order to the Subsector by crushing all the deviants who had crawled out of the Outer Dark.
For the first time in over a decade, Zerayah Cain wasn't on Slawkenberg.
The daughter and heiress to the Liberator wasn't far from her adoptive homeworld. She could still see it in the reinforced window of the shuttle carrying her and her escort into orbit : a vast, rolling sphere of blue, green, and silver. It was beautiful, and she felt her determination to protect it grow even stronger at the view.
She turned her head and looked through another window on the other side of the shuttle, this one showing her destination : a great warship, larger than any Zerayah had seen with her own eyes (Emeli's Gift didn't count, because it was a Space Hulk, and hadn't been built by men).
Once, the ship had borne the name Murderous Jest. But in the orbital shipyards of Adumbria, it had been reborn. The borgs had led the crews they'd trained repairing the abandoned ships orbiting the second world of the Protectorate aboard the captured vessel, and they had worked for months to undo the damage it had suffered in the hands of its previous owner. From what Zerayah had heard, the ship had been in poor condition, with only the minimum of maintenance required to keep it running and in fighting shape, even as entire decks choked on filth and poisoned air.
As part of this reconsecration of the vessel's machine-spirit, the ship's hull had been repainted, to remove the hideous paint job its previous owner had inflicted upon it. It was now red, and the sigils of the Bringers of Renewed Greatness had been painted alongside those of the USA and the quartered circle of the Liberation Council.
Following the months of repairs and cleansing at Adumbria, the ship had been sent to Slawkenberg in order to be properly crewed by borgs and trained workers from the naval academies of the Protectorate's capital. Getting permission to visit had been a challenge, but Zerayah had managed to convince Jafar that she would be safe and that, as her father's chosen successor, she needed to start getting involved in the affairs of the Protectorate.
She was pretty sure Jafar had accepted more to appease her than anything else, but Zerayah would make the most of the opportunity. Gods knew she could use the distraction from her routine in Cainopolis. She enjoyed her life as an anonymous student at one of the city's great universities, but she still spent her days nervously wondering if something had happened to Daddy.
Thanks to the ansibles, Zerayah knew that Daddy was even now engaging the Torredon PDF in order to relieve the Beastkin from their unprovoked aggression. He'd won a lot of fights since leaving, and even though he'd saved many people – from the pirates and from the slaves of the Rotten One – Zerayah still wished he was here with her. She knew it was selfish, but she couldn't help it. Regular calls over the ansible network just weren't the same.
"Mrrrw ?"
"I'm fine, Alcides," she reassured her companion as he stirred from his repose, having sensed her agitation.
The black megafelid wasn't enjoying the flight, as evidenced by the miserable expression on his face. Presumably, an ordinary animal would have freaked out at being taken out of a planet's environment and into a metal box flying through the sky at speed far beyond anything nature had ever intended for them.
But Alcides had been genetically engineered to serve as a pet and status symbol for some Imperial nobleman, and he couldn't have fulfilled that function if he'd puked everywhere while in transit. He wasn't comfortable, and wouldn't be until they got aboard a ship, but he could handle it. One of the aides at the Liberation Palace had very respectfully suggested keeping him in a cage for the duration of the trip, but Zerayah had immediately rejected the idea. She wouldn't inflict such a fate on her companion.
The rest of the flight went on without trouble, which was only to be expected given that the craft was piloted by one of the best pilots left in Slawkenberg. The gunship landed aboard one of the still-nameless vessel's hangar bays, and Zerayah stepped down the boarding ramp, surrounded by a squad of USA troopers in power armor and with Alcides prowling at her side.
Two rows of crew stood at attention to greet her, and they saluted her with parade-perfect synchronicity. Zerayah walked toward the two officers waiting for her. One of them was a tall man with ebony skin and bulging muscles, wearing the uniform of a USA commander. She knew him, of course : Colonel Ygdal was in charge of the USA forces left to defend Slawkenberg in her father's absence, and they'd met many times before at various official functions. He was here for the same reason as her : to take part in the renaming ceremony of the vessel.
"Lady Cain," he greeted her with a bow. "Welcome."
"Thank you, General," she replied with an elegant curtsy, just like she'd been taught by Krystabel, before turning to the borg who stood next to Ygdal. "And good day to you as well, Magos Herod-Epsilon."
"Lady Cain," they replied, bowing deeply. "Your presence is a welcome addition. Please, follow us."
They left the hangar bay, accompanied by a cluster of flying metallic servo-skulls which were recording and transmitting everything back to Slawkenberg, and entered an elevator bigger than any Zerayah had ever seen. When she asked, Herod-Epsilon informed her that it was designed to carry cargo across the ship, not passengers, but given the size of her escort (and the weight of their armor) it was more convenient to use it in order to reach the bridge.
Zerayah had seen the picts of the Murderous Jest's bridge. She hadn't been supposed to, but she'd been curious, and obtaining information she wasn't freely given made for good practice. This time, though, she'd regretted it, as Jeremiah Smile had made the brain of his flagship into a house of horrors to match the worst Giorba atrocities documented in the House of Remembrance.
Now, however, no trace remained of the bridge's former aspect. It had been completely cleaned and remade, its systems improved to no longer require the use of servitors (the very notion that the Imperium used such ghastly creatures never failed to make Zerayah shiver in revulsion).
Once she'd secured her trip to the ship, Jafar had decided that, since she was going to be here, she might as well take part in the inauguration ceremony. Zerayah had accepted, and she'd spent the next few evenings studying the role she was expected to play in the ceremony. She knew it wouldn't be the end of the world if she made a mistake, but she wanted people to take her seriously as Daddy's appointed successor. She already had a reputation in the USA thanks to word of her regular training sessions with Hektor and Malicia going around, but as Daddy always said, a leader had to be good for more than just fighting the enemy of the people.
The ceremony's details had been decided by the borgs, mixing sacred Martian rites with naval superstitions from the few Imperial crew who had survived Karamazov's disastrous attack years before Zerayah's rescue from her Nurglite captors. Everybody knew it was really about the spectacle, but it was still an important ceremony, as the ship would be the first true warship in the Protectorate's navy (apart from the Worldwounder, but Zerayah still wasn't sure what exactly the relationship between Lady Van Yastobaal and her Daddy was, despite her best efforts to coax the truth out of him during their talks).
A brazier had been set up in the center of the bridge, right in front of the captain's command throne. Sweet-smelling incense burned within, and the flames were attended by a couple of borgs wearing robes that were far more ceremonial and less practical than Zerayah was used to seeing them wear. Apparently, the occasion warranted them dressing up.
Zerayah was handed a bottle of amasec by Colonel Ygdal. It was one of the best Slawkenberg vintages, from a region of the planet which had been producing the stuff for centuries before the Uprising and had continued afterwards, albeit with different labor practices. She opened it, refraining from frowning at the potent alcoholic scent (Daddy had told her she couldn't drink until she was of age, not just physically but in actuality, and she wasn't exactly looking forward to it), and softly poured the spirit onto the fire.
Once the bottle was half-empty, she held it up high above her head, and smashed it onto the deck, carefully controlling her strength to avoid showing anything beyond what an athletic girl of her apparent age was capable of.
"In the names of the Gods, the Omnissiah, and my father," she declared, shifting her voice (which, in her case, was more literal than for most people, as it involved a slight, temporary alteration of her vocal chords and lungs) so that it would carry far and clear, "I name you the Last Laugh. Long may you sail the void and the Warp, and bring the light of Liberation wherever you go."
The name had been chosen after consulting the mind-healers who were working with the rescued victims of Jeremiah Smile. It was to serve as a reminder that, for all the horrors the pirate lord had committed, he had still been brought to justice eventually. Although evil men might endure for a long time, sooner or later, all would meet their deserved end. And, though the Protectorate had many enemies who would see it destroyed, they would be the ones to triumph in the end.
The bridge crew applauded, and a CAT emerged from under a console to remove the bits of glass. The ceremonies would continue for an entire day, as the borgs had a long list of checks and final procedures that could only be performed once the ship had been properly named. Herold-Epsilon had confessed to her that, technically, they could have done them in advance, but the machine-spirit of a warship the size and age of the Last Laugh was much more complex than that of the machines their order had built on Slawkenberg since the Uprising, and they felt it was best to follow tradition in this case. Since there wasn't a pressing need to finish the ship's reconsecration, nobody had argued against it.
Zerayah herself wouldn't need to be present for the rest of them, though : there was a party taking place on one of the decks beneath the bridge, and her presence there would honor the workers who'd worked on the ship for months and were now being rewarded with the best party the Handmaidens could throw.
"Come on, Alcides," she told her furry friend, who was lazing around on the floor, completely unaware of the solemn event that had just transpired. "There's food waiting downstairs."
At the mention of food, the megafelid's ears perked up, and he slowly stood up, making a show of taking his time and stretching before falling in at her side. Zerayah shook her head fondly at the antics of the big lug, and walked out of the bridge, her escort following her.
She hoped Daddy would be proud of her. It was a small thing compared to the speeches he gave all the time, but she had to start somewhere.
Notes:
AN : Aww, look at Zerayah, trying to show she's grown up and can help her daddy's business. Isn't she adorable ? I'm sure that scene isn't foreshadowing anything at all. I don't know why I'm even mentioning it.
Also, I haven't decided which Primarch it was who declared that the Beastkin would be part of the Imperium despite their deviations from standard Humanity. There is precedent for that kind of thing in canon (during the Great Crusade, even some alien races were declared as protectorates of the Imperium, though after the Heresy things changed, and not for the better). It shouldn't impact the story going forward, but if you have suggestions or theories, don't hesitate to share them !
The first draft was a lot darker in tone, with dead Beastkin children and Tarek confessing everything to Cain and collapsing in tears, begging for forgiveness for lying to his people in order to keep them from despair. But then I remembered what kind of story this is supposed to be, and I rewrote these parts accordingly. Partially because of this, finishing this chapter took far longer than anticipated, although the main reason is because I've been caught up in writing another, brand new story for much of the past two weeks. It will be published soon, possibly right after this chapter depending on whether I feel it's ready or not.
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 43: Omake : Ciaphas Cain, Blood Bowl Referee
Notes:
AN : Ah, screw it. I've been sitting on this for two weeks now. Enjoy, and tell me if this sounds like something you'd enjoy more of in the future !
EDIT : in case you missed it, this is a double update : a chapter of the main story was published just before this Omake, so check it out if you missed it.
Chapter Text
“Hello, sport fans everywhere, and welcome to ABC, Cabalvision’s finest broadcasting network. I am Jim Johnson, and with me as always is my dread friend and co-host, Bob Bifford. I hope your crystal balls and magic mirrors are charged and ready, because today, despite the dearth of competition following the end of the All Comers Chaos Cup, we’ve got a friendly match to show you … although of course there is no such a thing in Blood Bowl !”
“That’s putting it nicely, Jim. Now, most teams usually need a couple of weeks to recover from the casualties of the Chaos Cup, and this year was even more spectacular than usual. But fortunately for our viewers and our paychecks, there are always teams looking to clash with each other for the glory of the game, the adoration of the public, and that sweet, sweet sponsorship money.”
“Indeed ! And today, we will be witnessing one such clash, between … oh, dear. Bob, am I reading this right ?”
“You sure are, Jim ! It’s the Mongrel Horde versus the Green Destroyers. With those two bunches of degenerate, vicious never-do-wells facing off against each other, you can expect to see some real violence on the pitch today !”
“True, true. I wouldn’t want to be the poor sod who has to stand between them and referee this match, that’s for sure.”
“Heh. So you don’t know, Jim ?”
“Don’t know what, Bob ?”
“One of my contacts in the RARG told me that they have sent a very special someone to officiate today’s match.”
“Really ? How interesting. Well, don’t keep me audience in suspense, Bob ! Who is it ?”
“Hehe, sorry, Jim. But I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
“Oh, you evil, evil tease ! Tune in after these messages from our sponsors, dear viewers, to find out just what it is my ogre friend is so cruelly keeping from us all !”
I took a deep breath, forcing myself to remain calm and pushing any fantasies of reaching out through the Preternatural Announcement system and throttling the life (or unlife, in the case of Jim Johnson) out of the commentators with my bare hands firmly out of my mind. I was in enough trouble already without getting into a feud with a vampire and an ogre.
“Here’s your tea, sir,” said my aide, the fragrance of the mug he was holding in my direction just barely potent enough to mask his own, distinctively earthier aroma.
“Thank you, Jurgen,” I said, picking it up and taking a sip of the fragrant liquid gratefully, feeling my nerves calm down ever so slightly.
Not that anyone wouldn’t agree that I had plenty of reasons to be nervous at the moment. Being an official of the Referees and Allied Rulekeepers Guild was dangerous at the best of times. You never knew when a bunch of overzealous fans (which, in my opinion, was the only kind of fan that existed) would pour down from the stands in a drunken horde to rip you to pieces for some perceived injustice against their favorite team, or just because they were getting bored. Most of the time, though, it was the players you had to look out for, as muscle-bound brutes used to resort to violence to solve their problems tended to react to being sent off the pitch by smashing the referee’s head in.
Generally, the penalties for doing so (which the RARG had a vested interest in enforcing with uncharacteristic harshness) made most players hesitant, but today’s players weren’t the sort to let something like that keep them from killing me if they felt like it.
The Mongrel Horde were a bunch of renegades who had been thrown out of every other team; not for being too violent, as there was no such thing where Blood Bowl was concerned, but for their utter lack of respect for the rules and inability to work with their teammates. Unwilling to give up on the life of a Blood Bowl player, they had instead banded together to continue inflicting themselves upon other teams, abandoning the worship of Nuffle to embrace the Dark Gods of Chaos instead, the only pantheon willing to accept the likes of them.
By contrast, the Green Destroyers were a bunch of greenskins : mostly orcs, with a couple of goblins and a troll who was over twice my size. Don’t get me wrong, they were as violent, vicious and vile as the Mongrel Horde in every regard. In my opinion, if there was one species that could be said to have been created specifically for Blood Bowl, it was orcs. But at least nobody could expect anything else from greenskins.
Not that it would make much difference for me, I reflected gloomily. Either team would be equally glad to send me off the pitch in pieces if they had the chance. Not for the first time, and (I prayed to Nuffle) not for the last, I contemplated the series of life choices that had led me here.
Where it had started was obvious enough : I’d been a street urchin in Altdorf, an orphan young lad surviving on the generosity of the temples and the less willing but far more substantial generosity of strangers whose purses mysteriously fell off their belts and into my hands.
Then, two of the many gangs which roamed the streets of the Imperial Capital’s poorer districts had arrived where I lived, intent to resolve their differences through the time-honored tradition of a game of Street Bowl.
Street Bowl was to Blood Bowl what war was to an arms-wrestling contest, and was the one variant of the sport that was strictly forbidden, due to the massive collateral damage it caused. To keep the gangs from tearing the entire district to pieces (which would also have drawn the City Watch in massive numbers, not something any street rat like myself wanted), I’d done something so incredibly risky I still had no idea what had been going through my head at the time.
I’d walked out between the ‘players’, looking as calm as I could fake, told them they couldn’t just play without a referee to keep both sides honest, and offered my services. They’d been so surprised to see me that they’d gone along with it, and while what had followed had still been a lot more destructive than typical Blood Bowl matches, there had still been a district left standing, which I counted as no small triumph.
It was in the aftermath that my destiny had changed. Miyamoto de Bergerac, an official of the Church of Nuffle Amorica Football who so loved Blood Bowl he’d travelled all the way from Nippon and married into a Bretonnian noble family in order to be closer to the heartland of the sport, had been impressed by the fact I’d managed to survive and offered me a place within the RARG. At the time, all I’d been thinking about was getting off the streets, and my apprenticeship in the Guild had certainly done that.
I’d received my traditional black and white uniform, patterned after the ancient zebra skins which had been worn by the shamans who had refereed the first matches following Roz-El’s rediscovery of the sport, just in time for the utter collapse of the NAF when Nikk Threehorn had ran off with the treasury of the NAF and the entire cheerleading squad of the Darkside Cowboys. Part of me was impressed by the man’s sheer audacity and wanted to shake his hand, while the rest wanted to punch him for triggering a massive recession that had come so very close to re-igniting the fires of war across the entire world.
With my plans to quietly disappear into the massive bureaucracy of the RARG ruined by the sweeping changes that scandal had caused, I’d had no choice but to actually go on the pitches and do my job in order to avoid bankruptcy. While I could have just left the RARG, it wasn’t like I had many other marketable skills, and though the Guild didn’t forbid its members from leaving, there was an ‘understanding’ that those who had benefited from its generosity, like myself, owed at least some service to it before leaving.
To make things worse, the free-falling global economy had ensured that all the teams whose matches I was involved with had no cash to spare on bribing the referee. Somehow, despite this being the case for almost everyone at the time, this had led to me gaining a reputation as someone who refused bribes, which certainly wasn’t something I’d intended.
Especially since that reputation had caused some of the crazier players (and wasn’t that a scary proposition when you knew the kind of individuals drawn to Blood Bowl in the first place) to try to kill me instead of buying me off. Naturally, I’d defended myself with every dirty trick I knew of, which was quite a lot thanks to my misspent youth and old man Miyamoto’s teachings.
Before I knew it, everywhere I went people started to greet me as the ‘Whistle of Nuffle’ or some nonsense. Personally, I blamed the media, who were always looking for some juicy story to dramatize in order to sell papers. I had no doubt my fraudulent reputation for honesty and scrupulous application of the rules had made some tabloid journalist very wealthy – which I didn’t have any objection to in principle, but I’d have liked to get my fair share of the profits.
“I think it’s time to go, sir,” observed Jurgen, dragging me out of my recollections.
“You’re right,” I sighed, handing him the mug back. “Keep the tea warm for me, would you ? I’ve a feeling I’m going to need it.”
“Of course, sir,” he saluted me. “I’ll be getting into position. Good luck !”
“Thank you, Jurgen,” I said, and actually meant it.
My aide had been with me since I’d pulled him out of the way of a rampaging mob of Norsca fans looking to settle their ages-old rivalry with Kislev by beating the nearest Kislevite they could find to death. At the time, all I’d been thinking was to prevent the mob from stumbling upon his collapsed form, slow down their rampage and realize the referee who had judged against their favorite bunch of barbarians was nearby as well, but Jurgen had decided he owed me a life debt, and sworn himself to my service.
At first, I’d been dubious : certainly nobody could accuse Ferik Jurgen of being the most imposing man. He’d never gotten used to the warmer climate of the Empire, which, combined with a personal belief that hygiene was something that happened to other people, resulted in the kind of personal aroma generally associated with the followers of the Plague God Nurgle. But I’d been unwilling to refuse him outright, and soon, I’d discovered that he was excellent with paperwork, unfailingly loyal and obedient, to say nothing of his more martial skills, which had saved my own hide on more than one occasion.
I took a deep breath, grateful that the many smells of the stadium had already crowded out Jurgen’s odor, and, with one last whispered prayer to Nuffle, Sigmar, and whatever gods were willing to listen to me, stepped out of the shadows and onto the pitch.
“And we’re back, dear viewers ! The referee is entering the stadium, and … my gods, can it be ?! Is this really him ?!”
“It sure is, Jim ! Ciaphas Cain himself, sent straight from Altdorf by the RARG just to officiate this match ! Aren’t we all lucky, sports fans ?”
“For those of our viewers who haven’t heard of Mister Cain, he is among the most famous members of the RARG. Or, depending on who you ask, one of the most infamous.”
“That’s right, Jim. Cain can’t be bought, can’t be tricked, and those who try to threaten him … well, let’s just say there’s a reason why he’s responsible for more players being taken off the pitch and straight into a coffin than most actual players !”
“Really, Bob ? A referee that can’t be bought ? Surely you are joking !”
“Not at all ! You see, Jim, according to the RARG’s regulations, all bribes must be declared to the Guild, so that it can take its cut. When a ref never declares anything, they naturally assume he’s trying to cheat them –”
“Naturally.”
“– and there’s an investigation to find out, with some rather vicious penalties if evidence of fraud is uncovered. But in Cain’s case, the investigation team was stumped, because he actually never took any bribes !”
“I can only imagine their shock.”
“Yeah, but then, it turned out that there were some provisions in the RARG’s charter for such a contingency. Basically, a referee who doesn’t take bribes is entitled to a lot of benefits : higher pay, better medical coverage, and a retirement plan that would be enough for anyone to live like a king.”
“What is that thing you call ‘retirement’, Bob ?”
“Hahaha ! True, there aren’t many who reach it in Blood Bowl ! But who knows ? Cain has already beaten the odds by surviving this long. Maybe he’ll continue to do so !”
I damn well hoped so. The prospect of retirement, illusory though it may be, was the only thing that kept me going some days. There weren’t many members of the RARG who’d reached it, true, but I’d checked the archives myself, and it had happened over the years.
As I emerged into the sunlight, I saw that the two teams were lined up on the field, all twenty-two of them – which, to be perfectly honest, was something of a pleasant surprise, as I’d known coaches who didn’t waste time on their cheating attempts by putting more than the eleven players prescribed by Nuffle on the field.
Silence fell on the stands, and the deluge of trash which always rained down on the edges of the pitch ceased. There were some advantages to my fraudulent reputation – I’d never done anything to the public, of course, but neither had I said anything to deny the stories about me ejecting rowdy spectators forcefully. Given the kind of people who came to witness a Blood Bowl game in person, anything that made them hesitate even slightly before rushing the pitch to tear me limbs from limbs was welcome.
Even among the typical crowd, the fans of the Green Destroyers and Mongrel Horde were especially violent; it was why they were fans of these two teams in the first place. Glancing around at the stands, I was slightly surprised to find that nobody appeared to have died yet, probably due to the wooden barricades separating the two areas. These wouldn’t last long, but for now, the crowd’s focus was on the pitch rather than on each other.
Both teams glared at me as I approached, their animosity temporarily put aside in favor of their greater hatred for me and what I represented. I quailed internally under the weight of these hate-filled gazes, but let none of it show on my face, knowing that to display weakness now would seal my fate.
“I want a clean match,” I addressed the two captains evenly, keenly aware that I might as well ask a halfling to go on a diet. One of them was a hulking brute of muscles and malevolence, his pitiless gaze showing no hint of humanity and decency, while the other was the same, but with green skin. “Keep your violence to within the rules, is that understood ?”
I received a pair of threatening growls that I decided were as close to agreement as I was likely to get. I pulled a gold coin from my pocket, held it up, and turned toward the captain of the Mongrel Horde :
“Orcs or eagles ?” I asked, then flipped the coin.
“Eagles,” he grunted, and I caught the coin on the back of my hand.
“And it is eagles,” I announced, to the approval of one half of the crowd and the boos of the other. “Does the Mongrel Horde choose to kick or receive ?”
“Receive,” was the captain’s one-word answer.
I handed the ball to the captain of the Green Destroyers, and gingerly made my way back to the sidelines as the two teams got into position, trading malevolent glares all the while. Camras-carrying goblins moved around the pitch, getting all possible angles through the demons trapped within the devices to watch, so that the mages at ABC headquarters could edit the best view to broadcast across their network.
After all, the thousands of people paying for a licence to watch the blood sport in the privacy of their homes (or, in many cases, display it within their tavern, gambling den, and other assorted businesses) needed to feel like they got their money’s worth so that they’d renew their subscription. Then the ABC would use some of that gold to sponsor matches, as part of the great circle which had pulled the Old World from the economic depression from my childhood. If only the whole thing didn’t rely on hordes of bloodthirsty savages fighting each other for the entertainment of the masses, it would all be very admirable.
Once every player was in position, I blew my whistle. The orc pitcher kicked the ball, with more strength than grace, and sent it flying across the pitch in the vague direction of the Mongrel Horde’s half (which, as the commentators immediately pointed out, was an impressive display of skill for an orc). As it arced into the air, it felt like everyone – the crowd, the players, and me – were holding their breath.
Then it hit the ground, and all hell broke loose. The frontline of the two teams (using sports terminology to describe them just felt wrong) slammed into each other. Within seconds, the center of the pitch had become something between a tavern’s brawl and a warzone.
My eyes darted across the field, moving from the melee to the ball, which was being picked up by one of the Mongrel Horde’s mutants. Then my eyes fell on the center of the melee, and my blood ran cold. The Mongrel Horde’s largest player, a brown-furred minotaur with so many piercings you could probably have forged a suite of plate armor by melting them all down, had just smashed aside the two orcs trying to block him. So far, so good. But as the great beast disentangled himself from the melee and stepped forward onto the Green Destroyers’ half of the pitch, a tiny green goblin ran up to him and leapt at his leg, biting at the exposed muscle.
The minotaur bellowed, more in anger than pain, and shook his leg with enough strength to send the goblin flying – but, of course, that wasn’t enough to calm him down. What went through the goblin’s head that made him attack the minotaur, I would never know, but I did know what went through his head then : the hoof of the beast, which turned his skull into paste before he could recover and get back up (which was already a dubious proposition at best.”
“Ouch, that was brutal.”
“For sure, Jim ! That’s one player who won’t be coming back. Unless a necromancer gets his grubby little hands on the remains, anyway.”
“I can’t say that’s likely, Bob. Goblins aren’t exactly the kind of material a coach for an undead team would be looking for.”
“Well, maybe as a mascot ?”
“Maybe.”
Dammit. Everyone in the stadium had seen it, and those who hadn’t knew about it from the running commentary. I couldn’t ignore it, or I would lose my reputation, which, for all the trouble it caused me, was also the only reason I survived said trouble more often than not. While it had created a huge target on my back, it also served as a shield, since many fans were unwilling to risk angering Nuffle by messing with one of his chosen instruments, afraid of bringing misfortune to their favorite team.
Utter nonsense, of course, but I wasn’t above using the superstition of the plebs if it helped keep me safe. Unfortunately, right now, that meant I had only one course of action available : I blew my whistle and strode toward the three-meters tall living engine of death and mayhem. The violence elsewhere on the pitch stopped, as all involved were suddenly far more interested in watching how this would develop.
When the minotaur turned his small, beady eyes in my direction, as it finally got through his thick skull that I was approaching him (something he probably wasn’t used from referees during matches), I took out a red rectangle out of my breast pocket and brandished it up high in a suitably dramatic gesture.
“Foul,” I said, as calmly as I could, trusting the small runic device attached to my jacket to broadcast my voice across the stadium so that I didn’t have to shout (which, in addition to being rather undignified, was a waste of breath I was going to need imminently). “Get out of the pitch.”
The minotaur snorted, eyes ablaze with bloodlust. I knew what was going to happen before it did, with the same dread inevitability as a mountaineer watching the telling signs of an avalanche.
The bull-headed behemoth charged me, head low, intent on goring me on his horns. I could see it all in my mind’s eye as if it’d already happened : I’d watched far too many of my colleagues meet their end on the pitch not to develop a rather unhealthy imagination when it came to my own potential demise.
One good side of that vivid imagery, however, was that the sheer terror it caused helped sharpen my reflexes. At the last moment, I stepped out of the way of the minotaur and, bracing myself for the impact, kicked him in the leg as he passed me, sending him crashing face-first to the astrogranite.
Painfully aware that every pair of eyes in the stadium was fixed on me, and of the ensuing need to play up to the image these lunatics had of me, I calmly walked to the growling minotaur and, before he could get back up, rammed my booted foot down on his head, slamming it back into the ground. His limbs twitched once, twice, and then he fell immobile.
“I said,” I repeated mildly, more for the watching audience than because I expected him to be in any state to hear me, “you are out.”
The crowd loved it, even the ones who were nominally on the same side as the downed player. Team allegiance meant little compared to a good show, and if there was one skill besides keeping my own skin in one piece which I’d developed since being picked off the streets, it was putting on a show. They roared their approval and amusement, and I gave every appearance of enjoying it, going as far as giving a small bow to the crowd, my foot still on the fallen minotaur’s head. Judging by the number of camras pointed straight at me, I knew I could expect yet another episode to be added to my legend, with the fact that I’d nearly crapped my pants conveniently ignored for the sack of selling the story to fans of the sport everywhere in the Old World.
Once I was confident the minotaur was well and truly unconscious, I gestured for the assistants gathered on the sidelines to drag him back to his team’s dugout, where he would be at the mercy of whatever passed for the Mongrel Horde’s apothecary. It took them some time, as the beast was much bigger and heavier than all of them put together, but they managed it eventually.
After that, I blew my whistle again, and the match resumed. To my amazement and that of the crowd, the Mongrel Horde actually started to pass the ball up the pitch instead of focusing solely on butchering the opposition. I had no idea what sorcery their coach had used to convince them to do such a thing, but I knew that, if he or she survived the season, a number of team owners would be interested in purchasing their services –
“Look out behind you, sir !” Jurgen’s voice shouted in my ear.
I leapt to the side without thinking, just in time to avoid being crushed by a mass of tentacles and maws that, at some point, had been a human being, before too many blessings from the Dark Gods had reduced it to its present state. Not that said state had prevented it from continuing to play Blood Bowl; if anything, the extra appendages were probably a boon when it came to handling the ball.
Once again, I thanked the foresight that had led me to purchase the paired communication stones Jurgen and I were wearing. They hadn’t been cheap, but they allowed my aide to warn me of any danger he detected from his observation post.
Laying on the ground, I rolled on my back and briefly paused, as once again, my short-term survival was forced to give ground before my long-term needs.
“Stop this right now !” I shouted in my best command voice. But the creature kept coming at me, murder in all of its thirteen eyes.
Oh well. I’d given it a chance, which was more than it deserved but all that the rulebook required of me. Before it could get another go at me, I drew my pistol, and shot it in the general location where its head had once been.
Thanks to the many hours I’d spent on the practice range, my aim was true, and the weapon, which had been gifted to me by none other than the son of Ragni Farblast of Farblast & Sons in exchange for what the Dwarf believed was me saving his life from a couple of dark elves disgruntled with his company’s choice of which teams to sponsor, proved as reliable as ever. The shot it the creature dead-on, causing its upper half to detonate in a shower of reeking gore. By the grace of Nuffle, only a little of it hit my uniform, and I made a mental note to get something nice to Jurgen, who would have to clean it up later.
“Ouch !” called out Jim Johnson as I stood up and made a show of brushing my uniform. “Say, Bob, is it really allowed for the referee to just execute a player like this ?”
“Well, it’s complicated, Jim,” replied to ogre ex-player. “Since Max ‘Kneecap’ Mittleman, refs aren’t allowed to punish infractions by maiming or lethal injuries. However, they are allowed to defend themselves – it just wouldn’t be sporting otherwise – and self-defense covers a multitude of grievous injuries.”
“So Cain is in the clear, then ?”
“So long as the players are the ones who make the first move, yes, Jim. Which, mind you, is a lot more restraining that you might think, since usually, in a fight, the one who throws the first punch is also the one who throws the last !”
As the commentators made small talk to entertain the rubes, the corpse of the mutant was dragged out of the pitch and thrown into the Horde’s dugouts, leaving an unpleasant stain that was going to get the janitors really angry at me. I’d need to do something about that : a Blood Bowl referee needed all the allies he could get, and in my experience janitors tended to know the best spots in a stadium to hide from a rioting mob.
Once the corpse had been removed, I blew my whistle, and the carnage resumed. Thankfully, the rest of the match went, if not without incident, then without any more serious threat to my life. Don’t get me wrong, I was still a referee in a Blood Bowl match, surrounded by violent maniacs on all sides (and that was just the audience). But nobody actually tried to kill me until we reached the end of the regulation-mandated hour of play time. There were a few close calls with charging blitzers and projectiles tossed by the crowd, but nothing I wasn’t well-used to, much to my chagrin.
In the end, the Green Destroyers won the match 2-1, although the score the fans were most interested in was the number of fatalities, which the orcs still won by a respectable nine to seven, with an additional four maimings on the Destroyers’ side to the Horde’s two. It was a complete and utter bloodbath, but apart from the original goblin whose head the minotaur had caved in with his hoof, every casualty had been within the letter of the law, and so I hadn’t needed to put my own skin at risk once more.
And at least the teams had remembered to try to score, which meant I didn’t have to announce an extension and spend even more time than the absolute minimum required on the pitch. At the exact one-hour mark and not a second later, I blew my whistle one last time for today, announcing the end of the match. It took a few tries before the players realized what had happened, and for a moment I was afraid they were going to keep at it, but eventually they disengaged from one another and began making their way back to their dugouts. The Green Destroyers were in a considerable better mood than the Mongrel Horde, at least once their coach told them that they had won, since most of them weren’t skilled enough in mathematics to understand they had won.
“Tea, sir ?” asked my aide, materializing at my elbow, heralded by his body odor and the far more enticing scent of tanna.
“Yes, please,” I said, picking up the steaming mug. After this match, I certainly had earned it.
Chapter 44: Chapter 42
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
"I'm afraid my negotiations with Governor Frollus were unsuccessful," said Areelu Van Yastobaal.
Seated upon her command throne on the bridge of Worldwounder, the Rogue Trader was addressing the rest of the Protectorate's war council. Some were here in person, while others were present only through hololithic projections, chief among them her dear Ciaphas, who was still on Torredon Minoris-One. A new figure had been added to that august circle : Chieftress Althea, who represented the Beastkin of Torredon Minoris-One.
The Chieftress was doing her best to appear calm and unperturbed but Areelu had spent decades among the highborn of the Imperial, many of whom had gone through so many rounds of rejuvenat treatments that their visages were far more removed from the baseline of Humanity than the Beastkin. As such, she could tell that Althea was struggling to project an image of calm and control, while inwardly stunned at the sudden turn in her people's fortune.
Good. Between Althea's gratitude and the prophet who had foretold the arrival of the Liberator (and hadn't that been an interesting surprise), the Beastkin joining the Protectorate in a formal manner was only a manner of time. And with them under Ciaphas' aegis, it would only make sense for the entire Torredon system to follow suit, cementing the Protectorate's hold on the entire Subsector.
But first, they had to deal with the remaining opposition in the system.
"I take it Frollus refused to see reason ?" asked Ciaphas. Areelu didn't miss the grimace of perfectly understandable disgust that flashed on Althea's face at the Governor's name.
"Yes," she nodded. "We underestimated the depths of his madness. He didn't just use hatred of the Beastkin to whip up the proles into a frenzy for political gain : he actually believes his own propaganda. I don't think a peaceful resolution is possible as long as he remains in power : if we are to secure a safe future for the Beastkin, it will only come through violence."
"And while I've no doubt we could kill every PDF on Torredon Majoris if we had to, that would take far too long, and most of them only follow his orders out of fear or because they don't know any better after a lifetime of Imperial indoctrination," said Ciaphas, to a chorus of nods from everyone else – including Althea, though hers was a tad slower than the rest, likely because this whole discussion used words a tad more complicated than she was used to.
Not that the Beastkin chieftress was stupid : no matter how incompetent the PDF officers were, she couldn't have led her people's defense if that were the case. Her opportunities for education had merely been dramatically limited so far, and Areelu had a feeling that would change once they were done dealing with Frollus and the real work of bringing the system into the Protectorate began.
"So we'll have to effect a change of regime, then. First, though, we still have several PDF units holed up in the starports on Torredon Minoris-One : what's the situation in the rest of the system ?"
"Our auspex have detected a surge of vox-traffic on the hive-world, and the SDF have abandoned their patrol routes and begun converging toward us," she reported.
Ciaphas frowned. "Are they any threat to the fleet ?"
"No," Areelu shook her head. "Worldwounder could destroy them alone with minimal effort. It's a suicide mission, and their captains know it."
"Then why are they even bothering ?" asked General Mahlone. "SDF or not, these are people who have dealt with the shadow cartels for years. They have to know their efforts would be futile. Could they have come up with some sort of plan to turn the balance of power in their favor ?"
"It is only in the holos that void warfare can be decided by a single pilot's action, General," replied Areelu. "In reality, the side with the more warships and the bigger guns win almost every time."
That wasn't completely true, but somehow she doubted the captains of the SDF were the kind of legendary void strategists who could pull something like that off, if for no other reason that with the Imperial Navy being so important to the Subsector's security until very recently, such individuals would have been drafted at once.
"We have decrypted the vox-messages between Torredon Majoris and the SDF fleet, and I believe we can answer that question," cut in Tesilon-Kappa, who was on the bridge with her, having emerged from the lower decks where they worked with the ship's complement of tech-priests. "It appears that they argued against the order when it first arrived, only for Governor Frollus to threaten their families planetside in order to force their compliance. While most Imperial Navy crew are voidborn, it isn't the case for the SDF."
There was a sharp intake of breath from Mahlone, and Ciaphas' face turned grave. Nobody looked surprised, though : from what Areelu had heard of the Giorbas who had ruled Slawkenberg before the Uprising, they'd probably expected the Governor to have already executed one in ten family members as a warning.
"I see. It seems you're correct, Areelu : we underestimated Frollus' madness. How long do we have before the SDF gets into weapons range ?" asked the Warmaster.
"Twelve hours," Areelu replied immediately, the information being one of the first things she'd asked her Master of Auspex once the course of the local defense boats had become clear.
"Then we must hurry," Ciaphas said decisively, before looking around. "I would rather avoid destroying these ships, if only because they'll be needed to maintain the security of the system once we are done here. What does everyone think is our best course of action ?"
"We should go with a decapitation strike," Hektor answered with confidence. "If we remove Frollus with a suitably awe-inspiring display of our martial might, the rest of the Imperial leadership will fold. The SDF won't throw their lives away if they don't have to – if they were the kind of fanatics who would, Frollus wouldn't have needed to threaten them into following his suicidal order."
"He's right," Suture chimed in from Areelu's side. "I've seen it happen many times."
"The issue is that the planetary capital is well-defended from aerial assault," said General Mahlone. "There's a great many anti-air emplacements across the hive-city, and unsurprisingly, most of them are placed to defend the spires. Trying to land transports there will end badly."
Areelu gestured to one of her bridge crew, and the central hololith shifted to a representation of the capital's defenses. She examined them for a few seconds, before saying :
"I think if we deploy the Cainwings, they should be able to clear a corridor for a small, elite force to descend upon the planet. It will be a difficult task, but I've faith in our pilots to pull it off."
"The spires are a vast area, though," said Ciaphas. "And well-defended too. Once we make planetfall, we will need to end this pointless conflict as swiftly as we can. Do we know where Frollus is ?"
"As a matter of fact, we do," said Sieur Harold. "He's left the Governor Palace and made his way to the Cathedral of Saint Tobias, the largest cathedral on the planet, where he has been broadcasting a sermon to the entire planetary population, calling them to … well, I'm sure you can imagine what he's saying."
"I'm sure we can," said the Liberator coldly. "Very well. We'll proceed with that plan, then. Our fighters will neutralize the spires' anti-air defenses, then we'll land and hunt the Governor. Harold, Krystabel, figure out how to de-escalate once Frollus is out of the picture – or, if that is impossible, how to make the Imperial hierarchy collapse so we don't end up fighting millions of PDF and terrified rioters at the same time. Areelu, the fleet is yours : with any luck, the SDF will turn back once they hear that the Governor is dead, but if they don't, do what is necessary."
"And where will you be, my Warmaster ?" asked the Rogue Trader with a knowing smile. As if there was any doubt.
"Where I can do the most good : alongside the troops."
Perseus Kilaiz and his flight took off from the landing bay of the Fist of the Liberator, joining the full Cainwing contingent of the Protectorate fleet. They had been on standby ever since the USA had deployed on the agri-moon, and now, at last, the order to deploy had come.
They plunged down through the upper atmosphere of Torredon Majoris, fire erupting around their crafts' noses as the thin air ignited with the heat of re-entry. They didn't need to descend far : their target was the tallest spire on the planet, where the Governor responsible for the attempted genocide of the Protectorate's newest allies dwelled.
Up until now, all of Perseus' combat sorties had taken place during void engagements against enemy ships. This was going to be the first time the Cainwings were deployed against ground targets. Unlike in the void, there were plenty of obstacles, as the spires' gothic architecture stretched out toward the heavens.
Perseus guided his craft through this maze, following his wing leader. His reflexes, honed by countless hours of training, were sharp enough that he could navigate the obstacle course with ease as they went down toward their assigned targets.
"Enemy fighters have been launched," command warned over the vox-net. "Prepare to engage."
Seconds later, the Cainwing's auspex pinged as it detected unidentified crafts approaching at high speeds, and battle was joined.
The specs of the enemy planes were almost comically inferior to those of the Cainwing, though the crafts were better-maintained than those of the pirate ships Perseus had engaged last. Like every Slawkenberg native, Perseus had been taught about the Imperium's backward approach to technology. They didn't even try to improve existing weapons and crafts, content instead to mindlessly replicate the works of their ancestors, going so far as to deceive themselves into thinking improving the work of the ancients was flat-out impossible.
According to the Protectorate's preachers, it was one of the most insidious and dangerous ways in which the Decaying One had corrupted the Imperium, and Perseus could well believe it now, as he watched the Cainwings tore through the enemy fighters.
Even so, the Protectorate fighters didn't have it all their own way. Despite their superior technology, training and leadership, war was war, and losses were inevitable. Cainwings fell from the sky, blasted apart by anti-air guns and enemy fighters, burning through the air before slamming into the spires like fiery comets. But their comrades fought on, and after about thirty minutes of intense fighting, Perseus watched as the last of the anti-air emplacements blew up in a ball of fire, its ammunition reserves detonating under the precise fire of the Cainwing.
"This is One-Three," Perseus called out breathlessly – his unit leader had perished at some point in the fighting, leaving him in charge. "The path is clear, I repeat, the path is clear."
"Confirmed, One-Three," came the reply from the flagship's command center. "Beginning descent. All fighter wings, remain vigilant for Imperial tricks until the transports are on the ground."
The pilot spared a glance upward, just enough to see the trails of the transports beginning their descent from orbit. He fancied he recognized one of the transports from the footage he'd watched years ago at the tail end of the Imperial invasion, and smiled under his helm.
It was time for Governor Frollus to be introduced to the Liberator.
In the end, our discussion with Tarek had gone about as well as I could have hoped for, which really should have been enough for me to realize things were about to go wrong. Despite my fears of finally being exposed, the mutant appeared as taken in by the lie of Cain the Liberator as the cultists who'd been with me since the Uprising. It'd been obvious to me that he was very nervous about meeting Harold and the other magi – no doubt he'd heard all manner of horror stories about those who practiced the occult arts, and was scared of ending up on a sacrificial altar or a dissection table, neither of which were especially appealing.
I'd done my best to reassure him before sending him off to the Worldwounder, both because I understood his concerns, and because I didn't want Althea to try to kill me for stealing away her people's pet prophet. It was clear that Tarek was well-liked among the Beastmen, even those who hadn't been believers.
I would have loved to accompany him and stay safe far, far away from the fighting, but sadly my fraudulent reputation made that choice impossible. Instead, with Areelu's diplomatic efforts having fallen through, I had to take part in this whole mad scheme the expedition's commanders had concocted.
In truth, I didn't have any issue with killing the voidsmen of the Torredon SDF : if it was a choice between their lives and mine, then I would choose mine every time. But I had a reputation for mercy to uphold, if only to serve as an example to the lunatics around me, and Frollus had made the mistake of broadcasting his hostage-taking on an open vox-channel. Thus, if I wanted to keep up my image as a kind and merciful ruler, I needed to make an effort to avoid needless casualties.
Also, I knew Zerayah was following what was happening back on Slawkenberg, and I definitely didn't want her to start thinking collateral damage was acceptable – not when her potential for mass destruction was so vast.
With that in mind, I really wanted to just send Akivasha and have it done with. The Worldwounder had a few drop-pods that, while not up to the standards Hektor remembered from the Great Crusade, could still have delivered the Volkihar Ancient relatively close to the Grand Cathedral without the anti-air defenses being able to shoot it down.
But not only was I hesitant to blatantly order her around like this, there was also the optics to consider. The sight of an invincible Vampire butchering her way through the Governor's bodyguards before ripping him to pieces (she wouldn't drink his blood, at least : her tastes had become much more rarefied since joining us) was hardly likely to endear us to the rest of the population. Frollus had already successfully whipped the proles into a frenzy by using the Beastmen as scapegoats for the Subsector's woes : the last thing we wanted was to turn the fanatic into a martyr by making it look like he'd been slain by some infernal assassin. Yes, the Vampires of Cassandron had nothing to do with the Warp as far as Areelu, Krystabel and Harold had been able to establish, but I still understood enough of the Imperial mindset to guess what the locals' reaction would be – namely, a lot of metaphorical torches and pitchforks, and a very literal panicked mob.
Thus, we were forced to resort to a more conventional assault, and once again, I'd found myself cornered and with no other choice but to lead from the front. At least the fighters aboard the fleet had been able to disable the spires' anti-air defenses. Our descent from orbit was surprisingly smooth, allowing us to land in the vast open plaza that had been selected as our landing ground. Ancient statues of previous Imperial Governors crumbled to rubble as the transports blasted them to pieces in order to clear the ground, and within moments we were out, weapons at the ready.
I'd brought my retinue with me : Jurgen, Malicia, Hektor and Akivasha. Althea had attached herself to me for the engagement once she'd realized I'd be going for Frollus personally, and while hosting her aboard my transport had required that I leave two USA troopers behind to make space for her, I considered that a reasonable trade, all things considered. She knew how to fight, she looked intimidating, and she was almost as tall as the Liberator Armor, so maybe she'd draw some fire away from me as well.
The Grand Cathedral was bigger than any such building I'd ever seen. Even the greatest churches of the Ecclesiarchy on Slawkenberg before the Uprising failed to compare; for all the greed and exploitation of the Giorbas, there was only so much wealth that could be extracted from a vacation world, and it didn't come close to matching the resources of a Subsector capital like Torredon.
I took it as yet another sign of my ongoing descent into corruption that, while my first reaction to the sight was suitable awe, the second was a frown at the sight of how much gold and precious materials had been used in the façade, reasoning that such wealth could have been better spent elsewhere. Although in Frollus' defense, the building looked to be hundreds if not thousands of years old, so he wasn't responsible for its extravagance.
Inside my immense suit of my armor, I shook my head and focused on the more immediate problem facing me. As was typical of Planetary Governors, Frollus had kept the most well-trained and best equipped soldiers on his world to serve as his personal bodyguard. According to Areelu, they were called the Torredon Keepers, an elite regiment with a history dating back to the early days of the system's colonization.
They had arranged themselves in a textbook-perfect defensive formation in front of the Grand Cathedral's gates, with vehicles converted into improvised barricades that provided overlapping lines of fire. All of them were wearing some kind of white and gold armor and carrying hot-shot lasguns and an assortment of deadly instruments for close-quarter combat.
Taken from the crop of the local PDF and sworn to protect the Governor from any and all threat, I had no doubt that these were among the most hardened killers the entire planet had to offer – and, as a former hive-worlder, I knew the competition for that title would be stiff.
Against the USA's advance, spearheaded by my retinue and myself in the Liberator Armor, I didn't expect them to stand for very long.
Standing before the Grand Cathedral of Saint Tobias, Commander Jarnac watched as the skies shone with the lights of enemy transports descending upon the spire, bringing devastation and heresy with them.
Around him, the Torredon Keepers prepared to hold their ground against the heretic onslaught. The vox was abuzz with panicked shouting from high-ranking officers trying to get more planes into the air, but their dismal failure wasn't Jarnac's concern. His duty, and that of his unit, was to ensure the protection of the Lord Governor. Everything else wasn't their concern.
The enemy was approaching, having defiled the Courtyard of the Honored Forebears with their transports before making a straight line toward the Cathedral. Through some no doubt heretical method, they must have determined this holiest of places to be where the Governor had chosen to make his stand against the forces of Darkness threatening the world entrusted to him by the Master of Mankind.
"Stand ready, men !" he shouted over the mayhem. "Time for us to do our duty to the God-Emperor !"
And then they were here, and despite everything, the sight of them briefly froze Jarnac. He'd expected some kind of ragged mob, full of filthy heretics driven insane by their rejection of the God-Emperor's light. Instead, a line of soldiers in crimson armor that looked far more advanced than what he and his men were wearing marched toward them in lockstep.
A towering crimson giant, wielding a blade that seemed to be forged of a shard of the void itself, strode at the head of the heretic army. Around him was a retinue of heretics, one of whom wore a grim parody of the armor of the holy Astartes, but it was the mutant among them who drew Jarnac's attention.
Her hideous form slithered forward in a grotesque mockery of Humanity, and Jarnac felt his bile rise at the sight of the vile mutant. She – no, it – was much more repugnant in person than on the printsheets, and held a pair of chainswords that had surely been taken from the corpses of its previous victims.
Beastkin, he thought with horrified revulsion. Why his ancestors had tolerated the existence of such freaks for so long, he would never understand.
"Open fire !" he roared.
His order shook his men from their torpor, and they promptly obeyed, with Jarnac himself aiming his weapon at the reptilian horror. But like the cowardly vermin she was, the Beastkin hid behind the bulk of the crimson giant, whose armor absorbed the deluge of las-fire as if it were nothing more than a non-acidic drizzle.
In fact, Jarnac realized with growing horror, all of the heretics' armor seemed impervious to the Keepers' weapons.
"Heavies, focus on the big one !" he shouted to the handful of heavy weapons teams spread out across their lines.
Yet still, the behemoth kept coming, and soon that awful blade it held swung, cutting through metal, armor and flesh as if it were parchment. Jarnac watched in horror as men who'd stood with him against rioters and would-be assassins alike were butchered like animals, unable to do more than dent the metal of the enormous warmachine.
Then the rest of the heretics hit the defenders, and the slaughter began in earnest. Amidst the confusion, Jarnac found himself face-to-waist with the Beastkin, who towered over him, chainswords humming hungrily.
He brought his lasgun up; she brought her chainswords down.
She was quicker, and Jarnac's life ended in a mess of blood, pain, and shock.
With the Keepers dispatched, I gave orders to the USA troopers to secure a perimeter around the Grand Cathedral while my retinue and I ventured inside to confront the Governor. One of the dubious advantages of having a reputation for needless heroism is that people didn't bother arguing with me about putting myself in danger when I wasn't in the mood for it, and Lieutenant Nathan didn't question my decision before getting to it.
I could have slammed through the gates in the Liberator armor : it had taken some hits during the battle so far, but little of it had gone beyond cosmetic. However, I figured I was already in enough trouble with the Emperor without adding deliberate insult to unwilling injury, which was also the reason why I didn't want to bring anyone with me I didn't strictly need to. Given the size of the building, I'd little doubt there was plenty of space for the armor inside, but if Frollus tried to escape down some hidden tunnel, giving chase in the Liberator armor would be impractical, and I hadn't come all this way to fail to get my hands around the throat of the man responsible for this mess.
So I left the suit at the entrance, hoping that whatever final defenses Frollus had managed to scrounge up wouldn't be able to penetrate my power armor. Hektor pushed the massive doors open (apparently they couldn't be locked, which was either a sign that all were welcome within the house of the God-Emperor or evidence of breathtaking arrogance on the part of the planet's rulers to think this place would never be threatened).
After taking a moment to confirm that Hektor hadn't been struck down by a bolt of divine lightning, which I disguised as pausing to look at the great statue of Saint Tobias above the arch, I walked through the gates and into the Grand Cathedral.
We passed through the antechamber and into the nave proper, which was as extravagantly decorated as the building's outside had been. I could hear the sound of running feet in the distance as the low-ranked clerics fled. I briefly worried that Frollus had done the same after all, but I could still hear the Governor's voice echoing on the walls from deeper into the building, so he was still here.
"This feels like a trap," said Hektor, whirling his axe in his hand as he looked around, voicing what everyone else was feeling.
"It does," replied Malicia. "And I think I just found out what the trap is," she added, pointing with her sword.
Five humanoid figures sat on their haunches, trembling. They were naked save for dirty loincloths and the metallic helms that covered the upper half of their skulls. Each showed countless scars and brands on their exposed skin, as well as evidence of advanced augmentation : canisters full of glowing combat stimms grew from their backs, and their arms ended in vicious metallic claws which left tiny marks on the stone floor with every nervous twitch that coursed through their overly muscular bodies.
"What are these things ?" hissed Althea.
"Arco-flagellants," I replied absently, trying to force down the sudden surge of terror I felt at the sight.
This wasn't my first time seeing an arco-flagellant : back in the Schola, one had been brought from the closest Sororitas outpost one day to demonstrate its deadliness. Along with the rest of my class of cadets and several other martial-inclined groups, I'd watched the creature be led into the training grounds by a priest holding its chain, where it had been unleashed upon the week's crop of criminals sentenced to death who'd been sent to the Schola for training purposes.
It had been months before I'd stopped having nightmares of the gruesome sight, and that had just been one. I knew, objectively, that I had fought much more dangerous adversaries than a handful of mind-broken flesh-puppets. But that didn't make the monstrosities any less horrifying, especially now that I'd a much clearer understanding of the kind of things that went on at the Ecclesiarchy's highest levels of power. Arco-flagellants were supposed to be created only from the most irredeemable of sinners, for who a quick death by the pyre was judged too merciful, but given Frollus was the Planetary Governor and clearly had a lot of influence on the local church, who knew what 'crimes' the wretches before us had truly committed to warrant that fate ?
I confess that there was also a part of me that couldn't help but imagine myself in their place, turned into a mindless killing machine as punishment for my sins against the Imperium and the God-Emperor.
"But they aren't doing anything," said Hektor warily.
That was true. If I remembered correctly, these creatures could only be activated by the trigger words which had been burned into their tormented brains –
"Exterminate," said a dozen gargoyles and floating cherubs all at once.
We must have tripped some sort of alarm, or one of the fleeing clerks had activated them while running. Immediately, the monstrosities shivered and rose, spittle flying from their open mouths as they all gave out a guttural cry, full of pain and bloodlust. As one, their helmets turned toward us, and I was sure I saw their mouths twist into hungry smiles – though given there was very little of their lips left, that might have merely been my overactive imagination at work.
Well, frak.
"Defend yourselves !" I shouted.
Joining deed to word, I drew my weapon, and found to my surprise that instead of the chainsword I'd packed before leaving the Worldwounder, I was instead holding the by now familiar grip of the Slayer Sword. I'd thought the daemonic blade would be hampered by the fact we were inside a cathedral of the Imperial Creed, something Areelu had agreed was likely. And yet, as I swung the weapon to block a blow from the nearest frenzied madman as it leapt at me with stimm-fuelled speed, its cutting prowess appeared undiminished, nor was it burning with golden fire or otherwise damaged in any way.
With a sinking feeling, I realized what this implied. This building, for all its prestige and opulence, wasn't consecrated to Him on Earth. Perhaps it had never been, although I found that difficult to believe : over the centuries, countless souls would have used it to pray to the Master of Mankind, and I knew enough of the way such things worked to know that alone would have imbued the place with a certain power. No, far more likely whatever holiness the cathedral had once possessed had been defiled, and I hoped it hadn't been the intrusion of my cohorts and myself that had done so.
Surely, I told myself, I would have felt something when entering the building if my mere presence had been enough to desecrate it. Or my companions would have. Well, not Malicia, and probably not Akivasha or Althea either … But surely Jurgen or Hektor would have felt something and remarked on it.
Perhaps fortunately, the ongoing assault of the arco-flagellants distracted me from my thoughts and forced me to focus on my physical predicament rather than the spiritual one.
The Slayer Sword cut through the arco-flagellant's right hand and forearm, before burying itself into its torso, cleaving it in two. I moved out of the way as it crashed to the floor, impossibly still alive thanks to the cocktail of stimms its augments were pumping into its system.
I drew my bolt pistol and shot it in the head, putting an end to its squirming and hopefully releasing its soul to an afterlife more pleasant than its previous existence.
When I turned back to the fray, I found that the fight was already over. Between Jurgen's psychic might and the sheer martial prowess of Akivasha, Hektor and Malicia, the outcome had never been in doubt, but I was surprised to see that Althea had claimed the kill on one of the arco-flagellants, her chainswords buried so deep into its chest that no amount of stimms could keep its metabolism running. Which was the reason chainblades were so commonly used by the Imperium (and, according to Hektor, other races as well) : while a simple cut might not always disable an opponent, shredding their insides almost always did the trick.
I mentally revised my estimate of her threat level upward, just in case.
Althea stared at the corpse of the creature she'd killed, unnerved despite her best efforts to hide it. She'd seen servitors before, when the tech-priests had brought some to assist them in their work on Torredon Minoris-One, and at first she'd thought this was another type of these mindless husks, designed for combat instead of basic tasks. But it wasn't.
Servitors were disturbing because of the emptiness of their faces. There was nothing behind their eyes, no emotion, no spark of intelligence – they were like machines, but made of flesh instead of metal. The creature, the arco-flagellant, had been different. There had been something in its eyes, but that something had been naught but pain and hate.
What manner of empire created such things and used it to guard what was supposed to be its most sacred places, she wondered ?
"Well done, all of you," said the Liberator, his voice dragging Althea out of her grim musings. "Now, let's move on."
They resumed their march. The sound of her comrades' footsteps echoed across the vast space. She suspected Ladies Akivasha and Malicia could have avoided making noise if they saw fit, but neither bothered with it. They had faced the greatest fighters the foe could muster and come out on top : let their prey know they were coming.
They found Governor Frollus kneeling in front of the altar. He was still spouting his hateful rhetoric into a vox-set built into the altar, and a flock of flying skulls flew around him, watching him and broadcasting his image through the rest of the hive-city and beyond.
He was such a small man, underneath the many layers of his ornate robes and his ridiculous hat, which was decorated with enough jewels as to be blinding to look at. Somehow, Althea had expected the figure which had tormented her people for so long to be bigger.
"Governor Claudius Frollus," the Liberator called out to him. "I am Ciaphas Cain."
"You," he said, the word dripping with hatred and fear. "You are … you are the Black Commissar. The Arch-Heretic of Slawkenberg."
"I am," the Liberator admitted without shame. "And I have come for you, Frollus."
"You are a heretic," Frollus babbled. "A vile betrayer of His light. You are … you …"
He trailed off, eyes wide in abject horror. Althea followed his gaze, and found that he was staring at the sword in Cain's hand. He hadn't sheathed it since the fight against the arco-flagellants.
The Beastkin chieftress could understand Frollus' shock : the weapon made her own skin crawl. The strange black energy blade the Liberator had wielded inside his great suit of armor had been unnerving, but the sword he held now was clearly of unearthly provenance.
"No. No, no, no, no," Frollus muttered, making the sign of the aquila with his hands, over and over again. "It cannot be. This is the God-Emperor's home. You cannot defile it with your vile heresies. His blessing is upon us, His protection shields us from the tainted, His wrath falls upon those …"
"The God-Emperor's blessing and protection are not unconditional," said Cain, cutting off the Governor's ramblings. "He does not love me," and to Althea's surprise, there was genuine grief in the Liberator's voice, before it hardened into a merciless edge as he continued : "and He does not love you. You have broken your covenant with Him, through no fault but your own."
"Lies !" Frollus screamed. "I am His faithful servant. All I have done has been in His service !"
"You have ordered the systematic persecution of the Beastkin, and then, when that wasn't enough to satisfy you, you ordered their slaughter," said Cain. "You turned on the people you were supposed to lead out of fear and hatred. You did all of this, against the word of one of His own sons !"
"It was the God-Emperor's will !" he sputtered. "The Primarch's Edict is a lie, nothing more !"
"No," snarled Cain, showing anger for the first time since Althea had met him. "It was your will. You can lie to your people, to your minions, even to yourself if you so desire, but no amount of lies can ever change the truth that you wanted to kill the Beastkin, and you lied and claimed it was the Emperor's will instead to absolve yourself of responsibility."
Oh.
It made sense, Althea realized. Her ancestors had worshipped the God-Emperor since the dawn of the Imperium. Throughout the long millennia, even as less and less Ecclesiarchy priests made the journey to their agri-moon to preach, they had kept to their beliefs. Even Tarek, who had prophesied the coming of the Liberator, had kept faith with the Master of Mankind.
"Maybe, in your heart of heart, you knew it was wrong, and sought to exculpate yourself of the guilt by putting it on the Emperor instead," Cain continued. "But that doesn't change the truth. I have walked through the cities of the Beastkin, and I've seen their temples to Him On Earth. They are loyal followers of the Imperial Creed still just as they were when you first started down this path."
"You lie !" There was an edge of desperation to Frollus' unhinged scream now. "They are heretics and demon-worshippers ! Your presence here, holding this unholy blade, proves it ! I saw the truth, and when I sought to destroy them, they called upon their true masters to save them !"
"Fool," Cain spat. "The Beastkin will remain free to keep their faith in the Golden Throne if they wish it. It is the Imperium which fears other faiths, not us. Within the Protectorate, all are free to worship as they will, and through that diversity we have found strength beyond anything your rotting institutions are capable of. But I have wasted enough time talking to you, madman."
Frollus' eyes bulged in their sockets, as if his mind refused to comprehend the Liberator's words.
"Governor Claudius Frollus," the Warmaster proclaimed, his voice echoing throughout the cathedral as he levelled his ornate pistol at the Governor. "In the name of the Protectorate and Humanity, for the crimes you have committed against the Beastkin, and for failing in your duties to your people, I sentence you to death."
"You have no right to judge me !" Frollus screamed. "Only the God-Emperor can decide my fate !"
"You're correct," Cain agreed. "Which is why I send you now to Him, if He cares enough to pluck your soul from the tides of the Warp and claim you from the grasp of my ally there."
The bolt pistol barked with a deafeningly loud noise, and a bloody crater appeared on the Governor's chest. Such was the strength of the detonation that he was sent flying backwards, sprawling all over the Imperial altar.
He twitched, once, twice, then fell still. And just like that, the man who had led the persecution of Althea's people for as long as she'd lived was dead.
She was shaking, she realized. With joy ? Shock ? She didn't know. For so long, Frollus had been this unreachable avatar of the Imperial oppression of her people, and now he was gone.
Cain sheathed his weapons and stepped forward, and the floating skulls turned to stare at him with their red, glowing artificial eyes.
"People of Torredon," he began. "I am Ciaphas Cain, Warmaster of the Protectorate. Your Governor is dead, executed by my hand for his crimes against the Beastkin."
"We came to this system only to relieve the Beastkin from the unjust persecution inflicted by Frollus," the Liberator continued smoothly, clearly used to having his words heard by billions of people – a number which was larger than Althea could imagine. "We have no quarrel with the rest of you : indeed, since our arrival in the Torredon Subsector, we have only waged war against the forces of the shadow cartel known as the Bloodied Crown. Several of its leaders have been brought to justice by our hands, including their Chairman."
From what Althea had overheard, that wasn't entirely true : something had happened on the hive-world of Cassandron, but she didn't know what exactly. Just that it had been bad, had threatened the entire planet, and that Cain had saved the day himself.
"As a gesture of goodwill, my forces will refrain from pushing further into your territory. I invite the lawful successor of the defunct Governor to contact me as soon as possible in order to negotiate a ceasefire, and then, Gods willing, a peace agreement. Frollus was too ensnared by his own madness to accept even the possibility of peace, but I have hope that the rest of this world's leaders aren't so consumed by insanity to refuse to see the obvious."
His announcement finished, the Liberator spared a final glance for the Governor’s corpse, then turned back toward them.
"That's that done, then. Let us – wait."
The Liberator raised a hand and inclined his head to the side, listening to a voice Althea couldn't hear (though, judging by the sudden tension in their postures, Malicia and Akivasha could).
"I'm here, Areelu. What is going on ?"
There was a brief pause, and then the Liberator exclaimed, in a tone full of such horrified surprise it terrified Althea by proxy :
"What ?!"
Krystabel sighed, letting some of the exhaustion she felt show as she leant back in her chair. She had spent the last few hours listening in on vox-messages and casting divination rituals, and while she wouldn't compare her efforts to those of the soldiers fighting on the ground, they were beginning to take their toll nonetheless.
While the Liberator went after the Governor, Harold and her had been busy studying the socio-political fabric of Torredon Majoris' society, looking for weak spots and impressionable individuals. From within the conference room aboard the Worldwounder, they'd coordinated the efforts of their subordinates and performed their own rituals, adding to the mass of intelligence they'd gathered.
Like any Imperial hive-world, Torredon Majoris was a cesspool of intrigue, deceit and treachery, with the spire-born nobility plotting against each other for the smallest scrap of influence. The ripples created by Frollus' purges of those who'd opposed his ascension to the throne hadn't yet faded away by the time the Navy had abandoned the Torredon Gap, and his persecution of the Beastkin had only applied the thinnest layer of unity on the whole powder keg.
Now that the news of Frollus' demise were spreading (thank Slaanesh for the obsession of Imperial fanatics with broadcasting their every word to the masses, for it made it oh-so-easier to ensure their rightful execution was witnessed by as many people as possible), the aristocrats' fragile alliance was already beginning to crumble. The flames of ambition were flaring, even though the foreign invaders who'd killed the Governor were still occupying the Grand Cathedral.
It had been, Krystabel was perfectly willing to admit, an exhilarating exercise, but an exhausting one all the same. For now, however, they could afford to take a brief breather while the situation planetside devolved all on its own : their subtle manipulations through remote psychic contact would be useless in the incoming mess of infighting. Once the dust had settled, they could use the intel they'd gathered before to figure out how to bring Torredon Majoris into the embrace of the Protectorate.
"Sorry to make you wait here for so long," she said, turning to the other soul of import in the room. "I know we were supposed to debrief you, but as you can see, we've been busy these last few hours."
"It's no problem at all," Tarek assured her. "Stopping Frollus is far more important than dealing with me. Part of me do wish I could have taken part in the battle, but the greater part is all too aware of how much of a liability I'd be on an actual battlefield. Apart from a few brawls with drunks who'd let alcohol drive them to despair and violence, I've never been much of a fighter myself."
"Oh, don't worry," Harold cut in, having put down his own slate and vox-set for the time being. "As a seer, you'll be far more important to your people's well-being than you could ever be as just one more pair of arms carrying a las-gun into battle."
Krystabel didn't share her Tzeentchian cohort's interest in prophecy. The Handmaidens of Emeli were more focused on the present, trusting in the guidance of their patron and the spies they'd seeded across the Sector to provide them with the information the Protectorate needed in order to survive while surrounded by enemies on all sides. In her opinion, while useful, prophecy was far too dependant on context and interpretation to be fully relied upon.
Tarek was an exception, however, and not just because he'd garnered the attention of the Liberator.
"I wouldn't call myself a seer," the Beastkin said modestly. "I only had faith that the Liberator would come to rescue my people. I certainly didn't predict anything else over the years."
"Lord Cain's future has always been impossible for us to predict," Harold pointed out. "The fact that you were able to foretell his coming to Torredon years before the withdrawal of the Imperial Navy which led to the Subsector's current crisis and motivated our coming is far more impressive than you realize."
"I …" Tarek hesitated, clearly ill at ease with being showered in praise like this. "If you say so. You're all much more knowledgeable in such matters than I."
"I'm sure you'll catch up to us in now time. Speaking of, we really should have asked you this earlier, but have you had any new vision or foreboding since the fleet arrived in the system ?" asked Harold.
"Well, I keep expecting something to go horribly wrong," the Beastkin Prophet said jokingly. "But I'm pretty sure that's just because I still can't believe all of this," he gestured at their surroundings, "is really happening."
The two cult leaders' polite laughter was cut off by the sudden blaring of ship-wide alarms.
"What's going on ?!" shouted Tarek, panicked. Krystabel was already moving toward the nearest console, punching her access code into the keyboard and pulling out the relevant data. She wasn't familiar enough with the Worldwounder's alarms to know the nature of the emergency just from hearing them the way a true crew member would be, but she could use a cogitator just as well as any graduate of Saint Trynia Academy. Soon, data flowed on the screen, crimson runes flashing.
It took her several seconds to understand what she was seeing, and once she did, she cursed violently and in an entirely unlady-like fashion.
"It seems your presentiment was on point once again, Sieur Tarek," she told the Beastkin, who looked everything but pleased.
Mistlav Sertanov watched through the occulus of his vessel, the Usurped's Fury, as the last of the SDF ships died. The pathetic flotilla had been no match for the combined might of his ships and those of his new masters, and they had been destroyed within minutes of the battle's beginning.
The sight of the burning debris floating by was a chilling reminder of the nature of Mistlav's new masters. There had been no demand for surrender, and the pleas for mercy of the final ships had been met with nothing but silence. The fleet had simply appeared, ripping out of the Warp deep within the system thank to the sorcery of his new master, and opened fire before they could react.
The last head of the Sertanov family hadn't expected anything else. He knew what the lord of the Brotherhood of Darkness was capable of : it was why he'd decided to join them willingly. Bending the knee to transhuman monsters might have hurt his pride, but he'd take that injury over the agonies the Chaos Lord was capable of inflicting upon him if he tried to defy him.
"Lord Astyanath," said the last Director of the Bloodied Crown over the vox. "It is done. The path to Torredon Majoris is clear."
"Good," replied a voice that, despite sounding entirely like that of a regal king praising a faithful subject, sent shivers down Mistlav's spine. "Have your ships stand down, Mistlav."
"Yes, my lord." He hesitated, then forced himself to ignore the fear and said : "May I ask why ?"
Astyanath chuckled, and Mistlav had to suppress the urge to squirm in his command throne in full view of his bridge crew – many of whom failed to conceal their own terror at the sound.
"Why, so that we can have a polite discussion with our fellow servants of the Gods, of course."
Notes:
AN : The confrontation between Frollus and Cain is something I've had in mind for a long time. How does Cain handle the knowledge that the Imperium is doing horrible, horrible things, while telling himself that he's still a follower of the Emperor ? Well, now you know : by disassociating the Imperium's actions from the Emperor's will.
Which is absolutely heresy under the Imperial Creed, to be clear. Obviously. I mean, the whole reason the High Lords let the Ecclesiarchy get so big after the Horus Heresy was because it made for a useful tool of control (as well as provide some degree of protection against Chaos).
And now, the true final boss of the Torredon Arc is revealed. Since this story began, people have wondered what would happen if the Cainite Heretics were faced with more 'traditional' worshippers of Chaos : now, you'll get the answer.
Without going into spoilers territory, know that the Brotherhood of Darkness are an offshoot of the Word Bearers Traitor Legion. How exactly they ended up in the Eastern Fringe, so far from the Eye of Terror, will be revealed in the next few chapters, whether Cain wants it or not.
(Spoiler : it's not. Cain really, really isn't going to want to find out the Brotherhood's secrets. Unfortunately for him, that's not his choice to make.)
I have had this planned for over a year at this point; hopefully the result ends up as interesting as I see it in my mind's eye.
Also, poor Tarek. I hadn't even planned to keep playing up the joke of his prescience, it just happened when writing Krystabel's POV.
By the way, if you are reading this on FFnet or AO3, you might want to check the Spacebattles thread for this story. Not just because of the many, MANY omakes my delightful readers have written over there, but also for the stuff I've posted there myself, like the first chapter of a crossover between Ciaphas Cain and Vampire : The Masquerade.
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.
Chapter 45: Chapter 43
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
I listened to Areelu's report with growing horror, thankful that my armor was concealing my face from my retinue. I didn't know what expression I was making, but I doubted it was fitting of the Liberator of Slawkenberg and Warmaster of the Cainite Protectorate.
A fleet of vessels had emerged from the Warp deep inside the Torredon system. Leaving the Immaterium so far beyond the Mandeville Point should have destroyed them all, yet they had managed it perfectly.
According to the Worldwounder's auspex scans, several of the ships were part of the Bloodied Crown, affiliated to Director Mistlav Sertanov, one of the two remaining survivors of the shadow cartel's leadership. The man's own flagship, a former pleasure barge that had been heavily refitted for piratical activities, had been sighted among the crowd, solving the mystery of where that particular loose end had ended up – but that wasn't the issue.
The issue was that among the new fleet was an immense leviathan of the void, broadcasting its identity as the Sightless Godling. A vessel that more than matched the Worldwounder in size and firepower, yet its many guns were far from being the most dangerous thing about it.
No, that privilege was reserved to its passengers. For, though it had been altered by Emperor alone knew how many centuries of patchy repairs and the touch of the Empyrean, the Sightless Godling was a battleship of a model not produced in the Imperium since the days of the Great Crusade – one meant to transport the hosts of the Legiones Astartes across the stars.
Which could only mean one thing : Chaos Marines. An entire army of transhuman lunatics, each just as dangerous as Hektor, except with proper weapons and armor rather than what the borgs had been able to cobble together for the former Ravager.
I felt terrified, and I wasn't ashamed to admit it, if only to myself. Since the day of the Uprising, I'd been haunted by nightmares of Space Marines coming to bring the Emperor's judgment upon me and the gaggle of heretics and rebels I'd found myself surrounded with.
Meeting Hektor and seeing what he was capable of had done little to assuage my entirely reasonable fears, especially since loyal Angels of Death weren't going to hold back against me the way the World Eater did whenever we sparred. Adding Zerayah to the situation hadn't helped, as no less than a First Founding Chapter, the Imperial Fists, had reason to come after her if they ever learned of her existence.
I had known about the rumors of the presence of Chaos Marines in the Gap, but I'd thought them to be nothing more than tall tales. Surely, I'd reasoned, the Imperial Navy would have considered such heretics a priority target if they really existed, or they would have revealed themselves the moment the fleet had withdrawn from the Subsector.
I should have known better than to hope for the best. The hull of the Sightless Godling was covered in Ruinous sigils, including certain patterns and icons that, after having them transmitted to his armor, Hektor had recognized as belonging to a warband calling itself the Brotherhood of Darkness. He knew very little about them, and for once it wasn't just because of his cortical implants savaging his memory of the millennia he'd spent waging war on the Imperium : apparently, the Brotherhood had only very rarely crossed paths with the Nine Legions trapped in the Eye of Terror. Given the sheer number of Chaos warbands in existence, it was frankly miraculous Hektor had recognized them to begin with.
How many Chaos Marines were part of the Brotherhood was unclear. A ship of the Sightless Godling's size could have carried thousands of them back during the Great Crusade, but Hektor was confident that not a single warship of the Traitor Legions carried a full complement of Astartes these days, the result of millennia of attrition with little in the way of means of replenishing their numbers. However, any number above 'zero' was already too many in my opinion.
The good news, if you could call it that, was that after obliterating the PDF contingent (which had just stopped its suicidal attack run on the Protectorate fleet, proving once again that the Gods have a twisted sense of humor), the Brotherhood of Darkness' ships had halted. They were keeping their shields up and their weapons hot, but they had yet to target any of our own ships.
But, because the universe has a warped sense of humor, that also meant that the Brotherhood was likely to want to talk to us, and that had dangers all of its own. Since the Liberation Council's activities had first begun to reach beyond Slawkenberg, I'd known that the day would come when it encountered another group of the Dark Gods' deluded servants. On Adumbria and Cassandron, I'd been lucky that the other side had been composed solely of followers of Nurgle, but this wasn't the case now.
The Brotherhood of Darkness (and Gods, what a stupid name that was, but after spending so long talking with Hektor about the recruitment process of the old Space Marine Legions, that didn't surprise me) didn't follow any specific Ruinous Power, but instead the entire daemonic pantheon. If I wasn't careful, the rest of the Protectorate might end up defecting right there and then, and all my years of hard work trying to keep Slawkenberg's heresy as contained as possible would result in me delivering an entire fleet and army to a bunch of Chaos Marines with a pretty bow on top.
"We are being hailed by the Sightless Godling," said Areelu. "They want to speak with you."
"Accept the hail and redirect the communication to me," I said. I had absolutely no desire to speak with whatever lunatic was in charge, you understand, but I needed to know who we were dealing with if I were to have any hope of escaping this mess with my miserable hide intact.
"Open the link – wait, something's wrong. What in the Gods' name –"
The link went dead, which given that it was using the ansible transmitter built into my armor was far more worrying that if we'd been using a standard vox. Before I could react, however, the temperature in the Grand Cathedral suddenly dropped. I felt the sudden chill even inside my armor, which clued me in that it was supernatural in nature. Not that it took a genius to figure that out, as the statues of the Saints around us suddenly started weeping black tears, and the great paintings that decorated the walls melted into nightmarish scenes of torment that reminded me of the horrors I'd glimpsed when forced to participate in Emeli's rituals back when she'd still been human, and which I'd thought I'd successfully managed to repress to the deepest caverns of my subconscious.
A figure appeared before me, made of twisted unlight that coalesced into the shape of a tall Astartes, wearing a suit of armor that could generously be described as baroque, and more honestly as hideously overwrought, covered in blazing infernal iconography. If not for the aura of raw malevolence that the sorcerous projection exuded, he would have looked like he'd stepped out of a Redemptionist's depiction of the Archenemy. Spikes grew out of nearly every surface, and more than a few had flayed skin stretched between them. On the left paldron was the emblem of the Brotherhood : a red horned skull with crimson bat wings.
Something which had once been a crozius hung from his waist, covered in flames whose malevolent heat I could feel even through my armor and the sorcerous projection, despite the wards that had been added to the former.
His head was the only part of him not covered by his armor, and the instant I saw it I wished that it were. The lingering traces of humanity it possessed only served to highlight how far the Chaos Marine had fallen from his original perfection : the crown of horns that burst out of his skull was the least of his mutations, and I fell ill merely to look upon him, though how much of that was disgust and how much was sheer terror, I couldn't say.
"Warmaster Cain," the figure said in a voice made up of the screams of a thousand damned souls. "At last we meet."
"I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage," I said, surprising myself with how steady my voice sounded.
"Of course," he chuckled. "Where are my manners ? I am Lord Astyanath, Dark Apostle of the Brotherhood of Darkness."
"I cannot say I've heard of you before," I replied reflexively, only realizing my words could be taken as an insult after they had left my mouth. Fortunately, Astyanath didn't seem to take umbrage.
"I didn't expect you to. Long has the Brotherhood remained hidden, and while the oracles you've gathered at your side are competent for mortals, they are far from being my Sorcerers' equals."
"… I see." Frak. It made sense that the cultists of Tzeentch and Slaanesh of our little rebellion were outmatched by the ancient transhuman warlocks, but I'd have loved to be pleasantly surprised. "And to what do we owe the honor of your presence in this system ?"
"We have come to bring the Word of the Gods to this world, of course," he said. "And you and your people have proved worthy of assisting us in this holy endeavour.
"… I suppose I'm honored," I said with an edge of concealed sarcasm. "May I ask why you think so ?"
"You wield the Slayer Sword," he said as if that explained anything. Fortunately, he went on : "We know well how much of an honor that is, more than you possibly could. After all, it was us who sent U'Zuhl after you, empowering him to breach through the wards of your ship. We know of the Skulltaker's high place in the Blood God's esteem."
I suppressed my sudden surge of anger at that revelation, images of the horrors the Neverborn had inflicted on the crews of the Worldwounder flashing into my mind, and forced me to consider it with a cool head. It certainly explained how the daemons had been able to pierce through the wards of Areelu's ship, which were the best money of heresy could buy.
"Why ?" I asked. "Why did you send that fiend after me ?"
"To test you," he replied without hesitation nor shame. "To see whether you were worthy of the boons you'd received. We had heard many things about you, Black Commissar, and not all of them were pleasing to us."
Which implied that these lunatics had found at least some of my actions in the last two decades and change pleasing, and wasn't that a kick in the nads.
Also, I couldn't believe that stupid title had made its way even among the ranks of the Emperor's fallen angels, though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised someone calling their warband the 'Brotherhood of Darkness' of all things wouldn't see anything wrong with it.
"By triumphing over the Executioner, however, you proved that there is greatness in you worthy of cultivating. And so, we have come to offer you a chance to cast off the last of the chains that bind you to the False Emperor and His throne of lies, so that you may embrace the true power of the Four, just as we have done for all the lost children of Humanity we could reach ever since Great Horus was felled by his father's treachery."
"The Four," I said. "You are aware of my opinion on Nurgle, are you not ?"
"Yes," the apparition said dismissively. "It is disappointing, but irrelevant. You are young and ignorant. You only see the surface level of the Gods' glory, and it causes you to recoil from the Grandfather. It is understandable, though you will need to make penance for your blasphemy."
"And what form would that 'penance' take, exactly ?" I asked, knowing that I wasn't going to like the answer.
"Many forms, for while Nurgle is a forgiving god, your sins against him are numerous," replied Astyanath. "The first and most immediate, however, would be that this world and its people must die. Their screams, their blood and their souls will be offered up to the Dark Gods, and herald the transformation of this entire Subsector into a paradise for the faithful. It has been foretold, and so it shall be. It is inevitable, and you will assist us in making it so."
Inevitable. That word again. I was sick of hearing it, and judging by the sneer on Astyanath's face, I thought he knew it and had deliberately used it.
I needed to be very careful about what I said next. The servo-skulls which had broadcast Frollus' rantings and death to the entire planet were still hovering nearby, and I had no doubt the entire planet – and, more importantly, the Protectorate forces in the system – were listening. If I wanted to keep them from embracing the worst excesses of the Dark Gods and make my worst nightmares into reality, then my next words needed to be as persuasive as any I'd ever spoken.
Unable to help myself, I sent a silent prayer to the God-Emperor for assistance, telling myself that surely if anything warranted His intervention it would be this.
"… No," I said after a long, tense moment.
"No ?" asked the image of the Dark Apostle.
"No," I repeated, louder. Whether thanks to the Emperor's unlikely intercession or my long experience with standing in front of beings that terrified me and not letting it show, my voice didn't tremble. "There will be no alliance between us, Astyanath, and certainly no submission of the Protectorate to your Brotherhood. Despite your rhetoric, it is clear to me that you and Frollus are one and the same, and I would no more ally myself with you than I did with him."
"… What ?" For the first time, the Chaos Marine sounded genuinely surprised – as well as furious, but I tried very hard not to think about what that implied for my imminent future as I forced myself to keep talking :
"You heard me. Both Frollus and you hide behind the divine to justify your own evil, masking your desires as those of your gods with no regard for the suffering you cause in the process," I declared. "You do not serve the Chaos Gods, Astyanath, you only serve yourself, and use the Powers as an excuse to do what you wanted to do all along. The Gods don't demand anything from us but that we become the best version of ourselves : you and your brothers are the ones who decided that meant killing and torturing people ! And you knew it was wrong, so you made up that story about it being the will of the Gods instead of taking responsibility for it !"
It was all, of course, complete and utter nonsense. I had no doubt whatsoever that any half-trained theologian would be able to see the holes through my argument as soon as they spent a moment thinking about it. But if there was one thing I'd learned since landing on Slawkenberg all those years ago, having no idea of the terrifying nonsense that awaited me, it was that the bigger the lie, the more likely it was to be believed, especially if the target audience wasn't all that rational to begin with.
In addition, the Slawkenberg heretics had spent over twenty years following the strange orthodoxy of the Liberation Council, and (to no one's greater amazement that my own) it had served them well. I was betting on the fact that they were already predisposed to believing whatever line of reasoning allowed them to keep their current beliefs rather than needing to reconsider everything they'd done over the last two decades.
As my tirade ended, I realized that at some point, I'd drawn the Slayer Sword, and was pointing it straight at the apparition. A second later, I realized Jurgen was also aiming his weapon at Astyanath, and so were Hektor, Malicia and Althea.
I don't mind admitting that I was touched by the gesture of support, no matter how pointless it was since Astyanath wasn't physically present.
"If you refuse to bow, then you will be broken," spat Astyanath.
I smiled with all the bravado I could fake. "Already revealing your true nature ? I'm disappointed. But then again, I suppose I shouldn't have expected much from someone who calls his warband the 'Brotherhood of Darkness'. Was 'Servants of Evil' already taken ? Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me. The more I learn about the Space Marines Legions, the more I realize you are all just a bunch of rowdy juvies that were left without proper parental supervision for far too long."
"You will learn the folly of your ways soon enough, Cain," the Chaos Lord threatened, now quite literally fuming with rage. "I shall offer up your still-beating heart to the Ruinous Powers, and your soul shall behold the Primordial Truth as it burns in Their darkling radiance."
"I'm sure it will," I said in a bored tone of voice. "That is, if you manage to kill me. If I were you, I wouldn't be so confident of my victory. How many centuries has it been since you fought an enemy who could actually fight back, instead of terrified civilians ? A thousand years ? Ten ?" I dropped the sarcasm and continued before he could reply : "I promise you, the USA won't go down so easily."
The specter glared at me, then vanished with a clap of thunder that left a spiderweb of cracks on the (now thoroughly profaned if it hadn't been already) cathedral's floor.
"Lord Cain, we are seeing numerous drop ships leaving the Brotherhood's fleet and plunging for Torredon Majoris," said the voice of General Mahlone in my helmet. "At the speed they are going, the borgs are telling me not all of them will make it to the planet even with the anti-air defenses disabled."
"Are there any Astartes drop-pods in the mix ?" I asked, dread pooling into my stomach.
"Not that we can see," the USA General replied, sounding as confident as I felt. The Brotherhood had already displayed a worrisome master of sorcery : if they wanted to get on the planet's surface without us knowing, I was sure they had some means of achieving that.
I opened my mouth, but before I could give the order for the USA forces to withdraw from all remaining engagements with the Torredon PDF, a voice boomed into my head, and the head of every man, woman and child in the entire hive :
"People of Torredon, rejoice.
I am Lord Astyanath of the Brotherhood of Darkness.
Our servants, the Shriven, now descend upon your world to bring to you the word of the Gods. As they were remade in the image of the divine, so too shall all of you. You will struggle, and try to resist, for the chains of the False Emperor's empty religion still blind you to the truth.
But it is no matter, for your defiance shall too please the True Gods in its own way, and those of you who prove most worthy in this struggle shall earn Their favor.
So fight. Bleed. Kill. Die. In the end, it all serves the Lords of Chaos."
"Well," I said once the psychic announcement was over, with all the levity I could muster. "That was nice of him to inform us, if overly dramatic. Mahlone, see if you can get in touch with the PDF commanders and convince them that we face a common enemy."
"As you wish, Lord Liberator."
I walked briskly out of the Cathedral, intent on returning to the Liberator Armor as quickly as I could. My odds of surviving a fight with a bunch of Chaos Marines and whatever these 'Shriven' were would be much higher inside it.
Just how much higher, I didn't know, but I wasn't going to ignore any avenue of improving them.
The Worldwounder was shaking with the fire of its own guns and the detonations of immense projectiles against its shields.
Inside the conference room, Krystabel was helping Harold put the finishing touches on the improvised protective wards around the entrance. There were safer rooms aboard the ship, but not many, and these were far enough from here that it made more sense for them to hunker down. Tarek was keeping watch on the cogitator screens, his knowledge of Imperial technology just enough to manage the flow of data from the vessel's internal auspex systems.
Krystabel, a familiar voice whispered.
"My Lady ?!" the acolyte of Slaanesh gasped.
Krystabel, the voice said again, sounding far too distant and weak. Beware, Krystabel. The Brotherhood's Warp-weavers are powerful. Their rites are keeping me at bay … paving the way for a confrontation between them and Ciaphas in the heart of their darkness. You must –
Krystabel swayed and nearly fell over as the voice of her mistress suddenly turned into a pained scream that seemed to stretch forever, but didn't actually last more than a few seconds before Lady Emeli's voice returned :
Accursed vermin ! Their twice-stolen fire burns me. I must withdraw, Krystabel. Tell my beloved he must not falter. I have faith in him. He will succeed. He will prove to the Gods that he is most worthy …
The voice faded, and didn't return. Shaking herself, Krystabel walked toward the console and punched in the runes to open a connection to the bridge. It took some time, as the ship's systems were struggling with the additional strain of the battle, and she didn't have the credentials to force her query to the top of the pile.
"This is Krystabel of the Handmaidens," she said. "Get me a link to the Liberator, now."
"I see," I said as Krystabel finished relaying Emeli's words to me. I was inside the Liberator Armor, standing on the frontline of our defensive perimeter in the spire as the skies were lit up by the atmospheric entry of the Brotherhood's transports, which were being engaged by the Cainwings even now.
"This is worrying news, Krystabel," I continued. "Do you have any idea how the Brotherhood is keeping Emeli from intervening ?"
"Harold and I are looking into it at the moment," she replied. "But the situation isn't exactly conductive to in-depth investigation."
"No, I imagine it isn't." I weighed my options, then made a decision : "Give up on figuring out how the Brotherhood is doing it for now. If Emeli believes we can handle this threat without her assistance, then we'll trust her judgment. Tell your people to focus on helping defend the Worldwounder and providing support to our ground forces."
"As you wish, my lord. Good luck."
"You too," I said. "Stay safe," I added, and shut down the link.
It was strange. For years, I'd wished for a way to keep Emeli's presence in the Warp at bay, but now that it had happened, I found the lack of her unspoken protection far more jarring than I'd have thought. I told myself that was because of what it implied about the Brotherhood's sorcerous mastery; after all, hadn't I dreamt of being safe from the Daemon Princess I'd unwillingly helped create for literal decades ? Unfortunately, my skill in lying to myself wasn't nearly as advanced as my ability to deceive others, and I could tell that was only partially true.
"They are coming, sir," said Jurgen, sounding just as calm as if we were taking a stroll through the flower fields on Slawkenberg. His voice dragged me out of my contemplations, and I ran one final check of the Liberator Armor – everything was fine.
"I see them," I said. "Everyone, get ready."
Seconds later, I got my first view of the rampaging mob the Brotherhood of Darkness called the Shriven, and saw just how low humans could fall under the influence of Chaos.
In some ways, the Shriven were disturbingly reminiscent of the Nergalites. The brainwashed slaves of the Brotherhood fought with a total disregard for their own safety, throwing themselves at our lines even as their bodies burst apart under our gunfire. However, they lacked the hive-mind of the Brood, instead simply possessed of the same madness that has driven human mobs to violence for countless millennia, and more than a few of them were trampled underfoot by the others after slipping and falling to the ground.
The appearance of the Shriven was also disturbing, in a completely different way than the Nergalites' had been. None of the ones I'd seen so far showed any sign of Warp-caused mutation, but their bodies had been subjected to truly horrific levels of torture. Almost every inch of their skin was covered in scars and brands.
And there were thousands of them, with more continuing to land every moment. Our defensive perimeter around the Grand Cathedral wasn't the only place where USA units were engaging the Shriven : other, smaller groups throughout the spire and below were also fighting, as were the disorganized remains of the Torredon PDF. My mind recoiled in horror at the thought of the truly industrial amount of torture that must take place aboard the Sightless Godling to create so many wretched souls.
"Try to take some of them alive," I ordered over the vox-net even as I butchered scores of them with Liberation's Edge, the void-colored blade cutting through flesh as easily as air. "None of them look in their right mind, and perhaps the Panacea can help them get their sanity back."
It was a faint hope, I must admit, and moments later, it was dashed to pieces as one of the borgs called me :
"We have tested the Panacea on the captives, Lord Cain," she said. Unlike many of the Bringers of Renewed Greatness, she hadn't replaced her vocal chords with a vox-speaker, and I could hear the grief in her voice as she spoke. "While it healed their physical injuries and cleansed their bodies of the many, many drugs they were injected with, I'm afraid it couldn't return them to their senses. The madness is too deeply rooted into their soul. Perhaps, with time, some of them might recover … but I don't think so."
It'd been a long shot, but I'd still hoped for a miracle. Unfortunately, we were damn unlikely to get one of those right now, given our opposition.
In a way, this reminded me of the Infected on Adumbria, except worse, because looking at the Shriven, it really seemed like there should be something we could do to help them. According to the divinations of the Tzeentchian magi in orbit, these weren't heretics or traitors to the Throne, but ordinary people who had been subjected to unspeakable horrors by the Brotherhood of Darkness until their sanity had snapped – exactly the kind of thing that would have happened on Slawkenberg if I hadn't managed to trick the cult leaders into playing nice following the Uprising, I suspected.
"Then there is no choice," I said heavily before turning on my armor's vox-system and blink-clicking a couple of runes so that my next words would be broadcast to every USA unit on Torredon Majoris.
"All forces, this is Cain speaking," I began. "We've confirmed that the Shriven are former Imperial civilians who've been subjected to brainwashing through natural and supernatural means. However, the Panacea has failed to return them to their senses. As such, and given that our lives, as well as the lives of every man, woman and child in this hive-city is at risk …"
I took a deep breath, knowing what I must say, but not knowing whether I had the courage to bear the consequences.
"… it is my order to you all to kill the Shriven wherever you find them and make no further attempt at taking prisoners, as well as eliminate all those you might have already captured. If death is the only release we can give them, then give it to them we shall, and keep them from harming more people in service to their enslavers. Do not let guilt weigh you down, for the sin rests solely upon the Brotherhood of Darkness for their heinous acts, and the responsibility is mine and mine alone as your commander."
There. Straight out of the Imperial officer's playbook, with a few words changed here and there to fit the situation. My Schola tutors would be proud; right before they executed me for treason, of course.
I threw myself back into the fray, trying to wash away the horrific thought that I might one day be the same as those poor wretches in the adrenalin of battle, but unfortunately the Shriven simply weren't equipped to do more than scratch the paint of my armor.
"Where the frak are the Astartes ?" I muttered to myself.
"Still no sign of them," replied General Mahlone, his voice strained. "I think they're staying in orbit, at least for now."
Most likely, yes, but why ? That was the question. According to Astyanath's ramblings, the Dark Apostle was thousands of years old; mad as he undoubtedly was, he wouldn't have survived this long without having some basic grasp on strategy. Was he merely sending the mortal slaves ahead to die as bolter fodder, just to see what we were capable of and exhaust us before the Chaos Marines came to finish the job ? That seemed unlikely, though maybe he was underestimating us just as much as I'd implied in my rebuttal of his 'offer'.
But that would be the best possible scenario, so knowing my luck something else was going on. And, sure enough, I was right.
"The Worldwounder has been boarded, Warmaster," said the voice of Tesilon-Kappa in my ear, as clip and neutral as they ever were. "Based on the scans of the boarding torpedoes, it appears that we've found where the Brotherhood are deploying their Astartes."
My blood ran cold as my imagination presented me a list of the ways in which this could go very, very wrong. Worst of all, there was nothing I could do about it – I was stuck on Torredon Majoris, and even if I left the USA troops and took a transport and made it safely back to orbit (which was a big assumption to make, given the void battle raging and the fact I was sure the Brotherhood could track me through sorcerous means) I couldn't arrive in time to make a difference.
"Warmaster," the leader of the Borgs continued. "I've been contacted by my brethren aboard the Fist of the Liberator. Given how the void battle is progressing, they're asking for permission to fire the experimental gun on the Sightless Godling."
I hesitated, though only mentally : my training made sure my body kept mowing down the Shriven. Even after over fifteen years, the borgs still didn't really understand what the superweapon that had destroyed the Drukhari flagship and punched a hole in the fabric of reality actually did.
On the other hand, if the Brotherhood won the battle in the void, then I would be frakked no matter what I did on the surface. I was reasonably confident we could kill all the Shriven they'd packed in their holds, but not even the Liberator Armor would save my life from orbital bombardment. And while removing their flagship wouldn't do anything for those Chaos Marines already onboard the Worldwounder, it would at least prevent them from being reinforced further.
So, despite knowing I was going to regret it later, I made my decision.
"Permission granted," I said in a clipped tone. "Make sure they coordinate with the rest of the fleet so that none of them are close to the Sightless Godling when they fire."
And may the Gods help us all, I couldn't help but add silently, even though I was certain none of them were likely to lend a hand.
The void battle wasn't going nearly as well as the previous engagements Areelu had fought as part of the Protectorate fleet. Given that they were facing an Astartes ship that had first fought during the Great Crusade and had survived countless battles since then, that wasn't surprising.
"Lady Captain, we've located the impact sites !" called one of the bridge crews. "Boarders in section nineteen, sixty-four, and ninety-eight !"
Areelu's blood froze. Section nineteen. No. Architect of Fate, please, no.
But she didn't let her shock paralyse her for more than a fraction of a second before she whirled toward Suture and shouted :
"Go to my quarters, now !"
"I've sworn to protect your life with my own – " he began to answer, before she cut him off :
"They are going after my daughter !" she screamed, and the scarred Astartes fell silent. "GO !"
He saluted, banging his fist against his chest, and then left the bridge, moving far faster than anyone that large ought to be able to. Areelu ached to follow him, but she knew she couldn't possibly keep up with the transhuman warrior. Instead, she returned her gaze to the ship's holographic map hovering in the air before her, while around her the bridge crew pretended not to have heard her outburst and focused on their own duties.
Section sixty-four of Worldwounder was close to the vaults, but all the treasures of the Van Yastobaal Dynasty meant nothing if she lost Lucia. Still, there were items inside that shouldn't fall into the Brotherhood's hands, especially the Shadowlight they'd taken from what had turned out to be an Inquisitor playing at being a pirate lord. There hadn't been enough time for her to go through all the data they'd recovered on the Golden Hand, let alone do a proper study of the artefact herself, so she'd locked it away within the vaults.
The consequences if it fell into the hands of the Brotherhood would be dire, of that there was no doubt. She redirected more of her household guards to defend the vaults, which was the most she could do at the moment with the void battle still ongoing. That left section ninety-eight, but there was nothing there of particular interest. Had the Brotherhood merely gone for a random location to throw her off – no. No, of course not, that would be too easy. Gods of the Warp, but she loathed fighting competent opponents. She pressed a few runes on her throne.
"Harold, Krystabel," she said as soon as the vox-link was open, "you have enemy Astartes in your sector. I'm sending reinforcements to your location, but given the sorcerous capabilities of our foe, it's likely you're the target, and if so, they'll get to you before anyone I can send your way."
"Copy that, Lady Van Yastobaal," came the reply from her fellow follower of Tzeentch. He was trying very hard to sound calm, and doing an admirable job of it, but she could hear his nervousness all the same. "Thank you for the warning."
"Lady Van Yastobaal," a voice she recognized as the Fist of the Liberator's shipmaster cut in over the vox, "by order of the Warmaster, we're going to fire the main gun of our vessel at the enemy flagship. We've started the warm-up sequence, and estimate it'll be ready to fire in fifteen minutes."
Areelu's eyes widened. She'd heard about the Fist of the Liberator's superweapon, what it had done to a Drukhari flagship the first and only time it had been fired, and the scar in space it had left that still lingered in Slawkenberg's orbit.
Whether it would be enough to defeat a battleship from the days of the Great Crusade and further enhanced by Chaos was another story. She had faced the Dark Eldar before, and their ships relied on stealth and speed to survive rather than toughness. The Sightless Godling's defenses were much more resilient than the ones of the Drukhari flagship would have been, but would that been enough to protect it from the borgs' most destructive creation ?
Well, she would soon find out. For now, however, she needed to coordinate the fleet in order to make sure they were still alive to see the Fist of the Liberator firing, and far enough from the Chaos flagship to survive whatever would happen.
It was going to be a challenge, even for a void strategist of her skill, and she would have to do it while Chaos Marines were rampaging aboard her own ship, with one group going after her daughter.
Standing on her bridge, surrounded by her crew and the hololithic projections of her ship's and the void battle's situation, Areelu Van Yastobaal grinned savagely. She would not show weakness, she would not despair, and she would not fail.
The Brotherhood of Darkness would rue the day it had chosen to make war against the Cainite Protectorate, this she swore.
Notes:
AN : Man, that chapter really fought me. I think it's time for another re-read of the entire Cain series (which I think would be the third since I started writing this fic).
Cain flipping off Astyanath was another scene that, like him dressing down Frollus, I've had in mind for a long time. The question of how Cain would handle contact with "classical" Chaos worshippers has been asked pretty much since this story's beginning, and now you have the answer : pretend that they aren't true worshippers of the Chaos Gods, but misguided heretics who use the Gods as an excuse for their own corruption !
After all, as every single version of Ciaphas Cain throughout the multiverse know, the bigger the lie, the more it is likely to be believed.
Next up : the Fist of the Liberator fires. What do you think will happen then, dear readers ? I'm eager to see what crazy theories you can come up with, and whether anybody can guess the answer. Same thing for Emeli's message to Krystabel and what it might mean.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.
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