The Ebonite Archymsts 22 страница

Eventually, he found what he was looking for – the small, plum-shaped organ connected to a host of mysterious fleshy tendrils as thin as hairs.

‘Now what might be going on here?’ he wondered as he engaged the energised edges of the drill and pressed down hard to break through the layered bone protecting the organs within. Laser cutters burned through flesh and bone as internal tubing siphoned the blood away, and Kalimos jerked as the laser sent pulses of electrical energy through the strange pathways of his body. Fresh blood leaked from his ruptured eyeballs, and an exhalation of what sounded like pleasure sighed from between his blue lips.

The drill clamped in place and the automated mechanisms of the reductor finished its work. Carefully, Soulaka withdrew the drill as the hollow tubes filled with blood and the squirming lump of the harvested organ. The blade self-sterilised and the reductor retracted into his gauntlet, sealing the precious gene-seed within.

‘Is that really yours to take?’ said a voice behind Soulaka, and he jumped in surprise, reaching for the bolt pistol at his hip. A hand flashed out, swift as thought, and clamped down on the butt of the weapon before his own could reach it.

‘Now, now, not so hasty,’ said a warrior with a face full of scars and an arrogant, cocksure glint in his eyes. ‘We’re all friends here, are we not?’

‘Who are you?’ asked Soulaka, slowly lifting his hand away from his holster.

‘Lucius,’ said the warrior, kneeling beside Kalimos.

‘Where are your Legion’s Apothecaries?’ demanded Soulaka. ‘There are legionaries dying here. They could be saved.’

Lucius ignored the question and freed the toothed whip from the dead man’s grip.

‘You won’t be needing this then, Kalimos,’ he said, relishing the feel of the barbed grip in his bare hand. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of it for you.’

‘Did you hear what I said?’ said Soulaka.

‘I heard,’ said Lucius, standing and hanging the coiled whip from a hook on his belt. Now that he took a moment to study this Lucius, he saw a man perfectly in balance with his physique, a killer with an intimate knowledge of his body’s limitations.

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘Where are your Apothecaries?’

‘Only one came aboard your iron ship,’ said Lucius. ‘And I don’t think he’s particularly interested in saving lives.’

‘Then what kind of Apothecary is he?’

Lucius leaned in close, and Soulaka could taste the sourness of his breath, the rank sweat of his unwashed body and the blood of fresh scarring.

‘The kind that’s standing right behind you,’ said Lucius.

Soulaka spun around and found himself face to face with a gaunt-featured cadaver of a man with thready white hair, the blackest eyes and a cloak of leathered flesh over his armour of purple and gold. A leprous form of servo-harness sprouted from his back, and he carried an elongated needle pistol in slender, mantis-like fingers.

Soulaka heard a tiny thip sound and felt a sharp sting at his neck, like an insect bite.

He reached up and tugged a sliver of hollow crystal from his neck. A droplet of blood hung suspended at the tip, like a ruby tear. He tried to make sense of what he was seeing, but his mind was suddenly fogged and sluggish.

‘Fabius?’ he said, his voice sounding as though it echoed from the bottom of a deep chasm.

‘None other,’ said the man, who reached out and lowered him to the ground as the strength poured from Soulaka’s body. He tried to speak, but Fabius hushed him with a finger placed tenderly over his lips.

‘The xyclos toxin thrives on resistance and will make your suffering much worse should you desire to die in pain,’ said Fabius.

Soulaka could no longer feel his limbs and he nodded, as though what Fabius was saying was the most natural thing in the world.

‘You took something that does not belong to you,’ said Fabius, expertly opening Soulaka’s code-locked reductor to remove the gene-seed he had taken from Kalimos.

‘No, I…’ said Soulaka, but whatever he had been about to say slipped away.

Fabius placed something heavy against his chest.

Soulaka looked down and though he knew he should recognise the device, its name and purpose escaped him. Fabius pressed hard and Soulaka grunted as laser-edged blades spun up to cutting speed, coring down through the layers of his plastron and the thickened bone of his chest. He felt the device boring deep into his body, but there was no pain. Which was good. He felt a tugging sensation inside him as an internal organ was cut free. Tears welled in the corners of his eyes, though he could not say why.

Fabius leaned in close to whisper in his ear. ‘Tell me your name.’

‘What–?’

‘Your name,’ said the white-haired angel of death. ‘What is it?’

That at least he did know.

‘I am Honourable Soulaka,’ he said, pleased to have remembered this fact.

‘Honourable? You are a mason master?’ asked Fabius.

‘I am,’ said Soulaka.

‘Interesting,’ said Fabius.

Soulaka looked down. A neat hole had been bored through his breastplate. Blood coated his armour with a glistening sheen, and a viscous froth of blood and bone fragments pooled in his lap. The Apothecary of the Emperor’s Children cradled a metallic vial, upon which the spidery arms of his bio-harness scratched two words: Honourable Soulaka.

With his last breath of life, Soulaka fell back on the one source of strength left to him.

‘From iron cometh strength. From strength cometh will. From…’

His words faded away.

‘Yes,’ said Fabius. ‘Your gene-seed should be ripe with potential.’

Fulgrim took his time in answering the summons, but Perturabo had expected that, and his humours were in balance when the layered doors swung open. The robots of the Iron Circle brought their threat sensors to bear, but Perturabo waved them down as Fulgrim swept inside with a tired, pained expression.

Perturabo’s attention was focused on a clockwork automaton: the working model of a Warhound Titan that was almost as fully functional as the real thing. Its upper carapace was hinged open, revealing a fiendishly complex latticework of gears, cogs and timing shafts. The metronomic beat of its mechanical heart tick tocked to a precise rhythm, and the miniature screwdriver Perturabo held was no thicker than a human hair.

Two of the Iron Circle moved aside to allow Fulgrim within, and behind him came two of his captains – Kaesoron and Vairosean – together with the limping form of his last Lord Commander, Eidolon. Behind them came his Trident, who moved to take position at the cardinal points of a triangle around him. Perturabo gave Forrix a slow nod.

Fulgrim glanced around, and seeing that little – if anything – had changed from his last visit to Perturabo’s sanctum, lost interest in surroundings that would have captivated Terran scholars for months. Fulgrim was clad in his battle armour, bearing a fresh coat of paint that was almost painfully vivid in its colouring. The amethyst and gold were somehow too real, too sharp-edged; as though painted on the surface of his retinas.

‘Sit,’ said Perturabo.

For a moment, he thought Fulgrim would refuse, the command too imperious, too demeaning in the presence of their subordinates. Though he knew it was a childish ploy that a narcissist like Fulgrim would see through in a heartbeat, he ignored his brother and continued working on the Warhound’s interior.

Just as he judged Fulgrim was about to speak, he said, ‘I summoned you five hours ago.’

‘I am aware of that,’ said Fulgrim, tight-lipped and bowstring taut. ‘But I just lost a warship, so my attention has been somewhat diverted.’

‘You needlessly lost a warship,’ pointed out Perturabo.

‘Is that why you summoned me to your tinker’s workshop?’ snapped Fulgrim. ‘To berate me for showing a measure of intrepidity? If you have brought me here to gloat or say I told you so, then you can save your breath. I will not apologise for wanting to learn more of those who would oppose us.’

‘And what did you learn?’ said Perturabo, finally looking up from his working. ‘What great revelations do your monsters bring us from so bold an expedition?’

Fulgrim said nothing and cast his gaze around the room, as though the paintings, anatomical diagrams and mathematical proofs were now of sudden interest to him. His gaze hardened as his eyes alighted on the sketches over Perturabo’s shoulder, and he knew exactly what Fulgrim was going to say before he said it.

‘How did you get those drawings?’

‘Which ones?’

‘The gruesome ones,’ said Fulgrim. ‘The ones showing what looks like…’

‘Primarch anatomy? You know how I got them.’

Fulgrim nodded and an ugly expression of bitter jealousy clouded his features.

‘I remember little of the time before our scattering,’ said Fulgrim with a dismissive shrug.

‘You remembered enough to pass on something to your fleshsmith.’

‘Fabius?’ said Fulgrim. ‘No, I gave him nothing except permission to explore to the furthest reaches of his knowledge.’

‘Really? You told him nothing?’

‘Well, I may have pointed him in certain directions,’ admitted Fulgrim, ‘but the work he has done is all his own. Admittedly, what he has manufactured so far leaves something to be desired, but no great art is ever achieved without effort and blood.’

‘It is wrong,’ said Perturabo.

‘Wrong?’ said Fulgrim, as though the word were anathema to him. ‘Haven’t you seen yet? There is no right and wrong. We are beings of will and desire, and only by exercising the former and indulging the latter do we move closer to ultimate perfection. Fabius’s imperfect science might be crafting monsters just now, but eventually he will create something godlike.’

‘All he will create are bastard hybrids, mongrel half-breeds that should be strangled at birth,’ said Perturabo. ‘You should stop what he is doing before it goes any further.’

‘I will not,’ stated Fulgrim.

Perturabo sighed and returned his attention to the clockwork model of the Warhound.

‘You are never so certain as when you don’t know just how wrong you can be,’ he said, picking up his tools and working on the machine’s interior once again.

‘Is it broken?’ asked Fulgrim.

‘The perpetual motion driver at its heart is losing time,’ said Perturabo.

‘I thought that was impossible.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Perturabo, tightening a screw no larger than a grain of sand. ‘A genius of Old Earth discovered the theoretical principles thousands of years ago, but he lacked the technology to manufacture a working prototype. I have many of his journals and secret papers in my library and was able to extrapolate what had been lost to draw up the schematics for Vulkan to build.’

Fulgrim nodded, already bored. ‘I would have thought Vulkan would have better things to do with his forges, like making guns and swords.’

‘Then you don’t know him at all,’ said Perturabo. ‘His love of the forge encompasses all things, from crafting weapons to fashioning miniature wonders of artifice.’

‘But that one isn’t working?’ asked Fulgrim. ‘Then he’s not as good as I heard.’

‘No, it was perfect,’ said Perturabo. ‘It was damaged during the fighting at Phall. It fell from a shelf and the mechanism was knocked out of alignment. If you listen closely, you can hear the variation in each cycle of its mechanical heart.’

Perturabo reached out and placed the Warhound on the workbench in front of Fulgrim.

‘I have no interest in your toys,’ he said.

‘Listen,’ insisted Perturabo.

Fulgrim sighed and leaned in close to the table, turning his head to listen.

Perturabo’s hand flashed out and gripped Fulgrim’s hair. With sudden force, he slammed his brother’s face into the Warhound. The wondrous automaton shattered into a thousand pieces as Fulgrim’s head crunched into the pitted surface of the workbench.

Bone broke and blood spattered. Cogs flew, tiny springs and gear levers spun off.

Fulgrim cried out in painful shock and his captains surged forwards.

The Iron Circle smashed them aside with wrecking-ball blows from their energy shields and before the Emperor’s Children could recover, the Trident were upon them. Perturabo hauled Fulgrim over the workbench, scattering drawings, fragile tools, schematics and half-finished sketches. Though Fulgrim was fully armoured, Perturabo lifted him by the neck with no more effort than lifting a mortal man. Fulgrim spat blood, and Perturabo slammed his fist into his brother’s face, snapping his head back with a crack of bone.

Fulgrim’s eyes blazed black and his face glimmered with reptilian malice.

He started to speak, but Perturabo didn’t give him the chance. Like a fist-fighter going for the kill, he battered his brother’s face with pistoning jabs until he had him backed up against an iron column. He pinned Fulgrim in place and drew back his free hand to reach for Forgebreaker.

The hammer rose, but Perturabo left the blow hanging.

Fulgrim’s perfect face was a wet meat wound, leaking blood, snot and tears. His breath was hoarse and clogged with phlegm and broken teeth, his eyes were swollen shut. He tried to speak, but Perturabo cut him off again.

‘No, brother,’ he said. ‘I am speaking now, and you will listen to me.’

Falk, Kroeger and Forrix hauled Fulgrim’s captive officers over, powerful arms wrapped around their necks and wide-bore pistols jammed in hard to their flesh.

‘I have bitten my tongue and allowed you to bring my Legion into this place,’ said Perturabo. ‘I have followed your lead in all things, I have listened to your tall tales and allowed you to set the pace of this expedition.’

Perturabo leaned forwards and said, ‘That ends now.’

He released Fulgrim, who held himself erect in the face of Perturabo’s cold anger.

‘Your warriors have no discipline, monsters fight your battles and you have allowed an entire vessel to be sacrificed in the name of vanity, but no more. From here onwards, I am in charge and for the duration of this mission, your Legion is mine to command. Your warriors will obey my orders, they will follow my lead, and they will do nothing except by my command. If you agree to that, then we will continue on into the Eye of Terror and finish this together. If you don’t, then I will take my Legion and leave you here. Do you understand?’

Fulgrim nodded and swallowed a mouthful of blood.

‘I understand, brother,’ he said, his voice a gargled, mangled mockery of its once perfect cadence. ‘I understand that you humble me and expect me to swallow my pride. To be your lapdog.’

‘I don’t need a damn lapdog,’ snarled Perturabo. ‘I need an equal.’

‘But I am not your equal, brother,’ said Fulgrim, grinning through his bloodied features, as though this outburst of violence was somehow amusing. ‘I surpass you in every way.’

‘And yet I’m the one holding the hammer,’ said Perturabo.

‘You say you want an equal, but where is the equality when you secure my assent at the end of a weapon?’

Perturabo lowered Forgebreaker and harnessed it across his shoulder once again. He turned to the Trident and said, ‘Release them.’

‘My lord,’ said Barban Falk. Kaesoron struggled in his grip, despite the pistol wedged under his stretched open jaws. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure,’ said Perturabo. ‘Because the lesson of history tells me that the best way to get what you want is to make sure you give the other man something too.’

‘And what do you give me?’ said Fulgrim, coughing a wad of red-flecked saliva.

‘I let you live,’ said Perturabo.

‘That’s not much to give.’

‘It’s what I’m offering. Take it or leave it. Take it, and no one in the room will ever speak of this. You have my word on that.’

Fulgrim shrugged, as though the matter was of no consequence. He looked down at Perturabo’s chest and smiled with reptilian hunger.

‘I see I have misjudged you, brother,’ he said. ‘Do you know how long it has been since anyone has caused me real pain? No, of course, you don’t. But trust me, it’s been a while.’

The swelling around Fulgrim’s jaw was already fading. Shattered bones in his cheek and nose and jaw would be knitting, and the bruises around his eyes were yellowing. Primarchs healed fast, but Perturabo was impressed at the speed with which Fulgrim’s body was undoing the damage he had suffered.

‘So do we have an agreement?’

‘We do,’ said Fulgrim, running his hands through his hair and giving his warriors a curt nod. The Trident released their charges, but instead of the expected posturing and threats, Fulgrim’s captains merely followed the Phoenician as he strode away. Perturabo watched him go, surprised Fulgrim had agreed so readily, but content he had shown his brother that he would not be so casually disobeyed.

The encounter with Fulgrim had left him drained, and he let out a shuddering breath, rubbing his hand over his scalp. His eyes were gritty with exhaustion and he needed a drink. The violent urges of his triarchs were a potent cocktail of combat stimms and aggression pheromones, chemical precursors to a fight that hadn’t happened. Kroeger was disappointed more blood had not been shed, and Falk’s fists were still balled in anticipation of killing.

Only Forrix looked uncomfortable at what had just happened, picking over the smashed remains of the broken Warhound.

‘Something troubles you, my triarch?’ asked Perturabo.

‘I don’t know why, but I’ve always hated this model,’ said Forrix. ‘Though I’m sad to see it destroyed.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Perturabo. ‘You think I was wrong to bloody Fulgrim?’

‘No.’

‘You are a poor liar, Forrix.’

‘I don’t think you were wrong to bloody him, my lord,’ said Forrix. ‘But did you have to humiliate him in front of his warriors?’

‘Fulgrim needed to be taught a lesson,’ said Kroeger.

‘That he did,’ agreed Forrix, lifting a tiny cog-toothed wheel and turning it in a slow circle between his thumb and forefinger. ‘But if you’re going to skin a cat, you don’t keep it around as a house pet.’

Theogonies – III The ruined manufactory provided shelter from the wire storm, keeping the three of them alive while the razor-flecked particulates howled and surged beyond the irradiated skin of the building. Ptolea and Sullax had complained about the need to stop here, but what was the alternative? To suffer the ravages of a storm that could strip a man to the bone inside of a minute? Yes, the rad-counters were in the red, but Coryn knew the danger would pass before they’d suffer hazardous levels of exposure.

People said that places like this had once been generating stations, that it had taken dangerous materials and employed forgotten technology to harness its power. Well that power had evidently turned on its makers, and laid waste to the planet, releasing toxins that had burned the atmosphere and boiled the oceans away.

Their structures were irradiated and would remain so for thousands of years. That was the only reason they hadn’t been torn down and their materials reused.

Everything was reused in Callax – the bleak, iron-walled fortress factory Coryn called home. Almost nothing was new, everything had once been something else. The planet’s only readily available water was what could be extracted from the air by the towering vapour mills, and the food was reconstituted from yesterday’s bodily waste. Coryn had never known anything different, but the chapbook his father had given him on his fifth birthday spoke of the ancient gods and their sumptuous banquets, tables groaning with endless goblets of pure water and rich food that hadn’t been scraped from recycling vats or processed a thousand times to remove any impurities.

The book had belonged to Coryn’s great-great-grandfather, and its pages were brittle and thin, yet the inked pictures were still vivid and full of life. They were the only spots of colour in Coryn’s bleak, grey existence. They showed skies of blue and gold, with hundreds of lights that his father had told him were stars. His father said there were still stars up there, beyond the Umbral, but no one really believed that. His father said a lot of things, but no one believed much of what the old man had to say. His days were numbered anyway, his limbs too weak to work the forges and his mind too prone to straying to be of any use in the logistical executives.

Coryn unzipped his padded jerkin and slipped the book from his shirt, taking great care not to damage its cover and whisper-thin pages. While the storm blew out the worst of its flensing rage on the building’s exterior, he read stories he knew by heart, but still enjoyed for the respite they provided from the miserable labours of daily life.

‘Still reading your children’s stories?’ said Ptolea, trudging into the room and wiping glittering flecks of steel wool from her padded jerkin. She sat down next to him with her back to the wall and her knees drawn up in front of her.

‘They’re not children’s stories,’ he said.

‘Don’t see the point of them,’ said Ptolea, lighting a smoke that was mostly sweepings from a factory floor. The smell was terrible, but Coryn wasn’t about to deny his friend one of the few pleasures left to her. ‘What’s the point of reading about things that don’t exist?’

Coryn turned the book around and showed her a page featuring a warrior in blue armour wrestling with a great serpentine creature with many arms.

‘Because they’re better than the things that do,’ he said.

‘Pretty,’ she said and reached out to take the book, but he pulled it back to his chest.

‘Sorry,’ he said by way of apology. ‘It’s delicate. Kind of a family heirloom. I always hoped I’d pass it on to my kids, you know, if I get permission.’

Sullax stomped in from outside and also swept himself clear of wiry dust particles.

‘Won’t be any chance of children if we stay here much longer,’ said Sullax, cupping his groin. ‘Place is buzzing with radiation. Bloody stupid idea coming out here.’

‘You didn’t have to come,’ pointed out Coryn.

‘Course I did,’ said Sullax, as though he were being obtuse. ‘You’re my work-brother, and I need to keep you alive.’

‘Touching,’ said Ptolea.

‘Yeah – if he dies, I need to make up his quota,’ growled Sullax, only half-joking.

Coryn didn’t answer, well aware that it was a risky venture they were on, but unwilling to admit that to his fellow scouts. He’d had to fight to persuade the executive to let him take the patrol out in the first place. The last thing he needed was to bring back dead bodies torn up by a wire storm or dosed with radiation that would make them infertile or, worse, unproductive.

He wasn’t sure what had driven him to venture beyond the safety of Callax’s hermetic walls, but the sight of that violet cometary fall had struck a chord in him that was still thrumming with purpose. Coryn had to know what it was, and he’d managed to convey that passion to the grey-suited members of the executive. Perhaps it was evidence of another surviving world, a link to their lost history and the other planets that were said to have existed once beyond the Umbral. Perhaps it might be the remains of a satellite whose orbit had decayed enough for gravity finally to drag it down.

Either reason was good enough to warrant a patrol, but the only resources the executive had seen fit to allocate him were two other scouts. Both of whom, they insisted, had to be volunteers. Naturally he’d picked his dwelling-sister and his work-brother. Neither believed this was a good idea, but neither had they liked the idea of him going into the chem wilderness alone.

The comet had fallen no more than a couple of kilometres beyond the walls, but it was still a difficult and dangerous journey. They hadn’t been allocated any transport, and had been forced to trudge through the ash and rock on foot. Beneath the perpetually grey sky, they’d just about reached the haunches of the mountains that rose up behind Callax when the wire storm had set in and driven them to take shelter in the ruined power plant.

‘Looks like it’s dying down,’ noted Ptolea, leaning up to peer through a crack in the steel panelling. ‘It’ll be nasty and sore, but we can make good time and be back before next shift.’

‘Come on then,’ sighed Sullax. ‘Some sleep before shift would be good.’

Coryn felt a surge of guilt and tried to keep it from his face. Shifts in the factories, reclamation plants and vapour mills were hard enough, never mind trying to get through one without enough rest.

They pulled their chem cloaks on and settled their masks in place before making their way back down to ground level and setting off into the blunted teeth of the wire storm.

Ptolea had been right, its fury had passed its peak and the vortex at its centre was already moving on. He felt the stinging impacts of the sharp-edged particulate matter battering his heavy canvas trousers and padded jacket, knowing his skin would be dotted with tiny blood blisters when he removed his protective outer layers. But the farther they went, the less intense the surges and squalls became, until he could at last see the edges of the mountain.

It wasn’t difficult to see where the meteorite had come down.

A smoking furrow of rock had been carved from the low foothills, the edges sagging and molten-looking. Pyroclastic material fell like hot black rain, smelling of burned metal. Coryn let some of it settle on his gloved palm and held it out to the others.

‘Carbon re-entry burn residue?’ he asked. ‘From a starship?’

‘Maybe,’ said Ptolea, but Coryn heard the excitement in her voice.

They marched into the newly created valley, its sides glassy and vitrified by the passage of whatever had carved it. Sheltered now from the last remnants of the storm, Coryn lifted his mask, and took a breath of air. It was utterly still and calm and smelled sweet and fragrant, free of the toxins he’d expect to taste, more like the oils rubbed on newborn babes.

‘Still think this was a waste of time?’ he asked Sullax.

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Sullax. ‘Depends what’s at the end of this.’

Дата добавления: 2015-11-13