Carcharodons: Red Tithe Read online

  Bar’ghul’s daemonkin slaughtered the boarders. Shadraith watched them do it, secreted in what had once been the Imperial Truth’s Navigator Tower. He spirit-walked the darkened corridors of the captured ship, observing from the whispering shadows as horrors of pulsing, unnatural flesh materialised from nowhere, tearing apart the Imperials foolish enough to step into their new lair. He’d disrupted their communication nets – both long and short ranged – with vox-thieves, so that each group was unaware of the grisly fate of the others. It was all far too easy.

  A greater challenge waited on the surface of the world below, amidst the prison tunnels and mine shafts. Shadraith yearned for it.

  He is our future, Bar’ghul told him, the words echoing inside his skull. The weaves of fate have now bound us all together. Find him for me.

  Shadraith had never taken well to orders, daemonic or otherwise. Like all Night Lords, he looked dimly upon the creatures of the warp and their arcane pacts, even as one whose very power was drawn from the maddening sea in which they swam. He had long ago decided that his abilities did not derive from some indecipherable creature’s base whims. It was within him, in the strength it took to harness such horrors.

  ‘Where is he?’ Shadraith demanded. His consciousness was returning once again to the Navigator’s Tower, to his body, the figure known to his brothers as the Flayed Father.

  Beneath the surface, Bar’ghul said. The daemon’s voice was distant, as though carried on a faint night wind. Others are coming to claim him. They must not succeed.

  ‘Others?’

  The Hunters in the Void. Your lost brothers.

  ‘That means nothing to me. Do not speak in your senseless riddles, daemon.’

  The Pale Nomad and the rest of his mongrel, exiled kin. You have seen him with your foresight. You will know them when he arrives. Find the boy before he does.

  ‘I will.’

  And when you do, bind me to him.

  ‘And you will give me the powers you’ve promised.’

  Of course.

  Shadraith looked up at the crystalflex observation blister that constituted the tower’s domed ceiling. They had caught the Imperial Truth in the depths of the warp, two days out from the midway listening station at Gorgas. Shadraith’s ritual had successfully split the ship’s Geller field long enough for Bar’ghul’s daemonic horrors to overrun the crew. The Night Lords had taken possession of it and broken from the warp in time to check in at Gorgas with vox-recordings falsified through Shadraith’s dark arts. The trap had been baited and set.

  Past the crystalflex the stars glittered, a firmament of shining silver on black velvet. Beyond them there was nothing. Here on the edge of the galaxy, among the haunted asteroids and dying stars of oblivion’s edge, the void yawned. What was out there, coming to Zartak through the eternal dark? Shadraith’s mind had been plagued by visions of inky black eyes and pale, dead flesh. Bar’ghul had faced this enemy before. That they had survived an encounter with the ancient daemon was evidence of the threat they posed.

  He rose, warp scythe grasped in one gauntlet, the ancient flesh pinned to his armour crackling. He was needed on the surface. The final blow was poised, ready to be struck. Then the hunt for the boy could begin.

  Down in the depths of the White Maw, the Greats slumbered. There were three of them, three Wandering Ancestors, their bones reduced to ossified cartilage, sealed away for eternity in the adamantium shells of their Contemptors. The ancient Dreadnoughts slept as they had done for the better part of a millennium, the frames of the war machines locked and inert upon a shingle-like dais at the centre of the half-flooded chamber.

  Omekra-five-one-Kordi paid tribute to the slumbering warriors. He was one of six Carcharodons kneeling in the lapping water of the Bay of Silence, unarmoured, his plain robes soaked through. The vaulted chambers of the lower decks, carved from great blocks of craggy basalt, were filled with meltwater. Normally the vast room would have been frozen during void travel, the better to preserve its three venerable occupants. The imminent break into real space, however, meant that the thermal cycles had been restarted. Soon it would be possible to awake the Greats, if circumstances demanded. Kordi prayed they would not.

  The Fourth Squad Tactical Marine focused his mind, seeking the inner silence that was a key part of every Carcharodon’s pre-battle ritual. All sought such solace. It reminded them of the emptiness of existence beyond the Void Father’s light, of the insignificance of the individual self. War was a frenzied beast, a primal thing of thunderous roars and howls, but it did not last forever. The silence had existed before it, and when war lay down and died the silence returned. The void was the only constant, the certainty of an eternal emptiness.

  Kordi let his surroundings melt like the ice that had once entombed the chamber. The chill of the water lapping around his thighs faded, merging with the muted throb of the ship’s warp drives. The presence of the other Carcharodons kneeling either side of him slipped away too. They had all come here from disparate parts of the battle company, each drawn by personal needs. For his own part, Kordi was trying to forget. Flashes of a past life, of sandy shores and clear seas, would invade his consciousness at inopportune moments. It was always the same at the start of a new operation. Even after almost a century, the hypno-inductions and indoctrination drills hadn’t managed to erase all of the boy that had existed before the void had come for him.

  Kordi hated the memories. They were only fragmentary shards, but they clashed with the sense of purpose he now felt as part of the company. He had consulted Apothecary Tama numerous times, but there was no cure. The induction process had been imperfect, as it so often was with the Carcharodons’ limited resources. Kordi had been informed that, Void Father willing, his last few pre-initiation memories would fade with time. Until then communion in the calming presence of the Greats was the only thing that brought him focus.

  Kordi let the silence roll over him, his eyes on the three great, unmoving pillars of metal. Their armoured shells shimmered with the murky lumen light that reflected back off the surrounding water, the flickering patterns at odds with their own stillness. The black helm lenses, set low in their armoured shoulders, were dull and lifeless, staring out over the shaven heads of the kneeling Carcharodons with corpse-like vacancy. In his mind’s eye Kordi saw the three creatures within, little more than torn amalgamations of white flesh thick with scar tissue and the denticle scabs caused by their aged, defective gene-seed. Their thoughts were faint and distant, swimming deep below surface consciousness, sliding blissfully through the dark, numbing waters of oblivion. Kordi sought to join them. He closed his eyes, his breathing deep and regular, feeling his heart slowing as his body relaxed in the icy waters.

  The woman smiled at him, her arms open, the encouragement warm on her sun-kissed face. He took a few tottering steps. The old man beside him held out a liver-spotted hand, catching him before he fell. Laughter drifted across the golden sands.

  Kordi’s eyes snapped open, a snarl twisting his thin lips. The memory blazed through the darkness of his mind like a comet, fiery and sudden. His secondary heart kicked in with an automatic muscle-jolt, and his fists clenched in the water.

  The sound of his involuntary anger disturbed the other Carcharodons. Kordi could sense their displeasure, their bowed heads half turning in his direction. He let out a low, hissing breath from between his sharpened teeth, willing the sudden bloodlust that gripped him to subside. Regaining his silence, Kordi stood, nodded once in deference to the Greats, and backed out of the chamber.

  The warp jump to real space was drawing close, and with it, the promise of slaughter. If oblivion couldn’t smother the memories of who he had once been, then Kordi would wash them away with blood.

  + + Gene scan complete + + +

  + + Access granted + + +

  + + Beginning mem-bank entry log + + +

  + + Date check, 3606875.M
41 + + +

  Day 65, Kelistan local.

  I have just received word via the astropathic choir from Lord Rozenkranz. He has approved the transferral, thank the God-Emperor. Apparently he trusts Gideos and his nightmares more than I do. I’m leaving Rochfort and the two lexmechanics to continue what little is left of the investigation here on Kelistan. I’m taking the rest of the retinue out to Zartak. Rozenkranz and Gideos have both been stressing haste. I’m more than happy to oblige. The faster I can get away from this mire of politicos and bureaucrats the better.

  Signed,

  Interrogator Augim Nzogwu.

  + + Mem-bank entry log ends + + +

  + + Thought for the Day: A small mind is easily filled with faith + + +

  Chapter III

  Arbitrator Norren snatched at his magnoculars and trained them on the distant treeline, twisting the focus ring. Something was definitely moving out there, just beyond the edge of Zartak’s jungles.

  ‘Lumens,’ he ordered over the vox. ‘Four point four degrees left of the north gate. Focus.’

  The heavy spotter beams flashed on, lighting up a patch of jungle treeline. Nothing stirred.

  Norren swept his magnoculars across the area, his free hand grasping the edge of the rockcrete parapet. He was one of a detail of twelve arbitrators assigned to the northern wall of the void shield defences, the command-and-control facility that edged the rim of Sink Shaft One. The shock squad that usually acted as the shield’s primary garrison had been requisitioned for an orbital operation, and the remaining security halved as the warden primary prepared to back them up. The void shield garrison was mostly concentrated on the sink-facing ramparts, above the warren structures and hanging bunk cages of the prison cells. There was no threat from outside, from the jungle encroaching on the northern perimeter.

  Or so Norren had been told during the snap briefing. His instincts said otherwise. The heavy-duty lumen mounted on the parapet to his left picked out a ragged patch of fronds, but not the slinking shadow he’d seen earlier. Every monthly cycle a penal section would be requisitioned from the mines to hack back the jungle that was forever seeking to encroach upon the three-hundred-yard kill zone cleared around the edge of the sink shaft. The ground between the rockcrete wall and the nearest trees was bare and fallow, as undisturbed by movement as the jungle itself.

  ‘What is it?’ Wenston, commander of the north wall detail, hissed as he reached the arbitrator’s side. ‘Contacts?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Norren. Before he could elaborate further his head exploded, splattering Wenston’s black plate armour with brain tissue.

  ‘Throne,’ Wenston gasped, dropping down beneath the parapet. Norren’s headless corpse slumped next to him. There was a crack and a bang as the lumen blew, hit by another shot from somewhere out beyond the wall. The arbitrators suddenly found themselves in darkness.

  ‘Contact, contact,’ Wenston hissed into his vox-torq, unclamping his autorifle and flicking off the safety. ‘North wall. Unidentified shooter.’

  The rockcrete above him shuddered as it began to take hits, and the boom of heavy calibre discharges reached him from across the kill zone.

  ‘Multiple contacts,’ Wenston correct himself. ‘All forces be advised, the north wall of the void shield is under attack.’

  ‘Sir,’ Vox Chief Hestel began, leaning over the railing of the communications gantry.

  ‘I heard,’ Sholtz snapped. ‘The shield is under attack.’ All eyes in the Centrum Dominus turned to him.

  ‘We’ve also received an activity transcript from the attendant master of the choristorium,’ the vox chief said. ‘The astropaths are badly agitated. It… it seems as though something’s coming. There’s been a disturbance in their dream-vigils.’

  ‘Something means nothing, as far as we’re concerned,’ Sholtz said. ‘Until we have identification for those attackers at the north wall I will not trouble the subsector judges with alarmist reports.’

  ‘The void shield garrison are taking heavy fire,’ Hestel said. ‘Whoever they are, they’re well armed.’

  And made it planetside without being detected, went the unspoken follow-up.

  ‘The arbitrator containment section requisitioned from the void shield are already prepping in the shuttle bays,’ Sholtz said. ‘We’ve lost all contact with Macran and the shock squads that boarded the Imperial Truth. That’s a greater threat right now than some jungle scavengers. Tell the garrison at the void shield to get me a proper threat assessment, then I’ll consider whether they need reinforcing or not.’

  ‘I can’t, sir,’ said Hestel, hands darting over the rune panels and tuning nodes of the vox-bank.

  ‘What? Why not?’

  ‘I… I think we just lost contact with them as well.’

  First Kill shrieked up over the parapets of the void shield base from their claw-holds in the sink shaft below its walls, the screaming of their jump packs and vox-maws blending with horrific, flawless savagery.

  The plan was going well. Sink Shaft One’s most competent defenders had been drawn up into the death trap fashioned by Shadraith from the Imperial Truth. Cull and his Raptor retinue had teleported undetected into the depths of the old mine pit itself, and successfully scaled the exterior of the prison cell layers and hanging cages that constituted its sheer flanks. Fexrath and the two members of his Third Claw, who had been dropped in the heart of Zartak’s equatorial jungle forty-eight hours earlier, had struck the north side of the void shield defences right on time. The garrison, its numbers already reduced with the effort to pacify the supposed insurrection on board the Imperial Truth, had reacted to the sudden attack by scrambling most of the remaining arbitrators to the north wall facing the treeline. That left six men still on the south, overlooking the yawning darkness of the sink shaft.

  Six men against the Prince of Thorns and his six ablest murderers. The Imperials all died clutching their ears, forced down onto their knees by the sudden, terrible shrieking of the Chaos Raptors. Cull beheaded one with a flick of his runesword, disappointed by the ease of the kill.

  Sometimes there was no room for indulgences. Now was such a time.

  The Night Lord’s victims had barely hit the bloody rockcrete before the Chaos Space Marines were launching themselves down towards the shield’s control hub. A void transmission spike lanced the air above the armoured building, a pillar of crackling power rods and lit-up transmitter nodes. An arbitrator was scrambling for the wheel lock of the hub’s south-facing blast door, stumbling and disorientated by the shock of the Night Lords’ aural assault. Cull landed on him from above, the spiked claws of his lower limbs piercing the man’s skull and snapping his spine.

  He was first inside the hub. A rockcrete corridor ended in another set of blast doors, successfully sealed by the defenders. An alarm was clattering somewhere. A tech-adept, trailing his red robes, stumbled out from a side door, and was casually bisected by Skorra’s lightning claws.

  ‘Breach,’ Cull ordered. Drac, First Kill’s demolitions expert, pushed his way to the fore of the retinue, priming a set of mag-locking melta charges as he went. He paused for a moment to assess the obstruction.

  ‘Mark XIV Bastion Pattern blast doors, manufactured in Adeptus Mechanicus facilities on... Gryphonne IV? Or possibly Voss Prime. Primary locking clamps are either side of the central pin bolt, here and here.’

  ‘Warp take your damned chatter, Drac,’ Cull snapped. ‘Get it open.’

  The Night Lord clamped his twin charges to the points he’d indicated and stepped off to the side.

  ‘Breaching,’ he said, and triggered the detonator device wired to his right vambrace. There was a split-second of vibration as the directional limpet charges broke down their molecular pyrum fuel, followed by a bass crump as they fired. The melta blasts, channelled directly into the heavy door, bored two molten holes in the adamantium plating. The whole fr
ame shuddered, and a thin crack appeared where the two halves of the door had been sealed together.

  ‘Golgoth,’ Cull said. The largest member of First Kill shouldered his way past his brethren. With a grunt he slammed his charged lightning claws into the fracture in the doors, and began to heave. Disruptor energy crackled and sparked as the eight blades bit into the metal before they eventually found purchase. There was a low grating sound. Golgoth braced himself, head down, the ancient, patched servos of his customised power armour shrieking as they added to his already mighty strength. After a second of shuddering resistance, the auto-hinges kicked in. With the locks reduced to molten sludge, the heavy doors rolled open.

  Beyond them, from behind cogitator banks and power coils, the tech-priests simply stared.

  ‘Kill them,’ Cull said. The retinue tore into the generator chamber. As they hacked at the screaming, defenceless machine-men, Cull stalked towards the central pillar of power coils, coolant valves and cog blocks. It was the void shield’s primary generator, and the throb of its core filled the air with static charge. The arco-lightning dancing across Cull’s armour snapped and crackled in electric sympathy.

  He remembered. The palace in panic. His false father telling him to stay. Fleeing instead, through the halls and corridors, packed with terrified, screaming servants and bellowing royal guards. The rush of demented, reckless glee that had filled him. Bursting into the generator chamber. The old tech-priest, Ativus, trying to stop him. Ramming the ceremonial dagger given to him by his false father on his tenth name day through the old monster’s sole remaining organic eye. Taking his forged gene-key – the one given to him by his false mother, the item that stood for everything that he was not – and using it to begin the palace shield’s deactivation sequence. The shield had gone down minutes later.

  That was when the servants had really started to scream.

  The last tech-priest died, his pitiful wails cut short by Narx. The Night Lord was the youngest member of the retinue, and its most skilful blademaster – according to the ancient traditions of Nostramo, he held the title of Court Executioner.