Carcharodons: Red Tithe Read online

  ‘A truly Red Tithe then, Brother Sharr. Welcome home.’

  ‘The venerable Chief Librarian believes his visions are being realised,’ Sharr added, ignoring the jibe. Around him the other members of the slumbering company were waking, stepping out from their tanks to be robed by the attendants. Many of them, especially the younger ones, moved sluggishly, tense with cryo-cramps and the stomach-churning weakness that came with prolonged void sickness. Soon their pale, dripping, scarred flesh would be death-plated and red-scarred, and the haunting dreams of half-sleep’s depths would be forgotten amidst the thunder of battle.

  ‘Old Te Kahurangi has his visions,’ Kahu said dismissively. ‘Nothing can be allowed to impede the Tithing. I do not need to remind you of your new duties as Reaper Prime, nor of the importance of the Tithe to the future of the Chapter.’

  Sharr sensed the black eyes of many of his brothers on Kahu and the Red Brethren. They were outsiders, what the Chapter called Not of the Shiver, their brutal presence disrupting the natural currents that ran beneath the surface of the Third Company. Sharr held Kahu’s unsettling gaze.

  ‘You do not need to remind me. Te Kahurangi’s mission will not interfere. The Chapter will be replenished with the meat of this world.’

  Kahu nodded, his heavy gauntlet smacking Sharr on the shoulder.

  ‘I am looking forward to this one, brother. My void dreams have spoken of a great and glorious bloodletting. It has been too long since we faced a worthy foe.’

  ‘I would not call these traitor scum worthy,’ Sharr said, turning away from the Terminator. ‘And besides, you said it yourself. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with the Tithe.’

  The shock squad filed onto the bridge of the Imperial Truth, twitching for targets. It was clear they were too late. Nothing lived on the command deck, and the butchery didn’t look like the work of escaped convicts.

  ‘Primary, we have a situation,’ Macran said into her vox. There was still no response from the Precinct Fortress. The boarding team spread out, shields and shotguns up, probing the shadows.

  And the bodies. There were plenty of those, and none of them fully intact. Whoever had killed the bridge crew, they’d been in bloody, slaughterous mood. Even a sub-warden with as little experience as Rannik knew the vicious marks of tearing, decapitation and disembowelment could not have been the work of penal escapees. Something far stronger and even more violent had done this.

  Nor were the bodies fresh. The bridge stank of decay. They looked at least a week old, their pale skin tainted, the blood dark and crusted.

  ‘Focus, arbitrators,’ Macran snapped over the link. ‘I want this place locked down and secured.’

  The squad split into fire teams and began to explore the bridge’s inactive cogitator pews, oculus stands, command dais and augur arrays. Rannik, outside of the squad’s usual structure, found herself without a partner. She headed towards the only section not being immediately probed by the arbitrator teams, the primary communications pit at the foot of the command dais.

  She dropped down among the banks of machinery, boots crunching on the crusted decking plates. She realised immediately that something was wrong. The remains of the bridge’s vox-staff lay butchered and rotting in the bottom of the pit. The actual vox-systems themselves, though, were still whirring. Activation lights winked, and the faint crackle of static hissed from hooked-up receiver grilles and mic headsets.

  But that was not the worst thing about the pit. The worst thing was the body pinned to the primary transmission hub.

  Rannik approached slowly, shotgun aimed. There was a terrible, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Something was nightmarishly wrong.

  The body had been spread-eagled across the vox-hub, its head bowed, pinned in place with black nails that bore scraps of parchment Rannik didn’t want to look at. For some unfathomable reason, cables had been torn directly from the hub’s circuitry and surgically grafted into the corpse’s larynx and thorax, and a transmitter node was rammed into its mouth. The body was still half clad in the tattered remains of a Navy captain’s uniform. Rannik realised she was probably looking at Van Hoyt, the very officer who’d been addressing them barely an hour before via the vox on Zartak. She stopped in front of the defiled corpse, trying to fathom how such a thing could be possible.

  Van Hoyt’s head snapped up. His eyes were open, raw and wide with pain. He was still alive.

  He screamed. The sound tore through the vox, a distorted shriek that made everyone on the bridge flinch.

  Rannik fired. It was a reflex action, born from panic. Van Hoyt’s head vanished in a mist of blood and bone. The blasted ends of the wiring that had been inserted into his flesh snapped free.

  ‘Report!’ shouted Macran. ‘What in the God-Emperor’s name was that?’

  ‘No contact,’ Rannik said. She was amazed to hear that her voice sounded so utterly calm. Her whole body was shaking, and she still had the shotgun levelled at Van Hoyt’s twitching, headless corpse. ‘Repeat, no contact.’

  ‘Then what in the name of the Emperor did you just shoot?’

  ‘The captain, I think.’

  There was a thud as Macran dropped down into the pit next to Rannik. She forcefully lowered the Vox Legi and pushed herself into her field of vision.

  ‘What happened to him?’ she demanded, gesturing at the defiled corpse.

  ‘There was something wrong,’ Rannik said. ‘I can feel it. I know you can too. No word from Zartak, from the other boarding teams, no survivors. Not even any savlar. We need to get out of here.’

  Macran didn’t get a chance to reply. From the shadows of the bridge’s rafters, clawed death dropped, chainblades shrieking.

  The arbitrators were caught spread out, half deafened and disorientated by the sudden cacophony of long-dead victims. The howling giants showed no mercy. In a matter of seconds the shock squad’s corpses were joining those of the bridge crew.

  One of the towering monsters fell directly down into the communications pit behind Macran. She turned, shotgun coming up, but the nightmare swiped the weapon aside with the flat of its chainsword. It snatched her by the gorget with its other hand and slammed her into the side of the nearest vox-set. Rannik’s shotgun was up, her body moving on panic-fuelled instinct, but her finger hesitated on the trigger. If she fired she’d hit them both.

  ‘Rannik…’ Macran snarled, managing to make eye contact. Then the monster hit her. Its gauntlet punched through her skull, pulping it against the vox and denting the metal beneath. The master-at arms slumped, leaving a halo of blood where her head had been.

  The monster turned to Rannik. Red lenses gleamed wickedly from its fanged skull helm. It loomed well over a foot above her, its armoured form filling the space between the vox-banks.

  Something in Rannik’s head told her to cower. It told her to drop her weapon and go down on her face amidst the stale blood and rotten flesh, and beg this nightmare from the shadows for mercy. It told her to do anything she could to stop it from tearing apart her body and claiming her soul.

  Instead she screamed, and opened fire. The first blast of the heavy shotgun struck it square in the breastplate. It rocked slightly. Rannik racked the slide and fired again. The monster spread both arms, as much as the pit would allow, intentionally exposing itself.

  She emptied seven shells into it. The Vox Legi clicked, its ammunition drum empty. The nightmare was still standing, arms wide. Its breastplate was buckled, pitted and smoking, and dark blood oozed from the cracks.

  It laughed.

  Rannik dropped the shotgun. A part of her mind, still obeying the instincts drilled into her by her progenium upbringing, told her to reach for her autopistol. She was too slow. With a speed that belied its bulk, the monster cracked the skull pommel of its chainsword into Rannik’s helmet. She was dimly aware of hitting the deck, falling into the embrace of old, cold corpses. Her v
ision swam. She could see Macran’s body, slumped against a vox-bank. A fist closed around the edge of her breastplate, dragging her back up. Another tore her broken helmet from her head. She felt her legs kicking air. Her eyes were level with the nightmare’s. Their soulless red glare burned into her.

  ‘You will do,’ rasped the monster.

  Her vision went blank, and she knew no more.

  Vorfex hefted the body of the Imperial over his shoulder and turned towards the bridge doors.

  ‘The Flayed Father will want more than just one,’ Kurthen remonstrated as the Raptor bent to wipe gore from his chainblade.

  ‘This isn’t for old Shadraith,’ Vorfex said. ‘Cull wants one alive. He needs a survivor down on the surface. Someone who knows what happened. When help arrives for them, we need the reinforcements to go where we want.’

  The urge to kill the scrawny Imperial was almost overwhelming. Unlike the rest of the humans, this one had done damage. Of course, Vorfex had let the human empty its shotgun into him, more to prove his own strength in front of the rest of the Claw than anything else. The price of his arrogance amounted to a badly scarred breastplate and three minor penetration wounds. He dismissed the damage icons on his visor display. The injuries had already clotted.

  He stamped through the slaughtered remains of the boarding team and left the bridge, taking a grav lift down to the shuttle bays. The Imperial Truth was in complete darkness now, its shadows echoing with distant screaming. The crew and the boarding parties were all dead, as were most of the thousands of convicts crammed into the prison holds. The ritual slaughterings of the past week had thinned the barrier between reality and the warp on board the vessel, and allowed the daemons of Shadraith’s patron, Bar’ghul, to manifest. Their presence disgusted Vorfex, but the fickle creatures of the empyrean had their uses. Without Shadraith’s warp magic it would have been impossible for the Night Lords to imitate the captain’s voice and lure a detachment of the Imperials away from their planetside fortress. They would need such talents again before the end.

  Cull was clever, Vorfex would give him that much. Clever, and good with his blade. It wouldn’t help him though. He was too ambitious and too arrogant, even by the standards of the VIII. A warrior his age had no right leading a warband in the Long War. Unlike the less patient Claw champions, Vorfex had been pondering Cull’s downfall for some time. He’d found an ally in the Terminator champion, Shenzar. The harvest would offer them the perfect opportunity to seize control. All it needed was careful timing.

  Vorfex carried the unconscious human down to the shuttle bay. There the ship’s salvation pods still remained, intact. He strapped the Imperial into one, ignoring the moans as consciousness returned.

  The deck underfoot shuddered. Vorfex suspected it was the Imperial Truth’s starboard battery, opening fire on the Imperial Navy cutter that had brought the boarding parties into orbit. Down on the surface he knew that even now his brothers would be butchering the disorientated, scattered remnants of Zartak’s pathetic garrison. The time for concealment and subterfuge was over, and the games would soon be starting. The Stalk, the Terror, the Kill. Vorfex was eager to join them. The future of the warband hung in the balance.

  He punched the directional coordinates given to him by Cull into the salvation pod’s inner control bank, locked and sealed the hatch, and began its external launch protocols. Then, without another glance, he headed back to the bridge. If the bold little Imperial survived re-entry, they would meet again. The thought dulled the already distant ache of Vorfex’s wounds, and caused a smile to tug at his pale lips.

  Then the games really would begin.

  + + Gene scan complete + + +

  + + Access granted + + +

  + + Beginning mem-bank entry log + + +

  + + Date check, 3633875.M41 + + +

  Day 75, warp time variance approximate.

  Gideos is dead. I wasn’t there when it happened. Worren was. He was covered in brains when I arrived in the scrying chamber. That was all that was left of poor Gideos after he heard the mortis-cry. God-Emperor only knows what happened to the rest of him.

  Something terrible is occurring on Zartak. The astropath attached to the Saint Angelica swears by it. He seems to be a venerable psyker of some experience, yet even he was half mad and bleeding from every orifice when I saw him last. No wonder young Gideos popped the way he did. What could have caused a soul-shriek of such horrific power?

  We’re going to be the first to reach Zartak. I’d still rather be doing this than playing mediator back on Kelistan though. My thoughts go out to Rochfort. His duties there will teach him patience, if nothing else.

  Signed,

  Interrogator Augim Nzogwu.

  + + Mem-bank entry log ends + + +

  + + Thought for the Day: Every day survived is one day closer to the day of your final rest + + +

  Chapter IV

  Amon Cull stepped into the Centrum Dominus of the Precinct Fortress, boots disturbing the pool of blood that had spread across the floor. The lumen strips were back on, lighting up a scene of carnage. It brought a smile to the prince’s thin lips.

  Shenzar and his Terminator brethren had always taken a commendably direct approach when it came to butchering cattle. The control centre’s staff lay scattered haphazardly across the floor or draped across their stations, bodies blown apart by point-blank combi-bolter fire or reduced to a wide splattering of gore by the blows of power fists, mauls and lightning claws. Cull’s weakening of the void shield had allowed the veteran Night Lords to teleport directly into the Precinct Fortress’ nerve centre. It had always been the best way, Cull thought. Rip out the heart, and everything dies.

  The sounds of bolter fire reached him from elsewhere in the fortress. A few more rats being blasted from their holes. Behind Cull, First Kill stood in silence, their own blades and armour still bloody from the night’s work at the void shield generator.

  ‘You took prisoners for our Talon brothers?’ Cull asked Shenzar, who was now standing in the shadows at the edge of the Centrum Dominus.

  ‘Of course, my prince. They have begun to nest in the primary chapel. They seem content, for now.’

  ‘And the garrison commander?’

  ‘Also alive. He is in the chapel. His thoughts are being flayed by the Talons even as we speak.’

  ‘We will need him alive should we require more falsified Imperial communications,’ Cull said. ‘In the same way we used the ship’s captain.’

  ‘I will visit him personally to ensure the Talons do not grow too restless with his flesh.’

  ‘The astropaths are dead,’ said Shadraith. Cull had not been aware of the sorcerer’s arrival, but he had long ago stopped showing any surprise when it came to the Flayed Father’s silent manifestations.

  ‘How loudly did they scream?’ Cull asked, not deigning to look at his old mentor. Instead he bent to inspect a cogitator view­screen, cracked by the shrapnel from a bolt that had taken off a dead Imperial’s arm.

  ‘Loudly enough,’ Shadraith said. ‘It will have disturbed the mind of every psyker in the nearest systems. They will not be able to fully ascertain the source until we have long gone. Zartak’s one tie to the Imperium has been severed.’

  ‘Then we can begin,’ Cull said. He gestured to Shenzar. ‘Signal the Last Breath. Have thralls from the bridge brought down here. These systems will need repairing. They can take whatever parts they require from the Imperial Truth. And find more prisoners for the Talons. We must slake their thirst until we need them. If we need them.’ Shenzar’s horned helm nodded once.

  Cull returned his gaze to the viewscreen. The brutal firepower of Shenzar’s Terminators had left much of the room’s equipment damaged. The vast screen bank occupying one of the centre’s upper tiers would need to be repaired – roughly a third of the monitors that recorded the footage from the pict-feeds throughout Sink Shaft O
ne were cracked or blank. The remainder showed the warren-like interior of every single prison cell, hanging cage and mining sub-shaft on a constant, shifting loop. Cull took a moment to stare at the mute, grainy black-and-white activities of the thousands of inmates. The vast majority were still locked to their shackle bunks. Many were staring at their cell hatches, or seemed lost in angry or panicked discussion. All had heard the shrieks of First Kill as they slaughtered the defenders of the void shield, and many would have caught the sounds of gunfire echoing from the Precinct Fortress. Cull wondered if they understood that their salvation was at hand. He suspected at least one did.

  ‘My prince, the override systems have been secured,’ crackled the voice of Kail, leader of the Fifth Claw, over the vox. ‘And the rest of my Claw are in position.’

  ‘Good,’ Cull said, eyes still on the prisoners. ‘Release them.’

  The alarms had switched off as abruptly as they’d started. Skell’s ears ached. He shifted in his bunk, trying to slow his breathing and force down the sickly sense of dread that filled his guts.

  ‘What now?’ Dolar asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Skell said. ‘I don’t know what’s happening.’

  But he did know. Not in a definable sense, not in a way that he could explain. But he understood. They’d come for him, just as the voice had said they would. The things that had terrorised his dreams had manifested into reality.

  ‘I heard gunfire,’ Dolar said slowly. ‘From above.’

  ‘They’ll have killed the lawmen,’ Skell said.

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know.’

  Dolar shook his head.

  A buzz made them both jump. There was a thud and a clatter as their magnicles deactivated and fell away. They looked at each other. Dawn shift was still at least an hour away. Nobody was ever auto-unchained during night cycle.

  ‘What–’ Dolar began, but got no further. With a squeal of hinges, their cell hatch ground open, its locking system remotely disengaged.