by Rob Sanders
‘I am close to discovering the location of the dread planet from which the Word Bearers launch their raids. Even then, the frater faithful and preachers of the Crozier Worlds will not embark. For a White Crusade needs a figurehead. A name, beyond the God-Emperor’s, to give good men spiritual strength in the face of darkness. Your name, Cardinal Trazier. Only when your priests and the fighting fraters of Incandesica join us at Suspiria Proctor and your blessing is given, shall the White Crusade be undertaken and the deviant Word Bearers of the Maelstrom be destroyed.’
‘I have never heard such insanity,’ Arch-Deacon Scamander said.
‘Madness,’ Pontifex Guzzman agreed.
‘You invite the slaughter of billions,’ the canoness preceptor hissed.
‘As we invite the same,’ Cardinal Trazier said, ‘if we stand by, cower inside our chapels, our churches and do nothing. As the good inquisitor says, we must lead by example. So, Lord of the Holy Ordos. You may go to Suspiria Proctor. Await the frater faithful I will send. Then tell all that Josephat Hieronemo Trazier the Third gives his blessing to this White Crusade – an undertaking that receives the God-Emperor’s benediction also.’
‘As benevolent as you are wise, cardinal astra,’ Van Leeuwen told Trazier. ‘Your reputation is well deserved. And now, I take my leave. May the God-Emperor go with you, mighty ecclesiarch.’
‘And with you, my son,’ Cardinal Trazier told him.
As the inquisitor and the Adeptus Astartes mounted the ramp to an orbital lander bereft of identica and markings, the craft’s thrusters engaged and started lifting it off the cathedra landing pads. Leaving behind the Battle Sisters sentries and dusty priests of the palace, the lander spiralled up above the bell towers and spires, punching a hole through Incandesica’s spectacular layers of cloud before striking out for the darkness of the void.
‘Dissemble.’
Occam the Untrue turned around in the carrier compartment. While the exterior of the stolen lander was plain, the interior was plush. The scales of his plate, like those of the other members of the Redacted, changed back to their legionary colours from the penitent black of long dead Space Marines of the Nova Legion and Inquisitor Van Leeuwen’s ancient suit. Freydor Blatch threw off the heavy robes of the exorcist, while Mina Perdita simply took off her Battle Sisters helm. The Alpha Legion and their operatives felt the change as the sorcerer Quoda abandoned his efforts and the aura of telepathic manipulation that surrounded the renegades and played upon the prejudices, imaginations and expectations of those observing them, collapsed. The Redacted were the Inquisitorial entourage no more.
Sergeant Hasdrubal took off his refurbished helm, revealing fresh scarring across his face, an eye that had been surgically saved and a bright green bionic optic that replaced the one that could not. He hadn’t been the only one to benefit from an upgrade. In the time the Redacted had been touring the planets of the Crozier Worlds, garnering support for a supposed White Crusade, the warpsmith had replaced the right hand and gauntlet he had lost in the Serpent’s Egg with the bionics of an impressively dextrous appendage.
‘Right,’ the strike master said to the Alpha Legion renegades. ‘We have assembled the pieces – now it is time to play the game.’
μ
Second Skin
Lord Occam’s chambers were filled with the sound of hushed whispers and the beating of dark hearts. While the strike commander sat in his throne, decked in plate, figures moved in and out of the reconstructed Chapel of the Immaculate Ascension. His armour had assumed legionary colours, while his helm sat on the arm of the throne. Ghosting about the dark recesses of the chamber were Vilnius Malik and Sergeant Hasdrubal. The legionnaires wore helms with full plate. While Malik cradled his long-shot plasma gun like some kind of sentinel, the sergeant stood at ease, his gauntlet resting on the pommel of his sheathed, multi-blade knife.
Within the chapel, chirurgeons and medicae servitors were hard at work at the stone altar, which had been covered with transparent plastek sheeting. While medical-tooled servitors cut away at the subject lying there, the chirurgeons consulted, pointing as their drones went to work with las-scalpels and monomolecular chainblades. Occam knew one of the bearded chirurgeons to be Mina Perdita, the Assassin offering further security in the chamber. Since she knew more about taking life than saving it, the strike master assumed that she was the quiet figure in surgical robes lurking near the rear of the gathering.
The form on the altar was large. Like a mummified corpse recovered from a burial site, the figure was sheathed in a cocoon. In places the material was thin, like scabby parchment stretched across the musculature of the figure within; in others it was thick and horny, forming nubs, whorls and patterns of daemonic suggestion. Cutting away the second skin under the instruction of the chirurgeons, who stood some way distant, the medicae-servitors moved about the evil thing undaunted.
Gossamer wires ran from sensors on the husk to mobile runebanks that monitored the subject’s vital signs and filled the chapel with the sound of heartbeats. As sprays were issued and injections given through the shell of the cocoon, the servitors cut away more of the material from the subject’s face. The soft thunder of beating hearts accelerated and the runebanks spewed forth data, which the chirurgeons consulted with interest.
Now that the Word Bearer’s face was revealed, Occam could see that despite the infernal suggestion of his cocoon, the traitor Space Marine was not an altered underneath. He was as disgusting as he had been when Occam had found him – the Word Bearer’s black, frostbitten face a mess. He was not, however, warped by daemonic presence. The Ordo Hereticus exorcists had long driven any monstrous entity from the Word Bearer’s body and soul. The strike master was not inclined to be complacent. Quoda had insisted that the chapel’s hallowed influence would go some way to subdue the damned flesh of the Word Bearer. Perdita was nearby, ready to slit throats and stab hearts. Vilnius Malik and the sergeant had orders to put the Word Bearer down brutally if he showed signs of daemonic intrusion, while Autolicon Phex waited on the door to the strike master’s chamber, his heavy weaponry ready to be called upon.
As the Word Bearer’s hand came up suddenly, the chirurgeons and even their servitors jumped back. The cocoon cracked and tore at the movement, allowing the Traitor Space Marine to grab the wired sensors from his chest and kill the sound of hearts rapidly beating. Sitting up on the altar, the Word Bearer sloughed the encrusted sheath off like a second skin. Occam found himself up out of his throne. Malik and the sergeant closed in, while the chirurgeon the strike master suspected was Perdita pushed his way through his startled colleagues.
The Word Bearer glowered about the interior of the chapel, the whites of his eyes writhing in the black ruin of his face. He was clearly not comfortable, his frost-withered lips retracting about his teeth. He stared down at his naked body and grabbed at his chest, as though missing the damnation of his plate. Occam narrowed his eyes, watching the Word Bearer. It seemed something more to the strike master. As though the Traitor Space Marine was missing more than just his armour.
Finally, the Word Bearer looked around, prompting the medicae staff to back away even further. Then his gaze settled on Occam, flanked by Malik and the sergeant. While the muzzle of Malik’s glowing plasma gun was aimed at the Word Bearer, Hasdrubal merely stared back at the prisoner, his gauntlet grasped about the hilt of his multi-blade.
The Word Bearer grunted his derision.
‘Serpents…’
‘Serpents that saved your life,’ Malik said dangerously, staring down the length of his aimed weapon. ‘And don’t forget that.’
‘Where are we?’ the Word Bearer demanded with the imperiousness of a zealot.
Occam and the sergeant frowned. The phrasing of the question sounded odd.
‘You are…’ Occam said, ‘aboard my vessel – as a guest. My legionnaire here speaks true. You were a prisoner of the Holy Ordos.’
‘And now we are guests,’ the Word Bearer said, ‘of the Alpha Le
gion.’
‘Honoured… guests,’ Occam told him, picking up on the Word Bearer’s strange way of referring to himself. He turned to the gathering. ‘Robes and water – for our honoured guests.’
Servitors brought robes for the Word Bearer, a carafe of water and a chalice. The Traitor Space Marine looked suspiciously between the offerings and the strike master. This time it was Hasdrubal’s turn to grunt his derision.
‘If we had wanted it, you would be dead already,’ Occam told the Word Bearer. ‘We might be serpents, brother, but you need fear no poison from us.’
The Word Bearer ignored the offered chalice and took the carafe, downing the contents. Gesturing for another, he drank deep: his time as an Inquisitorial prisoner combined with time spent cocooned against the elements, or lack thereof, had visited upon the Traitor Space Marine a mighty thirst. Then came the robes, and his toes reached tentatively for the deck. He looked down at the altar and around at the crumbling architecture of the Chapel of the Immaculate Ascension. His eyes fixed upon the hexagrammic wards adorning the flags, the purity seals carved into the stone of the altar, holy scripture and sigils of protection and banishment.
‘An attempt at humour?’ the damned Space Marine said.
‘No,’ Lord Occam said. ‘It is meant for the solace of the faithful – not the amusement of heretics. That seemed to be lost on you when your vessel brought its apocalyptic thunder to the Canticula shrine world.’
‘It seems you missed one,’ Hasdrubal said, gesturing to the ruins of the chapel.
‘Now, let’s begin,’ Occam said, moving towards the Word Bearer. ‘How about your name and rank?’
‘You think us afraid to reveal such details,’ the Word Bearer said. ‘You think us some terrified soldier, obeying orders and saying nothing to withstand interrogation? I’ll tell you freely, as I told the Emperor’s pigs, the names of those that cost them their lives.’
‘Pray do,’ Occam said.
‘I am Goura Shengk,’ the Word Bearer told him, ‘Dark Apostle of the Barbed Oath and spiritual leader of the Varga Rax, those warp-tempered of flesh.’
‘And…’ Occam said, sensing more.
‘Morphidax the Primordial.’
‘If I may make an observation,’ Sergeant Hasdrubal said, ‘you speak with a pride and defiance ill-befitting your present circumstances.’
‘And you speak like a legionnaire of little understanding,’ Goura Shengk said. ‘A warrior with experience cleaving flesh asunder but with little comprehension of the darkness operating within.’
‘Enough,’ Occam commanded. ‘Lord apostle – Primordial One – the truth of the matter is that we find you far from home, at the mercy of your Imperial enemies and abandoned by those you would call brother.’
‘Truth?’ Goura Shengk said. ‘What would the Alpha Legion know of truth?’
‘More than you would think,’ Sergeant Hasdrubal warned the Word Bearer.
‘Your brotherhood abandoned you,’ Occam accused. ‘The traitors under your command.’
‘Again,’ Goura Shengk said, ‘you think you can manipulate us with details half understood. Those brothers obeyed our orders. They have a thousand decrees, precepts and commandments to follow from a thousand dark tomes – and they followed them to the letter. There is no wedge to be forced between the Bearers of the Word. The duty was carried out. Our sacrifice ensured success.’
‘But they left you,’ Occam pressed.
‘Failure is not tolerated in the ranks of the Dark Brotherhood and the Daemon Council is not forgiving.’
‘You have a new brotherhood now,’ the sergeant said. ‘A new duty – to us, your saviours.’
‘Think not to threaten us,’ Goura Shengk told Hasdrubal. ‘We share this delicate vessel, this miserable flesh – warping it for our own amusement and purpose. You really think we care what you do to it with your paltry blades? You put too much faith in your skill and a razor’s edge.’
‘You can never put too much faith in that,’ Hasdrubal told him.
‘But you don’t share that vessel, lord apostle,’ Occam said, confronting the Word Bearer with the reality of his predicament. ‘Your flesh is home but to one presence. The Inquisition exorcists saw to that. Your daemon – the entity you live to appease – is gone. Banished to the beyond. You are alone, Goura Shengk – but it need not be so.’
The Dark Apostle seemed to consider Occam’s words.
‘We will not join you,’ Goura Shengk said, ‘and your band of faithless traitors.’
‘We are far from faithless, lord apostle,’ the strike master said. ‘Besides – I am not recruiting.’
‘We set you at liberty, you thankless wretch,’ Hasdrubal reminded the Word Bearer.
‘This does not look like freedom,’ Shengk said.
‘And it isn’t,’ Occam assured him. ‘Your flesh is your prison. I offer you something else. A way back – to your brothers, to your home, to your daemon.’
‘To punishment for our failures.’
‘Better than a bolt round to the skull,’ the sergeant assured him. ‘Which is what you would be facing among our number.’
‘And why would the Alpha Legion wish such kindnesses upon a brother of the Word?’ Goura Shengk asked.
‘We share common goals,’ Occam the Untrue told him.
‘You speak of an alliance.’
‘I speak of an exchange,’ the strike master said. ‘We shall take you back to your daemon world, lord apostle, to rejoin your Legion, your brothers and your darkness. To face your punishment and beg for forgiveness.’
‘Take us to Ghalmek?’ Goura Shengk said. ‘The Daemonforge? The Shrine of Iron? You could never reach such an unholy place. The Maelstrom would chew your vessel up and spit you out.’
‘That is why we need your guidance,’ Occam told him.
‘What do you want with the daemon world?’
‘Truth?’ the strike master asked.
‘We’re not sure you can manage it,’ the Word Bearer told him.
‘The artefact your traitors stole from Nemesis Spectra,’ Lord Occam said.
‘What do you want with the Slaughterlord?’
‘The Slaughterlord?’
‘The daemon Kar’Nash’gahar,’ the Dark Apostle said, ‘Lord of Glorious Slaughter and Slayer of Worlds. The infernal volumes of the Daedronicron Malefest foretold of his coming. That those who freed him from imprisonment could count on his thunder in the trials to come.’
‘And you seek to engage this daemon’s thunder?’ Occam asked.
‘You don’t?’
‘We care nothing for your dusty tomes and their prophecies,’ the strike master promised. ‘The Alpha Legion deal in the here and the now. We seek the ancient technology that holds your rancid daemon – and that is all. Keep your monstrous entity and the doom he brings but give us the technology, in exchange for your life.’
‘We do not believe you,’ Goura Shengk said. ‘Besides, the Grand Apostle, the Daemon Council and the Brotherhood of the Dark Word will never barter for such a prize. Its dread promise will only just have reached Unholy Ghalmek. Why should they give it up?’
‘I can be persuasive.’
‘You will be dead,’ Goura Shengk said. ‘The Grand Apostle will have you stellafied – your hands and feet nailed to the half-points of a Chaos Star – while you slowly roast in the light of Ghalmek’s blood-red sun.’
‘Leave the Grand Apostle to me,’ Occam assured him.
‘Then I shall kill you myself,’ the Word Bearer promised. ‘We are not like you, faithless legionnaire. Our word means something – in this existence and the one beyond. We will not betray our brotherhood or give up our prize. Our names shall be carved into the mighty Animus, atop the Malevolent Mount, crafted from the black stone of a thousand temples fallen.’
‘No,’ Occam told him. ‘It will be forgotten. Your prize will be delivered to the Shrine of Iron by another. It will be his name that will adorn this monstrous monument you speak of. W
ho knows, Goura Shengk – perhaps your successor will be rewarded with a daemon of his own. Perhaps an eternity is too long for your own daemon to wait and he will favour another with his presence.’
‘You are wrong,’ Goura Shengk said. ‘I might have failed but my First Acolyte and captains, in turn, failed me. They return to punishment – as is decreed.’
‘Aye, they return – as decreed,’ Occam said. ‘As you must, Goura Shengk.’
‘I will not be goaded, serpent,’ the lord apostle said.
‘Then be persuaded,’ Occam the Untrue urged. ‘Be bribed and bought with a future that awaits you. Whatever appeases your dark soul. We want not your daemon prize, Word Bearer – only the artefact prison that holds him. If you would die rather than deal for yourself, then bargain for the benefit of your brothers.’
‘What can you possibly offer the Daemon Council?’
‘The only currency your dread council deals in,’ Occam said: ‘souls. We might be small in number but our reach is far. For weeks now we have been touring the Crozier Worlds – a region that knows the wrath of the Word Bearers well.’
‘You know it does,’ Goura Shengk said.
‘Disguised as the very Inquisition authorities your daemon ship hit on Nemesis Spectra and who, in turn, enjoyed your company on Fifty-Four-Thermia, we have been taking meetings with the ruling ecclesiarchs there.’
‘And why would you do that?’
‘Recruitment, lord apostle,’ Occam the Untrue told him. ‘The Word Bearers of Ghalmek and the apocalyptic attacks of their ungodly daemon ships are to be tolerated no longer. There is to be a White Crusade – a holy war the likes of which you have never seen, to be waged against your dark brotherhood. It will find your daemon world and destroy you there.’
‘Snake…’ Goura Shengk spat. ‘You applaud your own efforts and place too much faith in the Corpse-Emperor’s weakling priests. Such human frailty is nothing compared to the daemon legions that fight for the Dark Brotherhood.’
