Carcharodons: Outer Dark
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‘We can only hope, captain,’ Otte canted, irritably deleting a snap-response to the excited blurt of lingua-technis that Deitrich emitted. The mention of potential archeotech had excited the explorator even further.
Akamu stepped to his left, his brethren parting either side of him. Only the giant in Terminator armour remained between the Adeptus Mechanicus adepts and the black crevasse that led into the heart of the valley beyond. Otte had avoided addressing the hulking warrior, his algorithms calculating that there was insufficient precedent to risk disrupting the Grey Tithe’s ceremonial opening. For a second, as the giant seemed to bar their way, Otte was forced to suppress a series of alarm responses, wondering whether his decision not to honour the figure had been correct. Then, with a deceptively soft whir of servos, the great Carcharodon moved aside. Otte could not delete a relieved scatter of binary before it reached the rest of the expedition’s receptors.
The magos passed between the Space Marines, and in the moment before Akamu fell into step alongside him Otte experienced the full weight of their predatory attention. Though they had hardly moved since his optics first registered them, there seemed to be a constant threat of sudden motion hanging over them, as though the black lenses of their helmets were an oily film covering waters churning with razor-toothed savagery. Bar those consigned to servo-skull plates and cogitator mem-banks, Otte knew that no functioning members of the Priesthood of Mars had encountered this particular Chapter as frequently as he had. He was one of the few who had witnessed just what these silent, grey giants were capable of.
Akamu led him to the jagged crack in the valley’s flank, its darkness drawing them on. Only Deitrich, Severus and the Techmarine, Hitaki, followed. The rest of the magos’ expedition remained facing the Space Marines in silence, the wind the only low, moaning conversation that passed between them.
‘Do you desire a techna-arcanum exchange, Magos Benedikt?’ Hitaki asked as they passed into the rock’s shadow. Otte responded with a blurt of binaric affirmation, offering a similar service in return. As the Harvester Prime led them through the passage out of the valley, the Techmarine and the magos exchanged remote data feeds containing preparatory information on the resources both sides had brought. Otte routed the information on to Deitrich and his bibliovore. Even the magos primary felt a flare of eagerness as he ran through the lists provided by the Space Marine – the harvest this time was bountiful indeed.
A number of questions were flagged up on his response units, but he queued them for the moment, unwilling to disturb the dark, dusty quiet of the rock they were passing through. There would be time enough later. Tact and a respect for protocol, he calculated, accounted for over thirty per cent of the reason he was entrusted with these sorts of negotiations. To call them vital was an understatement.
His optics, which had automatically switched to minimal light filters upon entering the crevasse, clicked as they recalibrated for a change in illumination detected around a bend in the tunnel. The dusty, echoing passageway opened before him into a sprawling chamber, its ceiling dominated by a jagged split that admitted the light of the planet’s dying star. Though Otte had entered the chamber on two occasions previously, he still ran a diagnostic of the echoing space, as intrigued as ever by its dimensions. Its rough walls were uneven, the one to Otte’s left sitting lower, creating a slope in the stalactite-studded ceiling. The floor underfoot was similarly rough, the magos’ lobe stabilisers triggering as he compensated for the rocky surface. To a mind not blessed with machine-derived analytics, the cavern would appear natural, and even a newly inducted tech-adept, unused to applying the cold algorithms of the Cult of Mars to everything he came across, would likely not have thought twice about its origins, believing it formed by geological processes and the passage of millennia.
But not Otte. There was something more to it, he was certain, the work of some strange and powerful consciousness. His schematic analysis of the angles around him pinged back with too many coincidences of geometry and too many precise measurements for him to believe that the rock had split apart and reformed of its own accord. Something had fashioned this place, and it had done so with a degree of care and detail that his precise mind found both appealing and alarming. Just who, or what, the architect was, though, he had yet to discover. Some of his brethren, when presented with his findings, had hypothesised that it was the work of ancient, all-powerful xenos. Otte gave silent praise-digit cant to the Machine-God that he was not so superstitious. Still, the mystery remained.
Besides the deeper, more easily overlooked precision of the chamber’s structure there were two more blatant signs of intelligent design, ones that Otte was sure had been added later by a hand less subtle than the original architect. At the cavern’s far end what could only be described as a great throne, unadorned by any sort of pattern, had been carved into the rock face, while at its centre, bathed in the jagged scar of light that lanced through the split ceiling, a long dais had been hacked from the planet’s bedrock. On that dais lay their objective, a dozen opened cargo crates, while around them, standing just within the darkness beyond the light, stood another squad of Adeptus Astartes. Otte and his entourage halted before the dais.
‘We may approach, Harvester Prime?’ he asked, his vox-voice echoing weirdly from the strange chamber’s walls.
‘You may,’ Akamu responded, taking post alongside his silent brethren. Otte stepped up onto the dais, accompanied by Deitrich, Severus and Hitaki.
They moved from left to right, inspecting the inside of each crate in turn. Some were locked in stasis fields, a film of blue energy playing over their contents. Deitrich emitted another burst of excited binaric as he bent over the first container. Otte locked into the cant passing between the explorator and his bibliovore, listening in as they assessed the objects delivered to them by the Adeptus Astartes.
Deitrich said, peering down at a coil of thick, plastek-clad wiring.
Deitrich said, logging each item in the expedition’s shared inventory. He turned to Hitaki. ‘What is its providence?’
‘It was salvaged off the Hirath Nebula seven standard years ago,’ the Techmarine replied, his vox-voice deeper and more grating than those of the tech-priests. ‘I believe it to be part of the Third Dawn expedition. I would have investigated further, but had neither the time nor the resources.’
Deitrich gave an affirmative screed of lingua-technis, shot through with unhappy discord at the magos primary’s interruption of his analysis. After a moment more he dragged himself away from the previous shard of void-scarred metal and on to the next crate.
So they continued, the explorator and his bibliovore logging and scanning each new piece of salvage, occasionally addressing a question to Hitaki, all the while watched by both Otte and the squad of Adeptus Astartes guarding the cavern. Eventually they reached the final crate. Deitrich’s excitement, already palpable across Otte’s readouts, spiked.
‘Where was this retrieved?’ Deitrich asked Hitaki.
‘The moon of Terax Nine,’ the Techmarine said. ‘Six Terran years ago.’
‘You have possessed it ever since?’
‘We have, locked in stasis,’ Hitaki confirmed
.
Otte leaned forwards on his adamantium cane, peering into the crate’s bottom. There, nestled in the cables and fixing prongs of the stasis field’s heart, was a red stone. It was smaller than Otte’s palm, similar to a ruby, the light coming through the shaft in the cavern’s ceiling glittering from its rough edges.
Otte didn’t need Deitrich or Severus to tell him the identity of this particular piece of archeotech. The explorator magi of half a dozen forge worlds had spent millennia searching for it. It was the Red Periapt, and it had been thought long lost by the adepts of Mars.
‘We will have to conduct additional scans,’ Deitrich said, struggling to delete the scattering of extra binary that laced his vox-speech. ‘And we will need a full transcript of exactly where and how it was reclaimed.’
‘I have one ready to upload to your noosphere the moment you provide me with the activation hymnal,’ Hitaki responded. ‘I trust you are pleased with the harvest, Magos Benedikt?’
It took a second for Otte’s analysis to register the half-joke. The periapt alone was worth all the materiel the explorator fleet had brought to the Lysia System.
‘I am pleased,’ Otte agreed, his secondary systems failing to find a more organic response to the Space Marine’s dry humour. ‘My masters will likewise rejoice at these reclamations.’
‘I am sure they will, Magos Benedikt,’ Akamu said from the shadows beyond the light-bathed dais. ‘I hope this ensures the continuation of our ancient pact. There is much in the Outer Dark that can benefit the Adeptus Mechanicus. Much that only the Carcharodon Astra can reach, let alone recover.’
‘This is true,’ Otte allowed. ‘I have no doubt that those who approve these transactions between us will permit them to continue. For the glory of the Omnissiah, of course.’
‘And the Imperium, magos primary.’
Otte transmitted a binaric affirmative. He was already sending a signal to the Arc Lux, anchored in low orbit above. The communications marker on his optics display flashed green, the preset message acknowledged.
‘I have authorised the landing of our cargo shuttles,’ he told Akamu. ‘Will you allow me the honour of showing you just what the Omnissiah has provided to further your war efforts?’
‘I am not the one who will be inspecting the iron harvest this time, Magos Benedikt,’ Akamu said, the black lenses of his helm glittering in the darkness beyond the light. ‘The Red Wake will review this Grey Tithe personally.’
It took almost half of the Lost World’s rotational cycle to complete the transaction. Fat-bellied lighters the colour of rust descended ponderously from orbit, their thrusters kicking up wild eddies of dust from the valley floor. Their contents, laid out on unfolding auto-racks before their open cargo bays, gleamed in the weak light – bolters, power armour, munitions, even two Land Raiders and a trio of Rhinos, their hulls gleaming silver.
Akamu moved from one suit of power armour to the next, inspecting each greave and joint socket, rivet and ceramite plate. Hitaki was present to ask additional questions of Otte as he followed them from one rack to another, probing the magos on servo running times and auto-sense responsiveness. Particular attention was paid to the ten sets of Tactical Dreadnought armour, sheathed in plastek wrap to shield their unpainted surfaces from the wind and dust.
The Red Wake oversaw it all. The giant remained silent, following Akamu and Hitaki. Occasionally he would pause of his own accord, assessing a particular suit of battleplate or a weapon. Then, wordlessly, he would move on. Otte, unable to compute whether or not he was permitted to address the figure, kept his focus on Akamu and Hitaki.
While the inspection continued Akamu permitted the magos’ entourage to pore over the archeotech they had brought out into the valley, rigging scanning units and analysis drones around the crates and their precious contents. Much like the other Space Marines present, their skitarii guards watched on impassively, metal-clad frames unmoving as the wind snatched at their red robes and piled dust around their feet.
As darkness fell the machine-men departed, their shuttles stabbing the darkening sky with points of light. Bail Sharr, Reaper Prime and commander of the Carcharodon Astra’s Third Company, stood on the valley’s edge and watched the winking of pilot lumens and plasma thrusters high above, until his vox-unit clicked with the message he had been waiting for.
He had been ordered to attend Akamu and the Second Company in their voyage to the Lost World, but he had not been told why. It was a break from the rigours of preparing his own brethren for their campaign on Kolch Secundus, and not a welcome one at that. With the rising of the Great Devourer from the galaxy’s depths, time had become a precious commodity for every company in the Chapter, and Sharr had little desire to spend his overseeing another Prime’s tithing.
Then he had received word that the Red Wake would be with the expedition. That had changed everything.
Sharr passed into the jagged, black tunnel that wound its way through the valley’s bedrock, emerging into the cavern where the Adeptus Mechanicus had first inspected their half of the tithe. The chamber, which had held only one of Akamu’s tactical squads along with the cargo crates, was now full. Much of the equipment provided by the Adeptus Mechanicus – bar the heavy armour – had been transferred into the subterranean space, where it was being subjected to the checks and rituals of the Chapter, ensuring nothing dangerous or unworthy was brought to the Nomad Predation Fleet. Hundreds of serfs, from overseers to magnicled slave-hands, were undertaking the packing and preparation of the dozens of suits of armour and weapons, observed by fussing artisans and machine-savants, as well as Techmarine Hitaki’s unblinking bionic optics. A dozen Red Brethren – veterans of the Carcharodons First Company – observed the bustle from the chamber’s edges, as silent and unmoving as the rough-clad rock surrounding them.
Sharr passed between serfs struggling to auto-clamp plastrons and armoury-devotants counting out bolt-rounds. He was alone – his command squad had remained aboard his strike cruiser, the White Maw, in high anchorage above Kolch Secundus, as had the rest of his company. Being separated from them for the first time in many decades had created a curiously hollow, dislocated feeling. Those around Sharr were not of his shiver, not part of his void brotherhood. He had spoken only briefly with Akamu during their journey to the Lost World. Intruding on another Prime’s tithing felt unnatural, perverse even. He would have complained were it not for the commands of the great warrior who occupied the stone-cut throne he now approached.
Tyberos, the Red Wake, Reaper Lord of the Void, Master of the Carcharodon Astra. Even seated, he seemed to dwarf those around him, utterly immovable, a vast, silent judge whose pronouncements were always final. The armour he wore was a Tactical Dreadnought pattern, but heavily modified to suit his stature. Dozens of brass bonding studs gleamed atop slab-plates of grey ceramite, layered over blocks of plasteel reinforced with rods of adamantium. A skull, the bone yellowing and ancient, dangled from a chain at the giant’s waist, its eye sockets as dead and soulless as the black lenses of the Red Wake’s boar-snouted helm. More terrible yet were the two great gauntlets he wore. Named Hunger and Slake, the ancient fists combined wicked power talons with twin-linked underbite chainblades. The carnage they could unleash had to be seen to be believed. The entire suit of ancient battleplate throbbed with the vast power necessary to keep its thick servo bundles active, and the very air around Sharr felt alive with the potency of the supreme predator seated before him.
The Red Wake was not alone. Two Red Brethren flanked his throne, their armour heavily inscribed with exile markings. Another two Carcharodons stood slightly to one side, observing Sharr’s approach. One the Reaper Prime knew well – the Chapter’s Chief Librarian, the Pale Nomad, Te Kahurangi. The ot
her was Khauri, Te Kahurangi’s Lexicanium apprentice.
Sharr halted before the Red Wake’s throne and went down on one knee, ceramite scraping bedrock. He stayed there, head down, until Tyberos spoke.
‘Rise.’
The voice that issued from the helm’s vox-unit was at odds with the figure it belonged to – dry, rasping, dead. It was a voice that sounded as though it issued from an ancient Administratum savant or data-scribe, bent double and weary with a lifetime’s toil. There was a coldness there though, a chill in the irregular vox-crackle that accompanied it, a hardness like ice. Sharr obeyed it and stood, though he did not raise his own helm to directly face his master.
‘You are suffering, Bail Sharr,’ Tyberos said. It was not a question.
‘I do your bidding, lord,’ Sharr replied.
‘It is not easy to be drawn from your brotherhood while they are on a war footing,’ the Red Wake continued. ‘You are eager to spill xenos blood, rather than parley with machine-men.’
‘This is not my place,’ Sharr admitted. ‘I am unsure as to why my presence is required.’
‘This Grey Tithe has been a bountiful one for the Chapter,’ Tyberos said. ‘It was necessary. The War in the Deeps has cost the Chapter dearly in terms of materiel. In terms of flesh also.’
‘It has,’ Sharr agreed, sensing the giant’s helm shift slightly as Tyberos surveyed the activity filling the chamber behind him.
‘It was necessary that I oversee this particular tithing in person,’ the Red Wake went on. ‘It has fallen at a crucial juncture. It is necessary too that I impart your new orders to you in person. The future of the Chapter will rest upon your abilities, Reaper Prime.’
‘What is it that my lord wills?’
Tyberos was silent. Sharr risked a glance at Te Kahurangi. Unlike most void brethren, the Chief Librarian had a habit of only rarely donning his helmet. His features were pale and drawn in the cavern’s shadows, the patches of flesh around his eyes, jaw and neck blotched with the dark denticle scabbing that afflicted the oldest members of the Chapter. He sensed Sharr’s attention, and a ghost of a smile parted his thin lips, revealing teeth sharpened to wicked points. His Lexicanium, Khauri, remained inscrutable behind his own blue helm.