Fear the Alien

by Christian Dunn - (ebook by Undead)

  WARHAMMER 40,000 STORIES

  FEAR THE ALIEN

  Edited by Christian Dunn

  (An Undead Scan v1.0)

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless Planetary Defence Forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants—and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  CONTENTS

  Gardens of Tycho

  by Dan Abnett

  Fear Itself

  by Juliet E. McKenna

  Prometheus Requiem

  by Nick Kyme

  Mistress Baeda’s Gift

  by Braden Campbell

  Iron Inferno

  by C. L. Werner

  Sanctified

  by Mark Clapham

  Faces

  by Matthew Farrer

  Unity

  by James Gilmer

  The Core

  by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Ambition Knows No Bounds

  by Andy Hoare

  GARDENS OF TYCHO

  Dan Abnett

  A Magos Drusher story

  The nature of Master Dellac’s line of business had never come up in conversation, and Valentin Drusher was in no position to ask impertinent questions. Certainly, Master Dellac was a successful man, one of the most conspicuously wealthy citizens on that dusty stretch of the Bone Coast. Drusher had an idea or two, but decided it was probably safer not to know. He just did what he was told. Two visits a week, after hours, to Master Dellac’s mansion up in the hills, providing his specialist services on a private basis, in return for an agreed wage. And no questions asked, either way.

  Sometimes, Master Dellac would supplement Drusher’s payment with a gift: a smoked ham, a packet of expensive, dainty biscuits, perhaps even a bottle of imported wine. Drusher knew he could get good prices selling these items on later, but he always kept them for himself. It wasn’t that he was greedy, or some kind of epicure (although, Throne knows, it had been a long, long time since Valentin Drusher had known any luxury in his life). It was simply because there was a line Drusher wasn’t prepared to cross. So many aspects of his life, his respectability, and his good character, had been eroded over the years, he held on tight to those he still had.

  Besides, he was a meek man, and he was too afraid of getting caught.

  Late one Lauday evening, Drusher was making the return journey from Dellac’s house to Kaloster. Drusher went to and from the mansion on foot, a solid journey of an hour each way. Dellac never offered him transport, even though he had a driver. Drusher tried to consider the bi-weekly trips the sort of decent exercise a man of his age ought to be getting, but by the time he returned to his habitat on Amon Street, he was always weary.

  The sun had gone, leaving the sky over the small coastal town stained like pink marble. A night wind was picking up, sifting white dust from the dunes across the town road, and Kaloster itself seemed shuttered and dark.

  There was no nightlife, no remission from the frugal, small-town quiet. But in addition to the payment in his coat pocket, Drusher carried a piece of good brisket in his satchel. He would eat well for the next few nights at least.

  Amon Street was a tenement slope running down from Aquila Square to the rusty wharfs and the condemned fishworks. The buildings were drab brown with age and neglect, and their roofs were in need of repair. The air in the street stank because of the lime burners just across the way. Drusher rented rooms on the fourth floor of number seventy.

  A large black transporter with big chrome headlamps was parked just down the street. Drusher noticed it as he was fumbling for his key, but paid it little heed. He went up the narrow wooden staircase to his door.

  It was only when he stepped into his little room, that he realised someone was already there.

  The man was robust and rather ugly. Heavy-browed with a shock of thick, dark hair and a shapeless, asymmetric face, he wore a thick, high-buttoned suit of black serge and a heavy leather stormcoat, also black. He was seated, casually, on the wooden pole-back chair behind the door, waiting.

  “What are you—” Drusher began, his voice coming out thin and reedy.

  “You Drusher?” the man asked.

  “Yes. Why? What are you doing here? This is my—”

  “Valentin Drusher?” the man pressed, glancing at a small data-slate in his left hand. “Magos biologis? Says here you’re forty-seven. Is that right? You look older.”

  “I am Valentin Drusher,” Drusher replied, too scared to be offended. “What is this about? Who are you?”

  “Sit down, magos. Over there, please. Put your satchel on the table.”

  Drusher did as he was told. His pulse was thumping, and his skin had become clammy. He had an awful feeling he knew what this was about.

  “I’m Falken,” the man said, and briefly flashed an identity warrant at him. Drusher swallowed as he glimpsed the silver seal of the Magistratum, attached to which was a small orange ribbon that denoted the Martial Order Division. “How long have you been here on Gershom?”

  “Ah, fourteen years. Fourteen years this winter.”

  “And here in Kaloster?”

  “Just eighteen months.”

  The man looked at his data-slate again. “According to Central Records, you are employed by the Administratum to teach Natural History at the local scholam.”

  “That’s correct. My papers are in order.”

  “But you’re a magos biologis, not a teacher.”

  “Employment prospects on this world are not great for a man of my calling. I take what work I can. The teaching stipend offered by the Administratum keeps a roof over my head.”

  The man pursed his lips. “If the employment prospects for your kind are thin on the ground, magos, it begs the question why you came to Gershom in the first place. Let alone why you chose to stay here for fourteen years.”

  Despite his fear, Drusher felt piqued. This was the old injustice again, back to haunt him. “When I came to this world, sir, I was gainfully employed. The Lord Governor himself was my patron. He commissioned me to produce a complete taxonomy of the planet’s fauna. The work took seven years, but at the end of it, complications arose—”

  “Complications?”

  “A legal matter. I was forced to stay on for another two years, as a witness. All the money I had earned from the commission ran out. By the time the case was settled, I co
uld no longer afford passage to another world. I have been here ever since, making a living as best I can.”

  The man, Falken, didn’t seem very interested. In Drusher’s experience, no one ever was. On a downtrodden outworld like Gershom, everyone had their own sob story.

  “You keep glancing at your satchel, magos,” Falken remarked suddenly. “Why is that?”

  Drusher swallowed hard again. He had never been any good at lying. “Sir,” he said quietly, “could you tell me… I mean, would things go better for me if I made a full confession now?”

  Falken blinked, as if surprised, then smiled. “That’s a good idea,” he said, sitting down to face Drusher across the low table where the satchel sat. “Why don’t you do just that?”

  “I’m not proud of this,” said Drusher. “I mean, it was stupid. I knew the Magistratum would find out eventually. It’s just… things have been so tight.”

  “Go on.”

  “The Administratum pays me a stipend for my services, along with certain ration benefits as per the Martial Order. This is of course contingent on me not… on me not supplementing my earnings.”

  “Naturally,” nodded Falken. “If you break the terms, there is a penalty. It can be severe.”

  Drusher sighed, and showed Falken the contents of his satchel. “There is a man, a local businessman, who employs me, two evenings a week. It is a private arrangement. He pays me in cash, no questions asked.”

  “How much?”

  “Two crowns per evening. He has a daughter. For her, he retains my services…” Falken looked at the things Drusher was showing him. “You do this with his daughter?”

  “Yes. Sometimes he watches.”

  Falken got up. “I see. This is a pretty picture, isn’t it?” For some reason, Falken seemed to be stifling a smile, as if something amused him terribly.

  “Am I in serious trouble?” Drusher asked.

  “You’ll have to come with me,” Falken said. “To Tycho.”

  “To Tycho?”

  “The Marshal wants to speak with you.”

  “Oh, Throne!” Drusher gasped. “I thought perhaps a fine…”

  “Pack your things, magos. All of them. I’ll give you five minutes.”

  Drusher had very few belongings. They fitted into two small bags. Falken didn’t offer to carry either of them down to the transporter.

  It was dark now, fully night. When the transporter’s engine turned over, the glare of the headlights filled the depths of Amon Street.

  Drusher sat up front, beside the Magistratum officer. They drove up through the town, onto the coast highway, and turned south.

  * * *

  The cities of the Southern Peninsula, Tycho amongst them, had been the arena of a savage civil war that had raged for over ten years. The popular separatist movement had finally been defeated by government forces two years earlier, but by then the war had critically weakened Gershom’s already-ailing economy. Strict, Imperial martial order had been imposed throughout the Peninsula and right up through the Bone Coast into the Eastern Provinces.

  The civil war had stained the air with smoke, and poisoned the coastal waters, killing off the fishing industry. The cities of the Peninsula were urban ruins where the Martial Order Division worked to re-establish Imperium law and support the impoverished civilian population.

  Falken drove for two hours without speaking. The vox-set under his dashboard, turned down, crackled with Magistratum traffic as if it was talking in its sleep. Drusher stared out of the window at the darkness and the occasional black ruin that loomed out of it. This was it, he felt. Gershom was his nemesis. It had lured him in, a bright young man with an equally bright future before him, and it had trapped him like a fettle fly in amber. It had drained him dry, throttled his spirit, made him destitute.

  And now this, after all his efforts to earn a crust to live, let alone a ticket off-world, was going to destroy him. Disgrace. Shame. Perhaps a custodial sentence.

  “I don’t deserve this,” he murmured.

  “What’s that?” asked Falken at the wheel.

  “Nothing.”

  They began to pass through armoured roadblocks where Magistratum troopers wearing the orange ribbon of the Martial Order Division waved Falken through. They were entering the Peninsula proper now, the real war-zone. Ghost cities, tumbled and forlorn, drifted past, lit by searchlights and military beacons. The dark landscape outside the transporter became a phosphorescent waste of fragile walls and empty habs.

  Tycho was the principal city of the Peninsula region, and when they drove in through its empty streets, four hours after leaving Kaloster, Drusher saw a miserable calamity of twisted girders, piled rubble and smoke-blackened buildings. His face, half-lit by the luminous dials of the dashboard, reflected back to him off the window, superimposed on the ruins. Pale, thin, bespectacled, the hair thin and grey. Drusher wasn’t sure if he resembled the wastes of Tycho, or if they resembled him.

  They pulled up outside a mouldering ouslite monolith in the city centre.

  “Leave your bags,” Falken said, getting out. “I’ll have them brought in.”

  Drusher followed him in through the towering entrance. Magistratum officers hurried to and fro in the echoing atrium, and limp Imperium flags hung from the roof. There was a smell of antiseptic.

  “This way,” Falken said.

  He led Drusher to a room on the fifth floor. The elevators were out and they had to use the stairs. Falken made him wait outside the heavy double doors.

  The hallway was cold, and night air seeped in through the cracked windowpanes at the far end. Drusher paced up and down. He could hear the rattle and clack of cogitators in nearby rooms, and an occasional shout from down below. Then he heard laughter from behind the double doors.

  Falken emerged. He was still chuckling. “You can go in now,” he said.

  Drusher walked in, the doors closing behind him. The office was large and grim, a single metal desk planted on a threadbare rug. Half a dozen wire-basket carts heavily laden with dog-eared dossiers and files. A cogitator, whirring to itself. Faded spaces on the walls where pictures had once hung.

  “Throne. I wouldn’t have recognised you, magos,” said a voice.

  She was standing by the deep windows, silhouetted against the night-time city outside. He knew the voice at once.

  “Macks?”

  Germaine Macks stepped forward to meet him, a smile on her lips. Her hair was still short, her face still lean, the old, tiny zigzag scar above the left-hand side of her mouth still visible. The other, newer scar on her forehead was half hidden under her fringe.

  “Hello, Valentin,” she said. “What’s it been now? Five years?”

  He nodded. “Deputy Macks…”

  She shook her head. “It’s Magistratum Marshal Macks now. Chief of Martial Order, Tycho city.”

  He stiffened. “Mamzel, I can explain everything. I hope the fact that you know me of old might mitigate the—”

  “Falken was playing with you, magos.”

  “Excuse me, what?”

  Macks sat down behind her desk. “I sent Falken up the coast to get you. Throne knows why you started confessing things to him. Guilty conscience, Valentin?”

  “I…” Drusher stammered.

  “Falken was beside himself. He told me he didn’t think he could keep a straight face on the journey down here. Did you think you were in trouble?”

  “He… that is… I…”

  “Teaching the daughter of some small-time racketeer the art of watercolour painting? To supplement the pittance Admin pays you? Come on, Valentin! I’d hardly spare a chief investigator to go all that way to bring you in. You criminal mastermind, you.”

  Drusher felt a little giddy. “May I sit down?” he asked.

  She nodded, still chuckling, and reached into a desk drawer for a bottle of amasec and two shot glasses.

  “Get this inside you, you filthy recidivist,” she grinned, handing one glass to him.

  “
I really don’t understand what’s going on…” Drusher said.

  “Neither do I,” she said. “That’s why I want some help. Some expert help. I said you weren’t in trouble, and I was lying. You’re not in personal trouble, but there is trouble here. And I’m about to drop you right in it.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Drink up,” Macks said. “You’ll need it where we’re going.”

  “In your expert opinion,” she said, “what did that?” Drusher took a long, slow look, then excused himself. Coming up, the amasec was a lot hotter and more acid than it had felt going down. “All right?” she said.

  He wiped his mouth, and nodded reluctantly. Macks took a little pot out of her uniform pocket and smeared what looked like grease under her nose. She reached out and did the same to Drusher. The fierce camphor smell of osscil filled his sinuses.

  “Should have done that before I took you in,” Macks apologised. “Old medicae mortus trick. It masks the stench of decay.”

  She led him back into the morgue. The place was chilly, and tiled with mauve enamel squares. There were brass plugholes every few metres across the floor, and in the distance, Drusher could hear water pattering from a leaky scrub-hose. High-gain glow-strips, sharp and white, filled the chamber with a light like frost.

  The cadaver lay on a steel gurney beside an autopsy unit. Other shapes, tagged and covered in red sheets, lurked nearby on other trolleys.

  “All right to take another look?” Macks asked.

  Drusher nodded.

  She folded the red shroud back.

  The man was naked, his body as white and swollen as cooked seafood. His hands, feet and genitals seemed shrivelled with cold, and the fingernails stood proud and dark. The hairs on his chest and pubis were black and looked like insect legs.

  He must have been about one-eighty in life, Drusher figured, fighting back another wave of nausea. Heavy-set. Bruises of lividity marked his lumbar region, and there were other darker blue bruises around his ribs.