Sarpedon saluted. ‘Cold and fast, Soul Drinker.’
FLESH
Chris Wraight
Fifty years ago, they took my left hand.
I watched, conscious, heavy-headed with stimms and pain suppressants. I watched the knives go in, peeling back the skin, picking apart muscle and sinew.
They had trouble with the bones. I had changed by then and the ossmodula had turned my skeleton as hard as plasteel. They used a circular saw with glittering blades to cut through the radius and ulna. I can still hear its screaming whine.
They were simply following protocol. Indeed, they were further along the path than I was and there was something to be learned from the way they operated.
I kept it together. I am told that not everyone does.
It took three weeks for the new mechanism to bed down. The flesh chafed for a long time after that, red-raw against the metal of the implant.
I would wake and see it, an alien presence, bursting from the puffed and swollen stump of my left arm. I flexed iron fingers and watched micropistons and balance-nodes slide smoothly past one another. It looked delicate, though I knew it was stronger than the original had been.
Stronger, and better. Morvox spent a long time with me, explaining the benefits. He cast the issue in terms of pragmatism, of efficiency margins. Even back then I knew there was more to it than that.
This was an aesthetic matter. A matter of form. We were changing ourselves to comply with the dictates of taste.
Do not mistake this for regret. I do not regret what has been done to me. I cannot regret, not in any true sense.
My iron hand functions competently. It serves, just as I serve. It is an implement, just as I am an implement. No praise can be higher.
But my old flesh, the part of me that was immolated in the rite, overseen by those machine faces down in the forges, I do not forget it.
I will, one day. Like Morvox, I will not remember anything but the aesthetic imperative.
Not yet. For now, I still feel it.
I
From the Talex to Majoris, then over to the spine shafts and the turboclimbers. Levels swept by, all black, mottled with grime. Out of Station Lyris, and things got cleaner. Then up past the Ecclesiast Cordex, taking grav-bundles staffed by greyshirts, and into the Administratum quarter. That looked a lot like real grass on the lawns, baking under hololamps, before up again, through Securum and the plexiglass domes of the Excelsion.
Then things were really sparkling. Gleaming ceramics, floor-to-ceiling glass panels. You could forget the rest of the hive, the kilometres of squalid, close-pressed humanity, rammed into the angles between spires and manufactoria.
Right at the top, right where the tip of Ghorgonspire pierced the heavy orange fug of the sky, it felt like you’d never need a gland-deep dermoscrub again. You could imagine that everything on Helaj V was pristine and smooth as a Celestine’s conscience.
Raef Khamed, being a man of the world, was not prone to think that. He stalked up to Governor Tralmo’s offices, still in his Jenummari fatigues, still stinking from what had happened in 45/331/aX and from the journey up. His lasgun banged against his right thigh, loose in its waist-slung holster. It needed a recharge. He needed a recharge. He’d emptied himself out on those bastards, and they just kept coming.
The two greyshirts flanking the doors saw him coming and snapped their heels.
‘Jen,’ they said in rough unison, making the aquila.
‘She’s in there?’ asked Khamed, pushing the door open.
‘She is,’ came a voice from inside the chamber. ‘Shut the doors behind you.’
He went in, and did as he was told.
Khamed stood in a large circular chamber. The floor was veined stone, grey and pink. False windows lined the walls, looking out on to false meadows and false skies. A bonestone statue of Sanguinius Redemptor stood by the walls, pious and gloomy.
There was a desk at the far end, but it was empty. Set off to one side, three low couches had been set around a curved table.
In one of the couches sat Governor Planetary Anatova Tralmo, tight-skinned from a century of rejuvenat and with oil-shimmer hair. Next to her was Astropath Majoris Eridh, milk-eyed and staring.
‘How goes it?’ Tralmo asked as Khamed sat down. She winced a little as his grimy fatigues marked the cream surface of the couch.
‘Awful,’ said Khamed, not noticing. ‘Bloody awful. I’m not even going to try to describe what I saw this time.’
The Governor nodded sympathetically.
‘Then you’ll like this, I hope. Eridh?’
‘A response,’ said the Astropath, looking at Khamed in that eerie, sightless way of his. ‘Two cycles back, just deciphered and verified.’
Khamed’s weary face lit up. He’d begun to doubt there’d be one.
‘Throne,’ he said, letting his relief show. The time for bravado was long gone. ‘At last. Regiment?’
‘It’s not a Guard signal, Jenummari.’
‘Then what? Who?’
Eridh handed him a dataslate with a summary of the transmission, elucidated into verbose Helaj vernac.
Khamed looked at it, and his muscles tensed. He read it again, just to be sure. He discovered he was holding the slate rather too tightly.
If he’d been less tired, he might have hidden his response better. As it was, when he looked up, he knew he’d given everything away. For the first time, he noticed the air of tight expectation on Tralmo’s face.
Khamed had always liked her. Tralmo was tough. She didn’t shake easily and had been good during the difficulties.
Just then, she looked like she was going to throw up.
‘How long have we got?’ he asked, conscious of the sudden hoarseness in his voice.
‘Less than a standard Terran,’ replied Tralmo. ‘I want you to meet them, Raef. It’s protocol. We should keep this military to military.’
Khamed swallowed. He was still holding the slate too tightly.
‘Got you.’
Bitch.
The docking bay doors were a metre thick. They dragged open, grinding along rust-weakened rails. Outside, the platform was open to the elements. On Helaj, the elements were always hateful.
Tracer lights winked in the orange gale. Further out, deeper into the sub-zero atmospheric bilge, more lights whirled. The storm roared, just as it always did, grumbling away like a maddened giant turning in its sleep.
There was another roar over the platform, closer to hand than the storm, and it came from the blurred outline of a ship. The thing was a brute, far larger than the shuttles that normally touched down at the spire summit.
Khamed couldn’t make much out through the muck – his visor was already clouding up – but the engine backwash was huge. As he’d watched it come down on the local augurs he’d seen rows of squat gun barrels along its flanks, gigantic thruster housings and glimpses of a single infamous insignia.
That hadn’t made him feel well. He was on edge. His hands were sweaty even in the thick gloves of his environment suit. His heart hadn’t stopped thumping.
His men, twelve lostari lined up behind him, weren’t any better. They stared into the raging clouds ahead, their weapons clutched tight, held diagonally across their body armour.
We’re all soiling ourselves. Throne of Earth, trooper – get a handle on this.
The roar transmuted into a booming thunderclap, and the ship pulled away, back into the raging cloudscape. Its dark outline faded quickly, though the noise of those engines lingered for much longer.
New shapes emerged from the smog-filth, resolving into clarity like a carcharex out of the acid sea.
Five of them.
The Imperial Guard garrison in Ghorgonspire was over a hundred thousand strong. They’d made no progress against the incursion for six local lunars,
which converted into a lot longer if you went with Terran.
Five of them. Five.
‘Formal,’ hissed Khamed over the vox.
His men snapped their ankles together and stared rigidly ahead.
The quintet approached. Khamed swallowed, and looked up.
Their armour was night-black and plainer than he’d expected. There were white markings on the shoulder-guards, but the finish was matt. Blunt, uncomplicated.
There was no getting away from the size of them. He’d been warned what to expect from Namogh, who’d witnessed a squad of Argent Sabres twenty years ago while on an exchange placement off-world.
‘You never get used to it,’ he’d said, his ugly face thoroughly disapproving. ‘You think, that’s a machine. It has to be. But in there, there’s a man. And then it moves, all that plate, tonnes and tonnes of it, and you know it can move quicker than you can, it can kill you quicker than you can blink, and then you think: I was right the first time. It is a machine, a nightmare machine, and if we need to make a thing like this to keep us alive, then the universe is a scary place.’
Their armour hummed. It was barely audible over the roar of the storm, but you knew it was there. Just like the ship Khamed had seen, the power stored up in those black shells was obvious. They didn’t need to hide it. They didn’t want to hide it. They strode – strutted – up to him, every movement soaked in menace and confidence and contempt.
Khamed bowed.
‘Welcome to Helaj V, lords,’ he said, and was disgusted to hear how his voice carried a tremor even over the tinny transmission of his helm vox. ‘We’re grateful to have you.’
‘I think that unlikely,’ came the response. It was machine-clipped. ‘But here we are. I am Brother-Sergeant Naim Morvox of the Iron Hands. Brief me as we descend, then the cleansing will begin.’
‘They come up from the underhive. We isolate the spearheads and respond with contagion-pattern suppression.’
Khamed had to trot beside the stalking figure of Morvox as he tried to explain the situation. The Iron Hands Space Marine made no effort to slow down and kept up a punishing, metronomic stride. Behind him, the other four giants matched pace. Their heavy treads clunked on the polished surface of the transit corridor. Khamed’s own men trailed in their wake.
‘With little success,’ observed Morvox. His voice. It was a strangely muted sound to come out of such a monstrous mouthpiece. Like all the Iron Hands squad, Morvox kept his helm on. The faceplate was a blank, dark mask.
‘We’ve succeeded in keeping them from the upper hive,’ replied Khamed, knowing how weak that sounded.
Morvox was approaching the honour guard: fifty lostari in greyshirt trim, ranked on either side of the corridor, guns hoisted.
‘But you have not eliminated the source.’
‘Not yet, no.’
From somewhere, Khamed heard Namogh’s voice call the troops to attention, and their ankles slammed together. It wasn’t done smoothly. The men were nervous.
‘I need access to your hive schematics,’ said Morvox, ignoring the troops and carrying on down the corridor. ‘When did it happen?’
‘8.2 Standard Terran lunars ago,’ replied Khamed, shrugging an apology as he sailed past Namogh’s position. His deputy looked even more irritated than usual. ‘Insurgents control fifty-five percent, all lower hive. We have no access to the levels below the base forge.’
‘And I’ll need full asset inventory. All troops are under my command. What is your name?’
Only now. Now you ask.
‘Raef Khamed, Jenum–’
‘You will remain with me. We will commence assault as soon as I have the data. Your men will be mobilised by then and I will order their deployment.’
‘Very good. The men stand read–’
‘Warn them they will need to be.’
They passed from the long corridor, through a pair of slide doors and into an octagonal command node. The walls were lined with picts. There were cogitator banks along the near flank, attended to by servitors bearing the cog-skull of the Mechanicus. Hololiths shimmered over projection pillars showing various cross-sections of the Ghorgonspire.
Morvox stopped walking. He said nothing, but his squad immediately fanned out and began to assimilate information from the picts. One of them pushed a servitor aside and extruded a dataclaw from a compartment in his gauntlet. None of them spoke out loud, though Khamed guessed that there was plenty of chat over closed channels.
‘Leave us now,’ ordered Morvox.
Khamed hesitated for a moment. Only minutes had passed since the docking bay doors had opened. This was all happening very quickly and he’d expected... well, he didn’t know what he’d expected.
‘Your will, lord,’ he said, bowing.
He withdrew from the command node and blast doors slid closed behind him. He turned, and saw Namogh waiting for him.
‘So?’ the deputy asked. Orfen Namogh looked out of place in ceremonial armour, and it fitted him badly. Then again, the deputy only looked comfortable with dirt smeared on his face and a lasgun stock wedged against his shoulder.
‘We asked for help,’ said Khamed. He suddenly felt weary. He hadn’t slept for twenty hours. ‘We got it. Get everything together – we’re going in again and they’re in charge now.’
It took longer than he expected. The Iron Hands didn’t emerge from the command node for over seven hours, during which time Khamed snatched some sleep, reviewed tactical readouts from the containment operation, and shared a meal of dried multimeat and tarec with Namogh.
‘We’re going to have to work with them, Orfen,’ said Khamed, chewing through the gristle methodically.
‘No,’ said Namogh bluntly. ‘No, we’re not. You don’t work with them. They order you into shitholes. You go down them. That’s the way it works.’
‘Fine. But stow your attitude. I don’t want it getting down to the grunts.’
Namogh laughed, and took a swig of tarec. He had flecks of meat all over his big, yellow teeth.
‘Don’t worry. They’re all crapping themselves already. And I haven’t said a thing.’
A bead on Khamed’s starched collar blinked red. Despite himself, he felt his stomach lurch.
‘What are we afraid of?’ he muttered, getting up and retrieving his helmet.
‘You heard of Contqual?’ asked Namogh, wiping his mouth and following Khamed out of the hab. ‘You heard what they did there?’
Khamed brushed his uniform down and put his helmet on, twisting the seal as he walked.
‘You shouldn’t believe what you read, Orfen,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of crap on the grids.’
‘One in three. That’s how many they killed. Punitive measures, they called them. And those poor bastards were on our side.’
Khamed opened the blast doors from the officers’ quarters and strode out into the antechamber of the command node. He kept his shoulders back, head straight. The little things were important.
‘Like I said. There’s a lot of crap out there.’
He opened the doors. Morvox was waiting on the far side of them, vast and mordant.
‘We have what we need,’ said the Iron Father. ‘Now we go in.’
Out of the Excelsion, moving at a clip, and into the long bunkers of Securum, lit by gloomy strip-lumens. Administratum was amusing, with scholiasts looking terrified at the sight of the black giants striding through the lexchambers. Then down into the vaults of the Cordex. Some of the priests had tried to perform some kind of benediction on the Space Marines there, but had been simply brushed aside, just like everyone else.
After that, the dirt got bad. The air got hot. The floor got sticky, and the aircon wheezed like a phenexodrol junkie. There were men waiting at Station Lyris, arranged in ranks of a hundred. They looked pretty good, kitted out in full staff grey and assault arm
our. There wasn’t much blood to be seen. The floors must have been swabbed.
‘Will you address them?’ asked Khamed, not really knowing whether that would be good or bad for morale.
‘No,’ said Morvox, and kept moving.
He never stopped moving. He just kept going.
Then you think: I was right the first time. It is a machine, a nightmare machine.
It was the implacability that was so unsettling. They looked almost invulnerable, to be sure, and their armour-hum was eerily threatening. But it was the sense you got, the sense that they would just keep on going, that got to you.
A mortal would know when to quit, even a dogged one like Namogh.
They wouldn’t. Ever.
‘How do you want the lostari deployed?’
‘You have orders on the tac. For now, just try to keep up.’
Then down again, past the station bulwarks and along service runners towards the core hab clusters. The light got worse. The shafts got smaller and less well repaired. Loops of cables hung down from the roof, and moisture pooled in dark corners. Defective lumens guttered behind panels of iron mesh.
They were getting to the heart of it. Half a kilometre down in Ghorgonspire was like being a long way underground. The nearest patch of sky was buried under a lot of rockcrete. The air that coughed through the circulation systems was humid and smelled of human excreta. Major power grids had gone down early on in the difficulties, and battlefield gen-units struggled to keep the lumens in operation.
Khamed switched on vision-aug in his helmet. The men in his lead unit, twenty of them, did the same. They were all practically running in the wake of the Iron Hands, none of whom had broken their striding rhythm.
‘This is Node 4R,’ announced Morvox, coming up to a massive, closed siege gate at the end of the corridor. On either side of it, teams of greyshirt sentries waited warily, weapons hoisted. ‘We will cleanse it. Consolidate in our wake. Are you prepared?’
Khamed was already out of breath. He shot a quick glance back down the crowded corridor. His lead unit was in readiness. Behind it, stretched out in the gloom of the long tunnel, were more squads coming into position. He could see some of them ramming energy packs into their lasguns and strapping helmets securely. They were as prepared as they would ever be.
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