They knew it simply as the Vault.
Khangba Marwu had always been part of the mountain, or at least so it seemed to those who even knew of it. It had always been a site of incarceration, a hidden place to cage the most violent, the most dangerous, and the most reprehensible evils the world had known. No one knew who had first hacked its cells and passageways from the bedrock of the mountain, but its origins went far beyond the limits of memory and surviving documentation.
Stories of the heinous criminals incarcerated in its lightless depths stretched back thousands of years, their names now meaningless and their crimes long forgotten. Yet there were villains aplenty plucked from living memory who had darkened its sterile corridors and died insane within its unfeeling walls.
The lieutenants of the Pan-Pacific tyrant had been brought here, as had the Ethnarch of the Caucasus Wastes, the so-called ‘First Emperor’ and a being known only as the Reaper – a monster that legend said was an angel sent to cleanse mankind from the world. Uilleam the Red, the tyrannical blood-drinking prince of Albyon had been brought here for execution after his defeat at the Battle of the Blue Dawn. Uilleam’s debased followers conquered a quarter of the globe, but were finally halted by an army of powerful warriors raised by a Nordafrik warlord known as Kibuka, who was said to have called lightning from the clouds and granted his warriors superhuman strength. In time, Kibuka himself was hauled in chains to Khangba Marwu, but no history remained to tell of who had overturned his rule.
A persistent rumour told that the Emperor himself had designed a cell especially for Narthan Dume, but which had gone unused following the tyrant’s death during the final battle to bring down his inhuman regime. Scurrilous whispers maintained it had been the urging of Constantin Valdor that saw Durme executed in the ruins of his empire, a half-mad, half-genius psychopath deemed too dangerous to live.
Cardinal Tang had been bound for this specialised gaol, but like Durme he never saw the inside of his cell. Inmates who had suffered the worst tortures imaginable in his bloody pogroms broke open his isolation tank and tore his body apart with their bare hands before his transit from Nusa Kambagan could be arranged.
In all its long history, only one individual had ever escaped Khangba Marwu, a congenital dwarf named Zamora who was said to have once attained the rank of major in the proto-Legio Custodes, a fact that made the stories of his escape all the more ridiculous.
Since the beginning of the Great Crusade, Khangba Marwu had seen no shortage of inmates, deluded fools and doomsayers who raved and ranted of the Emperor’s folly or greedy opportunists who sought to exploit this new golden age for their own benefit. None of those incarcerated could boast a pedigree as infamous as Tang or Durme or Uilleam, but that would all change once this rebellion was put down.
Khangba Marwu’s most impregnable cellblock was even now being made ready to contain the most dangerous individual in the galaxy.
But could any facility on Terra hope to hold Horus Lupercal prisoner?
PRIMUS BLOCK ALPHA-One-Zero was never dark. The diurnal phases of the planet above were inconsequential to the workings of the Vault or the needs of its inmates. Darkness was an aid to escape, and was thus banished. Uttam Luna Hesh Udar halted before the last security checkpoint before the cells, allowing the bio-metric surveyors in the walls, floor and ceiling to verify his identity.
Air-samplers tasted his breath, body-mass sensors registered his weight and radiation detectors measured the decay rate of isotopes in his blood and bones. Over a hundred such measurements and genetic markers were compared against real-time data logs to ensure no intruders were able to penetrate Khangba Marwu’s security net without detection.
Uttam wore the gold armour of a Custodian, the cheek plates of his full-face helm folded back into its layered structure. His features were unmoving and expressionless, the result of a greenskin bacteriological pathogen that had left the upper right quadrant of his face unresponsive to muscle stimulus. His enhanced metabolism had easily purged the toxin, but the after-effects of the injury had reduced his reflexive response times to a level below the minimum required for front line service.
A proud man, Uttam had taken his removal from the fighting ranks of the Legio Custodes hard, but he had adapted and taken to his new role as gaoler of the Vaults with the same determination and attention to detail that had seen him closest to full infiltration in a Blood Game until Amon Tauromachian Leng’s most recent attempt.
Uttam had studied the young Custodian’s route to the palace, finding no fault with any of his decisions until the final moment when he had chose to throw caution to the wind and leap to the attack like a common assassin. Uttam would have drawn his victim in like a struggling insect in an arachnid’s web.
Far better to let the prey do the work and subtly calve it from its protectors.
Uttam stared into the blank slate above the armoured doorway, letting the retinal signifiers examine his eyes. This part always took longer than usual, his damaged eye making the machines work hard to establish his identity. This deep in the Vault, such measures were virtually unnecessary, but protocol was protocol, and Uttam never willingly ignored protocol.
The thought made Uttam turn to glance at the procession of veteran soldiers following him. Chosen from the most professional regiments based on Terra, they were armed with a collection of strange weapons, ranging from web-guns, plasma nets, iso-capacitors and mass-crushers to more commonplace melta-guns and hellguns.
A full head and shoulders over even the tallest soldier, Uttam could barely contain his disdain as they filed past the signifiers. It sat ill with him that these men were not Custodians, for the threat rating of the prisoners kept in Primus Block Alpha-One-Zero was far too lethal for these men to face, regardless of what weaponry they carried. Significant levels of the Legio’s operational strength had been despatched on a mission to Prospero alongside the Space Wolves. The purpose of the mission had not been stated, but there could be only one reason to send so many of the Emperor’s praetorians from his side at such a time.
Two soldiers in crimson battle plate and gold-mirrored visors guided a metallic box shaped like an oversized coffin floating on repulsor fields. A standard nutrition dispenser, it had been modified by the Vault’s Mechanicum staff to provide the specialised foodstuffs of these prisoners. Uttam found it incomprehensible that these men had been allowed to live. They were the most dangerous men on Terra, and no good could come of their continued existence.
The signifiers confirmed the identity of last of the soldiers, and the armoured door slid upwards with a hiss of pneumatics and a gust of cool air that spoke of a vast open space ahead. Beyond the door, the iron-sheathed walls of the prison complex gave way to the rough-cut stone of the mountain’s footings. The smell of cold earth and stone that had once rested beneath the deepest ocean blew from within. Glaringly bright lumen globes provided stark illumination and banished shadows.
Thirty metres in, a pair of servitor-crewed turrets spooled up and snapped towards them, clicking and whirring as target locks were established. Heavy calibre autocannons whined with the rotational speed of their barrels as Uttam stepped into the killing box.
‘Uttam Luna Hesh Udar,’ he said, enunciating each syllable with precise modulation.
The augmetic eyes of the servitors changed from red to green, and Uttam ushered the soldiers through as his rearguard warrior approached.
Sumant Giri Phalguni Tirtha was a veteran Custodian, whose name was said to bear at least seventy-six awarded titles. His armour was polished and carved with words of approbation in addition to his earned honours. Uttam did not know how Tirtha had come to Khangba Marwu. He bore no obvious injury and was in prime physical condition, but rumour said he had once questioned an order from Constantin Valdor.
The master of the Legio Custodes was a stern, uncompromising man, and though Uttam had never had the honour of meeting him, he doubted Valdor was so petty as to banish another from his side for so slight an offence. The
Legio valued thinking warriors, doggedly determined men who would question and question again until an answer was forthcoming.
‘Is there a problem, Uttam?’ asked Tirtha. ‘Why do you pause?’
‘No reason,’ said Uttam, ashamed at his lapse into speculation.
‘Then let us be on our way,’ said Tirtha. ‘I dislike being here, the air stinks of them.’
Uttam nodded. The air did taste different. The unique physiology of the prisoners made them different from mortals, even Custodians, in many obvious ways, but also in many less evident ones. Whatever crimes a man might have committed, he was still recognisably human, still clearly part of the human race. These prisoners smelled subtly different… almost alien, and that rankled almost as much than their betrayal.
Almost.
‘Biometrics confirmed,’ said Uttam, and the security door slid closed behind Tirtha. As the metres-thick locking bars slid home, he said, ‘Primus Block Alpha-One-Zero is now sealed and secure.’
‘So confirmed,’ said Tirtha, striding to the front of the column. Uttam now took up the rearmost position, and took short steps as Tirtha led them down the wide corridor. Though they were selected from the bravest and most professional regiments still based on Terra, there was no disguising the soldiers’ nervousness as they passed between the turrets. Though rigorous safeties had been engaged by Uttam’s command, they guns could open fire in a heartbeat, and the green eye-lenses of the servitors promised no mercy to anyone caught in the killing box.
Uttam followed Tirtha and the soldiers towards a wide archway lined with las-mesh emitters, through which came the bass note of colossal generators and the actinic tang of powerful energy fields. Uttam passed beneath the arch, emerging into an enormous cavern, a kilometre wide at its narrowest part, with glistening walls and a dizzyingly high roof. The cavern had no floor, simply a bottomless pit that spanned its entire width. Uttam knew that such a term was hyperbole of the worst kind, but it was apt for all intents and purposes.
He stood on a wide platform built at the edge of cavern, in the shadow of a slender bridge of latticed steel that reared up like the body of an enormous crane. Tirtha stood at its control console, and Uttam watched as he manoeuvred the bridge towards an island of rock that floated in the centre of the cavern, suspended on a hazy cushion of invisible energy.
Enormous machines like vast engines were bolted around the circumference of the cavern walls and Uttam felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand to attention in the electro-statically charged air. At a moment’s notice, these generators could be disengaged and the island would be allowed to plummet into the depths of the world. With such dangerous prisoners, no chances could be taken.
The bridge made contact with the floating island, and a host of automated gun pods mounted in the walls of the cavern swung long barrels to bear on the island. Thirty isolated cells stood on the floating rock, but only twelve housed inmates.
With the bridge in place, Uttam marched onto the bridge, with the soldiers and Tirtha following behind him. The bridge rang with the sound of his armoured boots, and he kept his gaze focussed firmly ahead of him. He unlimbered his guardian spear from the quick-release sheath on his back and rolled the muscles in his shoulder to loosen them in readiness.
‘Expecting trouble?’ asked Tirtha over the helmet vox.
‘No,’ replied Uttam. ‘But I always feel better facing these bastards with a weapon in my hands.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Tirtha. ‘I almost hope one of them tries something.’
‘Don’t even joke about it,’ warned Uttam as he reached the end of the bridge.
The first cell was a square block of triple-layered and ceramite-laced permacrete that gave little clue to the nature of the inmate within. Featureless aside from an alphanumeric designation stencilled on its side and a transparent door of armaglas normally found in the viewports of starships, it was a box that no one entered or exited without the say so of the Legio Custodes.
Uttam approached the door, feeling a familiar knot of tension in his gut: the flush of endorphins and battle stims that preceded a combat engagement. The sensation was welcome, even though he did not expect to fight here.
A single figure sat cross-legged in the centre of the cell, his muscular physique barely contained by the bright yellow of his prison-issue bodyglove. Long hair, dark as oil, spilled around a broad face with genetically spread features that should be ugly, but somehow combined in a handsome whole.
Though this prisoner was deadly beyond words, he had a smooth grace that was disarming. Uttam knew better than to underestimate Atharva simply because he came from a Legion of scholars. Where the others raged or spat biliously at their gaolers, Atharva appeared to accept his incarceration without rancour.
Atharva opened his eyes, one a glittering sapphire, the other a pale amber.
‘Uttam Luna Hesh Udar,’ said the warrior. ‘You are interrupting my ascent into the Enumerations.’
‘It is time for you to eat,’ said Uttam, as the nutrition dispenser was slotted home in the clear glass of the door. A cellulose bag of foodstuff dropped into the cell, and Atharva watched it fall with a mixture of distaste and resignation.
‘Another day, another banquet,’ said the Thousand Sons warrior.
‘You are lucky we feed you at all,’ said Uttam. ‘I would let you starve.’
‘Then you would become the villain of the piece,’ said Atharva. ‘And as the Emperor’s praetorians that must never be the case, is that not so?’
‘Do not say his name, you are not fit to speak it, traitor.’
‘Tell me, Uttam, whom had I betrayed when I was brought here?’ said Atharva, uncoiling from his seated position to stand in one smooth movement. ‘When Yasu Nagasena led his three thousand into the Preceptory, who exactly had I betrayed? No one, yet here I am locked up in a cell with warriors whose Legions are rightly named oath-breakers.’
‘When a group has a plague-carrier in its midst do you only remove those who are sick or do you quarantine the entire group?’ asked Uttam.
‘Allow me to counter your example,’ said Atharva. ‘If a man develops a tumour, do you selectively destroy it with treatment or do you simply kill the man?’
‘The tumour dies either way.’
‘Then let us be thankful you are not a medicae, Praetorian Uttam Luna Hesh Udar,’ said Atharva.
THEY CAME BACK to him in the darkness, every face, every scream and every last, terrified breath. Kai lay on a hard stone bench that doubled for a bed, and curled in a foetal ball, rocking back and forth as he tried to forget the memories of pain they forced him to relive. A flyer had carried him from the Whispering Tower, high into the mountains, through starlit cloudbanks and moon-painted peaks of dizzying height.
That had been his ascent. Then had come the descent into the lightless depths of a mountain that seemed somehow darker, somehow more threatening than any mountain had a right to be. As though it carried a weight of anguish borne by those taken into its depths.
Down corridors and through echoing passageways he was taken. Into rumbling elevators and pneumo-cars that carried him deeper and deeper into the unknown reaches of the sullen mountain until at last he was deposited in a bare cell, cut directly from the rock, with only the most basic human functions catered for. A rusted pipe in the corner of the room dribbled brackish water, and a circular pit in the opposite corner appeared to be a receptacle for bodily waste.
The walls were painted a faint bluish grey, glossy and hard-wearing. Previous occupants had scraped their presence into the walls with broken nails and whatever else could make an impression in the paint. Primitive, primal things, Kai couldn’t make out what many of them were: random collections of lightning bolts and men with long spears for the most part. The carvings were little more than desperate pleas to be remembered by men now long forgotten and, presumably, long dead.
Kai wanted to add his own mark, but he had nothing with which to score the painted walls.
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His captors had left him to sweat for an unknown period of time, letting the imagined horrors to be inflicted upon him do their work for them. Kai was not a brave man, and he had screamed that he would tell them what they wanted to know if he only knew what it was.
Though his mind was racing in a dozen different directions, Kai forced himself to sleep, knowing that whatever was to come would be more easily endured were he rested. He dreamed, but not of the Rub’ al Khali, not of the great fortress of Arzashkun, but of a cold void, populated by the voices of the dead. He saw a blonde-haired girl with a blue bandanna he had known on the Argo. He knew her name, they had been friends of a sort, but his memory was hazy, too overwhelmed with the chattering voices of the dead.
They swarmed his dream-self, begging to know why he had been spared and they had been taken. Why the monsters of the deep had come for them with their brazen swords and chitinous claws that tore meat from bones and left gouging wounds that would never heal.
Kai had nothing to tell them, but still they demanded answers.
Why, on a ship of innocents, had he been one of only two to survive?
What gave him the right to live while they were condemned to eternal torment?
Kai wept in his sleep, reliving the horror of their deaths over and over again.
Only one voice was free of accusation, a soothing, cultured voice that spoke without words, but eased him from memories of pain with visions of a paradisiacal world of high mountains, verdant plains and beautiful cities of glittering pyramids constructed from crystalline glass.
When he woke, it was to find two people standing in his cell, a man and a woman, blandly attractive and dressed in crisp white tunics that had the look of lab coats and hazmat gear all in one. The man was the kind of handsome that comes from fashionable cosmetic sculpting, whereas the woman had lavished all her attention on her eyes. Pale emerald orbs, they were the most captivating eyes Kai had ever seen.
‘You’re awake,’ said the man. Needlessly, thought Kai.
The Outcast Dead Page 18
