The Outcast Dead

by Graham McNeill

  Gythua followed them, a warrior from Mortarion’s Legion whose bulk and solidity had made others in the Crusader Host give him the epithet of ‘Goliath’, a giant from ancient myth. Argentus Kiron, the tall, broad-shouldered swordsman, jogged alongside him. The pair shared an unlikely friendship, for who would have thought warriors of the Emperor’s Children and Death Guard might find much in the way of common ground?

  Lastly came Severian, dubbed the Wolf by his fellows for the secretive and lonely path he trod. Atharva barely knew him, but as a warrior from the Legion of Horus Lupercal, he held a unique position amongst the warriors of the Crusader Host.

  Crusader Host…? The name was a joke now…

  The three World Eaters greeted each other with clenched fists and primal displays of their strength, though Atharva saw the subtle dance of superiority in its ritualistic displays of prowess. Alpha male and subordinates were clearly defined in the tilt of their heads and the baring of necks. It made Atharva want to smile, but Tagore would take a dim view of any such analysis of his warriors.

  Tagore swept up the guardian spear of the first Custodian to die, testing the edge of the blade with a satisfied grunt. He snapped the haft just below the cutting edge, making what was left look more like a long-bladed cleaver as Subha took up the spear blade Tagore had broken in his battle with Uttam.

  ‘How are we free?’ asked Kiron, picking up a fallen plasma carbine. The weapon looked absurdly tiny in his hands, but with a snap of a trigger guard, the weapon became useable. ‘Is this your doing, Atharva?’

  Neither Gythua or Asubha deigned to pick up a mortal weapon, but Severian slid a blade from the shoulder scabbard of a dead soldier clad in crimson plate. In the dead man’s hands it would have been a monstrous blade, a two-handed hewer of men, but to the Luna Wolf it was little more than a gladius.

  ‘It is indeed my doing,’ replied Atharva, already jogging towards the bridge that led from the island. ‘But explanations can wait until we are free of the mountain.’

  Tagore ran alongside him, glancing warily at the silent guns.

  ‘How did you do that?’ he demanded, his words still slurred with the after-effects of combat drugs and the stress of his battle with the Custodian.

  Atharva shook his head. ‘It would take too long to explain.’

  The World Eater took his arm in a powerful grip. ‘I am not a fool, Atharva. Tell me.’

  Atharva wondered for a moment how he could possibly explain the intricacies of bio-psychic engineering to a warrior of the World Eaters. It would be as futile as attempting to elaborate upon the shortcomings of Pandorus Zheng as a scholar relative to the achievements of Ahzek Ahriman to an amoeba.

  He held up the severed head and said, ‘I was able to extract the deactivation codes from the Custodian’s brain before it ceased to function.’

  Tagore eyed the head of the man he had killed with grim fascination.

  ‘You sounded like him,’ he said.

  Not quite the barbarian then…

  ‘I am a talented mimic,’ said Atharva, once again using a flicker of his powers to alter the density and length of his vocal chords to match those of Custodian Uttam.

  The bridge rang to the sound of heavy Space Marine treads as they crossed to the spur of rock at the edge of the depthless chasm. The warriors paused as they stepped from the bridge, all recognising the significance of the moment. They were clear of their cells, but there was fighting yet to be done if they were to truly call themselves free.

  Atharva felt Kiron’s eyes upon him.

  ‘Is that head still alive?’ asked the warrior of the Emperor’s Children, with a grimace of distaste. Artificial colour in the warrior’s hair had made him an albino while they had been honoured as representatives of the conquering Legions, but deprived of his dyes as a prisoner, dark roots were showing at his temples.

  ‘After a fashion,’ said Atharva, ‘I can use it to get us past the guns, but we will have to hurry before the synapse connections degrade beyond the point where I can sustain them.’

  ‘You dishonour a fallen enemy,’ said Subha, pushing into Atharva’s face.

  Atharva sent an exasperated glance in Tagore’s direction, and though the World Eater sergeant clearly shared Subha’s feelings towards violating a fallen enemy’s body, he nodded in understanding. Tagore thumped a fist against his chest, an old Unity salute that seemed more in keeping with their status as captives than the Aquila.

  ‘We are World Eaters, Subha,’ said Tagore. ‘You were there at the great breaking of the chains. We swore to be no man’s slaves, remember?’

  ‘I remember,’ said Subha with a feral snarl, his fists clenched.

  ‘We all remember,’ added his twin. ‘The Crimson Path before the Iron Fetter.’

  ‘Good words,’ said Tagore, gesturing beyond the stone archway before them. ‘Words to live by. Words of meaning.’

  ‘Angron’s words,’ said Subha, as though that settled the matter, but Atharva didn’t miss the uneasy glance shared by Asubha and Tagore.

  ‘Beyond that arch lies freedom, but that freedom has to be won in blood,’ said Tagore, brandishing the spear blade. ‘We will show our enemies what it means to put chains on a World Eater.’

  ‘We’re wasting time,’ said Severian. ‘We should go. Now.’

  ‘First sensible thing anyone’s said,’ grunted Gythua. ‘Like as not we’ll all die trying to get out of this place, but at least it’ll be on our feet and facing our enemies.’

  ‘Die?’ said Kiron. ‘What force could lay low the Goliath? You are too big and stubborn to die, my friend.’

  ‘We can all die, Kiron,’ said Gythua. ‘Even me.’

  KAI SPRANG FROM the chair as alarm klaxons echoed from far away. It didn’t take a psychic to figure out that something terrible was happening, something that had never happened in the gaol of the Custodians. Scharff’s inexplicable behaviour and the alarms could mean only one thing. Someone was escaping from the mountain, and though he didn’t know whom or how, Kai knew he was somehow included in this prison break.

  He wrenched the canula and drips from his body, crying out as the needles ripped his skin. Blood ran down his arm and clear plastic piping drooled coloured fluids to the tile floor of the interrogation room. The chemical stink of them was pungent, and Kai recoiled from the idea that he had been subjected to their effects.

  Kai backed away from Adept Hiriko, putting the chair between them. The extremities of his limbs were still tingling, and there was a clearness to his thinking that could only have come from the stimulants Scharff had fed him. His body was dreadfully weakened from the psychic abuses Hiriko had heaped upon him, and Kai had no idea how long he would be able to function before this new state of physical and mental clarity began to fade.

  ‘Get back on the chair,’ ordered Hiriko, and Kai laughed.

  ‘Seriously? You want me to get back into a chair for a procedure that’s going to kill me?’

  ‘More lives than yours are at stake,’ said Hiriko, her green eyes boring into his. ‘Lives more important than yours.’

  ‘Not a chance,’ said Kai.

  ‘The Emperor’s life,’ said Hiriko.

  That gave Kai pause, for he was still a loyal servant of the Imperium.

  ‘You can’t ask me to make that sacrifice,’ said Kai, his voice pleading.

  ‘Why not?’ said Hiriko, circling the chair. ‘You already gave up your eyes. Listen, Kai, everyone makes sacrifices for the Emperor: the soldiers of the Imperial Army, the warriors of the Legiones Astartes, all the astro-telepaths who died in the Whispering Tower. Why should you be any different? All these sacrifices mean something, and you can make yours mean something too, something infinitely greater than you can imagine. You would be a hero.’

  Kai shook his head as a wave of dizziness washed over him. ‘I’m not a hero,’ he said. ‘I can’t do something that’s going to kill me. I don’t have the courage.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ said Hiriko. ‘You
think heroes aren’t afraid? Of course they are. That’s why they are heroes. They faced their fear and they overcame it. They did the right thing even though it meant the end of their lives.’

  The tingling in Kai’s limbs began to fade, and an icy numbness replaced it. He glanced over at Scharff, but the man simply stood there with the dead-eyed stare of a mannequin. There would be no help from that quarter.

  Hiriko lifted a long, sharp-tipped hypodermic from the silver tray attached to the chair and stabbed the needle into a bottle filled with clear liquid. She drew a measure of the fluid into the body of the injector and tapped it to remove any lingering air bubbles.

  ‘Very well, Kai,’ she said, as a droplet of liquid beaded at the sharp tip of the needle. ‘If you can’t be a hero yourself, then I’ll make you into one.’

  INTO THE CORRIDOR that led from the island. Bright lumen strips banished shadows as Atharva led the way down the rock-hewn passageway. Subha and Ashuba flanked their sergeant, while Kiron and Gythua ran side by side, with Severian at the rear of their ad hoc formation. Ahead, two servitor-crewed turrets spun around to face them, servos whining as multiple barrels rotated and auto-loaders slammed shells into breeches.

  Red-eyed targeter lenses bored into Atharva like the eyes of a daemon.

  ‘Atharva,’ said Tagore.

  ‘I see them,’ he answered, holding the disembodied head before him and allowing the targeting cogitators to scan its contours and electrical activity. He fed the dying cells within the brain, keeping them alive like a medicae fighting to save a patient he knows will not survive his wounds.

  ‘Uttam Luna Hesh Udar,’ said Atharva, once again using his Pavoni arts to replicate the dead Custodian’s voice.

  ‘It’s not working,’ said Kiron, pressing himself against the side of the passageway as the barrels continued to spin.

  ‘It’s working,’ said Atharva through clenched teeth. The Custodians used advanced biometric readers in their automated weaponry, but hopefully not ones that could tell the difference between a warm body and one kept alive by psychic means. Atharva felt the machines scan the head again, before remembering – though the memory was not his own – that the greenskin toxin that had taken Uttam out of the front line made it more difficult for the signifiers to read him.

  ‘Uttam Luna Hesh Udar,’ he repeated with confidence, and this time the weapons accepted that one of their masters was standing before them. The barrels slowed and the eyes of the servitors changed from red to green.

  ‘Take them,’ said Atharva.

  The three World Eaters sprang forward like hunting dogs loosed from their chains.

  Ashuba sprinted towards the gun on the left and vaulted onto the rungs of the maintenance ladder bolted to its side. His hand speared out, fingers rigid, and the servitor’s head was severed from its neck as cleanly as though cut with an energised blade.

  His twin and Tagore sprang onto the turret on the right, their blades hacking deep into the servitor’s body in a flurry of rapid, punching blows. In seconds, nothing even remotely human was left of the cybernetic creature, just slopping chunks of carved meat that fell from the turret with a series of moist slaps. Yet for all the butchery of the slaying, there was no frenzy to the attack, each blow precise and controlled without any wasted effort.

  ‘Let’s move,’ said Tagore, dropping to the ground.

  Atharva moved past the turrets, impressed despite himself at the thoroughness and speed of the World Eaters’ attack. Kiron, Gythua and Severian followed at his heels, and Atharva felt their admiration for their fellows’ speed.

  At the end of the passageway, a heavily armoured door blocked further progress, its impenetrable facings painted black and gold and marked with numeric codes that told Atharva exactly where they were in the prison complex. Gythua braced himself on the door and closed his eyes. Surely he didn’t think to break the door open on his own?

  ‘Two metres thick at least,’ said Gythua, the muscles at his shoulders and biceps flexing like inflating fuel bladders. ‘If I had time and leverage I could open it.’

  ‘Which you don’t,’ pointed out Kiron, aiming the plasma carbine at the door.

  ‘That won’t even scratch the paintwork,’ said Gythua with a disdainful glance.

  ‘Not even the combined strength of all seven of us will be able to break it down,’ said Asubha. ‘Atharva, is there any life left in that head of yours? Can it open this door?’

  ‘It better, or this is going to be a damn short escape attempt,’ said Subha.

  Atharva ignored them and lifted the head towards the black slate of the signifier mounted above the door. His hand was sticky with blood, and he felt the weight of death dragging the struggling synapses of the Custodian’s consciousness down into oblivion.

  ‘One last favour I must ask of you, Custodian Uttam,’ said Atharva as he held the severed head up towards the signifier. His breath came in short hikes as he poured the power of the Great Ocean into the dying organ within the severed skull. Such energies were creation unbound, but what was dead was dead, and there could be no return from that black abyss. All Atharva could hope was that Uttam Luna Hesh Udar had not fallen too far into its embrace. Every scrap of his skill went into honing his deception, his genes donning the mask of another and his muscle density altering to match the body mass of the Custodian.

  The signifier clicked as the machine brain behind the blank slate considered the living creature before it.

  ‘It’s not working,’ he heard Kiron say. ‘Why would you break us out if you didn’t have a plan to get us beyond the first damn door? I thought you Thousand Sons were supposed to be clever?’

  ‘Be silent,’ hissed Severian.

  ‘I’ll speak my mind as I please, Wolf,’ said Kiron with a poisonous glare.

  ‘Enough,’ hissed Asubha. ‘Give it a chance to work before admitting failure.’

  The hiss and thump of disengaging locks answered before Kiron could take issue with Asubha’s words, and Atharva sagged against the walls of the passageway as the door swung slowly open on greased hinges. The Great Ocean was a powerful tool to achieve impossible ends, but it was also a demanding master. No sooner had the door opened enough to allow passage than Severian ghosted through the gap.

  Tagore bent down to look Atharva in the eye.

  ‘Can you continue?’ he asked.

  Atharva nodded and took a deep breath as he pushed himself upright. ‘I can continue.’

  ‘Good,’ said Tagore. ‘I don’t want to die here when the open sky is so close.’

  ‘You would stay here and die with me?’ said Atharva. Tagore was a killer, but at least he was a loyal killer, like a faithful war hound that would fight and die beside its master.

  Tagore regarded him strangely, as though the question was beneath him. ‘I do not like you, Atharva, and there is yet a reckoning to be had between us, but you are a brother of the Legiones Astartes. We fight and die as one.’

  Atharva doubted the rest of their group felt as strongly, but kept that thought to himself.

  ‘Besides,’ added Tagore, gesturing to the severed head Atharva carried, ‘you are the only one who knows the way out.’

  ‘About that,’ said Atharva. ‘We need to make a detour before we get to the surface.’

  ‘A detour? What are you talking about?’

  Atharva dropped Custodian Uttam’s head and wiped frosty sweat from his brow.

  ‘There is another prisoner we have to free before we leave this place of incarceration.’

  ‘More soldiers are coming,’ said Tagore. ‘We do not have time for fool’s errands.’

  ‘This is no fool’s errand,’ snapped Atharva. ‘We free this prisoner or else we may as well surrender now.’

  ‘Who is this prisoner? What is he to us?’ demanded Tagore.

  ‘Someone more important than you can possibly imagine,’ said Atharva. ‘Someone upon whom all our fates may rest.’

  KAI COULD NOT take his eyes from the droplet on
the end of the needle. The label on the bottle from which it had been drawn was turned away from him, but he had no doubt that it was a powerful sedative. The hypodermic contained enough to put him out in moments or perhaps even kill him.

  ‘Adept Scharff or whoever you are,’ said Kai. ‘Are you just going to let her do this?’

  Sharff flinched at the mention of his name, but did not move or otherwise acknowledge Kai’s words. Whatever notion had possessed Scharff to help him had clearly passed, but neither had he shown any inclination to help his former colleague.

  ‘This is Adept Hiriko, immediate assistance required,’ said Hiriko, speaking into a vox-bead at her collar. ‘Interrogation cell four seven, primus zero.’

  She smiled and said, ‘In moments there will be a squad or more of soldiers here, perhaps even a Custodian, so you might as well surrender now.’

  ‘I’ll take my chances,’ said Kai, lunging for the door. He pressed the opening mechanism, but the door stayed resolutely closed. It had been a forlorn hope to imagine the door wouldn’t be locked, but it was all he had.

  He turned just as Hiriko lunged at him with the needle extended before her. He raised his hands to fend her off, and more by luck than judgement managed to grip her forearms with the needle less than a hand span from piercing the pulsing vein at his neck. Though she was short and slender, Hiriko was stronger than she looked, and the needle inched towards his skin. Whatever Scharff had given him to counteract the soporific drugs that had kept him placid was clearly wearing off.

  Kai found himself staring into Hiriko’s lambent green eyes and had a brief moment to reflect that if he was going to die here, at least it would be while staring at something beautiful.