Atlas Infernal

by Rob Sanders

‘What is it?’ Klute put to his friend, who seemed fired and increasingly enthused.

  ‘It’s a star chart,’ Captain Torres answered. In his cage, Rasputus the maniac Navigator gibbered. Standing and with outstretched finger, Torres identified, ‘Coreward and Rimward declinations; sectors by three dimensions and system clusters. I don’t know what these are,’ Torres admitted sweeping her delicate fingers across a sequence of chalk circles – all of different sizes – that seemed to overlap. She leant in closer to examine one of Czevak’s notations, ‘But that looks like Tituba Prime and that is Ablutraphur.’

  ‘Ablutraphur?’ Klute shivered, having barely lived down the nightmare of their recent visit.

  ‘These sectors are thousands of light-years away, on the far edge of the Eye,’ Torres said.

  ‘As we suspected, the Hellebore has travelled far and wide, from one side of this damned region of hellspace to the other. The further back we trawl through her mnemonic log the more we learn,’ Czevak said. ‘For instance, we now learn that the Hellebore’s encounter with the Pluton, or rather Korban Xarchos’s Rubrician in Gehennabyss Reaches was not its first. The Hellebore had run down on the Rubrician at least nine times before, each time with the Thousand Sons’ vessel using sorcery and illusion to evade attack. It seems that the captains of the two vessels were engaged in an ongoing rivalry. A game of cat and mouse.’

  ‘Yes, but which was which?’ Klute mused.

  Czevak snatched a trailing fistful of vellum from Rasputus’s webbed hands and walked over to the star chart chalked into the opposite wall.

  ‘Sightings of the Rubrician as Pluton include Pyrrus,’ he began, reading off the parchment and smacking his fist against a sketched planetoid down by his waist. ‘Cardinal world, a beacon of pious civilisation on the edge of an otherwise dark corner of the galaxy. Pyrrus suffered an outbreak of mass corruption twelve years ago.’ Czevak briefly consulted a scrap of paper pegged to one of the lengths of twine that were strung across the cabin like a spider’s web. ‘Six million devout Imperial citizens and members of the Ecclesiarchy died during a planet-wide service to Saint Stephano. Inquisitorial records show that victims perished over a four hour period. Observations made by medicae personnel suggest that an ingested mutative substance corrupted internal organs that then assumed a life of their own. They evacuated their owners’ bodies, slowly killing them from the inside out. Nice.’

  ‘And you think Korban Xarchos was responsible for this atrocity?’ Klute asked, but Czevak held up a finger to request a pause.

  ‘I traced cargo shipments of wheat cane to Pyrrus from the agri-worlds of Alpha, Beta and Delta Myrias. Wheat cane used to make the devotional wafers taken during the service. An Administratum audit from thirteen years ago indicates record crop yields for the Myrias agri-worlds – an increase so large that Administratum clerks were sent out to investigate.’

  ‘Is this what you’ve been doing in here?’ Captain Torres put to the High Inquisitor. Czevak ignored the rogue trader captain and continued, tapping his chalk against a trio of worlds not far from Pyrrus.

  ‘Guess what they found?’ the High Inquisitor smiled. He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Expansive fields of wheat cane that should have been – even with optimum weather conditions – about a metre high, stretching for the skies. The Administratum auditors found it growing thick, fat and strong like forests. Alpha, Beta, Delta Myrias were all overrun with the rampant crop. Workers were shipping it out as fast as they could, to destinations like Pyrrus, but couldn’t keep up with the growth. The crops were so vast they even started to change the balance of oxygen in the atmosphere and the agri-worlders were forced to wear masks for fear of atmospheric poisoning. Finally, just like Pyrrus, the Inquisition was summoned to investigate but by the time a team arrived, all they found were three raging planetoids each bathed in its own swirling firestorm. Oxygen levels had grown to such an extent that their very atmospheres had ignited and burned. Between all three agri-worlds, casualties were estimated at two million souls.’

  ‘Where did you get this information from?’ Torres asked. ‘Astropathic communion across long distances is impossible in the Eye. And that kind of detail is not available on the Malescaythe.’

  ‘But it is,’ Czevak assured her with confidence and tapped his temple with the chalk. ‘Many of these details are already in here, the trick is putting them together. The genius is in seeing the pattern.’

  ‘The virus,’ Klute explained. ‘The afflicted soak up data – significant or otherwise – like a sponge.’ The inquisitor turned back to Czevak. ‘So the unnatural crop led to both the deaths on Pyrrus and the Myrias agri-worlds,’ Klute connected.

  ‘The question is what caused the unnatural crop growth?’ Torqhuil said.

  ‘And for that we take what detail we have from the Corpus Vivexorsectio and cross reference it with activities of the Dark Mechanicus Daecropsicum sect,’ said Czevak.

  ‘The group that dissected the daemon and bound its parts in objects like that damned coin?’ Torres asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Czevak jabbed the chalk at her like a professor.

  The captain and Klute exchanged another wide-eyed glance. Czevak fell straight back into his thesis.

  ‘The Daecropsicum used many parts of the daemon Mammoshad’s warp-corporal form and bound them individually to artefacts and dark technologies. We’ll come to those in a moment. What interests us right now are the parts that were not used. My researches have revealed, for instance, that bones from the colossal beast’s carcass were sold and traded between various cults and heretic groups on the Knubla Frontier before disappearing from record. A kilotonne of unregistered bonemeal, however, did arrive in the Myrias system as part of a consignment of fertiliser. In this way, Mammoshad’s bones are responsible for the deaths on Pyrrus and the Myrias agri-worlds.’

  ‘Emperor’s wounds!’ Klute said. ‘All those people.’

  ‘I still don’t see how this tells us where Korban Xarchos is – or at least where you claim that Mammoshad claims he is,’ Torqhuil called from the bulkhead.

  ‘One line of inquiry at a time, Brother Relictor. The relics lead us to the screams and the screams will lead us to that bastard sorcerer. Trust me.’ Czevak gave the Space Marine a piercing gaze. ‘These initial findings led me into a pattern, a strange correlation between recorded sightings of the Rubrician in the Hellebore’s mnemonic log and the bound daemonic artefacts of the Daecropsicum.’

  Czevak moved along the wall, trailing vellum and ducking between lines of string, consulting the pegged notes and scraps of parchment that dangled from them. ‘Rubrician was sighted en route to Tituba Prime, where the Cadian Forty-fourth and a Slaaneshi warhost called the Raptur disappeared just months before in their entirety. According to lost Medrang transcripts, Tituba Prime was the last known resting place of the infamous Counter-Clock Heart.’

  ‘Counter-Clock Heart?’

  ‘A Daecropsicum creation,’ Czevak explained with no little awe. ‘A blend of Dark Mechanicus technology and a daemonic heart, a heart I have good reason to believe belonged to Mammoshad.’

  ‘But what happened to the Cadian Forty-fourth?’ Torres asked.

  ‘Legend has it,’ Torqhuil informed her solemnly, ‘that the heart beats backwards. With every backward beat those around it, for hundreds of kilometres around, regress in age as though time is flowing in reverse for their own bodies, man to child, child to infant, until…’

  ‘Until they die by never being born,’ Klute concluded. Torqhuil nodded.

  ‘The Cadian Forty-fourth, estimated number of Raptur cultists and the remaining population of Tituba Prime post-hostilities means that we’re looking at about a million casualties,’ Czevak calculated, his giddiness at odds with the loss of life he was weighing up. He drained his cup of cooling tea and deposited it on a side cabinet.

  ‘Why the preoccupation with casualties?’ Torres said, uncomfortable with the High Inquisitor’s building excitement.

  ‘Not yet,’ he sim
ply told her before moving from his chalk sketch of Tituba Prime to a large planetoid just out of his reach near the ceiling. ‘UV6-26; in the Eye of Terror but originally designated a death world by Imperial expeditionaries. The Eye is always in flux. A huge population of warped ferals were found to have survived the horrific dangers of the planetary fauna. The only recorded survivors of UV6-26 – that is those who returned from its surface alive – claim that it wasn’t the death world environment that did for them. A contingent of Doom Eagles Space Marines lost three-quarters of their number to savages armed simply with horn bows and arrows whose long, blue shafts had been crafted from the feathers of some huge, daemonic bird.

  The Doom Eagles never sighted the creature itself on the surface but the arrows flew with an ethereal fire and effortlessly punched through power armour and the hides of the colossal reptiles that stalked the death world forests. The owners of such armour – both Adeptus Astartes and mega fauna – instantly spasmed and contorted into Chaotic spawn. An arrow recovered by the Space Marines and returned for analysis was found to bear markings I now find in the pages of the Corpus Vivexorsectio. The most recent visitor to UV6-26 was the rogue trader Dark Frontier, that found only a tiny tribe of abhumans remained – still armed with their daemonic weapons – the perpetrators of tribal genocide. Estimated casualties, four million.’

  ‘Czevak–’

  ‘Rubrician sighted, in the Archive Worlds. Here three heretic populations – the worlds of Shenghis, Mizar Blue and Brannigan’s Hope – fought over an artefact called the Obsidoculus. Heretical accounts claim different things of its appearance but most identify it as a large, irregular shard of warpsidium on a heavy iron chain. Those that looked closely enough through the dark glass claimed that that jewel contained an actual eye, through the rotten lens of which the future was revealed. These heretic civilisations each fought for possession of the powerful gem and through possessing it, each was shown the survival of their race at the expense of the other two worlds. This set in motion a war of the worlds, initiated by the coordinated manipulations of the Obsidoculus, a war that ended with the destruction of all three heretic races in atomic fires of their enemies’ making. Total casualties, two billion lives.’

  ‘Czevak–’

  ‘Vegatra IV – again, the Rubrician sighted. The Tzeentchian sorcerer Elba Draghan unlocks the potential of a grotesque staff, created by the Daecropsicum from Mammoshad’s withered forearm and left claw. No name recorded but what is known is that it had the power to wrack the planet with tectonic quakes and all manner of seismic doom. Casualties, three and a half million.’

  ‘High Inquisitor, please–’

  ‘Wait!’ Czevak ordered sharply. ‘Daemon weapons in the hands of warped marauders, madmen and Chaos Space Marines; the screaming blades, spawncannon, inferno blasters and kris knives capable of cutting through the fabric of time and space. All engineered by the Daecropsicum using parts of Mammoshad’s vivisected form. Casualties – Wombwort, Hive Havoque, Minerva Reach, the Triggonaut Sphere. Estimates of between one and two million souls.’

  ‘Czevak!’ Klute called at his friend. ‘You could not have stopped all of these atrocities, even with the Atlas Infernal.’

  The two inquisitors stared at one another.

  ‘Stop them?’ Czevak said.

  ‘Ahriman and his foul followers are everywhere…’

  ‘Ahriman did not commit these acts,’ Czevak told him. Klute frowned. The High Inquisitor stepped forward. ‘I have been so foolish. All our time on Arach-Cyn I thought that the Thousand Sons were gathering artefacts – the terrible tomes and works of the Daecropsicum in order to enhance their sorcerous power. The Rubrician has been sighted near the resting places of many of these artefacts.’

  ‘Ahriman’s hunger for knowledge and power is without comparison. His followers and cultists compete in their acquirement of such ancient artefacts,’ the Relictor Techmarine put to Czevak.

  ‘Korban Xarchos is trying to impress his master,’ Czevak agreed. ‘But not by acquiring these relics. He’s destroying them.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Torqhuil disagreed. ‘Ahriman would have Xarchos flayed for such sacrilege.’

  ‘Their power would be lost to Ahriman,’ Klute agreed.

  ‘You’re not thinking big enough. The artefacts are not the prize. Xarchos must already have a copy of the Corpus Vivexorsectio; that’s how he has traced these artefacts. He has collected the assorted work of the Daecropsicum – Mammoshad’s fragmented evil harnessed in the work of the Dark Mechanicum. He has placed these items in the hands of lunatics in specific locations in this region of the Eye.’ Czevak thrust his finger at the chalk-scrawled star chart. ‘Many of the sightings occur after, rather than before the inevitable tragedies these planets suffered. Xarchos must have come back.’

  ‘To destroy the artefacts?’ Torres asked.

  ‘He murdered countless millions using the artefacts and then destroyed them? Why would he do that?’ Klute said. ‘They would almost certainly have proved their worth.’

  ‘You say countless millions,’ Czevak said, moving back to the wall. ‘But I believe that their actual number was important. Mammoshad said follow the screams, so that’s what I did. Death is a corporal event in reality but has a spiritual equivalent in the warp. The Ruinous Powers themselves are said to be sustained by these energies – the actions and emotions of the living and the souls of the dead. That is why the eldar wear the spirit stones we saw collected on Arach-Cyn, for if their souls were not trapped by such technologies then they would be claimed by She-Who-Thirsts – the Chaos Power of Slaanesh. Using the faster than light average speed of astropathic communication through the warp as a baseline, I calculated the relative distance reached by these energies – released at the moment of death – given the time and location of these tragedies.’

  ‘But there were many deaths in numerous events,’ Klute said.

  ‘Imagine the psychic essence of millions of deaths rippling out through the warp like raindrops hitting the still surface of a pond,’ Czevak pictured for him. ‘Each radiating out, ripple crossing ripple. Where multiple ripples overlap you would have pockets of intense spiritual energy.’

  Czevak moved back and forth along the wall, drawing attention to the chalk circles around each massacre site that Torres had failed to identify and where they overlapped like a Venn diagram. He slammed the chalk into the only planet situated in an area of dreadspace covered by every circle.

  ‘Melmoth’s World,’ Torres recognised.

  ‘Which is where – by following the screams – we will find Xarchos and, therefore, Ahriman,’ Czevak told the gathering, a self-satisfied smile sitting across his face.

  ‘But why there? Why this collection of energy on that one world?’ Klute asked.

  ‘And why destroy the Dark Mechanicus artefacts? That still seems unnecessary,’ Torqhuil said. Such waste bothered him as both a Relictor and a Techmarine. Czevak’s smile cracked into an equally self-satisfied chuckle.

  ‘Xarchos was never interested in the artefacts,’ Czevak insisted. ‘Only in what they could achieve. He wanted a much greater gift for his master. A colossal daemonic entity to do his bidding with the power of all of the artefacts combined. Xarchos believes that the Daecropsicum were wrong – a daemon is not more than the sum of its parts. As one whole powerful being it could demolish fleets, sunder worlds and possibly breach the barriers of interdimensional reality, gaining Ahriman access to the webway once more.’

  ‘You’re talking about…’ Klute began fearfully.

  ‘Mammoshad – King of Kings, Enslaver of the Craven Worlds and Keeper of the Vault Abyssal. Ahriman needs it. And Xarchos wants to bring it back. Raising such a daemon would take the energy created by so many coordinated tragedies and would entail the destruction of Mammoshad’s individual parts – experimentally bound as they were to artefacts by the Daecropsicum. Then, with it released back into the warp, the Thousand Sons could repeat the rituals detailed
in the Corpus Vivexorsectio and bring the daemon back, whole, powerful and bound. As ally or slave, Ahriman would use Mammoshad to wreak havoc across the galaxy with astronomical loss of life. Much greater than his apprentice achieved in the Eye.’

  ‘If Korban Xarchos already had a copy of the Corpus Vivexorsectio – why return to Arach-Cyn for another uncovered copy?’ Torqhuil asked.

  Czevak’s face creased with annoyance.

  ‘Perhaps his copy was degraded, damaged or incomplete,’ Czevak answered, swiftly piecing together a hypothesis. ‘Either way, it was a trap. Xarchos left one of his mindless brethren waiting for me in the sarcophocrate, remember?’

  ‘But what if the whole damn thing is a trap?’ Klute demanded. ‘God-Emperor knows, these Tzeentchian bastards seem perfectly adept at such a convolution. If anything, it’s their specialty.’

  Klute’s question gave Czevak pause for thought, but with the cloud of irritation clearing from his face, the High Inquisitor shrugged.

  ‘If it was, it failed. To bring that monstrous daemon back to existence on Melmoth’s World, Korban Xarchos would have to succeed in destroying all of the Daecropsicum’s artefacts. We have the Black Sovereign. We have the essence of Mammoshad’s greed and ambition and without it the Thousand Sons simply cannot draw the entity back to existence.’ Czevak put a savage, triumphant cross through the chalk representation of Melmoth’s World on his map. Then he turned on Klute. ‘But you were wise to keep the Black Sovereign away from me. Sooner or later the damned thing would have forced me to destroy it. And then where would we be?’

  Czevak snatched Klute’s ruffled dress shirt from the back of a chair where it had been cleaned and starched and threw it on.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Klute enquired with caution.

  ‘Where do you think I’m going?’

  ‘Well, I think you think you’re going to Melmoth’s World.’

  ‘Korban Xarchos is there. Ahriman is there. Of course I’m going to Melmoth’s World. I’m ahead of the curve now – and have the element of surprise. This might be my only chance to destroy him.’ A little of the fever seemed to return to the High Inquisitor’s eyes.