Let The Galaxy Burn

by Marc

  A novitiate flew past me, his throat ripped out by animal tusks. His colleagues were locked in a desperate struggle with Ioq.

  ‘You burned him.’

  ‘Yes. The flames touched off the chemicals in the infirmium, the sample bottles, the flasks of seething plague water. They exploded. A fireball… Oh gods… brighter than the daylight that had never gone away. Brighter than… fire everywhere… liquid fire… flames around me… all around… oh… oh…’

  Bright flashes filled the hall, the loud discharge of a las-weapon.

  I stepped back from Ebhoe’s cell door, shaking. Ioq lay dead amid the mangled corpses of three novitiates. Several others, wounded, whimpered on the floor.

  Brother Jardone, a laspistol in his bony hand, pushed through the orderlies and ecclesiarchs gathering in the hall, and pointed the weapon at me.

  ‘I should kill you for this, Sark. How dare you!’

  Baptrice stepped forward and took the gun from Jardone. Niro gazed at me in weary disappointment.

  ‘See to Ebhoe,’ Baptrice told the sisters nearby. They unlocked the cell door and went in.

  ‘You will leave tomorrow, Sark.’ Baptrice said. ‘I will file a complaint to your superiors.’

  ‘Do so.’ I said. ‘I never wanted this, but I had to reach the truth. It may be, from what Ebhoe has told me, that a way to fight Uhlren’s Pox is in our reach.’

  ‘I hope so.’ said Baptrice, gazing bitterly at the carnage in the hall. ‘It has cost enough.’

  The novitiates were escorting me back to my room when the sisters brought Ebhoe out. The ordeal of recollection had killed him. I will never forgive myself for that, no matter how many lives on Genovingia we saved. And I will never forget the sight of him, revealed at last in the light.

  IX

  I LEFT THE next day by launch with Kalibane. No one from the hospice saw me off or even spoke to me. From Math Island, I transmitted my report to Symbalopolis, and from there, astropathically, it lanced through the warp to Lorches.

  Was Uhlren’s Pox expunged? Yes, eventually. My work assisted in that. The blood-froth was like the Torment, engineered by the Archenemy, just as sentient. Fifty-two medical officers, sources just like Valis, were executed and incinerated.

  I forget how many we lost altogether in the Genovingia group. I forget a lot, these days. My memory is not what it was, and I am thankful for that, at times.

  I never forget Ebhoe. I never forget his corpse, wheeled out by the sisters. He had been caught in the infirmium flames on Pirody Polar. Limbless, wizened like a seed-case, he hung in a suspensor chair, kept alive by intravenous drains and sterile sprays. A ragged, revolting remnant of a man.

  He had no eyes. I remember that most clearly of all. The flames had scorched them out.

  He had no eyes, and yet he was terrified of the light.

  I still believe that memory is the finest faculty we as a species own. But by the Golden Throne, there are things I wish I could never remember again.

  BARATHRUM

  Jonathan Curren

  NIGHT, AND THE site is quiet as a morgue. The only sound is the gentle clink clink of chains rustling from the high ceiling, connected to the crane mechanisms running from gantries the length of the hangar. Machines hum silently, a faint disturbance of the air the only sign that they are active. The occasional light pierces the twilight walkways and balconies, stairways and alcoves. Archaeo-site R347 is the inside of a great hive, its workers and machines the silent insects, termites in the service of the Machine-God.

  Tech-Brother Crans stands bent over a workbench, a tray of thick viscous fluid in front of him. Immersed in the unguents is an array of fine machinery, tiny metal plates and wires meshed together in intricate fractal patterns. Crans murmurs prayers, manipulator gloves caressing the fine wires, divining rods following the paths of energy locked in the device.

  He straightens up, stretching his sore back. Removing the manipulators, he lays them down on the workbench and raises the optical enhancers from in front of his eyes. Balancing them on his forehead, he rubs his tired eyes with his fingers. He’s worked with mechanical optics all his life, yet has steadfastly refused bio-implants of his own, maintaining that the optics he was born with would see him to the grave.

  Something. A noise, almost inaudible.

  Crans turns round.

  ‘Hello.’ he calls, quietly, almost so as not to disturb the tranquillity of the place.

  He appreciates the silence and solitude, it’s why he chooses to work at night. He doesn’t want to disturb it. ‘Is anybody there?’

  Nothing.

  He turns back to the workbench, flipping the opticals back down in front of his eyes. The component swings back into view, large as a fist. He picks up the manipulators.

  A crash, as something falls behind him.

  He spins round, and something fills his vision, the opticals fighting to make sense of the image, magnified hundreds of times.

  Then his sight fills with red mist as something hard and sharp shatters the opticals, plunges into the flesh around his eyes, driving through bone and filling his head with fiery pain.

  The last thing he hears before the darkness of death overwhelms him is the soft shuffle of slippered feet walking quickly towards him.

  ECHO TWELVE BEARING three three zero, range forty clicks and counting. Requesting landing permission, code blue seven zero seven. Over.

  A burst of static. Then:

  Echo Twelve, landing permission granted. Proceed to landing bay seven zero seven.

  The Imperial shuttle drifted slowly through the cloud cover, its wings jostled by the heavy thick air. Red dust thrown up by the industrial exchange outlets down on the surface swirled into the engines, causing the rotor-blades to shudder. Wind howled around the tiny craft, as if daemons of the air competed to swallow it.

  Inquisitor Anselm watched the red crosshairs of the nav-comm playing across the face of the pilot as he straggled to keep the shuttle on its computer-assisted course. The pilot’s right hand was jacked into the shuttle’s controls and his bio-eye scanned the clouds for the first lights of the landing bay. Technobabble issued from the cabin speakers as the cogitators spoke to the pilot at a rate of several thousand words mixed with binary codes a minute.

  Looking into the swirling maelstrom outside the shuttle’s forward screens, he was surprised to see his own reflection staring back at him. A craggy face, weathered by long tours of duty in the Emperor’s service made him look older than his years. Long-service studs embedded above his eyes glinted in the winking lights from the console. A shock of close-cropped white hair, dark, hooded eyes, an imperious nose added to his imposing figure, made people think carefully before crossing him. He knew full well the advantage it gave him.

  Gazing at himself like this made him uncomfortable, and he turned away. He felt impatience grip him, and he forced himself to stay calm. It was a long time since he’d last seen Cantor, many years, and he freely admitted that he was looking forward to seeing his old friend. But that wasn’t the only reason he was pleased to have been assigned this investigation. There was something else, the opportunity to investigate a crime at the very limits of Imperial jurisdiction. Only a short hop from unexplored space itself. He’d never travelled this far before, and now he was entering the atmosphere of Barathrum, a planet that despite years of extensive archaeological investigation, was still a mystery to Imperium scholars. Who knew what may happen this far from the centre of Imperial space? Not that this sort of thing meant anything to an Imperial inquisitor, but at the back of his mind, he knew that heading such an investigation could propel him along the road leading to the highest echelons of the Inquisition.

  The shuttle docked, and the pilot unplugged himself from the console, pale from the concentration needed for their landing. Anselm unbuckled himself, and felt his seat relax, its shape melting away from his body. The shuttle’s hatch opened with a hiss of compressed air, and as he walked down the rampway, his senses were assau
lted with the smells of ozone, oil, metal and industrial solvents. His enhanced olfactory system idly recognised a dozen different chemical compounds, but before his brain had time to register them, he heard his name being called.

  ‘Anselm! Anselm! I’m so glad you’ve made it.’

  He looked over to the double doors facing the shuttle hangar. A tall thin man approached, dressed in brown robes with a leather apron from which hung tools, calibrating instruments and various optical measures. His face was flushed, and he was sweating slightly. They gripped each other’s forearms in an old comradely gesture. Cantor indicated that they should walk, and they boarded the enclosed monorail pod that he’d just emerged from.

  As the monorail slowly accelerated, Anselm was the first to voice what he was thinking.

  ‘Cantor, it’s good to see you. It has been a long time. It saddens me that after all these years, we only get the chance to meet on such an ominous occasion.’

  ‘You’ve read the transcripts? There is something unnatural happening. I’m glad you are here.’

  ‘It’s affected you deeply.’ It was a statement, not a question. ‘You look flushed. Have you not been sleeping? You look uneasy.’

  ‘No, my sleep is fine. You always were an apothecary first and foremost. But that is not why I am uneasy.’

  Cantor reached out and stabbed a finger at the panel of buttons by the door. The monorail slowed, and a light started flashing on the console.

  Anselm looked at him. ‘What is it? Is there something you need to tell me? Remember that I am the Emperor’s ear here. Speak freely.’

  Cantor lowered his voice. ‘There is something you should know. You are not the only member of the Emperor’s Inquisition here on Barathrum.’

  Anselm felt something clench in his stomach. ‘What do you mean?’ he demanded.

  His friend paused, and at that moment, the pod slowed to a stop, the doors sliding gently open on a waft of pneumatic air.

  The inquisitor stepped out into a long room. At one end was a huge window, filling the whole wall. Silhouetted against the setting sun were two figures, one bulky, the other slight. Anselm strode towards the figures, and as he approached, the pair turned round.

  Surprise stopped Anselm in his tracks, but he made an effort to steady himself.

  ‘Grogan! What in the Emperor’s name are you doing here?’

  The tall man smiled a smile that made Anselm’s blood boil. His smaller companion looked confused. He recovered himself quickly, and bowed to Anselm in greeting, a half bow of respect to an equal. Anselm returned the gesture, never taking his eyes off Grogan.

  Inquisitor Grogan was tall, taller than Anselm and many years older. His eyes were cold, and seemed fixed on the middle distance, as if permanently watching out across the broad expanse of tundra that comprised his home planet had fixed his gaze far away; a long moustache drooped on either side of his lips, giving him a permanently sour expression. He wore rough clothes tied together with an immense belt from which hung a myriad of tools, knives and weapons, along with devices best left unrecognised. It was as if he wanted to make it clear that he would brook no nonsense of the kind that flourished in courts and palaces across the galaxy. He had a reputation for harshness and inflexibility that Anselm could attest to and that reputation had no doubt preceded his arrival on Barathrum. No wonder Cantor was nervous.

  ‘So,’ the smaller man started, ‘you two know each other?’

  Grogan turned to his companion. ‘Anselm was a pupil of mine. When he was first elevated to the rank of inquisitor adept, he was entrusted into my care.’

  ‘That was many years ago,’ Anselm cut in, and then stopped, angry with himself. It was a long time ago, long enough for him to have worked through the anger that his time under Grogan’s tutelage had left him. He continued. ‘The inquisitor and I have worked together before. We know each other’s methods well. Our differing approaches will no doubt cover all the possibilities in this situation.’ He gave Grogan a meaningful look and was relieved to see him back down. The man merely grunted in reply and indicated the man standing at his side. ‘Anselm, this is Eremet. He is the master explorator in charge of the work here on Barathrum.’

  Eremet bowed, and extended one hand to Anselm. His grip was strong, the skin rough and weathered. The explorator’s face was open, friendly. ‘The holy Inquisition is most welcome on Barathrum.’ he said. ‘You’ve read Cantor’s report?’

  ‘I have,’ Anselm replied, ‘but I would hear it from your mouth. There are many ways to tell the same story.’

  ‘Follow me then. Perhaps when you see, you will understand more than if you simply listen.’

  Eremet led them through a set of double doors and down a short flight of stairs. He pushed open a plain door and they entered a clean bright room that smelled of antiseptic. Racks of surgical instruments lined the walls, and an operating table stood under bright theatre lights. Behind a green cloth screen, just visible from the doorway, stood a row of gurneys, each holding a shrouded figure.

  The master explorator moved the screen aside and stood beside the first body.

  With a flick of his hand, he removed the shroud from the figure. Despite himself, Anselm felt his stomach heave. He was no stranger to battle and the hideous wounds that resulted from close combat, but this was no war-wound. The face had been mutilated almost beyond recognition, great gouging marks like those of a wild beast scoured the face from top to bottom. The jaw had been broken by the violence of the attack, and the mouth hung open, making it look like the corpse had been interrupted in the process of screaming. One eye had been destroyed, the socket torn across, but the other stared out between curtains of ragged flesh.

  Eremet’s voice was matter of fact. ‘We have lost six of our company in the past eight work cycles. The first to go missing, Aleuk, was found in sector four, one of the mid-city areas, then one by one we lost the others, each one deeper and further in towards the heart of the city. And now, Crans, he was working at the furthest point that we have excavated…’

  ‘How big is the city?’ asked Anselm. ‘All I saw on the flight in was the bunker and the landing bay.’

  Eremet laughed. ‘That is all you would see. The bunker is in fact the highest part, the spire if you like, for a great city that has sunk beneath the sands of this planet. It once stood proud above the ground, but something in ages past made it sink through the sand, and now all that lies above the earth is this part.’

  ‘How far does the city extend?’

  ‘The city stretches underneath us for over five kilometres. We’ve only mapped the core. The deeper we get, the more spread out it is – we estimate up to ten kilometres in diameter at the deepest points – and the less we know. The city is incredibly complex in design, but Cantor is the best tech-priest explorator there is. Every time we were halted in our efforts, Cantor advised us where to dig next, and, each time, we made such progress that we were able to carry on.

  ‘As I was saying, Aleuk was in sector four, about three kilometres down. Our servitors had just cut into a new area – a lot of the work here involves cutting or digging through debris to reach a new level – and this level was much older. There was less concrete and steel, much of the building was formed from great blocks of hewn stone.

  ‘The standard of masonry is extraordinarily high, there’s hardly a gap between any of the blocks. It’s quite astonishing.

  ‘One of our adepts was taking geochron readings, trying to gauge how old the area was. How it happened we haven’t been able to discover but one of the blocks from the ceiling must have been loose. It fell, blocking the corridor he was in and cutting the man off from the rest of the team. It was then it happened. He was attacked. The sound of him screaming in pain and fear could be heard from the other side. It was horrible.’

  ‘You were there?’ asked Grogan.

  ‘No, I wasn’t. I was here in the medi-bay’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about the ot
her corpses?’ asked Grogan.

  Silently, Eremet moved from trolley to trolley, pulling back the sheets that covered the forms, until all the corpses lay exposed, side by side in death like a roll-call of the slain. Each of them was terribly torn, the flesh of each flayed back from his musculature and in places bones, cracked and splintered, appeared through the tattered muscles.

  ‘The others disappeared and were found, each one deeper down in the structure of the city. I had to order the complete shutdown of all our operations until you came.’

  Anselm cast a critical eye over the display.

  ‘Has the cause of death been established for each?’ he asked Eremet.

  Grogan snorted. ‘I think the cause of death is pretty self-evident. Attack by some sort of wild beast, could be a ‘stealer or some other species of ‘nid. Something big and dangerous. Look at that one – his arms have been ripped off. Complication of the simple always was one of your…’

  He broke off, and turned to Eremet. ‘Master explorator, I think this is a clear-cut case of xeno-infestation, type unknown. Unless there’s some other evidence to the contrary, I would say this is not a crime-scene. I suggest that, as we’re here, we find your missing tech-priest, hunt whatever’s running loose here and move on.’

  He turned to Anselm. ‘Cantor’s already explained to me that the missing tech-priest was scheduled to work on some newly discovered archaeotech, in a recently excavated area, sector twenty-eight. I suggest we start looking for him there. Eremet, do you have weapons here?’

  ‘No – this site has been active for years and we’ve never had any problems with hostiles. It’s away from the main trade routes, we have no trouble from pirates or xenomorphs. The Imperial zoologians who surveyed the planet found no indigenous life that posed a threat, and the planet itself has a green security rating.’

  ‘Well, we have,’ Grogan countered. ‘So soon there won’t be any indigenous life forms around to threaten anyone!’ Then he added, as if to himself, ‘The Inquisition is a tool of cleansing fire. It’s time to light the flame.’