by Ian Watson
The peasants sacrificed lame children in honour of the celestial blanket-holder. If such propitiation did not result in the sewing-up of any chinks, at least it stopped new chinks from showing through.
A well-armed little colony had settled in this ignorant hinterland, calling themselves the “Keepers of the Blanket’s Hem”. Spurious preachers began to declare that the peasants were going about matters in a foolish way by sacrificing crippled infants. Cripples! This was the reason why the night-blanket was tattered. From now on the peasants must offer to the Keepers a tithe of more mature, and physically intact, sons and daughters who had some pretence to comeliness. Parents who objected were torn apart as heretics. A new cult established itself over twenty years, its shrine being the domed town of the Keepers, which was built up against the entrance to caverns.
In the final confrontation Jaq and a company of Grey Knights had fought through savage ranks of cultists who all showed some mark of Chaos – a tentacle, a sting, tendrils instead of hair, suckers, claws; through to the warlock of the coven ensconced deep within the caverns where young captives whimpered piteously in cages.
That warlock was a bloated, horned hermaphrodite draped in bilious green skin. Oozing sexual orifices puckered his/her slumping belly. His/her long muscular tongue lashed and probed the air like a sense organ as if to supplement his/her tiny shrunken eyes. Plainly that tongue had other uses too.
Acrid musk saturated the air. Jewel-tipped stalactites hung from the cavern roof, aglow like many little lamps. The warlock likewise was aglow. His/her foul body shone phosphorescently as if lit from within; as if his/her flesh acted as a window to a lascivious light from elsewhere.
The warlock had once been human; now he/she mirrored the warp-form of the daemon which possessed and which had remoulded him/her.
He/she fought by projecting an obscene delirium of dizzying debauched desire. Even though psychic hoods shielded the Grey Knights, they were rocked. Despite all his own psychic training, Jaq felt twisted within. A lurid miasma dazed his vision.
Blasts from weapons went astray or were turned back to their sources so that the warlock seemed to be using his/her assailants as puppets to fight themselves.
Two Grey Knights died. But Jaq girded himself with his own tormented chastity and fired true, from psycannon and boltgun.
For a few moments more the warlock held his/her shape and Jaq almost despaired. Then the monstrous green body exploded like a balloon of filth, spattering the walls of the cavern and the cages of the cowering young prisoners – the last time he/she would set a mark upon them.
On his thigh Jaq wore that warlock’s image in phosphorescent green.
Other daemons, which he confronted subsequently, had proved to be – if anything – even less appealing.
‘The hydra isn’t a daemon,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Yet how can it come from the warp, and not be steered ultimately by a Ruinous Power of the warp?’
The daemonological laboratories of the Ordo Malleus – its Chamber Theoretical – needed to know about this strange new entity. Jaq prayed that this Harlequin man might lead him to it.
GOOGOL SLOWED THE Tormentum to a virtual halt. The ship drifted in the sea of lost souls as the occupants of that bubble of reality stared at what the warp-scope showed.
A space hulk wallowed in the spangled spectral abyss, in thrall to the random currents of the warp; and it was there that Veils of Light had docked, slipping in to some gaping port.
The hulk wasn’t one single derelict craft. The hulk was many, and more. It was a titanic conglomerate constructed by madmen, even by mad aliens too. The hulk might be ten thousand years old, so scoured, pockmarked and ancient did some parts appear. Once, there must have been a single core-vessel which had lost its way or had lost the use of its warp-vanes so that it could no longer jump back into truespace.
Maybe its Navigator had died, his mind disrupted by daemonic intrusion. Maybe a warp storm had battered the ship and broken its warp-vanes when their runes failed.
The survivors must have tried to live out their lives by hook or by crook, descending into despair and lunacy, their offspring – if any – mutating into warp-monkeys.
Over the millennia, other wrecks and crippled vessels were welded to the first, in whole or in part, or were crashed into place in what became a vast assembly kilometres across and deep.
Many of these were deep-space vessels that never landed on worlds. Crenellated towers and buttressed spires jutted from the hulk as if a multiple collision had occurred between baroque flying castles.
The whole mass resembled, too, some jointed megawhale of metal which had sprouted metastasising cancers. Exotic cruciform antennae arose. Corbelled gargoyles bristled, as if spewing into the warp. Wrecked balustrades hung loose below stained-glass galleries. Heavily ornamented fins and flukes protruded. One pier intended for shuttles to dock at was studded with statues of dwarfs, another was embellished with runes. Weapons turrets were moulded in the shape of snarling wolves and savage lizards. A portal gaped: leering vermilion plasteel lips with bared ebon teeth each inscribed with golden texts. This portal was swallowing, or vomiting a fat endless worm...
Around the hulk clung the waxen coils of the hydra like some giant wreath of spilled intestines. Glassy tentacles delved through hatches and fissures. Tendrils rippled lazily in the warp current like weed in a stream. Some parts of the creature – hugely swollen parts – pulsed sluggishly, suggestive of disembowelled organs.
Other great sections of the entity hung almost loose, huge gobs of spittle on glassy strands. The hulk was vast; the hydra possibly vaster.
Jaq gave thanks to the Master of Mankind for their arrival.
Should he give thanks to Moma Parsheen too?
‘Can you take us somewhat closer?’ he asked Googol. ‘Whilst steering clear of any dangling hydra?’
‘Question is, will it steer clear of us, Jaq?’
‘We’ll find out. I spy a vacant cavity. Starboard top quadrant, see?’
Indeed. The hugging, questing, gelatinous limbs did not block all possible entrance into the multiple hulk.
As the Navigator nudged Tormentum Malorum slowly nearer to the indicated zone, using only attitude jets, for Jaq a strange intuition of security began to percolate through the dread engendered by hulk and warp alike. Tuning his psychic sense, he strove to analyse this feeling until he was virtually positive of its origin.
Once more the Tormentum hung almost motionless with respect to the convoluted crumpled cliffside of the hulk. A hundred metres of the emptiness-that-was-not still yawned, separating their ship from a ragged hole large enough to admit several armoured Terminator Marines abreast. Would that such were here!
Googol fretted. ‘If we push closer than this, any sudden warp-eddy could impact us...’
‘Here will do, then,’ said Jaq. ‘We can cross the remaining space in power suits.’
The Navigator’s face blanched. ‘You mean, leave the ship... at this point?’
The squat’s teeth chattered momentarily. ‘Er, boss, you aren’t by any chance pro-pro-proposing warp-walking?’
‘But that’s an insane risk,’ protested Googol. ‘Things can materialise anywhere in the warp. Things I’d rather not try to name!’
‘We’ll be safe,’ said Jaq. ‘I’m picking up a powerful field of daemonic shielding from this hulk. The field spills out beyond. We’re within the fringe. Daemon spawn won’t be able to home in and manifest themselves. We can leave the shield of Tormentum in almost total confidence.’
Grimm hummed and hawed; he cleared his throat. ‘That’s what he tells us... You aren’t, um, merely saying that to, um, jolly us on?’
‘Damnatio!’ swore Jaq. ‘What sort of fool do you think I am?’
‘Okay, okay, I believe you, lord. We’ll be shielded.’
The fact that the hulk was protected against daemonic intrusion piqued Jaq’s curiosity at the same time as it relieved his mind. For in that case how could daemons a
nd evil have any connection with the hydra?
‘Right,’ said Googol. ‘I withdraw my objection, which as a warp pilot I felt bound to register.’ He affected a sigh. ‘So I presume I’m obliged to stay with the ship.’ He glanced Moma Parsheen’s way. ‘I’ve no desire to stay with her, though. My gaze can kill, but obviously not a blind woman. She’s unreliable, tricky. I wouldn’t even trust her under lock and key.’
Oh yes, Googol had been left safely in a locked room once; and he had been taken by surprise.
‘Huh!’ exclaimed Grimm. ‘So you’ve decided to opt out of this little excursion, eh, Vitali? That’s nice to know. Of course a chivalrous fellow such as yourself couldn’t contemplate shooting that... parody of a living ancestor. If need be, if need be.’
‘I do feel a profound antipathy to firing any type of gun inside a ship I’m piloting,’ the Navigator said loftily.
Grimm’s attitude to Moma Parsheen had altered drastically since she revealed her sabotage of Stalinvast’s future.
‘Do we have to be saddled with her?’ demanded the little man. ‘Is that it? While we fight our way through the coils? That doesn’t make much sense.’
‘You’re to stay with Tormentum, Vitali, quite right,’ confirmed Jaq. ‘As to our astropath...’
Logic said that Jaq should execute her now – and quite justifiably too – for the murder of a world, for the sabotage of the Imperium. However, maybe Stalinvast still survived, and the Tormentum Malorum might yet leave the warp in time for him to compel the old woman to send a signal to save the situation. And even so, she deserved to die for attempted treason.
Meanwhile, here they stood, in effect discussing the advisability of killing Moma Parsheen. The astropath listened, wearing a faint rictus of a smile, and thinking who knew what. How could such a debate stimulate any sense of loyalty towards her travelling companions?
What sense of loyalty? Plainly she possessed none, except perhaps to her cat-creature far away, which she had condemned to death.
‘I sense when warp portals open,’ she remarked in Jaq’s general direction. ‘Your hydra is at least partly a thing of the warp, is it not?’
She wasn’t pleading for her life. She was simply reminding Jaq of how she might continue to be useful.
‘Besides,’ she added, ‘I presume you need to know precisely where Carnelian is within that great mass?’
If only Jaq could sense ordinary human physical presence at a distance, as some psykers could. The firefly of a psychic spirit gleaming in the nightscape of existence: ah, that he could pinpoint by and large. Exerting this sense, he encountered the fog of daemonic shielding which was hiding whosoever occupied the hulk.
‘Are you sure you can still fix him clearly, astropath?’ he demanded.
Moma Parsheen gazed blindly. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’m good at harking through warped spaces, very good. I’m not looking for him. I’m listening to the echo of my tracer.’
‘Our astropath will accompany us,’ Jaq said. If he could but consult his Tarot! Yet Carnelian might be alerted. Jaq dearly wished to surprise that man.
Meh’Lindi spoke up. ‘We’ll be wearing powered space armour all the time we’re inside the hulk? That disposes of the problem of Parsheen’s muscular atrophy.’ Oh no, Meh’Lindi would not call the astropath Moma.
‘Huh! Give a madwoman the strength of a tigress?’
‘I presume, Grimm,’ she said, ‘you can gimmick her armour so that she can be switched off by any of us if she misbehaves?’
‘No problem, lady.’
‘I thought not! I could do so easily enough myself.’
‘Do you suppose thinking of doing so requires true genius, huh? Oh damn it, I’m sorry. I bite my tongue. Give me ten minutes to insert a governor into Vitali’s space gear.’
‘Into mine?’ protested the Navigator.
‘Whose else do you think the hag’ll wear? Did she bring her own spacesuit in that little satchel, shrunken by magic?’
‘She has never worn such gear in her life.’
‘You want rid of her, yet you don’t want her to wear your suit.’
‘No, I do not! She might taint it psychically. Interfere with the protection runes.’
Grimm chortled. ‘Our inquisitor can exorcise and asperge and reconsecrate it afterwards.’
Obviously the squat didn’t place much faith in any such techno-theological procedures, the efficacy of which was perfectly evident to Jaq and to most right-minded people. Still, the little man seemed somehow to get by. Unconsecrated, he certainly wouldn’t survive in the warp!
‘I will bless all our armour beforehand,’ vowed Jaq. ‘Triply so, when we are about to undertake a short swim in the sea of souls! I will seal and sanctify. You, Moma Parsheen, world-slayer, will lead us to Carnelian. We will surprise him, net him, wring the juice of confession out of him.’
Jaq thought of the collapsible excruciator that any inquisitor carried, to extort information from the unwilling. It had rarely been his style to use that instrument. Even though the device was righteous, he felt a certain repugnance towards it.
Sometimes the whole galaxy seemed to reverberate with a sob of pain, a moan of anguish.
SOON JAQ AND Meh’Lindi were donning their stout suits of power armour and Grimm his smaller version of the same, while Googol disdainfully assisted Moma Parsheen into his own suit, his lips curled, as if he was packaging excrement.
Cuisses on to thighs... locking on to the hip girdle. Flared greaves on to shanks; magnetic boots locking into the greaves... ‘Benedico omnes armaturas,’ intoned Jaq. ‘Benedico digitabula et brachiales, cataphractes atque pectorals.’
Presently they were testing their sensor pick-ups, temperature regulators, air purificators...
TEN
LIKE FOUR BLACK-CARAPACED beetles decorated with protective runes, fluorescent red icons, and weapons pouches, Jaq and Meh’Lindi and little Grimm – who was tugging Moma Parsheen – jetted their way into a ruptured, cavernous hold. They hoped to maintain radio silence.
Junk of aeons hung aimlessly nearby: strange knobbly skulls of some humanoids reminiscent of irregular, cratered moonlets, an antique plasma gun half melted into slag, broken crates, and a buckled cage that was still confining a corpse dressed in a spotted leotard. A tumble of yellow silken hair suggested woman, though the long-exposed flesh was purple leather.
Their light beams played around the interior. Shadows jerked about. The corpse in the cage seemed to shift as if seeking release. In the deeps grim giant ghosts appeared to swell. This was all illusion.
Jaq carried on his suit a force rod, power axe and psycannon. The force rod, resembling some solid black flute embedded with enigmatic circuits, stored psychic energy so as to augment a psyker’s mental attack. Unknown aliens had crafted all such force rods which had fallen into the hands of the Imperium, most notably the cache found in the ice-caverns of Karsh XIII. Impervious to any probing, a rod never needed or offered the possibility of any overhaul, so it was perhaps the least adorned of all weapons. By contrast, the shaft of Jaq’s power axe was embossed with rococo icons, the pommel of that halberd was a brass ork skull, and complex purity seals embellished the power-pack to which a cable resembling a gem-serpent ran. The psycannon likewise was adorned with supernumerary ribs and moulded flanges painted with esoteric, exorcistic glyphs.
Jaq drew Meh’Lindi’s attention to the bio-scanner in its filigreed, jade-studded frame. A blotch of green light registered the psychic throb of life deep in the interior of the hulk. However, his scanner was fogged by emanations from the aspect of the hydra that was alive, almost masking the trace.
That pocket of life was plainly still some distance away, yet it was apparent to Jaq that the instrument was attempting to distinguish more than the single sharp blip that would represent Carnelian alone.
He held up his gauntlet questioningly, opening five fingers once... then twice.
Meh’Lindi signalled another ten possible presences far ahead, in
her opinion. Maybe more.
When Jaq turned up the gain on his sensor, static flooded it. Too much interference from the hydra. To his annoyance the sensitive instrument failed like a night-flower wilting in too bright a light. He muttered an invocation but the machine’s soul had perished and did not revive.
Ever since entering the hulk, Jaq had been aware of daemonic shielding. While this relieved his mind in one regard – daemon spawn would be unable to home in and manifest themselves – the precaution piqued his curiosity afresh.
Jaq heartily disliked space hulks. It was well known how these sinister plasteel cadavers could house genestealer broods, adrift for centuries or millennia until a fluke of the warp vomited the derelict into truespace close to some vulnerable world.
Or they might shelter piratical degenerates who had become creatures of Chaos.
Loyal subjects of the Imperium always feared hulks. Imperial merchantmen traversing the warp would flee at the sighting of one. Space Marines were honour-bound to board a hulk, to cleanse any threat it posed, and to recover any valuable or enigmatic pieces of ancient technology from millennia earlier which might be encysted in the wreck like pearls held in a lethal clam.
Too often, the consequences of such boardings proved quite dire.
Where better, then, to hide the heart of some treacherous web of intrigue than in such a megavessel lost in the vastness of the warp, that all sane voyagers would shun?
The four intruders drifted through the hold. Half a dozen different black-mouthed corridors beckoned, angling away variously. Tentacles of the hydra protruded from two; stout soapy cables, undulating sluggishly.
Moma Parsheen pointed to a third, empty mouth. That direction corresponded with the earlier bearings for the green splotch of life signs.
