‘What is this place?’ Czevak asked.
‘This is the Archive,’ Myra replied. ‘The colony forefathers thought it important to keep a little of the Imperium alive in this benighted place. The Archive reminds us of where we came from. A haven of normality in the most abnormal of places.’
‘I heard a bell,’ the inquisitor said, peering up at the large instrument.
Myra reached out for the improvised bell cord that hung down and snaked about them on the floor.
‘It sounds the arrival of fresh wreckages and mobilises the colony for the reclamation.’
‘The reclamation?’
‘The warp rift might have marooned us here but it is also the source of uncorrupted supplies. Each wreck brings us food and fresh water, much needed equipment and, most importantly, arrivals like yourself. New blood, with knowledge and skills essential to the colony’s growth and security. The bell sounds and we all climb topside to recover salvage and survivors.’
Czevak shook his head.
‘What?’
‘I’m just… astounded,’ the inquisitor admitted. ‘How you have survived in this place, amongst its corruptive influence, amongst its threats?’
‘There is little we can do about those,’ Myra said. ‘The colony survives because it stands together. A collective. We stand as one, against all threats.’
A hooded colonist attending to the decorative detail on an aquila carved from dark wood looked up and approached them.
‘Admiring our collection?’ the colonist enquired. Czevak nodded up at the bell above.
‘Neutran. Early M37,’ Czevak told him. ‘Before the Abyssal Crusade but definitely post-Drachmere and the Volk Abstentions. Looks like a Gorshac or Vanderghash. Some form of Adamantique alloy with angelic depictions of the Adeptus Astartes. The Fire Claws, I believe. Probably a Gorshac, then. Vanderghash favoured ferrum.’
‘I’m impressed,’ the colonist told him. His smile was a warm greeting but his eyes were cold and piercing. ‘Few come to the Archive so qualified to be here.’
‘You’re the Curator?’
‘I am,’ he replied. ‘I look to the preservation of the colony’s treasures, both those alive and long dead.’
‘Then, Curator, this will concern you,’ Czevak announced. ‘A danger approaches that far exceeds the peril of your present circumstances. A war host intent on your destruction.’
The Curator raised a bald brow. ‘A day does not go by without one of our number falling foul of the predations of this world, but what would a war host want with us? How would they even know of our existence?’
‘That’s not important right now and I don’t have the time to explain it to you. Know only this: I found you – and they won’t be far behind. They never are.’
‘Who is this war host?’ the Curator demanded. ‘What do they want with us?’
‘They are witchbreeds and faith-traitors. Servants to the Dark Gods. They come looking for an ancient artefact. A gift for their distant master. A relic of ruinous power.’
‘You believe this artefact to be here, in the Archive?’ Myra asked.
‘They search for the Bacillum Formidonis,’ Czevak told them. ‘The Dreadsceptre. An accursed crozius arcanum carried by the infamous Word Bearer Dark Apostle, Rhadamanthys – the dread Herald of Sicarus.’
‘I fear you talk of the Traitor Legions,’ the Curator spat. He shook his head. ‘You or any that follow will find none of their warped artefacts amongst our collection.’
‘Listen to me,’ Czevak implored. ‘Rhadamanthys is long dead, but the Fire Claws recovered the damned weapon from the ice world of Perboreas IX, where the Chaplain froze to death with dark prayers on his lips. It was said that no army marching with the Dreadsceptre before it could ever suffer defeat. With the Bacillum Formidonis, a fighting force would become unstoppable. This is what interests Ahzek Ahriman and the Thousand Sons–’
‘The Thousand Sons!’ Myra exclaimed.
‘You insult us with your accusations. We do not harbour artefacts of the damned here,’ the Curator seethed.
‘Curator,’ Czevak said. ‘Help me find the Dreadsceptre and destroy it. In return, I will take you and your people offworld, to safety. Perhaps not back to the Imperium, but certainly somewhere safer than this.’
The Curator turned angrily on Myra. ‘You bring me this false prophet?’
‘All of this,’ Czevak gestured with his cane, ‘is Neutran. Antiquities from the Fire Claws’ homeworld, no doubt loaded on the reliquary vessel that came to crash land here. The Adeptus Astartes masters of Neutra failed to tell your forefathers why such treasures were being evacuated. The Fire Claws were declared heretics by the Imperium and branded Excommunicate Traitoris for dealing in damned artefacts. The Dreadsceptre is here, hidden among Neutra’s holy relics, and your masters – now known as the Relictors – would have recovered the ruinous weapon, had your ship not fallen foul of the Craw. I’m here for that artefact.’
‘Spread not his lies,’ the Curator commanded, looking at Myra. ‘He is no saviour. There is no artefact and no threat. It is foretold. Our people will come for us. We shall be patient and await our deliverance. It will be our reward for preserving these great treasures so that they, like we, might join a greater collective. Only then will evil be wiped not only from this world but from the galaxy itself. It is foretold.’
With that, the Curator hurried off into the depths of the Archive.
Czevak looked to Myra.
‘Enough,’ she said softly. She lowered her eyes. ‘You’re bleeding,’ Myra observed, looking at the dressing on the inquisitor’s thigh.
Czevak said nothing, his mind elsewhere.
‘Stay here. I’ll get my kit,’ she said.
With Myra gone and blood running down his leg from his ruptured stitches, Czevak limped off after the Curator.
Turning the corner, the inquisitor was surprised to find himself at a dead end. A stone sarcophagus decorated the space, the carved detail of its lid slightly ajar.
Czevak hobbled across to the relic. Slipping his metal cane between the lid and the sarcophagus rim, the inquisitor prised the cover open and it slid across. Allowing the light of the chamber into the sarcophagus, Czevak found that the coffin lacked its stone bottom. Instead, a hole had been cut through the metal decking beneath and a flight of steps descended into the darkness. Czevak followed them down.
Several decks below the cargo bay, Czevak began to question the rashness of his pursuit. He could have been in the same vessel or another derelict entirely; there was little in the way of illumination. Several times he had halted, massaging the savage burn in his bleeding thigh, and squinting into the murk. He was sure he’d seen the faint glimmer of movement and his imagination began filling in the blanks, painting a picture of daemon world monsters stalking the darkness of the colony underworld.
On a small landing, Czevak found he had to rest. The wound on his leg was streaming with blood now and the inquisitor felt it prudent to take off his belt and tie it off above the dressing. Leading off from the landing was a bulkhead. The metal door had been lowered but still cleared the landing slightly, allowing a little of the sickly light of the chamber beyond to filter through. Bringing his face down to the stairwell mesh, Czevak peered beneath the bulkhead.
As his eyes adjusted further, the inquisitor could make out the cloak-tails and sandals of various colonists standing about the chamber. They were gathered around a grotesque throne, two fat cloven-claws scraping the deck at its base. A shiver of horror ran through the inquisitor at the prospect of the daemonic monstrosity to which they belonged. One of the colonists came to his knees and with hood retracted, kissed the hideous feet. The Curator. It shouldn’t have surprised Czevak. The colony of Perdition’s Landing could realistically stand little chance of survival on Nereus without daemonic sponsorship.
The mesh
began to quake beneath Czevak’s cheek. The boom of a bell rang through the derelict superstructure. With his movements masked by the pealing, Czevak hurried back up the steps. A fresh vessel-victim was tumbling out of the dark heavens and the colony mobilising for reclamation meant the Curator would be returning. As he staggered up the stairwell, Czevak couldn’t help feeling that it wasn’t the ascending Curator he had to worry about. In the back of his mind, the blackness below was giving birth to the obscene monsters of dark fancy. He heard a hiss right next to his ear. Unmistakable. Not the fleeting notion of an overactive imagination. With the shiver down his spine trumping the bloody blaze of his thigh, the inquisitor hurried, stumbling up the steps to safety.
Czevak found Myra below the bell, alongside a particularly unfortunate colonist. The ragged bell-ringer not only had a small mountain for a back but heaved on the cord with three muscular limbs.
‘Help me find this damned artefact!’ Czevak called as he approached. Time was running out for all of them. Myra couldn’t hear him above the boom of the bell and set to work immediately inspecting his thigh. ‘Leave it,’ Czevak snapped. ‘We have to find that sceptre.’
‘What?’ Myra said, angling her ear up at him.
‘Could you not do that?’ Czevak shouted at the bell-ringer, but the mutant’s brute features just creased with confusion.
‘Reuban,’ Myra called, putting her hand on his hulking shoulder. He released the rope and the bell slowed to silence above them.
‘What?’ Myra repeated but Czevak didn’t reply. He was staring up into the darkness of the bell. He gave a perverse chuckle before hobbling over to the wall and wrapping the cord around a section of recovered cathedral architecture. ‘What are you doing?’ Myra asked again. Czevak braced his cane between the gargoyle-encrusted stone and the Archive wall. Toppling the stone dead-weight of the relic, the irresistible tug on the cord tore the bell from the chamber ceiling. The great Neutran bell bounced, cracked and clanged to the metal floor.
‘What are you doing?’ Myra screamed.
Czevak limped over to the shattered dome of the bell. He stabbed at the darkness inside with the tip of his cane. The clapper within lay still. It appeared strangely at odds with the Neutran design of the bell itself. The clapper rod was adorned with raised glyphs and symbols of dark origin and the clapper head was a brazen, horned skull. The skull was encircled with metal bands, creating a globular cage shot through with spikes and giving the object the unmistakable appearance of a weapon.
‘The Bacillum Formidonis,’ Czevak said. ‘Dreadsceptre of the Dark Apostle Rhadamanthys.’
Myra went to say something.
‘Listen!’ Czevak hissed.
With the boom of the bell gone, the three of them could clearly hear the roar of engines.
‘What is it?’ Myra asked fearfully.
‘They’re here,’ Czevak replied. ‘Help me get this bloody thing topside. We have to destroy it.’
The archipelago rang with the sound of screams.
Czevak hobbled across the mangled landscape, assisted by Myra at his side. Behind them, the hunchbacked Reuban humped the further handicap of the Dreadsceptre across one shoulder. About them, a massacre unfolded. Haunting the sky like a sacrilegious ornament was a spacecraft, a warship. It had clearly reached Nereus by means other than doomed passage through the Craw and hung pristine and deadly in low orbit.
‘They have come, as the Curator predicted,’ Myra mumbled. Czevak recognised the vessel as a Traitor Astartes frigate and its markings as belonging to the Thousand Sons. He didn’t need to correct Myra, however, the teleporter flashes on the scrapscape below did that. Crowds of colonists emerged from the archipelago and fell to their knees at the sight of seeming salvation. As they did, Traitor Space Marines in ancient cerulean plate marched out of the light with the cold certainty of executioners. They opened fire with their bolters almost immediately, hammering the approaching colonists with precision fire in silent impunity.
‘You can’t help them,’ Czevak insisted as Myra came to an astonished stop.
‘We are as one…’
‘It’s over. Help me and help yourself,’ the inquisitor told her.
The Dreadsceptre clattered to the floor as Reuban dropped his burden and began an afflicted bound back towards the carnage.
‘Reuban!’ Myra called, tears rolling down her sulphur-smeared cheeks.
‘Think of your child!’ Czevak implored, his hand on her shoulder.
Reuban didn’t get far. The Thousand Sons were making short work of the colonists and, even at long range, their disciplined gunfire riddled Reuban’s unfortunate body with ragged holes. That was enough for Myra. She clutched the sling containing her infant closer to her chest with one hand and took up the unholy Dreadsceptre with the other. Together, the pair heaved the accursed crozius up the hull of a crashed alien vessel. They reached the precipice of an unnatural cliff face, where the crash-site peninsula met the bloody waves of the brimstone ocean below.
‘One.’
‘Two.’
‘Three!’
As Myra and the inquisitor released the ends of the ruinous object, the Dreadsceptre flew off the cliff-top and tumbled down into the surf. There the relic would be lost forever in the raging, daemonic depths.
Bolt-fire sang off the wraithbone nearby, announcing the approach of Rubric Marines. Abandoning his cane and snatching Myra by the hand the inquisitor ran for the warp gate. Czevak’s leg was sodden with blood and his thigh seared with pain but the thunder of armoured boots and bolter rounds drove the pair on.
‘Come on!’ Czevak roared, putting one arm around Myra’s shoulders and the other around her swollen belly. The two of them slid onto their backsides and skimmed down the sulphur-dusted wraithbone of the alien hull. Leaving a cloud of brimstone behind them, Czevak and Myra reached the bottom, a short distance from the warp gate. ‘This way,’ the inquisitor called, climbing up towards the portal.
On the summit of the wraithbone rise, the silhouettes of Traitor Marines punched through the cloud in indomitable pursuit. Czevak reached the gate first and began the rune sequence required to activate the ancient artefact. As the portal crackled to interdimensional life and began assembling an alternate reality behind him, the inquisitor reached down to help Myra.
‘Give me the child,’ he ordered. Myra was having difficulty climbing with the bulge of her pregnant belly, and the infant held to her breast in the sling presented a further burden. Slipping the babe out of the ragged material, she thrust the child up to him.
Czevak took the swaddling and parted the rags.
Within was no human child. Where there should have been innocent vulnerability, there was carapace and the horror of claws and jaws. A xenos abomination: a genestealer hybrid. Four arms. Bulbous head. An ovipositor slipping out from between needle-like teeth.
‘What’s wrong?’ Myra called from below. The revulsion on his face had frozen her to the spot.
Czevak looked at Myra. For the inquisitor it all began to fall into place: the colonists’ survival in such a hellish environment; their deformities; the collective. Perdition’s Landing did not benefit from daemonic sponsorship. The colony could protect itself. Czevak shuddered at the enthroned monster he’d discovered below the Archive. The Curator: the face of the cult. A genestealer cult, a brood, marooned here on a daemon world.
Czevak considered the Curator’s words to him, his insistence on their deliverance. On their joining a greater collective and how then the evil of the Eye would be wiped clean of the galaxy. Czevak nodded to himself. Should the xenos plague ever come for its lost brood, it might well assimilate the darkness of the Eye and leave this terrible place a barren empire of forgotten evil.
On the rise, still enveloped in the dust cloud, a shadow puppet show played out. Monstrous genestealers were climbing out of the floor, while silhouettes of the Thousand So
ns marched on towards the new threat of alien abominations with impassive discipline.
With a heavy heart, Czevak handed back the infant to its confused mother. Looking down into her pretty eyes, he realised that Myra couldn’t see the monster in her arms, only the one before her, about to leave her and her child to their deaths on the surface of a damned world.
‘What are you doing?’ she said in disbelief as Czevak backed towards the portal. ‘Take us with you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he told her and, with grim determination, limped back through the interdimensional static of the webway portal. With a flash, she was gone – and the daemon world of Nereus with her.
Sealing the wraithgate, Czevak was left with possibilities. Perhaps the Thousand Sons would exterminate the genestealer brood in their futile search for the Dreadsceptre. Perhaps the xenos abominations would end Ahriman’s Rubric Marines and their armoured husks would join the Craw-spawned scrap of Perdition’s Landing. Turning his back on the portal, Czevak limped away – undecided which of the two hosts, the Chaos Marines or the xenos filth, were the more necessary of evils.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Neil Roberts
© Games Workshop Limited, 2012. All rights reserved.
Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2011, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-85787-976-9
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Hammer and Bolter: Issue 23 Page 11
