[Rogue Trader 02] - Star of Damocles

by Andy Hoare - (ebook by Undead)

  The creature’s head disintegrated as the plasma bolt passed through it to strike a conduit mounted overhead. As gas flooded the utility space, the body crashed to its knees, and tumbled to one side. An instant later an arms-man was standing behind it, proffering his hand to Lucian.

  “Sir? Are you…?”

  The hair on the back of Lucian’s neck stood on end as he saw the dead creature’s arm shoot out, the distended claw taking hold of the armsman’s wrist.

  “Get back!” Lucian bellowed as he staggered to his feet, but he knew he was too late.

  The armsman threw back his head and screamed, sickly light shining up from his throat as the daemon from the warp took over his body.

  Despair threatening to overcome him, Lucian raised his pistol once again. But he never had the chance to pull the trigger, for the armsman, his body under the sway of the warp beast, flung out his arm and sent the pistol flying across the space.

  It was gone a moment later, disappearing through the gases venting from the conduit overhead. Lucian looked up at the discharging pipeline as if only just becoming aware of it. He coughed, and looked around for his pistol. He could not see it. He risked losing the beast if he wasted time looking for the weapon. Throwing an arm over his face to shield his lungs from the gas, he plunged through the billowing clouds, after the beast that was slaughtering his crew.

  All was darkness for an instant as Lucian passed through the cloud of gas, followed by nauseous disorientation as he emerged, to find himself in a narrow passageway that led from the utility area to the forward torpedo decks. He had no difficulty discerning the creature’s path, for another two bodies lay up ahead; at least it looked as if the constituent body parts amounted to two people.

  As the shock of the confrontation with the beast wore off, Lucian felt a primal rage well up within him. No Arcadius, to his knowledge at least, had ever lost a vessel to a warp beast, and he was damned if he would be the first to suffer such a fate. His anger grew as he considered that he had been forced to destroy the body of a man he thought of, if not as a friend then as a companion and a valued crew member. Even if he died in the event, which he thought entirely probable, Lucian determined that he would take this bastard of a creature with him. If he were to be dragged to hell by this beast, he raged, he’d make sure the beast went with him.

  Passing the bodies, Lucian came to another junction, and was greeted immediately by the boom of a shotgun being discharged very nearby.

  “Hold!” he called, rounding the corner cautiously.

  He stepped towards a wide chamber, machinery clustered upon its every surface. A single armsman stood at the centre, and nearby a cringing group of ratings. The body last possessed by the creature lay before the arms-man, its chest blown through by the force of a shotgun blast.

  But Lucian dared not believe it had been defeated so easily.

  The armsman with the shotgun turned towards him, his head tipping to one side as he did so. The mouth fell open and bloodstained drool pooled forth. Lucian met the armsman’s eyes, experiencing a stab of despair as he saw that those eyes were filled not with the lucid gaze of the creature from the warp, but with sheer, unadulterated terror. Those eyes were the eyes of a man being dragged beneath the surface of the ocean by a voracious predator, knowing all the while that a quick, clean death would be denied him.

  “Not again!” Lucian spat, casting around for something, anything he might use as a weapon. He did not care what; a pipe would do, if it would allow him to bludgeon the creature to death, to stave in its skull so that it could possess no more of his crew.

  Before he could find a weapon, however, fate took a hand in events. One of the cowering ratings took the opportunity to flee, crossing the chamber and running behind the creature as he did so. The creature spun around to rake the man with its hands, its fingers split apart and the bones protruding to form wicked claws. It turned back towards Lucian, as if deciding which prey to pursue. Lucian judged that the beast was trapped, if only he could force it back to the next chamber. Summoning all his courage, he stepped forward, just as a group of armsmen arrived behind him. The beast stood motionless for an instant, before it evidently saw that it was outnumbered. The fleeing man dived for the access portal behind the beast, and the creature made its decision. It dived after him, through the small opening.

  Lucian reacted in an instant. He knew that there was no exit from the chamber into which the creature had passed. As the creature overtook its prey, a terrible scream spilling forth to be cut off an instant later by the sound of rending flesh and bone, Lucian surged forward and hauled the portal shut. He spun the heavy wheel that engaged the locking mechanism, and sank to his knees with exhaustion.

  As the chamber filled with armsmen and ratings responding to the emergency, Lucian raised his head, and laughed the laugh of one who has come far too close to the abyss. He saw his crewmen recoil in horror, and realised that he must appear a madman.

  “Someone,” he said, forcing his voice to its normal tone, “get me Karaldi.”

  “It’s in there, my lord?” asked Master Karaldi. Lucian was unsure whether the astropath asked a question or made a statement of fact. The man was impossible to read, the wild madness he had displayed on their last meeting now entirely gone. He nodded.

  “It’s sealed, and there’re no other exits,” Lucian replied, finding his eye drawn, as he spoke, to the small armoured porthole in the heavy bulkhead door. He could see nothing beyond, which made him even more uneasy.

  “Apart from the tubes, my lord,” Karaldi said.

  Aye, Lucian thought, the torpedo tubes. The creature was trapped on the loading deck for the forward torpedo tubes. There were no torpedoes in the area however, for the fortunes of the Arcadius clan had been so dire this last century as to preclude their replenishment. Lucian knew that the astropath referred to the possibility of voiding the chamber, in the hope of blasting the creature through the tubes and into the warp.

  “No,” Lucian replied, “that’s not an option. The internal bulkheads aren’t up to it.”

  “Then what?” Karaldi asked, his blind gaze fixed on the small porthole.

  “That’s why I called you here,” Lucian replied, knowing he had no choice but to trust the mad old astropath. “I have an idea, but I need your advice.”

  “Please, my lord, go on. I am your servant.”

  Lucian looked into the man’s time-worn face, haloed as it was by his wispy grey hair. Lucian fancied he detected a change in the man, as if the astropath was prepared to face up to his duty in a way he had appeared reluctant to on prior occasions. Lucian had considered Karaldi burned out or washed up, of late, and had seriously intended to petition the Guild for a replacement. Something now gave him pause. Something in Karaldi might have changed, Lucian thought.

  “Good,” Lucian began, “I have a question for you, and I want you to be sure of your answer.”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  “I intend to destroy the body the creature inhabits, totally: to incinerate it to atoms.”

  “Go on, my lord.”

  “What then of the creature, with no new victim to claim?”

  “Oh,” Karaldi replied, his hand reaching up to grip his chin, “I see…”

  “What then, without the body?” Lucian pressed.

  The astropath hesitated, visibly considering his words before continuing. “With no Rite of Warding, which would take many hours, I could not say, not for sure. It has certainly feasted upon enough souls to sustain it for some time, even in incorporeal form. But I know we do not have the luxury of time, so I say please do it, master. For the sake of us all, please do it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Quite sure, my lord,” the astropath replied, his hands fumbling with the beads around his neck, an old and tarnished Imperial aquila hanging upon them.

  Lucian turned and nodded to a tech-priest manning a console near the bulkhead door. The hooded figure bowed, and turned to the large array of
levers, dials and meters before him. Lucian turned to the porthole once more, feeling the tension grow.

  The tech-priest worked a series of levers, lowering each in succession and mumbling prayers to the Machine God all the while. The effect was immediate. The air in the chamber charged, the hairs on Lucian’s body standing up, accompanied by a distinctly unpleasant sensation of something crawling over his body. The air pressure rose dramatically for a moment, before a bank of equalisation pumps mounted overhead started to life and quickly returned it to normal.

  Then, Lucian heard a great commotion from the torpedo deck, and he approached the bulkhead door, cautious all the while. Peering gingerly through the porthole, he could make out only a small area of the bay, for the illumination was inactive, yet he caught an actinic flash to one side, followed an instant later by a great arcing bolt of energy that crossed the deck at the speed of light, grounding itself in the centre of the chamber in an explosive shower of sparks.

  “Reactor bleed at optimum, my lord,” the tech-priest announced, monitoring his dials intently. “Output shall remain constant until you order core flow resumed, but I advise against maintaining the output at the expense of primary systems.”

  “Understood,” said Lucian, peering through the porthole for any sign of movement within. Another flash, and another arc, and a great whining went up from beyond the bulkhead door. The conduits that would have charged a plasma torpedo were discharging their raw power into the chamber. Lucian could tell that the system was straining to maintain the output that was even now scouring the bay with lashing arcs of raw power.

  “There!” Karaldi shrieked, his voice almost drowned out by yet another burst of lightning from within the chamber.

  As Lucian’s eyes recovered from the massive blast, he caught sight of a figure standing in the centre of the torpedo bay. Its body was charred and smoking, the armsman’s uniform incinerated entirely. Despite the apparent injuries done to its stolen body, the creature stood tall, though, as before, its head lolled to one side as if its neck muscles were weakened, and its mouth hung open, bloody drool pouring forth. The arms were held out wide, almost as if to welcome Lucian to him.

  Lucian tore his gaze from the porthole, and turned to address Karaldi.

  “The beast lends the flesh unholy vigour, my lord,” Karaldi said, evidently anticipating Lucian’s question. Lucian suppressed his annoyance at having his surface thoughts read in such a manner.

  “My apologies, my lord,” Karaldi said, his face deadly serious as he contemplated the creature.

  “How long can it last?” Lucian asked. “We cannot keep up the output indefinitely.”

  “I feel,” the astropath said, his voice straining and cracked. “I feel… it fights… it draws such power.”

  Lucian turned to the tech-priest. “Can you increase the core bleed?”

  The tech-priest cast his mechanical eyes over his instruments, mumbling prayers beneath the hood of his crimson robes. Then he raised his head and addressed Lucian. “I can, my lord, but to do so I must control the bleed manually.”

  Lucian knew he was asking a great deal of his crew and of his vessel, yet he saw no alternative. If he did not get this creature of the warp off of his ship, he would have no ship, and no crew to man it. He knew that entrusting the core reactor flow to the tech-priest was incredibly risky, for the function was normally controlled by a hundred different, triple redundant cogitators. He scarcely believed a single, human mind could perform such a task, but he knew that the tech-priest would not have made the suggestion were it not true. The servants of the mechanicus might be taciturn and unimaginative, but such traits were, in times such as these, a benefit.

  “Proceed.” Lucian ordered the tech-priest, gripping the frame of the bulkhead door as he turned his gaze back within.

  The whine of the conduits venting their guts into the torpedo bay grew louder still, their pitch shifting upwards to a shrill howl. Lucian could faintly detect the touch of the tech-priest within the sound, a subtle modulation indicative of the workings of a human mind rather than that of a machine.

  The creature still stood in the centre of the loading deck, but it was now bathed in stark, flickering white light. Around it danced a cage of arcing power, crawling up and down its body. That body blackened and blistered before Lucian’s eyes, the skin slowly vaporising even as Lucian looked on, horrified, but knowing he must witness the creature’s death.

  “It fights,” Lucian heard Master Karaldi mumble at his side. “It draws yet more power from the infernal planes.”

  Lucian turned his head to regard the astropath, and was struck by the expression on the man’s face. It was not the normal, crazed visage that Lucian had become used to. There was an unfamiliar calm upon Karaldi’s face, he was almost placid.

  Looking back to the chamber, Lucian could see that the creature was absorbing a staggering amount of energy. The body it wore should have been vaporised in an instant as soon as the reactor bleed was turned upon it, yet somehow, it was keeping the body together.

  Then, Lucian saw that the creature’s mouth was no longer hanging slack. It was smiling, and it was looking straight at him. Though he met its gaze for but a fraction of a second before violently turning his head away from the porthole, Lucian felt his soul seared by the raw stuff of the warp. He fought to remain standing, bracing himself with both arms against the frame of the bulkhead door.

  “Increase bleed!” Lucian shouted, gasping as the air pressure increased and the equalisers overhead fought to remain online.

  “My lord,” the tech-priest replied, an edge of uncertainly creeping into his normally even voice. “Such a thing is—”

  “Do it, damn you!” Lucian bellowed. “Do it or so help me…”

  “I obey, my lord,” replied the tech-priest. “I can maintain point three variance for no more than forty seconds.”

  “Understood,” replied Lucian, knowing this must surely be his best, and last hope. He dared to raise his eyes to the porthole once more, this time ready to avert his gaze should it meet that of the creature. He saw immediately that the core bleed output had increased even more, and that the creature’s body was entirely black, a vile, greasy smoke rising from it in eddies. Yet still, it smiled, and held its arms out wide as if welcoming its fate.

  “It mocks us.” Lucian scowled, hating the intruder with a depth of feeling he had not realised he could summon.

  “Its power fails, master.” Lucian heard Karaldi at his back.

  “How can you be sure?” he asked Karaldi smiled, a trace of his former mania returning to his face. “I can hear its thoughts, my lord.”

  How could the astropath bear such a thing? Lucian thought. Just meeting its gaze had brought Lucian to his knees.

  “I am soulbound, my master,” Karaldi whispered. “It cannot hurt me. Not the bit that counts, at least.”

  Lucian turned to look at the astropath, and saw that Karaldi held his hands across his chest, the thumbs interlocked and the palms spread wide. It was the sign of the aquila, and Lucian knew that it was meant as far more than a formal salute.

  “The soulbinding, in which I received but a portion of the Emperor’s infinite grace, warded me against the likes of this beast. Though it cost me my sight, I gained far more than I can tell you, my master.”

  Lucian nodded slowly, and turned his gaze back to the torpedo bay. The creature’s flesh was steaming from its body, blackened muscles visible as the skin peeled back and fell away in ashen fragments. A weird, guttering light flickered deep within the rapidly disintegrating body as its scorched bones became visible.

  Even as Lucian watched in stark horror, the creature’s body began to crumble. As power arced all around it, it stood as a rigid, petrified and charred statue, its arms still spread wide. A last great arc leapt across the chamber and grounded itself on the creature’s form, and the remains of its body shattered into a thousand blackened fragments. All that was left was a retinal after image, seared across Lucian’
s eyes, as he looked on, not able to tear his gaze from the porthole.

  “It is too powerful.” Lucian heard Karaldi mumble behind him as the whine of the core bleed died away. “It is too near its home.”

  “What?” Lucian began, blinking to clear his eyes of the retinal burn of the creature’s death. “But it’s dead.”

  “No, my lord, it is not.”

  Lucian blinked once more, realising with mounting terror that the ghostly image floating across his vision was not in fact the after-effect of the creature’s violent death. What he saw was a glowing form standing exactly where the creature had stood, and it was there, in the torpedo bay, looking back at him.

  “It’s still…” Lucian never completed his sentence, for he felt himself shoved to one side, to slam into the frame of the bulkhead door.

  “What…” he began, looking up as he caught himself, to see Master Karaldi struggling with the great locking wheel at the centre of the door. “What the hell are you doing man?” he shouted, raising his voice as a shrill wail escaped through the door’s seams as Karaldi pushed it open.

  “Master,” the astropath called over one shoulder as the other leaned into the door, “I have no choice. I cannot let it remain unbound.”

  “It’ll eat your soul, man!” Lucian shouted, pulling himself upright with one hand, and gripping Karaldi’s arm with the other.

  “No, my lord! You must let me do my duty!”

  Karaldi turned his eyeless face on Lucian, and although the astropath’s eyes were nothing more then empty sockets, Lucian felt that a fierce light had arisen within, where previously the astropath had radiated an aura of madness and despair. Karaldi shouldered the bulkhead door open, and Lucian relaxed his grip on the man’s shoulder.

  As the door fell fully open, an acrid stink assaulted Lucian’s nostrils and scoured his throat. It was the scent of metal, ceramic and plastic ravaged by unholy powers. And mixed in with the chemical taint was something far worse. Lucian knew that it was the taint of the warp, made real through the destruction of the body in which the creature had infiltrated his vessel.