by William King
The men had made camp in a great hall that contained a sunken pit that once might have been a pool. A statue of what looked like some warlike eldar god stood on a plinth in the middle. Sentries were set, camping stoves and field rations produced. Weapons lay close at hand. Janus could understand why. The feeling of gloom had intensified with the coming of night. The sense of melancholy and evil had both increased. It was as if the sadness and wickedness of an entire people had seeped into the very stones, leaving a residue that would taint any who came after.
The long shadows contained a hint of menace. Men talked louder as if to ward off the unnatural silence, then once they realised what they were doing, their voices faded into scared whispers. Several of them cast uneasy glances at the eldar, as if wondering why they had been brought to this place. Most likely thoughts of the bloody sacrifices they had seen depicted on the murals were still in their minds.
Janus himself was uneasy. All day the sense of wrongness had increased and with it the fear inside him had grown. Something terrible had happened here, he thought, and something terrible was going to happen here again. And he knew now that he was going to be part of it. Something told him that it was all part of a pattern as sure as he had seen it laid out in the farseer's runestones. He stroked the smooth flesh where his little finger had been. It was strange how natural it seemed now, and that there was no pain. Remembering the events leading up to the loss of his finger made Janus flinch.
Janus sat down cross-legged between Athenys and Auric. The farseer appeared lost in meditation, crooning a strange song. The runestones orbited him, like tiny moons circling a gas giant. Athenys sat alertly as if expecting danger at any moment. It seemed once again that the farseer was using his powers, although for what purpose Janus could not say.
As he listened, Janus felt heavy with fatigue. His eyelids grew heavy, his head slumped down onto his chest and strange dreams stole stealthily into his skull.
Images began to spin through his mind. He hovered over the city as it had once been, in the days when mighty spirit engines had provided it with power. He saw a wonderful place filled with beautiful, peaceful people. He saw long crystalline ships flying through the sky. He saw sorcerers draw on the energy of massive psychic engines to raise vast starscraping towers whose sides were smooth as glass and stronger than steel. He saw an age of peace and plenty when the eldar dreamed their alien dreams of perfection and splendour underneath the light of an uncorrupted sun.
He saw great webs of energy lace the land. He saw hidden highways being woven between the stars. In a heartbeat he understood the answer to one great mystery—why eldar ships were never encountered in the warp. They used other pathways, built by the ancients, in a time before the Imperium was even born. He caught a glimpse of the arrival of mighty liners and enormous trading caravels from other worlds, and he began to realise the reach that eldar civilisation had once possessed.
Centuries passed, then millennia, and the cities grew. As they did so the images became darker, the people more debauched. More and more power brought greater and greater wealth and luxury, and that in turn, brought spiritual corruption. He saw the eldar grow corrupt. He saw great orgies of indulgence and torchlit rallies where painted prophets spoke words of wickedness to a willing audience. One of them seemed somehow familiar. It was not anything about his appearance: it was his aura. It was the same as the daemon Janus had encountered in his last vision. It was in some strange way Shaha Gaathon or someone possessed by him. He moved through the crowds talking and preaching, hidden by potent spells from even the psychic senses of the eldar. The Harbinger of Slaanesh, come to prepare the way for the god's birth.
He saw the hidden daemon preach. Many listened, perhaps the majority, for his words were persuasive and his presence great.
A few of the eldar had some presentiment of the disaster. Some turned their faces from the dark and prepared to flee their worlds in great arks, but most stayed and so were doomed. Others, the priests who had built this temple, who also saw gathering doom, remained and tried to preach against the corruption. When this failed, they retired to its depths to forge a weapon against what was to come. Using engines of awesome power, they forged a sword that was not a sword, but a captured echo of the death force of the universe bound into the shape of a blade. Then they waited for their doom to come upon them.
The days grew darker, strange savage rites stained the streets with blood, and eldar hunted eldar for pleasure through the streets of the city. Red garbed priests rose, preaching the coming of a new god, a deity created by the eldar themselves, who would lead them into an age of ever greater wonders and life everlasting. Janus did not know how he understood what was going on, but he did. It unreeled before his eyes like scenes from a vast pageant. Over it all brooded the smiling enigmatic face of Shaha Gaathon.
There came a day when a mighty ritual was performed under the supervision of those perverse and dedicated priests, the ritual they promised would usher in a new age of even greater splendour and pleasure. He saw the faces of the crowd aglow as they watched the rituals being performed. He saw the creation of mighty vortices of energy linked between many worlds. He saw the pride and the power written on every face, and then saw the horror enter their expressions as the watchers realised that something had gone wrong.
Lightning flickered, black clouds raced across the sky. The sun's rays reddened and a blood-coloured light illumined the crowds. Janus sensed something grow. As the ritual took place, something was born: something dark and evil and terrible. From the vortices, shafts of light lanced out, striking at every eldar, extending tentacles into every soul, reaching out to grasp every being on the surface of the planet. He saw the eldar scream with a mixture of pleasure and horror as the summoned thing drew the very life from them, consuming their souls and their bodies, reducing them to a fine powder of ash that blew away in the wind. With each death, with every soul it absorbed, the dark thing grew stronger and stronger.
The priests emerged from the shrine of Asuryan, armed with their weapon that had been so long in forging. It was a blade that glowed brighter than the sun, and was pregnant with the power of death, a blade powered by the mighty spirit engines that slept beneath the temple. They came for Shaha Gaathon, the dark prophet. The leader of the priests cut and wounded him, and the prophet vanished, fleeing beyond their reach. Filled with triumph the eldar high priest turned on the newborn god.
He struck the growing thing and wounded it, but it was not enough. The new being was too strong. It threw itself at the priests and consumed them, and they died screaming in ecstasy and horror. The few that survived snatched up the sword and were driven back within their fortress temple. They forced closed the doors, but not even the mighty seals they invoked could save them. The tentacles of the dark god reached into the heart of the temple, found them and consumed them. All save the one who bore the blade, who sealed himself into the ultimate sanctuary beneath the temple and vanished behind its spell walls.
And the day of destruction came. And so was Slaanesh born. A daemon god birthed by the dark side of the eldar soul, a composite being composed of every single life-force it had devoured. He knew now why the eldar feared and hated the Lord of Pleasures so.
His eyes snapped open and he saw that Athenys and Auric were staring at him. His mind reeled from the vision he had just seen. Not for a moment did he doubt its truth.
Was this what had happened to all of the eldar, Janus wondered? Had this scene been re-enacted on their every world? Had most of an entire race really been consumed to feed the newborn deity? He did not doubt that the answer was yes. The two eldar bowed their heads as if they had been secretly reading his thoughts and were ashamed of what he had seen.
NINETEEN
THE PRIDE OF SIN
Simon sensed that something was wrong. He strode across the command deck, dropped into the Navigator's chair and began hooking himself up. He had felt a slight disturbance in the fabric of space-time, the sort that any Nav
igator associated with either the arrival or departure of a ship. On instinct, he barked an order to the crewmen.
'Ready for action,' he said. If this was a false alarm it might prove a little embarrassing, but what of it? He doubted that any ship appearing out of the immaterium within the Eye of Terror was going to be friendly. He would much rather look like a fool than be a corpse. The crew were surprised but they were well trained. They sped into their combat positions. At that moment, Simon realised how on edge they must have been, knowing where they were. Only after they had taken their stations and sounded the klaxons, did the helmsman ask, 'What is it, sir?'
By this time Simon had already patched himself into the command chair, and was reaching out with the sensors to scan the space all around them. He concentrated for a moment, and picked up the spoor. There! Space rippled where a discontinuity had been established. He extrapolated the inbound course from the probability wake and found his worst fears confirmed. There was no way that ship had leapt in from anywhere outside the Eye. It must be a native.
He could almost feel the tingle of the immaterium. A further heartbeat of scanning located the enemy vessel. He had not yet achieved visual contact but he did not need to. The probing fingers of his sensors told him the exact shape of the vessel right down to the last tiny gun turret.
She looked old but huge, a warship of the most ancient Imperial design. From memory he called up all the blueprints and he could see she did not quite conform. Changes had been made. Turrets had been added here and there, and weapons of a pattern with which he was not familiar. Gargoyles encrusted the hull like barnacles. A massive head grinned from the prow. It was shaped like the tip of an enormous horned phallic member bearing the scowling features of some ancient daemon. No mistaking what it was at all, it was a vessel of the slaves of darkness and it appeared to be coming for them.
Simon took another look at its wake. There was something disturbing about it, something touched by evil, and he was not sure what it was.
He was certain that whatever propelled the ship was no wholesome power. There was something about it that caused him enormous unease, that reminded him of those things he had seen in the warp. The whole thing reeked of old evil. Was it possible for a ship to be possessed, he asked himself?
Why not? If human flesh could be possessed, why not ancient steel? If the mind of a man could be devoured by daemons, why not a datacore? Who knew the limits of the powers of Chaos, particularly here in the Eye of Terror, at the very heart of darkness? He barked out more orders to the men, telling them to ready their weapons. The chanting of the tech-adepts increased as they prepared the ship's systems for action. The deck vibrated as massive bulkheads began to seal.
He continued to study the Chaos craft. His current assessment was that the Star of Venam might well be overmatched. The enemy ship looked to be based on a heavily modified version of the Iconoclast class of destroyer. It appeared to be much slower than normal which hinted that it was much more heavily armed and armoured than the basic version. Studying it closely, he could see that there were many odd things about it, a hint of subtle wrongness that made his flesh creep.
He knew that with Janus on the ground the command decision fell to him: stay and fight or cut and run. Staying and fighting might well result in the loss of his craft; even if they survived, the ship might well be so crippled that they would never be able to leave the Eye of Terror. On the other hand, running for it would mean abandoning the landing party to their fate. He did not relish the thought of leaving Janus Darke and the others to the tender mercies of the worshippers of the Dark Powers. Unless, of course, the Chaos raider could be drawn off in pursuit. The shuttle currently was shielded and giving off a very faint energy signature. The landing party were not even with it. Shielded by the walls of the Palace of Asuryan, they would probably not show up on any sort of divinatory scan. And any pirate would most likely to be more tempted by a trading ship such as the Star than a small group of men on the ground.
Given the circumstances, the best bet seemed to be to make a run through normal space, hoping to lure the pirate into battle under more favourable conditions, or to draw him out and lose him in the cometary halo, returning to pick up Janus later. Simon quickly decided this was the best plan.
'Mister Stack, take her out of orbit at 75 per cent speed. We want to bring those Chaos bastards after us if we can. Mister Render, focus the tightest comm-beam possible on the Palace of Asuryan, and get me Captain Darke. I want no leakage—if they spot any communications we're signing the death warrant of the men on the ground. Get to it, gentlemen.'
The crew responded to their orders with well-trained discipline. Simon studied the sensor net, waiting for the next move to unfold. Let's see how the pirates respond to this, he thought.
'Interesting,' said Zarghan, stroking the head of his favourite pet, a naked redhead named Mara. 'It looks like their ship was crippled, judging by the speed they are making, unless it's some sort of trick.'
He took another puff on his hookah and let the drug lift his spirits as he considered his options. He had been told that he would find his prey on the surface of Belial. All of the omens pointed to it. The question was whether they had already gone down to the surface or not. If they had and they had found out what they were looking for, the ship could be preparing for a warp jump. That was not good, they might escape, and Zarghan's reputation would suffer. His secret music skirled despondently.
He looked around at his crew. They were tense and ready. The orgies were over, the pleasure feasts done. The only drugs in their systems now were combat drugs designed to increase speed, efficiency and ferocity. Zarghan kept a careful eye on them. The fact that the drugs had already driven most of their users psychotic was not entirely irrelevant. He believed he had already winnowed out the weak ones, the ones who became gibbering paralysed lunatics or who turned on their fellows in foaming madness, but you could never tell. There was always the possibility that a man might crack under stress and have to be permanently retired with a bolter shell. So far, so good, thought Zarghan. Everybody looked steady. The ground attack shuttles were prepared to go. What to do, he wondered? What to do?
If only he could be certain that the prey were down there, he would lead the ground crew down and the trader's ship could go to hell for all he cared. No, that was not strictly true, it was a working ship and armed, and seizing such a vessel would double the reduced size of his fleet at a stroke. He decided, on considered reflection and another pull at the mouthpiece, that he wanted it. The music in his head swelled in triumphant agreement.
That would mean ordering the Pride of Sin to pursue it, which would mean leaving somebody else on the command deck. Obviously that meant leaving no one capable of interstellar navigation on the ship.
He kept his crew loyal with the finest pleasures procurable but there were always some who were dissatisfied no matter how much you gave them or how well you led them. Given a chance, they might well take the ship and leave Zarghan and his men stranded on the surface of Belial. Being stuck on the surface of that tediously dead world, facing the prospect of an eternity of boredom, was not one that pleased the Chaos Marine. He could think of few less attractive prospects. He would only have a hundred men to toy with—and they would be depleted far too soon.
It was something of a problem, he had to admit. He had to lead the landing party himself. He was taking no chances that any of his minions would make a mistake and kill Darke.
And he understood there were a couple of eldar down there, and it had been centuries since he had broken any of them to his will. If possible he wanted at least one of them alive as well. That was a pleasure he was not prepared to forsake.
Granted it meant disobeying the spirit of the orders Shaha Gaathon had given him but he could certainly follow it to the letter. She had said kill the others, she had just not said when. Doubtless he would get round to killing the eldar soon enough once their torments bored him. That seemed fair to him. After all, h
e might as well gain the greatest measure of pleasure he could from this mission. He was sure it was what the Great Lord of all Pleasures would want.
This was getting him no closer to solving his problem though. He picked Hralf, one of his sergeants, a man who had on many occasions conned the ship but, as far as Zarghan knew, had no idea whatsoever about interstellar navigation. More to the point, he was as loyal as any man aboard.
At that moment, Malarys strode forward. 'Sir, we are receiving a transmission from the enemy starship. It's in a tightly focused directional beam.'
'What is the message, you old fool?'
'Janus Darke is on the planet. At the Temple of Asuryan. All we need to do is seek the shuttle craft.'
'Hralf—watch that ship, defend yourself if attacked and hold orbit over the planet. Begin a rigorous scan for any energy source, no matter how small.'
'As you desire, my lord.'
Zarghan chuckled to himself. One problem solved, he told himself. Doubtless the ship would return to pick up its commander, and when it did, he would have it too. Things were turning out rather well, he thought.
'What is the problem, Janus Darke?' asked Athenys. Had she been reading his mind, Janus wondered, or had she just watched the way his hand cupped the earbead? He shook his head groggily. Simon's communication had woken him from a profound sleep. He checked the ambient light. It was almost dawn.
Janus spoke loudly so that his men would understand the situation as well. 'Another ship has arrived. Simon Belisarius has taken the Star of Venam out of orbit to try and lure it away from us, but so far he has not succeeded. Also it looks like multiple landers are being deployed from orbit and will come down close to our own. Simon has already ordered the shuttle to take off and perform evasive manoeuvres while it finds a hiding place. Perhaps it will draw them away from our landing site.'
