Ahriman: Exile

by John French

  ‘You have been unconscious for six solar days,’ said Carmenta, as if answering an unasked question. ‘You suffered extensive internal damage, bone fractures, blood loss and burns.’ She stepped forwards, a mechadendrite reaching out to take the limp layer of flesh from the servitor’s razor fingers. He noticed the lattice of capillaries running through the soft material. ‘Luckily your body has done much to heal the damage itself. The layer of synthetic flesh was mainly to treat the scorching. You looked like you had been cooked.’ Ahriman looked beyond the harsh circle of light. He could see metal frames and racks, nests of machine arms gathered close to the ceiling, and metal-sided vats connected to thick pipes that snaked across the floor.

  ‘You are a biologos, as well as a machine-wright?’ he said.

  ‘I dabbled once. This is one of the servitor reclamation holds.’

  ‘Helpful.’

  ‘Not really. The little I know of your kind just confirmed that there was little that we could do. Your own flesh is your salvation.’ Ahriman nodded. The injuries he had sustained must have induced a healing coma. As sensation returned he could tell that he would be below peak condition for some time. His aetheric senses also felt dull and sluggish, as if a deadening fog wrapped his mind. The memories of the last moments on the gunship were indistinct blurs. He shook his head. That he was alive, and that the Titan Child had clearly survived, was enough for now.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked.

  ‘In a dead stop in the deep void.’ Carmenta paused. ‘It cost us. I hope it was worth it.’

  ‘Astraeos?’

  ‘Is alive,’ she nodded. ‘Like you he suffered significant physiological damage. He is still in the same type of coma you just woke from. Kadin suffered worse. I am not sure what happened to him, or why he is alive.’

  Ahriman’s blurred memories snapped into sharp focus. Adrenaline roared through his tired veins. He could feel damaged muscles twitching in response. He was suddenly aware that his limbs were still bound to the metal frame, thick rubber-covered clamps holding him at the wrists and ankles. A thought pulled them open with a grind of bending metal. He stepped to the floor.

  ‘Where is he?’ he growled.

  ‘He is unconscious in a sanguinary immersion tank,’ said Carmenta, carefully. ‘I don’t know if he will wake again.’ He looked at her and something in his look must have shaken her, because she stepped back, her hands and mechadendrites rising. Ahriman stilled his own emotions.

  ‘Isolate it,’ he said. ‘Shut down every connection to where he is held and override all access protocols. Keep it that way until I see him.’ Carmenta did not move. ‘He is a danger to the ship, to all of us.’

  ‘Really?’ If she had had lips Ahriman was certain they would have curled. ‘An unconscious cripple kept alive in a tank is a danger? You think I don’t know that you already keep an abomination on my ship? The thing created by your pet Maroth.’ She was staring at him, her bionic eyes lit with coldness.

  ‘Do as I say,’ he snapped, and she flinched and took a quick step away from him. She is still human, he thought. Broken and driven half mad by the machine she tries to tame, but she still feels and fears. It took him a moment to reach what he judged a correct response. ‘I am sorry for what happened, mistress.’

  ‘My ship, you nearly killed my ship, and you say that Kadin is a danger to us.’ Her voice trembled as she spoke and her mechadendrites twitched. ‘Parts of the ship are still burning. Half of it is just wreckage: systems, weapons, engines. All so you could get answers?’

  Ahriman returned her stare. He had once known many tech-priests and adepts of the Mechanicum. In the time since he came to the Eye he had met many more who had fallen to the warp. All had seemed to him to become colder with age, more withdrawn, as if becoming like the metal of their machines. It was a form of insanity, he supposed, an obsession that dissolved away everything outside it. In Carmenta, though, the closer she bonded with her ship, the more fractured and raw her emotions, the more human part of her became; and what was left became… What?

  ‘We will find supplies, and there are places on the Eye’s periphery that can remake ships. Even one of this size.’

  She shook her head, a strange combination of mechanical precision and human exhaustion.

  ‘Egion is dead,’ said Carmenta in a flat voice. Ahriman understood then what she meant: the Titan Child was dead in the void. It would be able to jump to the warp, but without a Navigator it would be rudderless, capable only of short, unguided hops before having to re-enter reality. They would be guessing their path and even the most modest journey would take an eternity. Worse, they balanced on the rim of the Eye of Terror in a region already saturated by unstable warp phenomena and storms. They might be alive for now, but Carmenta was facing near certain death if they attempted to move. For someone who was still human in a sense, she was taking it well.

  ‘How did he die?’ he asked, after a pause.

  ‘I am not sure,’ said Carmenta, and there was a note in her voice that he could not place. ‘Perhaps it was this place that killed him. Perhaps he was dying before we went to the station.’ She turned away with another shake of her head, and took a clinking metallic step towards the end of the chamber. ‘We fled once we had you. Some of the… the creatures were still on my hull. I had to shake and burn them off.’ She paused, an angry catch in her voice. ‘I had to destroy parts of the ship’s hull. I had to hurt my own ship. Egion was screaming all the time we were in the warp, then he just stopped, and we were here, and he was dead.’

  He looked at Carmenta as she took another limping step. Dried blood stained her charcoal robe, and he could smell servo systems overheating as she moved. She was hiding something from him, but he restrained the instinct to simply take it from her thoughts; he had taken too much from her already.

  ‘Where are we now?’ he asked. Carmenta kept walking, and did not look at him as she replied.

  ‘Egion was raving as we fled. I do not know how their kind function, but I think at the end he was not navigating so much as running in terror.’

  ‘Where did he flee to?’

  Carmenta stopped, and slowly turned her head to look back at Ahriman. In the low light the cracks in her mask looked like the traces of black tears.

  ‘Home, Ahriman,’ she said. ‘He tried to flee home.’

  Looking out of the armourcrys cupola Ahriman saw the Cadian Gate as a fluttering dot of light, set in a lone patch of black in a voidscape stained with nauseous colour. It was a gate only in the abstract sense, of course. A system turned into a fortress, it guarded the only stable passage from the Eye of Terror into the Imperium. There were other ways into and out of the Eye, but they were uncertain and dangerous paths, difficult to find and likely to kill any that sought them. Any sizeable fleet wishing to pass into or out of the Eye of Terror had to pass through Cadia, or so it was said. Garrisoned by millions of troops, ringed by space fortresses, and circled by war fleets, anything trying to break through had to either bring overwhelming force or wear the face of a friend. Time and again armies of renegades had tried to break Cadia and failed.

  ‘Towards the light,’ said Astraeos softly from beside him. Ahriman glanced towards the Librarian.

  No, he thought. Not a Librarian, an acolyte, an apprentice. My apprentice.

  Astraeos still wore the robe the servitors had given him while he slept and healed. Glossy burn scars covered his face and arms, and all his facial hair had vanished. His breath hissed and cracked with the sound of unhealed bones. Ahriman felt an echo of the lingering pain in Astraeos’s body every time he looked at him.

  Both of them stood under a wide dome of brass and crystal high on the spine of the Titan Child. Beneath them the living wreck of the ship glimmered in the curdled starlight. Black wounds like huge bites ran along the ship’s hull. In places he could see gas and liquid still venting from holes. The leaking gas formed a mist, which hung over the buttresses and gun towers like smoke rolling over a burned city. The shi
p was still at a dead stop and had been for days. In that time Astraeos had woken, Carmenta had healed what she could of her ship, and Ahriman had brooded on what to do next. He knew, of course. The options were limited, but that did not make them any less dangerous, or any more palatable.

  After a long moment Astraeos turned his head to look at Ahriman.

  ‘The Navigator ran towards the only light he could see, and it led him here,’ said Astraeos, his breath hissing wetly between each word. ‘All creatures born in the light run towards it when they are afraid. Only vermin run into the shadows.’

  Ahriman raised his eyebrows, and looked back to the stars. A dark mood had pervaded Astraeos since he had woken from his healing coma. Ahriman had caught snatches of bleak and clouded thoughts the few times that he had skimmed his apprentice’s mind. For a while Ahriman had thought it was fatalism, that the fate of his last two gene-brothers had broken Astraeos’s spirit, but it was not; it was resignation, a surrender to something cold and dark within.

  ‘This is the closest I have been to the Imperium since…’

  ‘Since you betrayed it,’ said Astraeos. Ahriman was silent for a second. He could recall every day with a precise clarity, but how long had passed since he had last broken the bounds of the Eye eluded him. Time in the Eye was not fixed; like a trick of perspective, it changed depending on where one stood, and for how long one looked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘What happened on the station? Why did my brother die?’

  ‘He died because I made a mistake.’

  ‘Just one?’

  Ahriman held Astraeos’s gaze and nodded.

  ‘The daemon I summoned was already bound to do another’s will. My summoning drew it into existence, but once it was manifest I had no control over it.’

  ‘It was a trap,’

  ‘Someone predicted my actions, and acted first.’

  ‘Amon?’

  ‘I think so, but I have no shortage of enemies,’ shrugged Ahriman, and turned to look down the length of the Titan Child to the distant tip of its prow.

  ‘I want to wake Kadin,’ said Astraeos. Ahriman let out a slow breath. He knew it would come to this; it was one of the inevitable steps he would have to take if he wanted to move forward. He should have ordered Kadin dumped into a plasma furnace and the ashes vented into the void.

  ‘That would be unwise,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘It would be unwise to refuse,’ said Astraeos, his voice cold, but his thoughts growling with aggression. ‘You promised me salvation for Cadar, but you have only taken another brother from me.’ Then the emotions vanished and Astraeos’s thoughts were just the familiar hum of a well-shielded mind.

  He is learning quickly, thought Ahriman.

  Ahriman stared back, his face still, his emotions balanced and masked by layers of subconscious baffles. He could annihilate Astraeos, and burn Kadin to nothing without allowing him to wake.

  He could do these things, and lose what few allies he had.

  Necessity is the father of error.

  ‘Very well,’ said Ahriman.

  Astraeos watched him for a heartbeat then nodded. ‘Once he is awake we follow you, and you will fulfil your promise to me.’

  Ahriman gave a crooked smile. ‘Is that a fresh oath?’

  Astraeos’s mouth made a stiff line. ‘If you choose.’ He paused and glanced out at the distant light of Cadia. ‘You mean to continue, don’t you? After all this, you intend to find Amon.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ahriman. ‘The daemon showed me how to find him.’

  ‘You believe what it showed you, even though Amon bound it to his service?’ Astraeos shook his head.

  ‘It was not bound to hide where Amon is.’

  ‘You don’t think that it could be what Amon wants: a trap within a trap to draw you to him?’

  Ahriman said nothing. He had considered the possibility that the information the daemon gave him was a trap, or a lie, or both, but he was committed now. He had to know.

  After a second Astraeos shook his head again, but this time the gesture was heavy with weary resignation.

  ‘How will you follow this path? We are four souls and a broken ship without a guide.’

  ‘We are not without a guide,’ said Ahriman. ‘I can guide us for a short way.’

  ‘Where?’

  Ahriman looked up to where Cadia glimmered amidst its sea of calm night.

  ‘To steal a Navigator.’

  Kadin rose from the blood tank on the end of polished chains. The tank was an iron-sided box over twice the height of a man, set at the centre of a chamber of riveted bronze that curved to a domed roof. Viewports in the tank’s side showed the red liquid within. Cracked glass readout displays were set beside the viewports, and symbols scrolled across their grimy surfaces in luminous blue. The air in the chamber was damp and warm.

  Astraeos watched as the machines suspended above the tank slowly swallowed the chains. He sniffed; the air stank of fresh blood, a sharp iron taste that overwhelmed even the smell of machine oils and rust. His brother’s head was the first thing to break the surface. The servitors had cut Kadin’s helmet away to attach a mane of injector tubes and bio-feeds to his scalp and neck. Under the draining blood the skin of his face was pale grey and pulled taut over his skull. Spiral-shaped lesions covered his crown and looped down over his sunken cheeks. His eyelids were closed. Blood drained from his slack mouth as he rose from the tank. Astraeos stared. Still clad in his stained robe, he felt suddenly cold. Part of him wanted to look away, but he could not.

  ‘He is in a drug coma,’ said Carmenta from beside him. She turned her head to glance at Ahriman. The sorcerer stood utterly still, his eyes watching Kadin emerge from the tank, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. ‘The dose we need to keep him sedated is massive, and…’ She trailed off as Astraeos looked at her. He nodded once to her, not sure why she had stopped speaking. He looked back to the top of the tank.

  Kadin’s torso had emerged. Astraeos heard himself breathe out slowly, but did not feel the air leave his lungs. The armour over Kadin’s shoulders and chest was blackened and melted. The edges of torn ceramite had folded into the exposed flesh beneath. His right arm was missing below the elbow, the left below the shoulder. The legs that emerged were twisted strips of meat hanging from shattered pegs of bone.

  The hoist stopped with a clunk of gears, and then swung forwards. Slowly it lowered Kadin until he was on a level with Astraeos. Blood was pouring off him, spattering on the floor and forming dark pools. Astraeos lifted his arm and slowly extended his open palm. Behind him Ahriman’s stillness shifted. Astraeos’s hand touched Kadin’s shoulder guard.

  ‘Brother,’ said Astraeos quietly.

  ‘He cannot respond. His injuries are extensive, and we are still passing sedative into his system.’

  +Brother,+ sent Astraeos, focusing his message on the ember of consciousness he could sense in his brother’s mind.

  +His ears and mind are closed,+ sent Ahriman, and Astraeos felt a surge of anger at the sorcerer’s intrusion. +He is in the abyss. Even if he wakes and can speak, he will not be your brother.+ A warmth of reassuring emotion came with the sending, like a hand of a friend resting on his shoulder. +Trust me in this.+

  ‘Withdraw the sedatives,’ said Astraeos. Carmenta glanced from him to Ahriman. ‘Wake him,’ he snarled.

  Carmenta paused for a moment, then stepped towards the tank and keyed a small control panel. There was a distant clunk of shifting machinery, and the tubes connected to Kadin jerked and twitched. More blood began to dribble onto the chamber floor from Kadin’s body.

  Astraeos watched, waiting for a scream, for Kadin to wake like a child from a nightmare. After several minutes of silence and stillness, he turned to Carmenta again. She shrugged with a ripple of mechadendrites.

  ‘He was gravely wounded, and my knowledge of Adeptus Astartes biology is limited at best.’

  Astraeos was about to bite off a reply when
he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. His head snapped around to meet Kadin’s open eyes staring back at him. Astraeos froze. Eyes. Kadin had two eyes. The iris of each was bright green and slit by a black pupil. There was no sign of the augmetic, just smooth skin.

  ‘Brother,’ said Kadin, in a wet rasp which became a smile. Suddenly blood was pouring from his mouth, and Astraeos flinched back. Carmenta’s mechadendrites uncoiled in an eyeblink. Only Ahriman was still, his relaxed hand resting on his sword hilt. Kadin coughed, and spat a thick clot of blood onto the deck.

  ‘Blood in his lungs,’ said Ahriman.

  ‘So,’ said Kadin. ‘Are you going to unchain me?’

  Astraeos was looking at his brother intently. Kadin’s voice was a mutilated growl, a grave-echo of his old tones. And the eyes…

  ‘I am not going to kill you,’ said Kadin, his gaze flicking between Astraeos, Ahriman and Carmenta. He smiled. ‘You have my word.’

  ‘You are… injured, brother,’ said Astraeos.

  ‘A fact that I had managed to grasp.’ Kadin’s lips peeled back from broken and jagged teeth. He still had not blinked. Astraeos glanced at the flesh and armour of his brother’s body. Now that the blood had drained from it, he could see portions of flesh that looked to have healed, ugly knots of scar tissue, visible through breaks in armour plating. His gaze stopped. The broken ceramite and plasteel glinted brightly where it had sheared. Except, in places it seemed to have softened and distorted; as if it had begun to close over the flesh beneath, as if it were flesh itself, as if it were healing.

  ‘You–’

  ‘It’s gone. See for yourself.’ He flicked his chin to Ahriman. ‘Or ask the trickster lord if you don’t wish to look.’

  ‘Your body is not whole.’

  ‘Augmetics, brother.’ Kadin turned his face to Carmenta. Astraeos thought he saw her shiver. ‘You can fit those, can you not? And I will need armour, though I do not think that some of this will come off. You will have to work around that.’