There Is Only War

by Various

  ‘You like poetry?’

  ‘The Early Imperials. The Tacits. Is that a crime?’

  ‘This is,’ said Endor. He walked in from the side kitchen with something in his hand. There was an ugly, almost triumphant grin on his face. Master Imus realised that what he first registered as handsome in the features of the officer’s companion was in fact a cruel arrogance. Interrogator Endor was accustomed to winning.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the officer.

  ‘Buried at the bottom of a jar of caffiene,’ Endor replied. He held out his hand. Six little pills lay in his palm.

  ‘Yellodes,’ he said.

  ‘Most perturbatory,’ said the old man.

  ‘They’re not mine,’ said Master Imus.

  Master Imus sat on the threadbare couch tugging at his robe.

  ‘They’re not mine. Not mine, not at all. I don’t use that sort of thing. I wouldn’t even know how to get that sort of thing.’

  ‘Zespair Street, or the dealers that frequent the depot,’ said the old man.

  ‘Be quiet, Aemos,’ said the officer. He stared down at Master Imus. ‘This is a bad turn of events for you. It compounds things.’

  ‘They’re not mine. How many times do I have to say it?’

  ‘They were in your kitchen,’ said Endor, who seemed to be relishing Master Imus’s discomfort.

  ‘I didn’t put them there.’

  ‘Oh, so someone just came in and hid them in your caffiene, did they?’

  ‘That must be it. I can think of no other explanation.’

  ‘I’ve had enough. Let’s process him.’

  ‘Slow down, Titus,’ said the officer.

  ‘He’s up to his ears in it.’

  ‘Slow down, I said.’

  ‘I had plans for tonight,’ Titus Endor scowled.

  ‘Fantastic for you. Give me the tablets.’

  Endor tipped the yellodes into the officer’s hand. The offcer sat down on the couch next to Master Imus.

  ‘Get lost,’ he told his companions. Endor went out onto the landing to smoke a lho-stick. The old man shuffled away to examine the books in the bedroom.

  ‘I’ll be frank. This is going badly for you, sir,’ the officer explained to Master Imus.

  ‘I realise that.’

  ‘The matter of the accounts is the main thing. But the yellodes. They complicate the matter.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘They are a prohibited substance. That’s the first thing. The second thing is, they’re yellodes.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Master Imus.

  ‘This isn’t the first time I’ve inspected an individual’s hab and found evidence of drug use. Obscura, gladstones, that sort of business. But yellodes... they’re mind expanders. We typically find them in circumstances connected to cult activity.’

  ‘Cult?’

  ‘We often find them used in association with prohibited texts and deviant knowledge. A man who has the Number of Ruin might use yellodes to help him fathom it and master its use.’

  Master Imus put his head in his hands.

  ‘They’re not mine.’

  ‘Is the Ur-Saker yours?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘I found it between the Frobisher and the early Tacits in your bedroom.’

  ‘I don’t know what an Ur-Saker is. I don’t know it’s significance.’

  ‘It’s a proscribed text. It defines the methodological use of psychotropic drugs in gnomic enlightenment. So that was just placed there too, was it? Someone just put it there?’

  ‘They must have done!’

  The officer sighed. ‘Master Imus, you brought a matter to our attention, a serious matter. The numbers you showed me in the ledger are quite pernicious.’

  ‘And I came of my own free volition! Remember that!’

  ‘I do, and that leaves me with two possibilities. You are a practising heretic with a pathological desire to be caught and condemned.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or, Master Imus, you have been set up to take the fall for someone. There’s one last thing I would like to do. It’s necessary, for my work.’

  ‘What is it, sir?’ asked Master Imus.

  The officer turned to look at him. His face was no longer human. It was a snout of rancid, gnashing teeth, spatulate and broad, with sharp edges. The snout opened, drooling spit, and seemed about to bite Master Imus’s face clean off. Master Johan Imus smelled the pit-stink of the warp, and the shadows of dark places where no human ever willingly walked. He saw a monstrous horror lunging at him, pallid tentacles whipping up out of the distended throat. He cried out in fear and wet himself.

  ‘I’m sorry I had to do that, Master Imus,’ said the officer, wiping his mouth.

  Titus Endor came in from the stairhead. ‘Throne, Gregor. I felt that.’

  ‘Sorry. Would you and Aemos please stay here and tidy the place? And help Master Imus to get cleaned up?’

  ‘I had plans for tonight,’ replied Endor.

  ‘And now I have plans of my own,’ said the officer.

  Titus Endor stayed until midnight, and then made some vague excuse and left. The old man remained with Master Imus until dawn. They played regicide, and talked of antiques.

  The officer returned at first light. ‘The matter is settled,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your cooperation.’

  When Master Imus went to work the next day, he found that Slocha and Daviov et Cie had been closed down. With immediate effect and until further notice, the seal on the door said.

  Most of the staff had gathered in the street, bewildered and dispondent.

  ‘Master Slocha was shot,’ muttered one of the underkeepers.

  ‘He was shot last night by the Inquisition,’ another confirmed.

  ‘Oh dear!’ said Master Imus.

  Three days later, the officer called on Master Imus at his hab.

  ‘Sit down, please,’ said Master Imus.

  ‘I’ve come to tell you that you’ve been formally cleared of all charges.’

  ‘Even my transgression?’

  ‘Even that.’

  ‘I’m very relieved,’ said Master Imus.

  ‘Your employer was conducting bad business, heretical business, in fact. He was engaged in the importation of illicit texts under the cover of the auction house’s primary dealings. We’d been after him for a year. We had no proof of his activities.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Your employer knew we were on to him, of course. He set you up to act as a distraction. He wanted us to concentrate on you instead of him. And we would have, if you hadn’t been so honest as to bring the matter to our attention.’

  ‘Did you kill Master Slocha?’ asked Johan Imus.

  ‘I’m afraid I did.’ The officer rose. ‘Well, I must be on my way.’

  ‘What happens now?’ asked Master Imus.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I have no job to go to. The auction house is finished. What will become of me?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. That’s not my problem.’

  The officer turned to leave.

  ‘I think I might be allowed to ask one question, in all fairness,’ said Master Imus.

  ‘Ask it.’

  ‘Why was it necessary?’

  ‘Why was what necesary?’ asked the officer.

  ‘Why was it necessary to scare me?’

  ‘Fear simplifies the mind, Master Imus. It is so strong and pure, it quite empties the head and removes all barriers and falsehoods. I scared you so I could read the truth inside you, the honest part of you that you could not dissemble. I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘You’re a psyker, then?’ Master Imus asked.

  Yes.

  ‘Ah. I see. If you can read into the
future, tell me... I have no job, and no references. I am too old and set in my ways to retrain. I have no means of support. I came forward of my own free volition, helped you hunt out a heretic, and proved my innocence, and I am left the poorer for it. What do I do now?’

  I’m a mind-reader, not a clairvoyant.

  ‘Right. Thank you for your candour anyway.’

  ‘Goodbye, Master Imus.’

  Interrogator Eisenhorn closed the door behind him.

  Master Imus sat on the threadbare couch. From the floor below, he could hear a baby crying. He could hear the knock of the landlord, going from hab to hab for the week’s rent. Master Imus’s rent dues were in the sideboard drawer. This week’s, and the next’s, but nothing more.

  Master Imus was glad he had come forward, and glad he had spoken out. Duty was duty, after all. He tried to inflate some sense of civic pride in his heart.

  But he wished, more than anything, he had just kept himself to himself.

  The Long Games At Carcharias

  Rob Sanders

  The end began with the Revenant Rex.

  An interstellar beast. Bad omen of omens. A wanderer: she was a regular visitor to this part of the segmentum. The hulk was a drifting gravity well of twisted rock and metal. Vessels from disparate and distant races nestled, broken-backed amongst mineral deposits from beyond the galaxy’s borders and ice frozen from before the beginning of time. A demented logic engine at the heart of the hulk – like a tormented dreamer – guided the nightmare path of the beast through the dark void of Imperial sectors, alien empires of the Eastern Fringe and the riftspace of erupting maelstroms. Then, as if suddenly awoken from a fevered sleep, the daemon cogitator would initiate the countdown sequence of an ancient and weary warp drive. The planetkiller would disappear with the expediency of an answered prayer, destined to drift up upon the shores of some other bedevilled sector, hundreds of light years away.

  The Revenant Rex beat the Aurora Chapter at Schindelgheist, the Angels Eradicant over at Theta Reticuli and the White Scars at the Martyrpeake. Unfortunately the hulk was too colossal and the timeframes too erratic for the cleanse-and-burn efforts of the Adeptus Astartes to succeed: but Chapter pride and zealotry ensured their superhuman efforts regardless. The behemoth was infested with greenskins of the Iron Klaw Clan – that had spent the past millennia visiting hit-and-run mayhem on systems across the segmentum, with abandoned warbands colonising planetary badlands like a green, galactic plague. The Warfleet Ultima, where it could gather craft in sufficient time and numbers, had twice attempted to destroy the gargantuan hulk. The combined firepower of hundreds of Navy vessels had also failed to destroy the beast, simply serving to enhance its hideous melange further.

  All these things and more had preyed upon Elias Artegall’s conscience when the Revenant Rex tumbled into the Gilead Sector. Arch-Deacon Urbanto. Rear Admiral Darracq. Overlord Gordius. Zimner, the High Magos Retroenginericus. Grand Master Karmyne of the Angels Eradicant. Artegall had either received them or received astrotelepathic messages from them all.

  ‘Chapter Master, the xenos threat cannot be tolerated…’

  ‘The Mercantile Gilead have reported the loss of thirty bulk freighters…’

  ‘Master Artegall, the greenskins are already out of control in the Despot Stars…’

  ‘That vessel could harbour ancient technological secrets that could benefit the future of mankind…’

  ‘You must avenge us, brother…’

  The spirehalls of the Slaughterhorn had echoed with their demands and insistence. But to war was a Space Marine’s prerogative. Did not Lord Guilliman state on the steps of the Plaza Ptolemy: ‘There is but one of the Emperor’s Angels for every world in the Imperium; but one drop of Adeptus Astartes blood for every Imperial citizen. Judge the necessity to spill such a precious commodity with care and if it must be spilt, spill it wisely, my battle-brothers.’

  Unlike the Scars or the Auroras, Artegall’s Crimson Consuls were not given to competitive rivalry. Artegall did not desire success because others had failed. Serving at the pleasure of the primarch was not a tournament spectacle and the Revenant Rex was not an opportunistic arena. In the end, Artegall let his battered copy of the Codex Astartes decide. In those much-thumbed pages lay the wisdom of greater men than he: as ever, Artegall put his trust in their skill and experience. He chose a passage that reflected his final judgement and included it in both his correspondence to his far-flung petitioners and his address to the Crimson Consuls, First Company on board the battle-barge Incarnadine Ecliptic.

  ‘From Codicil CC-LXXX-IV.ii: The Coda of Balthus Dardanus, 17th Lord of Macragge – entitled Staunch Supremacies. “For our enemies will bring us to battle on the caprice of chance. The alien and the renegade are the vagaries of the galaxy incarnate. What can we truly know or would want to of their ways or motivations? They are to us as the rabid wolf at the closed door that knows not even its own mind. Be that door. Be the simplicity of the steadfast and unchanging: the barrier between what is known and the unknowable. Let the Imperium of Man realise its manifold destiny within while without its mindless foes dash themselves against the constancy of our adamantium. In such uniformity of practice and purpose lies the perpetuity of mankind.” May Guilliman be with you.’

  ‘And with you,’ Captain Bolinvar and his crimson-clad First Company Terminator Marines had returned. But the primarch had not been with them and Bolinvar and one hundred veteran sons of Carcharias had been forsaken.

  Artegall sat alone in his private Tactical Chancelorium, among the cold ivory of his throne. The Chancelorium formed the very pinnacle of the Slaughterhorn – the Crimson Consuls fortress-monastery – which in turn formed the spirepeak of Hive Niveous, the Carcharian capital city. The throne was constructed from the colossal bones of shaggy, shovel-tusk Stegodonts, hunted by Carcharian ancestors, out on the Dry-blind. Without his armour the Chapter Master felt small and vulnerable in the huge throne – a sensation usually alien to an Adeptus Astartes’ very being. The chamber was comfortably gelid and Artegall sat in his woollen robes, elbow to knee and fist to chin, like some crumbling statue from Terran antiquity.

  The Chancelorium began to rumble and this startled the troubled Chapter Master. The crimson-darkness swirl of the marble floor began to part in front of him and the trapdoor admitted a rising platform upon which juddered two Chapter serfs in their own zoster robes. They flanked a huge brass pict-caster that squatted dormant between them. The serfs were purebred Carcharians with their fat, projecting noses, wide nostrils and thick brows. These on top of stocky, muscular frames, barrel torsos and thick arms decorated with crude tattoos and scar-markings. Perfectly adapted for life in the frozen underhive.

  ‘Where is your master, the Chamber Castellan?’ Artegall demanded of the bondsmen. The first hailed his Chapter Master with a fist to the aquila represented on the Crimson Consuls crest of his robes.

  ‘Returned presently from the underhive, my lord – at your request – with the Lord Apothecary,’ the serf answered solemnly. The second activated the pict-caster, bringing forth the crystal screen’s grainy picture.

  ‘We have word from the Master of the Fleet, Master Artegall,’ the serf informed him.

  Standing before Artegall was an image of Hecton Lambert, Master of the Crimson Consuls fleet. The Space Marine commander was on the bridge of the strike cruiser Anno Tenebris, high above the gleaming, glacial world of Carcharias.

  ‘Hecton, what news?’ Artegall put to him without the usual formality of a greeting.

  ‘My master: nothing but the gravest news,’ the Crimson Consul told him. ‘As you know, we have been out of contact with Captain Bolinvar and the Incarnadine Ecliptic for days. A brief flash on one of our scopes prompted me to despatch the frigate Herald Angel with orders to locate the Ecliptic and report back. Twelve hours into their search they intercepted the following pict-cast, which they transmitted t
o the Anno Tenebris, and which I now dutifully transmit to you. My lord, with this every man on board sends his deepest sympathies. May Guilliman be with you.’

  ‘And with you,’ Artegall mouthed absently, rising out of the throne. He took a disbelieving step towards the broad screen of the pict-caster. Brother Lambert disappeared and was replaced by a static-laced image, harsh light and excruciating noise. The vague outline of a Crimson Consuls Space Marine could be made out. There were sparks and fires in the background, as well as the silhouettes of injured Space Marines and Chapter serfs stumbling blind and injured through the smoke and bedlam. The Astartes identified himself but his name and rank were garbled in the intruding static of the transmission.

  ‘…this is the battle-barge Incarnadine Ecliptic, two days out of Morriga. I am now ranking battle-brother. We have sustained critical damage…’ The screen erupted with light and interference.

  Then: ‘Captain Bolinvar went in with the first wave. Xenos resistance was heavy. Primitive booby traps. Explosives. Wall-to-wall green flesh and small arms. By the primarch, losses were minimal; my injuries, though, necessitated my return to the Ecliptic. The captain was brave and through the use of squad rotations, heavy flamers and teleporters our Consul Terminators managed to punch through to an enginarium with a power signature. We could all hear the countdown, even over the vox. Fearing that the Revenant Rex was about to make a warp jump I begged the captain to return. I begged him, but he transmitted that the only way to end the hulk and stop the madness was to sabotage the warp drive.’

  Once again the lone Space Marine became enveloped in an ominous, growing brightness. ‘His final transmission identified the warp engine as active but already sabotaged. He said the logic engine wasn’t counting down to a jump... Then, the Revenant Rex, it – it just, exploded. The sentry ships were caught in the blast wave and the Ecliptic wrecked.’

  A serf clutching some heinous wound to his face staggered into the reporting Space Marine. ‘Go! To the pods,’ he roared at him. Then he returned his attention to the transmission. ‘We saw it all. Detonation of the warp engines must have caused some kind of immaterium anomaly. Moments after the hulk blew apart, fragments and debris from the explosion – including our sentry ships – were sucked back through a collapsing empyrean vortex before disappearing altogether. We managed to haul off but are losing power and have been caught in the gravitational pull of a nearby star. Techmarine Hereward has declared the battle-barge unsalvageable. With our orbit decaying I have ordered all surviving Adeptus Astartes and Chapter serfs to the saviour pods. Perhaps some may break free. I fear our chances are slim… May Guilliman be with us…’