Soul Drinker

by Ben Counter

  Vilnin's voice crackled over the vox. 'Think I got her, sir. There's an observation platform about four hundred metres down. I've got someone moving on the infra-red.'

  'Good.' replied Skrill. 'Put a bullet through her.'

  'She's got hard cover, sir, I can't get a shot. It's... there's something else down there. Looks like a shrine.'

  'A what?'

  'You know. Sacred stuff. Altar, bunch of books. She's got cover behind the altar and I can't take her from this angle. I can move around the turbine to the other side but it's a long walk.'

  'Stay put, Vilnin. Put a couple of shots her way, get her scared. Then shut her down her if she moves.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  Interesting, thought Khobotov as he listened in. A temple. It seemed El'Hirn had found another convert to whatever half-baked belief system he had created for himself. 'Sasia Koraloth, your false religion can offer you no hope. Whatever El'Hirn told you was a lie. There is only one Omnissiah, and He is most jealous.'

  Khobotov drifted further down, keeping gantries and gird­ers between him and Koraloth, blocking her aim. It would not do to have his components tarnished with lasburns.

  'You're wrong!' yelled a small, frightened voice from far below, audible only to Khobotov's hypersenses. 'He has spo­ken to me! He has shown me the way!'

  'Then why did you find it necessary to kill your fellow unbeliever?' Khobotov could see the renegade tech-priest now. She was cowering behind a slab of carbon upon which were set two candelabra and a number of books, on a hexagonal observation platform hung with banners covered in scribbled equations. The place would normally be deserted apart from the occasional mindless maintenance servitor, and so it made a deceptively good choice for a hid­den place of worship. Koraloth herself was pale and drawn with fatigue and fear, her tech-priest's robes torn and unclean, the barrel of the laspistol still glowing red in her hand.

  'He couldn't face knowing the truth!' she shouted. 'When it came to make the offering, he was afraid! Everything we know is wrong, Khobotov! The Engineer of Time has told me in my dreams!'

  Quite insane, thought Khobotov. A shame. There was a slight chance that Sasia Koraloth could have been a tech-priest of some note, and in any case her skill at reverse engineering would have had its uses. Instead, she had to die. But while the Omnissiah disliked the waste of good material, he abhorred the corruption of His sacred name far more.

  Khobotov stepped off the gantry and floated downwards, the immense metallic curve of the turbine stack sliding by beside him. He rarely engaged his grav-dampeners so overtly, thinking it a rather vulgar way to travel, but he wanted a closer look at Koraloth and her temple before the tech-guard killed her.

  Koraloth held up a hand, and from the sudden power-glare in Khobotov's eye-lenses he knew the hand held the Soulspear. The artefact had just as strong an aura of power as when Khobotov had first seen it. He would find someone else to study it, and when they had made some headway in the dan­gerous and unpredictable process of unlocking its secrets, he would take over the research and add the Soulspear's majesty to the Omnissiah's masterpiece of learning. Koraloth was no loss. The Soulspear was what mattered.

  'See!' she yelled. 'See how much you know!'

  She slammed the Soulspear into the carbon altar, end-first. For a split second Khobotov's senses shut down in the face of massive overload, the synapses parting to prevent the surge of sensory energy coursing into the archmagos's brain.

  An energy spike so vast even the archmagos's blessedly aug­mented body could barely cope with it. A discharge of power so far off the scale that the first thing he heard when his aural senses came back on line was the shriek of the generatorium stack coming apart beside him.

  Critical mass.

  There was a great disc of light where only the grimy depths of the generatorium sink had been before. It was white and blinding, the glare swallowing everything else, even the tum­bling sheets of metal pouring from the ruptured turbine. Khobotov was dimly aware of a strangled vox-traffic, screams and howlings of pain, from the tech-guard somewhere above him. The normally dominant, analytical part of his brain told him their skin would be dry scraps fluttering upwards on the column of light, just as his own robes were burning away around him. But most of him just gawped at the fantastic output of power. Machine-discipline had served him so well these last centuries, but the Omnissiah's logic faltered in the sight of such madness.

  Sasia Koraloth stood on the platform that floated at the heart of the light, the Soulspear a blazing thunderbolt in her hand. She was screaming something at him but the only sound was a wall of white noise.

  The light rose up and began to swallow her, and beneath its surface something moved. Something humanoid but gargan­tuan, its features swimming beneath the curtain of light, reaching a hand upwards. Nails like jewels broke the surface, pale perfect skin. Symbols flashed in the air, numbers, letters, strange sigils that throbbed with power.

  Sasia Koraloth sank into the light, taking the Soulspear with her. Beside her, the giant's face, still half-obscured by the glare, looked upwards with burning eyes. The arcane symbols solidified, and suddenly the air was full of sorcerous equa­tions, leading rings of power around the upstretched hand.

  Bright bolts of energy swirled in great circles as the hand opened and the fingers spread to surround Khobotov.

  His motor systems burned out, Khobotov hung paralyzed as the fingers closed around him. Scrabbling around inside his own head, he managed to disconnect his few remaining sensory inputs before he was crashed.

  THE SOUL DRINKERS had lost more than fifty of their number. Over a quarter of the strike force down in a matter of min­utes, trapped on the Ultima or dragged beneath the waves. Many of those they had pulled out of the water had discarded much of their armour and there were many Soul Drinkers who would have to fight on with parts of their armour miss­ing. There weren't enough backpacks and without a power source others would go almost completely unarmoured, for even a Soul Drinker would struggle to move in an unpowered suit of Space Marine armour. Their augmented physiology would resist the pollution of the unnamed world's seas, but that would be of little consolation when they found what Ve'Meth had planned for them, and would have to face it almost naked.

  Not unarmed, though. For not one of them had dropped his gun.

  The night was clammy and cold at the same time, the bru­tal jagged ocean stretching out around them, bleak and endless. It was worse than the fog, for here a man might feel how small he was compared to an entire planet that knew they were here and wanted them dead. Ve'Meth had seen them arrive, of that he could be sure. The ships they encoun­tered were probably part of a cordon thrown around the daemon's fortress island, a lifeform's reaction to foreign bod­ies. Sarpedon could feel the baleful heat of the black flame that Yser had described, the horrible mocking laugh he had heard in his dreams of Quixian Obscura. He was not just closer to Ve'Meth - the foul thing was watching him, scrying by some sorcery or watching through the eyes of the mon­strous fish and distant flying creatures.

  He looked round to see the survivors of Squad Luko taking over the watch at the stern of the Hellblade. Sergeant Luko and his few remaining men were some of the Marines who had been accommodated on the Hellblade and Lakonia after the shattered remnants of the Ultima had sunk beneath the waves.

  Sergeant Luko saluted Sarpedon. Sarpedon left his vigil in the stern and picked his way across the shifting deck.

  'Sergeant Luko, Chaplain Iktinos told me of what you did on the Ultima.'

  'And I could tell you something of him, too, and of every Marine there. We all fought.'

  'He told me how Brother Zaen died.'

  Luko nodded slowly. 'Zaen. An excellent death. Something to remember.' Luko could put on a good face, never fazed by the fires of battle. But like every leader amongst the Soul Drinkers there had been a fair few men lost under him, and it always left him reflective. Few would recognize the fiercely joyous Luko save those who really knew him. 'Vor
ts gone, too, and all the serfs. I heard Graevus's mob did better, though.'

  'They left nothing alive, and took no loss.'

  'Just how Daenyathos would have liked it.' Luko looked round and Sarpedon saw how old he looked bare-headed. Sarpedon had relaxed the helmet-discipline, if only because so many Marines had lost their helmets in the ocean. He realized that he was old, too - ninety years, if he stopped to think about it, seventy of those as a fully-fledged Soul Drinker. But those seventy years seemed like a solid slab of memory, one long apprenticeship of battle he had to com­plete before his real life started. He had dreamed of living out a glorious career in the service of the Imperium of Man, but now he realized he had just been a child, making mistakes he had to learn from.

  'They say Tellos took half of them down himself.' said Luko.

  'They say right. It will be some time before I can give Sergeant Tellos an independence of command, though. Grae­vus's men had to drag him back on board the Lakonia.' Sarpedon had often asked himself the question of Tellos's future. He had lost the discipline that had made him a sergeant, but doubled the ferocity and bravery mat had made him all but idolized by the Assault Marines around him. Grim as it may sound, Sarpedon suspected the problem would solve itself - there was little doubt Tellos would be the first off the Lakonia onto the shore of Ve'Meth's fortress, and it was unlikely he would survive forging the beachhead for the Marines deploying behind him. It would be a good death, one of the best.

  There was the sudden flash of an alarm rune at the edge of Sarpedon's vision. He peered through the twilight to see the lookout in the prow of the Lakonia, pointing to the dim hori­zon as Marines gathered behind him.

  'Sarpedon here. What do you see?'

  It was Iktinos's rune that flashed. The Chaplain had taken his turn in the watch, just like the ordinary Marines who made up his congregation. 'Land sighted, sir. We're closing in.'

  'Understood, Chaplain. The Lakonia can lead, we'll follow you in.' Sarpedon saw it now, too - a hard black scab just vis­ible on the horizon.

  He would have Graevus prepare the assault troops, and know that Tellos would be doing the same on the Lakonia. The black flame was burning bright now, the mocking laugh­ter loud in his head. The final ran had begun, and he had seen too much of this world to believe any of them would survive.

  TECH-PRIEST SASIA KORALOTH was dead. There was only Sasia the child, her mind blasted backwards as she was bathed in the sea of power that had swallowed her.

  She was alone. She was afraid. There was light and noise all around her, filling her, too much for her to cope with. There was heat against her skin, and currents of power pulling her this way and that, like a thousand hands snatching at her. She opened her eyes, the white light nearly blinding her. But she wanted to see. She wanted to know where she was, what had happened to her, who was doing all this.

  The light solidified, and the Engineer of Time stood before her.

  He was a thousand storeys tall. His skin was white crystal. His thoughts were magic, and the symbols of that magic were orbiting him in wide circles of sigils, spelling out impossibly complex equations of power.

  He held out a hand the size of a city and, with incredible grace, plucked something from her grasp. It was a tiny thing the little girl had been clutching in her woman's fist, and dimly, Sasia remembered that she had wanted the Engineer to take it, and that perhaps now he had it he might be happy.

  It held the thing up in front of his face and examined it with eyes like twin gas giants.

  'Such a small thing.' said a voice in her head. 'So much anguish. Most satisfying.'

  The Soulspear. It was called the Soulspear.

  And suddenly she knew that the Engineer had everything he needed now, and that he had forgotten about her already.

  He looked away from her and suddenly the forces he had created to hold her intact were dismissed. The light exploded and gargantuan islands of madness rolled in, oceans of tears, malicious lumps of thought looming dark like kraken.

  Little Sasia was torn apart by the sudden storm of experi­ence the human consciousness wasn't supposed to comprehend. She lost her mind a split-second before her body was dissolved by the forces of the warp.

  IN THE FADED splendour of the pleasure-yacht's viewing gallery, Tech-Marine Lygris looked out through the huge oculus. The great blinded eye of the unnamed planet glared back at him. Lygris knew Sarpedon and his battle-brothers would be down there, probably fighting, probably dying. They had been down there for several days now - probably halfway through the mission at the best guess. Communications with them had, as expected, been cut the instant the Thunderhawks had dropped through the thick layer of bone-coloured cloud. There had been nothing but static over the comms.

  Part of him said he should have been down there. But, with so little known about Ve'Meth and his capabilities, Sarpedon had needed a level head to stay on the Brokenback. They were here to prove the Chapter's devotion to the Emperor's will, and if that was the part Lygris had to play, then so be it.

  He wanted to fight. He wanted to feel a bolter in his hand and fires of battle all around him. But he was needed here, just in case.

  He felt the rumble in the deck through his feet and heard it a split-second after, rolling through the Brokenback's cav­ernous body. The image of the unnamed world shuddered as the crystal of the oculus shook and somewhere a klaxon sounded as a component ship's alarm system activated. There was a jolt and Lygris only just kept his feet, tortured metal wailing through the walls.

  He switched on his vox. 'Engineering, what was that?'

  'The sensors say it's a warp fluctuation, sir. Could be some­thing arriving.'

  'I'm in the viewing gallery, sector green. Route it to the oculus.'

  The huge round viewing screen above him flashed and an image was cast onto it, a composite of the region of nearby space taken from the hundreds of sensoria all over the Brokenback. The disturbance was a boiling mass of blue-white against the star field, pulsing like a beating heart and sending out the pulses that shook the space hulk even now. Lygris called up the damage report - the Brokenback was made of tough stuff, though, and there had been little more than a few nuts and bolts shaken loose.

  Could it be another ship? Unlikely. But they were orbiting a world saturated with Chaos, and everything about it was unlikely.

  'This is Tech-Marine Lygris.' he announced over the vox-casters. 'All personnel to weapons stations.'

  With so many Soul Drinkers on the surface the Brokenback was effectively on a skeleton crew of Marines and serfs, and every man would be heading to his weapons stations, ready to launch the racks of torpedoes they had found intact, or fire the macrocannon and magnalasers that studded the hulk's surface.

  As Lygris watched the disturbance rippled and faded, sink­ing back into the blackness of space. The Brokenback stopped shaking, and the sensorium data streaming along the top of the image returned to normal. Background radiation was up, but there was little more.

  Could be a simple ripple in the immaterium, to be expected in a place as horribly linked with Chaos as this. Or it could be something more sinister, that didn't show up on the Brokenback's myriad scanners. Such a thing was, effec­tively, impossible, but Sarpedon had not given Lygris command of the Brokenback to take needless risks. He would keep the hulk on alert for a couple of hours, until he was sat­isfied any danger had passed.

  He had the oculus blink back to the image of the unnamed planet, and the blinded eye kept on staring.

  THE ISLANDS OF the archipelago rose all around them as they approached, midnight spires of broken black coral jabbing from the ocean. Ve'Meth's influence was so strong every bat­tle-brother felt it and the pollution was stronger and viler here - there was a sickly rainbow sheen, like oil, on the sur­face of the water, and the coral was crusted with residue where the waves lapped at them. The air was heavy with tox­ins, the light feeble, the cloud a dirty dark slab of pollution in the sky like a ceiling. The lookouts saw islands floating
in the air, and squat amphibian daemons on top of the coral spikes, vomiting gore into the breakers beneath. They glimpsed the distant fins of giant sharks and the mottled bodies of kraken.

  They sighted other ships - a ghastly spidery thing that skimmed across the water on wooden legs, a bloated galleon with sails of skin - but the Lakonia and the Hellblade were hidden by the poor light and mist. Sarpedon wondered why they were not attacked again. Perhaps they had proved their valour in ship-to-ship combat to such a degree that Ve'Meth would rather face them on land than at sea again. Or maybe this place was so wholly Chaotic that the Soul Drinkers were simply too few to spot amongst all the madness.

  There were flies everywhere. They got into armour joints, helmets, bolter actions. Wargear rites had to be doubled. Iktinos led the men in prayers for deliverance and strength in the face of such all-pervading corruption. Sarpedon had asked Tyrendian, the strike force's other psyker, what he could tell of Ve'Meth. Tyrendian's nightmares had been of a huge serpent, wrapping itself round a world and crushing it to death, then swallowing it whole along with billions of souls.

  There was no need to navigate. Ve'Meth was like a dark beacon, shining evilly. Tyrendian, in the Lakonia, took them in. The engines were little more than idling as the ships swept almost silently through the shadows of the archipel­ago, the lumped black coral reefs becoming more frequent until they stood in rows like the ribs of something huge and dead.

  Nine days after they had departed in their ships, and five after the loss of the Ultima, they came within sight of Ve'Meth's fortress.

  It was the size of a mountain. Great pustules dotted its surface, opening and closing like dumb mouths weeping bile. Noxious yellowish steam rose in clouds from cracks in the scarred coral surface, and flocks of winged creatures flapped blindly around the fortress's distant pinnacle. Rivers of pus ran down the mountain's sides, clotted thick and squirming with creatures. Far above, thunderstorms raged in the solid black slab of flies that hung in a thick layer in the sky.