Another possibility existed. One he had not considered in some time. It had never seemed important, until now. One more mistake to add to the list, perhaps. Then, who could have predicted that the Phoenix Conclave was anything other than a grandiose delusion on the part of Kasperos Telmar?
Supposedly – according to Telmar, at least – the Phoenix Conclave was a gathering of the minds, led by Eidolon. Composed of those who ruled the splintered fragments of the Third, it sought to rebuild the Legion, and restore it to its former glory.
Not an uncommon story, in these fraught times. Every Legion had its own variation on the theme. Abaddon had made good use of that persistent need to belong that afflicted so many of their brothers, manipulating it and them in order to build his new Legion, out of the ashes of the old ones. Perhaps Eidolon had learned something from the Warmaster.
‘One would think that if brotherhood had meant so much to us, we would not have discarded it so blithely, all those years ago,’ he said out loud, as he entered his laboratorium. His armour’s vox recorders clicked as they inhumed the statement, saving it for posterity. ‘What we once so eagerly cast aside, we now sacrifice all to reclaim. We have become beggars of virtue.’
‘Benefactor?’ Igori asked, startled by his sudden arrival. She stood near the entrance, hand resting on the butt of her shuriken pistol. Several more of her pack were visible, their tension palpable. There had already been a number of incidents. It had taken some time for word of the newcomers’ status to filter down, and several of Alkenex’s less observant warriors had wandered into inhospitable territory. Most of them had survived. The absence of those who hadn’t, had yet to be noticed.
‘Nothing, my dear. Merely making notes. Do not concern yourself with it.’ Fabius paused. ‘You have brought them, as I requested?’
She nodded. At the gesture, two of her pack urged forward a trio of mutants. They were brawny lower caste workers, from the dark forests of the engine decks, where warplight seeped out through cracked and impotent sigils. The mutant clans that inhabited those decks were stronger than most – sturdier, better able to survive harsh conditions. It was dangerous ground, so close to the hell-light of the warp engines. Strange creatures prowled those corridors, hunting for blood and souls. The mutant clans hunted them in return, in order to feast on their theoretical flesh.
These three had been chosen, by whatever savage rites their clans deemed fit, to receive the blessings of the Pater Mutatis. Igori and her kin had escorted them safely through the byways. Even if the Vesalius was helmed by a new captain, that did not mean that the ancient ways had changed. The niceties must be observed.
‘Were you seen?’ The question was unnecessary, but a matter of ritual.
‘No, Benefactor. We brought them through the Cur-roads.’ The Gland-hounds had their own paths through the Vesalius. The ship had accommodated them with an almost human equanimity, allowing them to reshape access tunnels and fire-conduits for their purposes. The packs could come and go as they pleased, with no one the wiser. Certainly not the Space Marines now guarding every hatchway and bulkhead.
‘Good. Appointments must be kept, lest all fall to anarchy.’ He turned to the bank of techno-crèches that occupied one wall of the apothecarium. The artificial wombs were capable of mixing disparate genetic material into a stable form, and then artificially aging it. And not just age, but evolution, as the material was combined and broken down, the way a swordsmith might heat and fold a blade. Millions of years of carefully guided development, accomplished in a matter of months.
Each one contained a slumbering experiment, and there were a hundred more just like them scattered across the galaxy, in isolated caches and laboratoriums. In most cases, he used them to develop advanced neurovascular bundles and synaptic webs, which were then implanted in worthy recipients. Such devices had also been of great use in perfecting the lesser gene-seed he’d used in the creation of the first generations of New Men.
But in this case, he was after something a touch less subtle. He opened one of the techno-crèches and thrust his arm into the nutrient soup within. Something with too many limbs wrapped itself about his forearm. Diamond teeth scraped against ceramite, and a bone-stinger struck repeatedly, trying to find a weak point. He extracted the wriggling newborn and held it up to the light. He turned the creature, examining the venom sacs that throbbed inside the bone cage of its thorax.
‘Excellent,’ he murmured. The creature’s venom was more than just a poison. It contained a potent genetic cocktail of his own mixing. He’d crafted the gene-venom after many years of patient genetic sequencing, and eugenical cultivation. If the mutants were going to insist on breeding, he would ensure that they produced useful offspring. Hardy stock, capable of surviving the rigours of a life of servitude below decks. The gene-venom would seek out the flaws in their DNA, and correct – or, at the very least, moderate – them. He conducted similar inoculations on the warrior-clans that prowled the gunnery decks, streamlining them for combat of all types.
While the wretched creatures would never be the equal of his New Men, they would still have some purpose in the world to come. True, a caste system was not the most efficient means of running a civilised society, but it would do as a starting point. If the creatures evolved into something worthwhile in the coming millennia, things might change. But for the moment, they had their place and their duties.
He gestured. ‘Come here.’ A mutant shuffled forward, snorting in apprehension. Fabius glanced at it. Its head was vaguely feline, beneath the tangle of horns rising from its skull-plate. Broad torso, with a thick cabling of muscle and powerful limbs. A steady heart rate, as well. None of the obvious physical deformities that cropped up every other generation or so, then. Good. ‘Hold him.’
The two other mutants stepped forward, eyes wide. Like the first, they were superior, if bestial, examples of their kind. They gripped their fellow roughly, pulling on its horns in order to expose its neck, as Fabius extended the squirming, scorpion-like thing. The chosen mutant began to whine. Fabius clucked his tongue. ‘Now, now – it’s for your own good.’ He held his arm out and stroked the insect-thing’s spinal ridge, eliciting a quiver. It tensed and struck, its barbed stinger sinking into the mutant’s neck. The mutant snarled as the venom entered its veins.
It slumped, shivering. The others joined it, as each in their turn received the same dose from the insect’s stinger. He watched the three creatures for a moment, timing their convulsions. When he was satisfied that they would survive, he ordered the Gland-hounds to take them back to their clans. There, they would be free to pass on their superior genetic legacy, should they survive. It would take a few generations before he saw the results of his tinkering, but he was patient. In the meantime, he would continue to tweak the effects of the gene-venom, further refining it.
As he deposited the insect back into its crèche, he turned to find that Igori had remained behind. She said nothing, merely watching him. He frowned. ‘The Twins did well,’ he said. ‘You should be proud.’
‘The xenos almost killed them. They almost killed you, Benefactor.’
‘But we are not dead.’ He sighed. ‘They are survivors, like you. They will lead your people well, when the time comes.’
She nodded, almost absently. ‘I dreamed of her again. The one called Melusine. I think she was trying to warn me about something. You are in danger, I think.’
‘When are we not?’ Fabius said. ‘It is a dangerous galaxy for such as we. You are children yet, and I must protect you until you can look after yourselves.’
‘Not us,’ Igori said. ‘You.’
Fabius hesitated. There was worry in her voice. True worry, not simply the unease of a predator facing something it could not comprehend. Something she should not have been capable of. Then, there rarely came a day his creations did not surprise him.
‘You look tired. Have you been sleeping?’
‘I am not tired,’ Igori said softly. ‘I am old.’
‘And I am not?’ Fabius said. ‘Age is but a state of mind, child.’ He studied her with an Apothecary’s eye. She had lost some mass, as the years chipped away all but the most necessary of flesh and muscle. Her hair had turned the colour of ice, but her eyes were still vibrant. She flexed a hand subconsciously and he caught hold of it. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Stiff.’
Fabius grunted, examining the pliability of her fingers one by one. She watched him. ‘Will you put me to sleep, the way you did Faethor?’
Fabius paused. Faethor had been First of the pack, before Igori. There had been a flaw in him, a subtle swelling of the glands that had led to crippling pain and an eventual loss of mobility. The subsequent autopsy had enabled Fabius to correct that error in the others. ‘Faethor was blighted – sleep was a mercy.’
Igori nodded, as if he had answered her question. ‘My children and my grandchildren are strong,’ she said. ‘Maysha and Mayshana – they serve you well.’
‘They do.’ Fabius released her hand. ‘As do you.’
‘I no longer hunt.’
‘No. You train others to hunt. A more important task, in my opinion.’ He looked down at her, seeing, for a moment, the child she had been, so many centuries ago. Thin, malnourished, barely human. He had drawn out the best of her and made her worthy of his gifts. And she was. They all were. They were survivors. Pure and untarnished by the weaknesses of previous generations. Worthy inheritors of the galaxy to come, once the fires of the last great war had burned themselves out. ‘The day will come, my dear, when your children’s children stride the galactic rim as the kings and queens of all they survey. But first, you – we – must teach them how to survive, until that moment.’
He caught her chin gently and lifted her face up. ‘In your generation, there were five hundred. Of them all, I kept only you and your closest siblings. The rest are scattered across the galaxy, burrowed into the flesh of a dying empire, so that they might best guide it to its well-deserved and long overdue grave. They, and their children, carry my teachings into the dark.’ He smiled. ‘Generation upon generation, their strength breeding true. As mankind dies, so it nurtures its own replacement, all unknowing.’
He leaned close to her, so close that he could hear the thump of her heart. A strong heart. ‘But you are different. You and your kin are to be my hand on the throat of the future. For my brothers will not surrender to fate with dignity. Those who remain, after that final hour, will fight one another for the right to rule the ashes. And in that moment, you and yours shall assert yourselves, for the first time and the last.’ He tugged on her necklace of teeth, causing them to rattle. ‘You will hunt angels, in the days to come, and make a new kingdom from their bones.’
‘And where will you be?’ she asked softly.
Fabius stepped back. ‘I imagine I will be first among the foundations, my dear.’ He smiled thinly. ‘There will be no place for me in the paradise to come.’ He laughed. Behind them, the entrance to the laboratorium whined open, and someone entered. Fabius ignored the newcomer, even as Igori stiffened. ‘But until then, I persist. Until my work is done.’
‘Only, it will never be done, will it, Spider?’
Fabius grimaced and turned. Flavius Alkenex stood behind him, watching him with a mocking eye. Alkenex had removed his helm, exposing his face. He bore little in the way of obvious mutation. His face had been ritually scarred, and his pale hair braided into thin locks that hung serpent-like from his scalp. His teeth were unnaturally sharp and had been etched with tiny characters, as if each fang were a poem. ‘Flavius. Come to spy on me?’
‘Call it curiosity. I see you are still doting on lesser creatures. Is it because they make you feel superior? That is the only reason I can conceive of why one would stoop to speak to such things.’ Alkenex strode past, examining the objects of study that lined the walls. He stopped and pointed. ‘That is the skull of a hrud.’
‘Yes. Troglydium hrudii. Igori killed it, when we encountered one of their interminable migrations, some years ago.’
Alkenex glanced at her, eyes narrowed. ‘By herself?’
Fabius snorted. ‘Of course.’
‘Is that why she’s so withered?’ He leered at her. ‘Run afoul of one of those entropic fields of theirs, little dog? How foolish of you.’ Igori made a sound that might have been a growl, and took a step towards Alkenex. He grinned. ‘Call it off, Spider, or I’ll kill it.’
‘You’ll do nothing, Flavius.’ Fabius let his hand drop to his needler.
Alkenex’s grin faded. ‘Mind your tone, Spider. Or I’ll pluck off your limbs.’
‘No. You won’t.’ Fabius looked at him. ‘Otherwise Eidolon might be disappointed. And you know how he gets when he’s disappointed.’
Alkenex stepped back with an easy laugh. ‘There’s the Spider I remember. Quick to skitter away from any and all confrontation.’ He shook his head. ‘Send the cur away, Fabius. I would speak with you.’
Igori growled low in her throat, but subsided at a look from Fabius. ‘Go,’ he said flatly. She turned and departed, hands on her weapons. As he’d hoped, she did so by the main entrance. For the moment, the Cur-roads would remain a secret. When she’d gone, he turned back to Alkenex. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Very little about this situation satisfies me,’ Alkenex said.
‘You always were one for complaints.’
Alkenex picked up a scalpel from a tool tray and turned it so that it caught the light. ‘Why this hostility, Fabius? We have harmed none of your pets.’ He grinned. ‘Yet.’
Fabius snorted. ‘Make the attempt, by all means. My pets, as you call them, are more than capable of looking after themselves. And I am hostile because I have been made a prisoner in all but name on my own ship, by those who have little reason to love me.’
‘And whose fault is that?’
‘Yours. Yours and those like you.’ Fabius looked at him. ‘Unappreciative, treacherous dolts, one and all. And Eidolon the most doltish and unappreciative of the lot. Without me, he’d be one more victim of our wayward father. One more name, consigned to the ash heap of history.’ He pointed at Alkenex. ‘All of you would be dust, without me. And what is my reward? Isolation. Persecution.’ He snorted. ‘Then, it has always been that way, hasn’t it? I rebuilt the Legion, helix by helix, when the blight threatened to consume it. I pulled it back from the precipice and in return, it shoved me over.’
‘Are you finished?’ Alkenex said after a moment.
‘I have only just begun,’ Fabius said, turning away. ‘How did you know where to find me, Flavius? I was not aware that my activities were being monitored by anyone, let alone my former brothers.’
‘Obviously, given how easily the xenos lured you into that trap.’ Alkenex set the scalpel down. ‘But, I only know what I’m told – Eidolon knew where you were, or rather, where you would be, and sent me to intercept you, several weeks ago.’ He looked around. ‘Unfortunately, this vessel of yours is much faster than I was led to believe.’
Fabius smiled. ‘So it is.’ He looked at Alkenex. ‘Why did you come for me, Flavius? I have no doubt that it is of the utmost importance.’ He dragged a tray of aeldari scrolls, salvaged from the craftworld by the Twins, towards him. Fabius studied the parchment for a moment before tearing a strip from it and popping it into his mouth.
Catching sight of Alkenex’s grimace, Fabius smiled around a mouthful of shredded parchment. Swallowing, he said, ‘Some among the aeldari inscribed their knowledge on a type of vat-grown dermal extrusion. It “remembers” the information, in much the same way as the human brain. After much trial and error, I managed to train my omophageac implant to synthesise and interpret the information grown on this sort of parchment.’
‘You actually… eat that filth?’
‘We’ve eaten
worse, Flavius.’ Fabius crumpled up another strip and ate it. ‘Remember Gheist? How many of the Ulashi broodslaves did we devour, seeking the location of their war-queen?’
Alkenex grunted. ‘They tasted like excrement.’
‘Given the way their internal processes worked, that is perhaps not surprising.’
‘Why waste your time devouring parchment, when there are so many more pleasurable meals to indulge in?’ Alkenex shook his head. ‘You’ve always been an odd one, Spider.’
‘And you’ve always been a dullard, Flavius. I’d hoped the intervening centuries had cured you of it. Answer my question – why did you interrupt my expedition?’
‘It looked to me as if I was saving your miserable hide.’ Alkenex laughed. ‘The stories I’ve heard have nothing on the facts of it – the mighty Manflayer, harried by a pack of alien clowns. Why do they want your head so badly, Spider?’
Fabius turned back to his meal. ‘Revenge for my part in the raid on Lugganath, I suspect.’ He glanced at the white, grinning mask, sitting nearby. It was lightly spattered with the blood of its former owner – another gift from the Twins. ‘Should I ever capture one alive, I shall surely ask them.’
Alkenex grunted again. ‘Perhaps you will get that chance. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering your bridge crew to set course for Harmony. Eidolon wishes to speak to you.’
‘Harmony?’ Fabius turned, eyes narrowed. ‘What does he want of me? And why there? Is this another of his obtuse attempts at humour?’ Eidolon had only gained a sense of humour after Fulgrim had removed his head. It was therefore perhaps unsurprising that it was as warped and erratic as it was. Eidolon’s jokes left whole planets lifeless.
‘Even if I knew that, I probably wouldn’t share it with you, Spider.’ Alkenex grinned. ‘But rest assured, it’s probably not to protect you from your xenos friends.’ He turned to leave. ‘Enjoy the rest of your meal.’
Fabius Bile: Clonelord Page 11
