The Omnibus - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  The bolt pistol went silent. The daemons were ten paces away, their flesh quivering as they swung and flew closer. He began to run towards them. His knife was a reassuring weight in his hand, like a memory held close.

  He had broken his oaths to the Imperium. Others, now long dead, had disputed that fact, but Thidias had always known the truth in his soul. They were falling and would fall further. Better that he ended now, as a warrior who could still remember what honour was.

  A daemon broke away from the swarm and spiralled towards Thidias. Long arms waved around its stump of a body, and hundreds of tiny mouths covered its bloody-pink flesh. Thidias took another stride, dropped low and rammed his knife upwards. Black liquid drooled out in weightless cords as he sawed up through the deflating bag of the daemon’s corpse. Something was scrabbling at his legs with long talons. He kicked blindly, felt an impact and kicked again. Something he could not see stabbed into his left ribs. Alarms began to ring in his ears. Acid was spreading down the inside of his armour. He cut at a creature with a wide mouth and rolling eyes. The blow split it in two. The alarms were a constant whine in his ears. He took a breath, felt liquid rise in his throat. He raised his knife and cut again, before a hooked talon darted out and spilled his guts into the cold vacuum.

  Ahriman went still. The figure was half sprawled against a flight bench. Red crystals of blood hung around its crumpled form. It wore armour, its pitted bronze surface gleaming dully in the dim light. Even half hidden by shadow, it was clear that its body was not whole: its arms and legs were bloody stumps. Something had ripped chunks from its chest. He could see white ribs poking from the sides of its wounds. Ahriman stepped forwards. He began to reach out with his senses to feel for the pulse of life in the slumped figure. As soon as he tried, his mind filled with a chorus of cries and a heat-haze sickness.

  Astraeos swung down into the hold, not seeing the figure. +Come on,+ he sent. Ahriman made to reply, but a voice stopped him.

  ‘Brother?’ said the voice, scraping across the vox. The figure on the floor moved, turning its head with drunken slowness. It still wore its helm, but the eye-lenses were blank and unlit. Astraeos had frozen where he was. ‘Is that you, Astraeos?’

  It was Kadin, the warrior’s voice a crunching slur of clotting blood. Kadin tried to move, but what he achieved was a pitiful twitching. ‘Brother, I cannot see,’ said Kadin, a wet breath between each word. Astraeos took two strides and bent down.

  ‘It is I,’ said Astraeos. ‘We have you, brother, you will be well.’ Kadin coughed, and Ahriman heard the scraping of bones in the sound.

  ‘Liar,’ said Kadin. ‘Where is Thidias?’ Astraeos said nothing, and after a second Kadin nodded weakly.

  ‘We have to go now,’ growled Astraeos. As if in echo to the words, the gunship’s weapons began to fire. Ahriman felt the craft’s frame shake with recoil. Beyond the open hatch, strobing muzzle flashes broke the blackness. He moved towards the front of the crew compartment, clicking the vox to transmit as he did.

  ‘Take off!’ He had no idea if the pilot servitor was still alive or if its mind was still functioning, but he shouted the command anyway. ‘Take off now!’ A blurt of machine code answered him. A second later the gunship’s internal gravity activated, and the ramp began to close. Through the narrowing gap, Ahriman glimpsed the daemons, floating and bobbing towards them, caught in the flarelight of the firing guns. The gunship rocked as it unclamped from the platform. Air vented into the crew compartment in a cold fog. The guns were still firing, and the gunship shivered as its engines lit. Ahriman grabbed hold of an overhead rail.

  The gunship shot across the cavern, accelerating on bright cones of fire. Behind it, the daemons ran across the platform and leapt into the void after it. Bolts of corpse light and arcs of crackling power followed the gunship. Some hit, burrowing into metal, chewing into circuits and fuel lines. The heavy bolter mounts on the wings swivelled and fired.

  Within the crew compartment, Ahriman tried to reach for a point of serenity amidst his fatigue. Kadin’s wounds were thawing, oozing blood onto the decking. Astraeos was muttering something to the dying warrior, one hand supporting the back of Kadin’s helmet.

  Something hit the gunship, sending sparks crawling across the inside of the hull. The stink of burning cables and hot metal filled the compartment. Ahriman pulled his thoughts away from the scene in front of him, and pushed his mind into the void beyond the hull. A thought the shape of ice and crystal formed in his mind, hardening over the gunship like a shell. Another bolt of lightning cracked across the gunship’s wing, and Ahriman felt his mental ward hold for a second and then break. He gasped and blinked away blood-thick tears.

  +Astraeos,+ he sent. The Librarian’s head snapped around. Ahriman could feel the rage fuming off him in hot waves. +I need your help.+

  Astraeos said nothing but reached up and pulled his helm off. His skin was pale, and burn marks blistered his brow. He stared back at Ahriman, his true eye a pale orb with a pinprick of black beside the electric green of his augmetic.

  +We will all die here if you do not help me,+ Ahriman sent. Astraeos looked back to the chewed remains of his brother. Fresh blood was seeping from the wounds. +We will die here, and any chance Kadin may have will die with us.+

  Outside the hull, the heavy bolters fired their last shells. As if sensing the weakness, the daemons spilled forwards. The gunship jinked and flipped, weaving amongst blasts of rainbow energy. Invisible blows ripped at its wings, sending it spinning. Ahriman heard the craft’s frame scream like a ripped girder. There was no time. He turned to look back at Astraeos.

  +Now,+ he sent, and layered the command with all he had learned of the Librarian. Astraeos was a man with many names: the name granted to him by his Chapter, the name he had been born with and forgotten, the name that his mentor had called him, and the number the Black Ships had given him when they took him from his birth world. The command held all of these names, and it hit him like a physical blow. Astraeos half fell then came up fast, his face twisted with pain and rage. Ahriman remained still.

  Astraeos stopped, his hands clenched in fists. The gunship bucked again. Astraeos opened his mouth, but never said what he was intending.

  Kadin rose from the deck, floating into the air with a crack of bones that sounded like pistol shots. Frost spread across the walls and deck. In Kadin’s deep wounds, blood ice was forming. His head came up last. Black eyepieces looked at Ahriman.

  Ahriman felt cold. In his mind the distant cries of the daemons suddenly sounded like laughter. He had misunderstood. He remembered the gunship’s weapons glowing red as he had approached it. He saw Kadin’s wounds and remembered the blood and meat hanging in the airless dark. The daemons were not chasing them, they were circling.

  ‘I cannot see,’ said Kadin’s choking voice.

  The Titan Child was burning across half her hull. Carmenta knew it, but could not feel it any more. Her void shields were gone. Scabs of molten slag had peeled off across her flanks and prow. The creatures crawled over her, chewing and ripping at armour plates softened by the heat of their breath. She was half blind but she could see the gunship, spinning in a clear sphere of space a few hundred metres away. It was so close but it was tumbling like a broken bird. In one of her still functioning landing bays, a slab-sided lifter rose from the deck. Its servitor crew blurted an acknowledgement of her order. Blast doors unfolded and the lifter pushed into the void.

  Kadin floated towards Ahriman. Steam was rising from him even as frost thickened across his armour. Shreds of skin hung from the stumps of his legs. Kadin’s wounds closed before Ahriman’s eyes, fresh flesh filling the chewed gaps.

  Astraeos lunged towards Kadin. Kadin’s head twitched, and a telekinetic wave slammed Astraeos into the wall. He rolled with the impact and sprang forwards. Kadin drifted to the side and struck him across the chest with a lash of energy. Ahriman heard a dry crack of splintering ceramite. Astraeos folded and, before he could hit the floor, the daemon
’s power smashed him across the compartment. He lay still, blood seeping from the cracks in his armour.

  Kadin looked back to Ahriman.

  No, thought Ahriman. It is not Kadin, not any more. He could see it now, the daemon rooted in Kadin’s flesh like a parasite, snaking through his blood and bone like horned chains. There was nowhere to move. He tried to summon power, but it slipped out of his grasp like a rope tugged away by the wind. The daemon gave a sorrowful cackle in his head. He could not move. He felt invisible hands grip his flesh, holding him in place. The daemon raised Kadin’s arm. A long talon of frozen blood extended from the chewed stump. Delicately, almost gently, the daemon placed the tip on the lens above Ahriman’s left eye. The daemon pushed the talon forwards. The crystal of the eye-lens splintered. Ice-blue light flooded Ahriman’s left eye. He could not look away as the needle tip extended towards his pupil.

  +Kadin,+ said Ahriman, and felt the last inch of his strength shorten. The talon tip halted. The daemon roared with rage, the sound ripping from Kadin’s blood-clogged lungs. +Kadin. I bind your flesh. I compel you by your blood.+ The daemon staggered, and around them the stricken gunship spun and spun. Ahriman’s will flowed into Kadin’s body. It was not fully the daemon’s. Not yet. The daemon had taken Kadin as a host, but it had done so by blunt force. There was still a fragment of Kadin’s mind and body it had yet to conquer.

  Into that shrinking gap, Ahriman poured the last of his will. He did it without subtlety, ramming his raw strength against the daemon. He felt the scraps of Kadin’s soul lend him strength. The daemon vomited, and the neck seal of Kadin’s armour burst as red-streaked bile spilled down his chest. The stolen body twitched, striking the walls of the compartment. Ahriman felt his knees buckle. His own body felt like a distant memory. The daemon’s hold on Kadin’s flesh weakened, then began to slip. The daemon’s back arched. Kadin’s body was glowing like an overheating furnace. Ice melted from him, turning to steam before it could hit the floor.

  Then he felt another presence pour into Kadin’s body. It was cold and black, like water gathered from a deep cave. The daemon that had been fighting for Kadin’s flesh vanished beneath the oncoming tide. Ahriman felt the edge of the new presence touch his own mind. It was like being stabbed by needles of ice, and the shock snapped him back into his body.

  Above him, the new creature shivered with Kadin’s flesh and stepped forwards. Kadin’s features vanished as his body moved, as if he had fallen into shadow. For a second, he looked like a hole cut in the background of the world.

  The newcomer reached down and lifted Ahriman from the floor, cradling his head in Kadin’s hands. He could feel the creature’s eyes looking at him, into him. He looked back.

  ‘No, not you,’ croaked Ahriman. ‘It cannot be you.’

  +Forget,+ said the shadow. Ahriman blinked.

  He saw billowing clouds of light that spiralled to a vanishing point. His body was cold, his mind was numb. He could not think. Somewhere beyond the border of his senses, he was bleeding. The world was silent. He was not sure if he was still breathing.

  He could not remember where he was. Warm darkness crept over him.

  He saw nothing.

  XII

  CHANGE

  Ahriman woke suddenly, pain and nausea replacing a blank absence of sensation. His eyes were open, but he could not see. He tried to raise his hands to touch his face, but they would not move.

  ‘Subject conscious,’ said a machine voice, and he flinched at the suddenness of the noise. A high ringing filled his ears, and he could hear the whir and scrape of mechanical gears.

  ‘Remove the dermal covering,’ said another voice. This one was human and female. He recognised its hard edge. ‘Start at the face.’

  ‘Carmenta?’ he said. Something sharp pricked his forehead, and scored down the centre of his face.

  ‘Yes, Ahriman.’ He felt something tug at his face, and light stabbed into his eyes. He blinked, for a moment as blind as he had been before. Then the world around him resolved into blurred shapes and indistinct colours. ‘You are alive.’

  He turned his head. He wore no armour, and was bound to an upright frame in a long chamber that extended away to blackness on either side. Bright lights stabbed down at him from a hoist suspended above him. The walls and ceiling were gloss red, and a channel ran down the scuffed metal floor. He could smell antiseptics, machine oil and crude but powerful pain suppressors. A hunched servitor stood close beside him, staring at him with a cluster of green lenses. Red-brown spatters covered its off-white robe, which trailed in scabbed tatters across the floor. The servitor peeled an inch-thick layer of what looked like pale fat from Ahriman’s skin. Carmenta stood in front of him, her cracked red lacquer face tilted to one side, watching. Ahriman thought she looked exhausted, but he could not say why.

  ‘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 t
ook 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.