The Omnibus - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  Linisa swore every step of the way, moving through colourful and creative phrases in High and Low Gothic and the spire tongue of her birth hive. Iobel said nothing to stop the stream of invective; it gave her something else to focus on besides the voices of the dead.

  The ghost voices had begun as soon as they entered the fields of broken crystal. They rose in Iobel’s mind, roaring with rage, crying out in pain, babbling, pleading. She closed them out, but they always found a way back in, and each time they were stronger. Several times they almost drowned out her awareness of the psychic trail. She was starting to wonder if she had made a serious mistake. The whole landscape, from grey sky to grey ground, seemed to press on her mind. She was not even sure what she was expecting to find; nothing remained here now, just the shards of crystal cities, and the ashes of its past.

  ‘What was that?’ Linisa’s voice cracked across the vox, sharp and sudden. Iobel reached for the boltgun clamped to her back. She twisted, trying to see what Linisa had seen. The acolyte had moved close to her, arms raised, weapon tubes focused on the fog. Iobel instinctively extended her senses beyond her mind, and then recoiled.

  ‘Turn back now. You must turn back.’

  The voice was so clear that it sounded like her own. She shook her head to clear it. The fog was thick around them. Linisa was braced, legs sunk to the knee in the ash mud. Iobel could hear her own breathing fill her helm. She shifted her grip on the boltgun in her hands.

  The figure reared from the grey sludge. Its body was a ragged sculpture of torn armour and heaped bones. It had no head, and only the vaguest similarity to a human shape. Black liquid poured from it. White ice crackled across its growing limbs. A roar of countless anguished voices filled Iobel’s mind. She reeled, blood spattering the inside of her helm. The sludge around the creature froze hard. It lunged forwards with a limb made of cracked armour plates and broken blades. Linisa fired from behind Iobel. A deluge of bolts hammered into the creature, ripping it into chunks with explosions. Its arm tore away. Rounds exploded within its torso, and for a second it seemed to shiver. Linisa shook as her armour absorbed the recoil. The creature staggered, its roar now a shriek.

  Linisa moved forwards, firing without pause, frozen ground splintering before her. The creature lunged again with its remaining arm. The acolyte ducked, but not fast enough. The creature’s fist lifted her from the ground and tossed her into the fog.

  The creature turned to Iobel, its chewed body glowing with pale light. She caught herself as she stumbled backwards, and aimed her boltgun. The creature raised an arm of debris. Iobel squeezed the trigger. The boltgun roared until the firing pin clicked on an empty chamber.

  It took several deep breaths before she remembered to release the trigger. The creature lay in the mud, a heap of bones and armour. Steam rose from it as the witch ice melted. Iobel moved closer. Her mental senses were silent. The creature was dead, as much as something which had not truly lived could die. Looking down at the remains she recognised the shape of broken power armour within them. Specks of red lacquer clung to the deep recesses of some, ice grey to others.

  ‘So walking was still a good idea,’ said Linisa. Her battle rig was dented, but still seemed to be in one piece. If anything the damage just enhanced the armour’s air of blunt brutality. She stopped beside Iobel, and looked down at the remains of the creature. ‘Please tell me this is not what we came here for.’

  ‘No,’ said Iobel.

  ‘Hmmm. What is it, anyway?’

  ‘An echo of the past,’ said Iobel. ‘A cluster of shredded souls trapped at the moment of death, like flotsam caught in an eddy. So much was done here – it is no longer just a planet, it is a scar in the warp.’ She straightened up and looked back into the fog, reached for and found the tug on her psychic senses. ‘We keep going.’

  It took them another hour to find it. When they did Linisa just stared, and muttered a sequence of swear words in a dozen dialects. It had been buried in a small adamantine box at the base of a toppled obelisk. A faint psychic aura pulsed from within the box. Iobel had hesitated before opening it, but when she did, she almost laughed. She lifted out what she found, and held it up to the faint light. It was an ‘I’ crossed by three horizontal bars moulded in polished adamantine; the symbol of the Inquisition. A brilliant blue carbuncle sat at the symbol’s centre, winking in the weak light like a single, watching eye.

  ‘What–’ began Linisa.

  ‘It is an answer, of sorts,’ said Iobel, watching fire kindle at the heart of the blue gem. ‘It says that others have followed the same path I have, and that there are more answers for those who have come this far. If they can find them.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘It’s enough,’ said Iobel.

  The fog froze. Everything stopped moving. The low sounds of distant rain and thunder cut out.

  Iobel lowered the Inquisitorial symbol. She reached for her boltgun.

  ‘Enough,’ said a low, deep voice which came from Linisa, but did not belong to her.

  Linisa paced forwards slowly, her movements feline smooth despite the bulk of her armour. Cold light burned in the eyes of her helm. Iobel had her bolter in her hand, but she already knew that nothing would happen if she pulled the trigger.

  Linisa crouched down, and scooped up a handful of grey ash from the ground. Iobel blinked. Something was screaming inside her, the voice which told her to turn back – a voice which sounded like her own.

  Linisa let the dust fall from her fingers.

  ‘The bones of a Legion buried beneath the ashes of all they had built.’

  ‘Ahriman,’ breathed Iobel.

  ‘It was enough, wasn’t it, to come here, to touch the first grave of my Legion? In this moment you knew that everything you had discovered of us was true.’ Ahriman pointed at the Inquisitorial symbol still clutched in Iobel’s hand. ‘And that bauble was enough to lead you further, and to continue your hunt for the truth.’ Ahriman stood, the form of Linisa blurring as it moved, spiralling into a rising cyclone of dust. ‘And here and now, it is enough for me to do the same.’

  Iobel was shaking where she stood. The fog and ground were gone. She stood in emptiness. The shape of Linisa had vanished. Two cold points of lights shone in the spinning cloud of dust before her. She felt her will try to hold her where she was.

  ‘No!’ she managed to shout, before the storm of dust enveloped her.

  ‘Why am I here?’

  Astraeos watched as the man with the thin face stepped closer.

  ‘You are here because you are a traitor,’ said the man in a flat voice. ‘You are here because your master deserted you. You are here to give us everything you know.’

  ‘A traitor… I am no traitor.’

  The man shook his head. Behind him the crone and the glass-eyed man exchanged glances.

  ‘I am sorry, perhaps you believe that now. Perhaps you believed it before, but what you believe does not alter the truth. You have broken oaths, you have embraced powers that wish only mankind’s slavery, and you have drawn arms against those who fight to preserve humanity. You are a servant of ruin, Astraeos.’

  ‘I…’ The word caught in Astraeos’s throat. ‘…cannot remember.’

  ‘No, your mind was damaged. Though if you can remember, you will.’

  Astraeos did not reply. His head was rolling with fog. Who was he? He recognised the name that the man had given him, but was that really his name? Other images and half recollections drifted close to his awareness, then dissolved back into vapour. Memories were there. He could sense them waiting just beyond his perception, like the buildings of a broken city looming out of the fog. He wanted to know who he was, and why he was here, bound to a metal slab. He had been here for some time, but he was not sure how long. He remembered that there had been questions before, that there had been pain, but he could not remember the details or how long that cycle of pain and questions had lasted. There was just a dull aching feeling that he had been asked these questio
ns before, and asked the same questions in return.

  The thin-faced man had not moved; Astraeos had the impression that he was waiting.

  ‘What is your name?’ said Astraeos.

  ‘My name is not the question at hand,’ said the man, and glanced behind him towards the crone and the crystal-eyed man. ‘I am an inquisitor. Think of me as that if you must.’

  ‘Inquisitor,’ said Astraeos carefully. Somewhere in the fog of his memory something moved and creaked. The word meant something to him, something more than its obvious meaning. ‘You call me a traitor, and think that I will tell you whatever you ask?’

  ‘Do you believe that you are a traitor?’

  ‘No,’ said Astraeos without a pause.

  ‘Then you have your answer.’

  ‘I cannot remember who I am, or why I might be here.’ Astraeos gave a tired laugh. ‘What do you wish to know?’

  ‘Everything,’ said the inquisitor. He ran his hand over his forehead, and let out a carefully controlled breath. ‘Let’s begin with what you can remember – your name is Astraeos.’

  ‘No,’ said Astraeos. In his mind he felt a pocket of recollection open before him. It felt good to speak, as though by talking his memory became clear. ‘It is my name, but it was not my first name.’ He stopped, licked his dry lips. Images and sensations filled him. He could see faces, and smell a swirl of scent that had not been real to him for a long time, but was real for him now, more real than the face of the inquisitor, or the ache in his head. He began to speak, and his voice seemed to be coming from someone and somewhere else.

  ‘When I was born they called me Mellik. There was a lot of smoke when I was small, and the sky was always the colour of copper. I remember towers going up to the clouds. They were covered with lights, and bled fire. I think I had sisters. I don’t remember what home was called, or what anyone else was called. I just remember that I was called Mellik. I can still hear someone calling that name. I used to hide, find a corner on the roofs, or crawl into passages, and just wait for it to be quiet. I didn’t like people, and they didn’t like me either. I was different, everyone knew it, even though I never told them. I could hear them, though. I could feel their fear and hate touch my skin when they looked at me.’

  He paused. Around him the fragments of memory turned, showing him glimpses of faces, of voices. He watched them, knowing they had all meant something to him, but unable to grasp what.

  ‘Most of your kind cannot remember such things,’ said the inquisitor. The images of the past dimmed.

  ‘My kind?’ asked Astraeos. The inquisitor nodded.

  ‘A psyker of the Adeptus Astartes.’

  ‘Is that what I am?’

  The inquisitor raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You remember how to speak, you remember that this is a servo-skull, but you do not remember what you are.’ He smiled, showing silver teeth. ‘What else do you remember, Astraeos?’

  Astraeos compulsively tried to close his eyes. Shutters closed over the servo-skull’s eye-lenses in response. Static-laced blackness replaced the sight of the chamber.

  ‘I remember the day the ships came. They came through the grey sky, bigger than the towers, bigger than anything. They took the light away. I knew they were coming for me, even before the hailers started calling, I knew. I hid, but they found me. People I knew helped them, told them where the strange child liked to hide. When I woke I was in a different place. There was screaming and pain, and darkness and more light than I had ever seen. It stayed that way for a long time. Then I remember being taken to another place where there was more pain. There were questions. There were tests…’

  His voice ran out. In his mind he saw men and women in tight buckled masks pulling him on a chain. There had been machines, and screams that went through the walls and into his dreams. It went on and on, but never the same twice. Only the memory of fear and pain was the same.

  ‘Can you remember more?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, slowly. The memories were coming faster now, the mist shredding as he ran through his past. ‘I remember another ship, and this time I was alone. The room was silver. It was cold. Then the next thing I remember was a giant made of black armour. He had a skull for a face and red eyes. There was a second giant, but he wore blue, and his… his eyes. I felt them on the inside of my skull. They said…’

  ‘His brain output is fluctuating,’ said the tech-priest from close by, voice rising in volume over the sudden chiming of machines.

  The memory stopped. The images snagged and juddered. Astraeos wanted to scream and did not know why. He just knew that something in this memory, something which had been with him there all along in the dark, and light, and pain, was trying to live again. He recognised it then. It was terror, it was the memory of a child’s terror trying to manifest in a mind that could no longer understand it, that was no longer human.

  In his mind’s eye, the Space Marine in blue was staring at him with eyes like polished ice. The one in the skull helm was reaching down, raising Astraeos’s face to look into the skull’s stare. The fingers of the gauntlet were worn, their touch cold.

  ‘They said…’ He heard the words come from his lips again. Everything was becoming slow, and soft, and dark.

  ‘Yes? What did they say, Astraeos?’

  ‘Excessive brain activity. Secondary bleeding inside skull. Subject losing consciousness.’

  The darkness grew around him and the image of the two Space Marines pulled away, becoming an image seen through a pinprick in a sheet of oblivion.

  He felt his mouth open, and his tongue form halting words.

  ‘They said I would become an angel.’

  The fortress was grown of ice. Its walls rose in a ring of turquoise and white blade edges. At its centre a lone landing pad sat like a coin dropped onto a frozen lake. Gun turrets surrounded the pad, their barrels swathed in white fabric and their shapes hidden by pale nets. Looking down at the fortress from the lighter’s windows, Iobel had thought the surface structure looked like a crown of clouded crystal. Now, shivering despite her fur-lined cloak and thermal bodyglove, she thought it looked nothing like a crown, and more like one of the most desolate places she had ever seen.

  ‘Beautiful,’ muttered Cavor, through chattering teeth. The nihilator’s shoulders were hunched beneath his thick crimson coat, his head sunk so deep into the black fur collar that he looked like a troglodyte. Beside them the lighter’s engines began to rise in pitch as it prepared to lift off again. It would return when they were done; nothing lingered on the polar ice longer than it had to. Iobel found herself thinking fondly of the lighter’s machine-scented warmth.

  The planet that they stood on was called AV-213. Tucked away on the frayed edges of the Halo Margins, its equatorial belt was a strip of foetid jungle bound by dry deserts which stretched to the planet’s bloated polar caps. People could have lived there, could have scraped some form of life out of the dirt and clung onto it, but they did not. Only a few members of the Inquisition knew of the planet, and a small circle within the Ordo Malleus kept it that way. AV-213 was one of the quiet and forgotten places used by those who fought the enemies that humanity could not know existed. Iobel knew that much, but what waited for her here she did not know.

  Two decades had passed since she had set foot on Prospero, and in that time she had seemed to come no closer to real answers. She had tried, of course. She had bent all of her subtle arts to trying to find out the source of the Inquisitorial emblem left on the dead world. She had found only a suspicious absence of information. That had only convinced her to dig deeper; an absence of information was, after all, sometimes as significant as information itself. But two decades of investigation had yielded nothing, until, when she was almost at the point of turning back, a message had come. A mind-blanked courier had brought her a slip of parchment in a puzzle tube covered in Prosperine runes. Inside was a slip of parchment, and a wafer of explosive designed to detonate if anyone had forced the tube open. On the parchm
ent had been the location of AV-213, a clearance code, and a single line of handwritten script: ‘the door to the truth stands open’.

  The lighter’s ramp began to close, and its engines kicked ice dust into the air. The servitor pilot burbled a stream of machine code over the vox, and then it was lifting away. When it was ten metres above the pad, its thrusters fired. Iobel felt the blast of heat wash across her face, and was briefly grateful for the warmth. Then the lighter was gone, a pale speck rising into the cold blue sky. She looked down. They were alone, the expanse of the sky and ice pressing close around them. The wind gusted across the landing pad.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ said Cavor, turning to look around them. She heard a low click and knew that he had eased a set of pistols from the holsters beneath his coat. She said nothing, but clicked through channels on her vox-bead: a low hiss answered her from each channel. She stopped after a while and waited. If it had not been for the metal of the landing pad, and the covered gun emplacements, she would have thought they were in the wrong place.

  ‘Selandra Iobel.’ The voice came from so close that she felt her muscles tense. Cavor spun, guns rising. ‘Peace, Cavor,’ said the voice, strong but calm.

  She turned more slowly than Cavor, careful not to seem hurried or surprised. A tall, thin man stood a few metres from them. He wore a quilted black bodyglove without mark or symbol. There was a square hole in the ice-covered ground just behind his feet. She nodded slowly, but did not smile. She was pleased to notice that Cavor had not lowered his guns.

  ‘Yes, and who are you?’ she replied. The thin man smiled.

  ‘I am glad you came,’ he said smoothly, and turned to Cavor. ‘You are as fast as your reputation, Cavor. What is your kill count now?’