Shas'o

by Various

  ‘Do you see something?’ the Calavera asked, and Mordaine realised the giant was standing beside him.

  ‘Nothing,’ Mordaine said. But something sees me.

  THREE DAYS AFTER UNITY

  Oblazt was a world of darkness, but its ice wastes shimmered with a dull, diffuse light, like the last flicker of a failing lumen bulb spun out eternally. The locals claimed it was reflected starlight, but Lieutenant Omazet didn’t believe it. She could taste the hunger behind that anaemic radiance and she knew the Ghostlands were well named.

  It is almost as if this debased engine has carried us into the twilight realm of Grandfather Death, she thought. Perhaps we all fell at Vyshodd and never knew it.

  She dismissed the dark notion and focused on the gloomy corridor ahead. Someone, presumably the captain, had smashed every one of the glow-globes lining the passage, leaving only the pallid haze from the windows to illuminate her path. Uzochi had claimed this carriage when they boarded, refusing both succour and guidance, demanding only solitude. He’d looked like a man drowning in a poisoned dream.

  He bleeds shadows as an untended wound bleeds pus, she mused with regret. Like all the Sharks she was fiercely loyal to her commander, but she had long suspected that Uzochi was like a tautly drawn bowstring – dangerous, yet also very brittle.

  But is he beyond redemption? Omazet wondered as she arrived at the locked door of his cabin.

  ‘Captain,’ she said, tapping on the door. ‘Armande… We must talk.’ There was no response. She knocked again, harder this time. Something creaked above her head and she looked up sharply, squinting in the gloom. The ceiling was an ambiguous blur of grey panels and dark grilles, devoid of… She frowned. Had something moved up there? No, that made no sense.

  There was a murmur from behind the locked door and Omazet put an ear to the enamelled wood. Someone was pacing about in there like a caged animal.

  ‘Captain!’ she called, rapping on the wood. The pacing stopped. Growing impatient, Omazet switched to the insidious, damning lilt of La Mal Kalfu: ‘Armande, hear my breath and heed me, for I name you wayward, wordless and shaken-hearted. Craven-haunted, you’d spit on your oath…’

  So it went until she heard a chuckle from within, rancid with anguish. A moment later the bolt was drawn back and a crack of shadow appeared in the doorframe, confining a bloodshot eye.

  ‘Captain?’ she asked. The eye blinked at her without recognition. ‘Armande?’

  ‘Is he with you?’ It was the hoarse rattle of a man who hadn’t slept in days.

  ‘Is who with me?’

  ‘Grandfather Death,’ he whispered, as if fearing to say the name aloud. ‘I know you are his disciple, woman. You paint your face in his image.’

  ‘I serve Father Terra and no other.’ She frowned. ‘Armande, you have invited doubt into your heart…’ As she reached for the door the eye widened in fury.

  ‘I’ll not parley with his lackeys!’ he hissed. ‘Tell him to come himself if he wants my soul.’

  ‘Armande–’

  ‘Tell him!’ The door slammed in her face.

  Omazet growled, a primal release of tension. She realised her pistol had slipped into her hand, as if demanding that she fulfil her most sacred duty.

  He is no longer fit to lead us, she judged. It would be a mercy.

  And yet some indistinct, malformed intuition held her back. She turned and stalked away, eager to be gone from this shadowy carriage.

  The saloon car had been eviscerated and sacrificed as a penance for the sins of its patrons, yet the Ghostlands had transformed the gaudy chamber into a vision of almost ethereal beauty. Krazi Rémi stood at the entrance, bewildered by the frost-wreathed opulence. It looked as if the carriage had been frozen in time.

  Like starlight made into stuff, he thought reverently.

  He roused himself with a shake of the head. Such foolishness had earned the mockery of his brothers, but he was going to prove them wrong. He’d come back here to chase the rain. His thoughts were a raggedy jumble these days, but he was pretty sure rooms weren’t meant to rain.

  Nodding to himself, the scrawny Shark crept towards the place where he’d seen it happen, his boots crunching through the vitrified strands of carpeting. His breath hung about him like smoke, testifying to the cold that gripped the carriage. If he lingered here overlong he’d end up as another piece of frozen furniture.

  Rémi grinned when he saw the suspect grille in the ceiling, delighted that his memory had clung on to it. Hunting about, he spied an overturned table. The ice had welded it to the fabric and there was an audible snap as he pulled it free. He froze, but nobody came so he pressed on with his quest. Grunting with effort, he dragged the table under the grille and climbed up. The panel’s screws were frozen tight and his gloved hands were clumsy, but he worked at them with his knife until the grille came loose. Sliding it aside, he poked his head cautiously into the shaft above, shining his torch first left then right. Nothing. He sniffed. There was a heady stench lingering in the space, like the spoor of a wild beast. He hesitated, wondering if this would be enough for the others. Minutes passed as he tested the possibilities. No, it wouldn’t be enough, he decided unhappily. Nobody would believe him. He needed more.

  With a sigh, Rémi hauled himself up into the ventilation shaft.

  He chose a direction at random, working his way along the shaft until it terminated at the carriage wall. What? Oh… There was a hatch above him. He squirmed onto his back and shoved, gasping as it came free and he was bathed in bright light. He was staring up at the sky and it was full of stars. Real stars, not the glittering lies that crowded his head like beggar’s diamonds. He drank them in, marvelling that the blizzard had eased off and granted him this clear sky. Even so, it was bitterly cold and he knew he had to get moving before he froze up in the shaft.

  I should go back, he thought, but the stars sang to him, urging him to race them across the top of the world. No… No, it wasn’t the stars… It was the wind, a glacial whispering mistral plucked from the air by the speeding train. Rémi sat up, popping his head through the hatch to watch the tundra surging past on either side like a fleeting yet perpetual memory of whiteness. His breath froze, glazing his face with frost as he tried to remember who he’d been before the shiver fever had filled his head with smoke.

  I should really go back, Rémi decided as he hauled himself out onto the roof of the carriage. The metal was frost rimed and slippery, but he felt no fear because he was a Shark and his balance was sharp, even if his mind wasn’t. Anyway, the carriage was wide enough for a man to walk ten good paces to either side before reaching the edge. True, it slanted sharply after just one pace, but he’d be fine if he kept to the central spine.

  His hunt forgotten, he picked his way cautiously across the ribbed hull, delighting in the iron gargoyles perched along his path. They were turned outwards to ward off evil so he couldn’t see their faces, but he could imagine them, ugly orkoid brutes with sharp eyes and sharper fangs, angry at being stuck out here to freeze. They had a point about that because the cold was something terrible up here. He could feel it drinking his skin dry and sucking the breath right out of him, eager to carry his soul away…

  He stumbled and yelped, almost slipping from the level spine of the roof. Those ten good paces to either side weren’t looking so good any more. One misstep and he’d be sliding down the roof like a man caught in a waterfall. He froze up, wheezing hard and shivering uncontrollably as the Ghostlands flashed past on either side.

  Got to get back inside, he realised, out of this killing cold.

  He frowned, peering at the trail of carriages ahead. There was a dark shape moving at the far end and even at this distance it didn’t look right. As he watched, it came rushing towards him like an insect, scuttling on all fours and leaping the gaps between the carriages in great hops, becoming more manlike with every step. And th
en it was close enough for Rémi to see that it was nothing like a man at all. It was a gargoyle come to life and its face was a lot worse than the ones he’d imagined.

  His heart pounding like a caged animal, he remembered that he’d come out here to hunt. Whatever else he was or wasn’t, Rémi Ngoro was a Shark.

  Steeling himself, he reached for his laspistol. His fingers closed on empty air. Maybe the gun had slipped loose during his crawl or maybe he’d forgotten it. He hoped it was the first. It didn’t really matter any more, but it was all he had left.

  Closing his eyes, Krazi Rémi turned away from the horror and stepped onto the slippery, sloping surface to his right, proving he wasn’t crazy at all.

  ‘How long, Iho’nen?’ the traveller, who had become a prisoner, demanded from the shadowed confines of his cell.

  ‘Not long, but it is a fragile process,’ the giant, who wore his many names like a shroud of half-truths, answered. ‘I did not anticipate that his body would become so damaged. His final foray into the hive was unfortunate.’

  ‘Is this error also within your acceptable parameters?’ the prisoner asked.

  ‘Not if he dies,’ the Calavera admitted.

  ICE

  And after it has beguiled, tormented and betrayed you, Truth will reveal itself as nothing more than another lie.

  – The Calavera

  FOUR DAYS AFTER UNITY

  It is time, the Empty One’s decree bled into Ujurakh’s skull.

  Unbound, the Sourblood surged from his lair in an empty promethium tank and scuttled into the ventilation system. Finally freed from the hateful shackles of meekness, his mind burned with the possibilities for wreaking ruin upon the flat-faces. It would have to be done with stealth and swiftness, for they were many and the Empty One’s schemes prohibited open conflict. Ujurakh did not understand this stricture, but it did not trouble him unduly for he was a tangled creature himself, drawn to the craft rather than the brutality of slaughter. The hunger soared alongside him, seeking to deny him this dignity for it cared only for the feast, but he leashed it and made it his weapon rather than his conqueror.

  Oh, we’ll feed deep and well, springing loose the hidden spiral seeds of their flesh, Ujurakh promised, but we’ll weave our carnage with whisper-light perfection!

  He scurried from carriage to carriage, sometimes through vents, sometimes across roofs, peering through windows or grilles at his blind prey, assessing numbers and positions, measuring movements and distances, assembling the scattered pieces of the plan he’d devised during his concealment.

  And finally, he was ready.

  ‘A whole day!’ Mordaine bellowed as he stormed into the Imperator Suite. ‘You let me sleep through an entire day!’

  ‘It was necessary, Haniel Mordaine,’ the Calavera said. He was waiting at the centre of the chamber, exactly as he’d been waiting the first time. ‘Without respite your body would have shut down catastrophically.’ The Space Marine appraised him as a man might assess an insect with a broken wing. ‘Even now your metabolic insignia indicate your condition is significantly impaired.’

  Mordaine faltered, his fury diminished to bluster now that he was face to face with this eldritch being again. As always, the Calavera’s logic was maddeningly irrefutable. He forced himself to stare into that cyclopean eye, wondering why he’d never challenged its nature before. Surely it couldn’t be a conventional…

  ‘It is an augmetic of rare and resplendent provenance,’ the Calavera answered.

  ‘What…?’

  ‘Your eyes betray your thoughts as mine cannot, Haniel Mordaine.’

  They were silent for a time, while Mordaine fumbled for the courage to press the challenge. Do I really want to know this truth now?

  ‘I want to see the prisoner,’ he demanded instead.

  ‘As you will, interrogator.’ The giant offered the ghost of a bow.

  ‘You agree?’ Mordaine couldn’t conceal his surprise.

  ‘Yes. It is time.’

  At a grand thirty-one years, André ‘Ironfingers’ Pava was far and away the oldest man in the company, but maturity had only cemented his status as an outsider. Very few Sharks expected to see twenty-five, let alone their thirties. Indeed, surviving to such a ripe old age was regarded as vaguely scandalous among the Iwujii, but there was no getting round the fact that Pava was too useful to lose, so one commander after another had kept him out of harm’s way – even Armande Uzochi, who was the craziest he’d ever served under. While this cosseting didn’t endear him to his fellows, they weren’t blind to his talents. Who else could they turn to when their guns or pict recorders played up? The Iwujii regiments had few tech-priests attached to their ranks, so a man with a knack for machinery was a precious if unloved commodity.

  Pava hummed to himself as he monitored the control panel in front of him, delighting in the tangle of levers, wheels and intricately carved dials. While the deeper secrets of the Chain Engine’s workings would always elude him, he had its shape now. It had taken some experimentation, but he’d eventually divined the right input mantras to awaken its machine-spirit and beseech it to soar across the ice. Afterwards he’d continued to refine his stewardship through trial and error, relying on his gift to win the engine over. It was an invigorating process and he realised he’d never been so happy in his life. Up front in the drive cabin he was a world away from the dirty looks and veiled insults of his so-called comrades.

  Something thudded heavily onto the cabin’s roof. Perplexed, Pava peered through the slanted viewport, trying to penetrate the white noise of hail and darkness. He heard a scrabbling overhead, then a clatter as the intruder slithered onto the access platform outside. Whoever was out there, they were now between Pava and the rest of the train. It suddenly struck him how isolated he was up front in the drive cabin.

  He was fumbling for his laspistol when the hatch was flung open.

  Sergeant Chizoba threaded his way through the silent throng of troopers packed into the barracks carriage, vigilant for any sign of laxity as he made another headcount. Some men knelt in prayer, while others sought wisdom in the scriptures of Father Terra, reading their spiritual primers with solemn frowns. Those who’d been inducted into the disciplines of the Jade Chord sat in contorted postures, their eyes closed as they meditated upon their transgressions. After the debacle in the saloon car they’d all woken up to the dissolution stalking them since they’d boarded.

  Sometimes I feel the engine itself watches us like a fell spirit, Chizoba mused darkly, testing and tempting us with a thousand glittering snares. A silver serpent…

  His former negligence still mortified him, but the seeds of corruption had been insidious and fertile, from the lascivious images adorning the staterooms to the fine spirits and exotic delicacies packed into the cargo carriages. But worst of all was the dazzling, hoarded wealth! Many of the Sharks had filled their pockets with loot in the first days, weighing themselves down like swine fattened on gilded muck, but Chizoba had put an end to it, standing watch as each thief cast his baubles overboard.

  The serpent hates me for that, he decided, but it fears me too.

  He’d reached the front of the carriage now, counting sixty-three Sharks in total. Taking into account the ones posted along the train there should have been sixty-four. Rémi was still missing. The fellow was probably sleeping off one of his shiver fits, but nobody recalled when they’d last seen him and Chizoba couldn’t help worrying. He hesitated, unwilling to disturb his comrades’ devotions.

  I’ll find him myself, he decided. It’s past time I did the rounds anyway.

  With a sigh he reached for his fur-trimmed greatcoat.

  Hunched over the blood-spattered drive console, Ujurakh yanked a lever at the end of the sixth row, completing the pattern the Empty One had placed inside his head. Somewhere at the tail end of the vehicle magnetic clamps would be releasing, leaving th
e rearmost carriage hanging by a thread. That thread would require a personal touch to sever.

  And so machines are unwoven and splayed wide open for the fools they are!

  The sabotage delighted him, for the unravelling of things, be they fashioned from flesh, metal or mind, was the true calling of Sourblood. With a hoot of glee he leapt to the cabin door, lingering at the threshold to savour the sweet aroma of liberated flesh in the air. He had wrought fine work here.

  ‘Sacred Throne!’ a voice hissed behind him.

  Ujurakh spun round and found himself face to flat-face with a kine beast standing on the access platform. He lunged before the patrolling sentry could reach for its weapon, his serrated beak ripping away the creature’s face in a snap of crimson as his twin blades slammed into its shoulders, pinning it rigid. Ignoring its convulsive kicks, he lifted the pinioned ruin and cast it overboard with a squawk of rage.

  The sentry’s sudden appearance here infuriated him. He’d timed his attack to interweave precisely with the flat-face patrols, yet this fool – this defiler! – had surprised him, tarnishing the perfection of his plan! Riding the wave of his rage, the hunger heaved within him, urging him to linger and feed on the driver’s carcass. Ujurakh slammed the hatch shut before the scent wafting from the cabin overpowered him.

  One master already claims my shame. I’ll be bound by no more!

  He leapt for the roof of the next carriage, straight into the teeth of the gale. His anger had made him careless and the blizzard snatched him as he landed, spinning him towards the edge of the speeding train. His talons scrabbled for purchase on the icy hull as the maelstrom howled and tore at his quills. Desperate, he crouched and sprang forwards, crashing down at the centre of the carriage and hugging the roof like a spiny limpet.

  Blood-blind fool! Ujurakh cursed himself. Then he was moving again, scurrying on all fours towards the rear of the train.

  ‘I’m going to do the rounds,’ Chizoba told the sentry standing beside the exit of the barracks car. ‘I may be gone a while.’ He swung the hatch open and the squall rushed in, dusting the interior with snow. A few hours ago the night had been quiet, but the blizzard had returned with a vengeance. The sergeant scowled, barely able to see the carriage ahead through the churning snow. Suddenly leaving this sanctuary seemed like the worst idea he’d ever had. But what if Rémi had hurt himself?