Silver Skulls: Portents

by S P Cawkwell

  Gileas regretted asking the question the moment it left his lips. It made him sound like an acolyte; a young warrior who had just stepped into the field for the first time. He began to retract his words, but Kerelan merely held up a hand.

  ‘A long time ago, sergeant, I felt that way. A very long time ago.’ Kerelan paused for a few moments. ‘I have over three centuries of service to my name and perhaps that gives me a greater perspective.’

  Gileas said nothing, letting Kerelan continue. ‘We were designed to kill the enemies of the Imperium without remorse and many of our brethren, particularly those in some younger Chapters, seem beyond humanity. But though we wage war in ways that may seem inhuman, we do so to preserve the sanctity of man. We do what they cannot do, indeed what they should not do. To visit death upon another on such a scale, to be a weapon of retribution, is to set aside humanity. Sergeant Ur’ten, my shoulders… your shoulders are broad enough to bear the responsibility of these deaths which stain our armour with the blood of their treachery. Once the battle is ended, we rest assured that our cause was just and the delivery of that justice was our obligation, to both the Emperor and mankind.’

  ‘You are wise, first captain.’

  ‘No, Gileas.’ Kerelan laughed lightly. ‘I am merely pragmatic. Speak with the Prognosticator if you get a chance, or find Chaplain Akando on our return to the ship. Unburden yourself to him.’ He fixed his gaze on the younger warrior. ‘Are your troubles dealt with for now?’

  ‘Yes, first captain.’

  The inquisitor and her retinue entered the palace through the recently demolished front doors and walked into a vast, echoing and empty hallway that was one of the most ostentatiously decorated buildings that Nathaniel Gall could ever recall. Frescos were painstakingly hand-painted on the walls, each a beautiful work of art depicting famous scenes from Imperial history. Everywhere there were the words of the Imperial creed.

  The place was deserted. Their footfalls on the exquisite flooring, inlaid with mosaic tiles making up the Imperial aquila, echoed unnaturally loudly around the vaulting chamber. So loud were the acoustics in this silent place that it seemed forty or fifty marched into its confines, not the dozen there actually were. There was no sign of life and the air, whilst not as choked with the dust and grime of the war beyond the doors, was still cloying and heavy.

  They found only one thing, and that was enough to draw muttered oaths of preservation from several of the soldiers. They found Governor Gryce.

  They found him at the end of the vestibule, but he was not in any position to give them the answers they sought. The man had been nailed to the wall, obscuring a great tapestry that was now blood-soaked and ruined beneath. His limbs and guts had been drawn out into the blasphemous image of the eightfold star of the Ruinous Powers. A jagged excision line ran down from neck to groin, opening him up like an obscene flower. No blood ran from the body and even the floor below was curiously free of what should have been an expansive pool. The unfortunate governor looked as though he had been drained dry. There were few signs of decay; the death had occurred only recently.

  Worse, though, even worse than the appalling state of the cadaver, was the expression on the dead man’s face. His eyes were open, staring down at some unseen horror beneath him, and his mouth stretched wide in what must have been his last, terrible scream. He had been an attractive man in life. Now he was just a slab of meat that the inquisitor surveyed with a dispassionate eye.

  The faint outline of markings on the floor was still visible and Nathaniel crouched with some difficulty to consider them. ‘Ritualistic,’ he observed. For a man who not so long ago had been wrapped in a state of unshakable grief, he was now once again the master of his emotions. A lifetime spent exercising control had simply come to the fore and pushed back the weaker part of his personality. ‘In keeping with what we must come to expect from the presence of sorcerous traitors.’

  ‘Such a find does not bode well for the longevity of Lady Gryce,’ was the inquisitor’s thoughtful response. ‘If they have done this to him, then I don’t imagine she will have fared any better.’ She turned to the ashen-faced Guardsmen who were trying their utmost to avoid looking at the grisly scene. They had all been exposed to battle-wounded, but this was something else. This was clinical butchery that spoke of horrors beyond their comprehension.

  ‘Get him down,’ she said. ‘Start sweeping the palace for Lady Gryce. We have the technology of the Space Marines at our fingertips, let us use it. If she is here, I want to find her. Alive or dead. Nathaniel, see if you can trace her.’

  It was merciful that the palace was a very small structure that represented barely a fraction of the hive, otherwise searching would have been something that could have taken days, even weeks. But the palace’s function was diplomatic and it served primarily as a residence for the governor and his wife. There would not be many hiding places.

  ‘Already looking. There is heavy residual disturbance present. I need to…’

  ‘Just do it, psyker.’ If the inquisitor saw how her snappish reply hurt him, she did nothing to show it, simply pushed past him to walk from the death tableau, her sharp eyes roaming up and down the vast hall. If Lady Gryce still lived, there was not much of a world left for her to inherit. But the bureaucratic machine had to run on regardless.

  ‘Find her,’ ordered the inquisitor. ‘Dead or alive, it matters little now. Just find Sinnaria Gryce. She is going to have a lot of explaining to do.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Before she is executed for this heresy.’

  There was no exact science to the use of the omophagea. Inteus knew this and yet he couldn’t help but try to process it logically. The use of their ability to absorb genetic knowledge through ingestion was a serious matter and ethically, the Silver Skulls did not advocate it. Inteus’s inexperience smarted, but he could access any number of texts on the matter. He knew the whys and the hows.

  They chose the prefrontal cortex specifically to access any short-term memory they could find. Sometimes it worked, other times it did not. But the subject in question had not been purely human. He had been a Space Marine. Warped and twisted beyond recognition, certainly; but capable of utilising far more of his brain capacity than an unmodified mortal.

  Seeking out the part of the brain that dealt with longer-term memory was a far more complicated process and Inteus knew that time was of the essence in the matter. But he could not hurry this. There was no way he could magically produce an outcome.

  The world around him faded into a distant buzz of voices and activity. His nostrils flared with the assorted scents of mud and death, the smoke from the hastily erected funeral pyres and the lingering stench of promethium that wafted around every battlefield.

  There were thoughts in his mind that he knew categorically were not his own. Thoughts that for him, a devout believer in the Imperial creed and lessons learned over decades of service to the Silver Skulls, were anathema. For several moments, he knew what it was to be filled with hatred so strong that it drummed inside his mind with a rhythm of its own. The rhythm thudded harder, more strongly; a driving force that meant he would do anything in the effort to bring chaos to order…

  ‘No. This will not be.’

  The Prognosticator drew in a deep, calming breath and exhaled slowly, purging these abhorrent thoughts. He was a Silver Skulls Prognosticator. He would not fall into the quagmire of this heresy. It was a mess that he had to unravel because somewhere in that memory – a memory that was already starting to fade – was a core piece of information that might just reveal the enemy’s intentions and where they could be found.

  He could feel it; the shape of it forming like a poorly received holo-transmission. Fuzzy at the edges, and indistinct. He reached through the haze to piece the thought together; much as it turned his stomach and much as it went against everything he’d ever understood, he still reached for it.

  I will know what you know,
he thought.

  And then he had the shape of it. A location, marked on the mental map of his knowledge of the city’s layout; a knowledge that came from both his own studies prior to deployment and from the mind of the traitor he now shared a brief but solid bond with.

  You will die before you get there. The voice arrived in the back of his skull and was as loud as a shout in his ear. He started, his eyes flaring open, and the delicate frame of the psychic hood that rose from his shoulders sparked with life.

  ‘Inteus?’ Daviks stepped forward. ‘Have you learned anything that can help us?’

  The Prognosticator smiled grimly. ‘A location, nothing more, but it is somewhere for us to begin.’

  Kerelan nodded abruptly. ‘Then consult the skeins of fate, Prognosticator, and we will set out immediately.’

  The reading had been swift and efficient. It was always so with a Prognosticator’s divinations in the field. There had been no sign that the party should not proceed and so the Talriktug, along with Gileas’s squad, had left the battlefield and headed towards the ancient chapel that Inteus had identified.

  The city was a mess; what had once been a bustling hive of industry had been reduced to ruins and blasted shells. Ferrocrete dust filled the air, motes flickering in the first watery rays of the morning sun. Here and there the Silver Skulls passed bodies of citizens and rebels alike; senseless deaths in the name of an evil cause. They found no signs of life.

  The battle on Valoris had raged for many months and although a spate of early evacuations by the Imperial Guardsmen had seen some of the citizens to safety, it was clear given the number of bodies they passed that that had been relatively few in the grand scheme of things. Gileas crouched down at one point and picked up a child’s doll, its face broken and one arm missing. He studied it without speaking before tossing it aside. It clattered against the broken stones and came to rest again, its sightless glass eyes fixed on the ponderous skies above. Somewhere beneath the rubble was its owner.

  ‘A senseless waste,’ he said quietly. There was a quiet anger smouldering deep inside him; something familiar and known and he welcomed it.

  ‘First captain, look at this.’ The voice was Tikaye’s, and Kerelan’s lumbering form moved over to join the other Space Marine who was standing before a generator. It was a standard Imperial design, or at least it would have been had the innards not been torn out. Evidence of tampering was clear: wires had been re-routed and others left to spark uselessly. None of the party were privy to the secrets of the machine-spirits that dwelt within such things, but one thing was evident to them all. This damage was not accidental.

  A trailing cable led from the generator, snaking its way back away through the ruins carrying whatever power it was leeching towards its new destination. With a snort of derision, Kerelan unsheathed his relic blade.

  ‘Brother-Captain Kerelan, you should not…’ Djul began to speak, but was silenced as Kerelan’s blade came down and sliced through the conduits, severing the connection.

  ‘That could have been a foolish action,’ reprimanded Djul. ‘It could have been a trap, laid for us to destroy ourselves.’

  Kerelan shrugged. ‘It could have been. But it was not. So get on with your task, brother.’

  ‘As my captain commands.’ Brother Djul, always diligent in his duties, murmured a prayer to the departed machine-spirit and nodded his head towards another generator, several metres away. The same thing was evident there, another cable stretching away into the gloom.

  ‘Destroy what you can as we move,’ ordered Kerelan. ‘And pick up the pace.’

  One of the lights had gone out.

  The stuttering power from the city’s damaged generators had been barely enough to produce an erratic glow and so it went unnoticed by all but one. In the darkness, the bulk of the First shifted, the shackles that bound him in place clanking against his vast form.

  Garduul flexed one ancient limb and the chains that held him strained to contain the power of his artificial body. The hulking Helbrute tugged against his shackles a second time and five of the twenty slaves set to record his mutterings backed away in alarm.

  ‘The silver tide comes,’ he rumbled from deep within the sarcophagus. ‘The silver tide comes to me. But this is not the time of the conjunction. That time is now. It has passed. It will be. It will not be. This will not come to pass. The world fluxes, the outcome shifts…’

  He ceased his motion and the chains fell silent again. Once more, the Dreadnought lapsed into its litany of madness and garbled divinations.

  Another light went out.

  Fourteen

  Revelations

  Nathaniel allowed a single tendril of psychic thought to lazily ahead of him, keeping his senses finely tuned for the touch of life. Since the grisly discovery in the main chamber on the ground floor they had encountered increasing numbers of bodies; Administratum officials, judging by their robes of office.

  The Imperial Guardsmen had already combed several levels of the palace and by the time they reached the fifteenth floor were growing visibly weary. Nathaniel had offered them one bright moment when he had caught the trace of a mind but the subsequent search and pursuit of that thread turned up nothing apart from a domesticated animal that had been found trembling beneath a chair. The moment one of the young soldiers had gone towards the creature, it had tried to bite him and then fled in terror.

  That had not improved morale.

  Everywhere there were signs of slaughter. Corpses were piled high in various states of dismemberment, and all of them had shared the same fate as their governor, having been thoroughly exsanguinated. The beautiful decor of the Governor’s Palace was stained crimson and the eight-pointed star of Chaos was daubed everywhere. Yet for all this, the building remained whole whilst so many others around it had fallen in ruin. The air was thick with the stench of butchery, the raw stink assailing them all until it clotted the air enough that rebreathers became necessary, even for the inquisitor.

  It was around the twentieth floor, his hip screaming in agony from all the stairs he had climbed, when Nathaniel finally connected with an unmistakable spark of a living mind. He had been carefully tracing every scrap of biomass in the palace, examining each particle in what was rapidly becoming the unlikely hope of finding a trace of life.

  ‘Nathaniel?’ Inquisitor Callis’s voice was sharp as she studied the psyker who had just stopped dead in the middle of a deserted corridor, causing at least two of the Guardsmen to walk into him. He held up a hand to silence her and for once, she made no comment. When Nathaniel was this deep in concentration, it was not advisable to interrupt.

  His pinched face screwed up in effort and then he nodded. ‘Definitely human this time,’ he said and raised a long, thin finger to point. ‘That way.’

  ‘Listen.’

  One of the young Guardsmen had spoken. He was standing beside one of the countless doors that lined the hallways. There was the faintest of sounds, as though the maker were trying and failing to control themselves, but now the party had fallen silent, they could all hear it quite clearly. It was the sound of sobbing.

  ‘Open that door.’

  The inquisitor pointed at the nearest soldier who did as she was ordered, heading for the door. It was not locked and swung open easily. The room within was a bedchamber of some kind; not anywhere near well-appointed enough to be one of the master suites. Perhaps a guest room of some kind, or one of the higher-ranking administrators’. There was a bed, a simple dresser unit and a weeping woman ensconced in one corner. It was the latter that drew everyone’s attention.

  Her crying stopped immediately as the door swung open and she held up a pistol in shaking hands, pointing it at the door.

  ‘Put down the weapon, Lady Gryce,’ came the imperious instruction of the inquisitor. ‘We are not here to hurt you.’

  Sinnaria Gryce stared at the deputatio
n at the door, scrabbling up against the wall as much as she could manage. She was a thin woman with a long, fox-like face framed by expensively treated blonde hair that had long since fallen into wild disarray. Her face was dirty and smeared and her eyes met those of Nathaniel for a fleeting second.

  ‘We are here to help you,’ said the inquisitor calmly, and pushed past the soldiers and Nathaniel to walk towards her. ‘Are you Sinnaria Gryce? My name is Inquisitor Liandra Callis of the Ordo Hereticus. We are here to end this nightmare. You will give me your full cooperation.’

  It was not that the inquisitor lacked sympathy for the woman’s plight, Nathaniel observed. It was just that right at that moment it was the least of her concerns.

  The woman stood up slowly, the long, bloodstained gown that she wore dropping to cover her feet. She stared at the inquisitor in terror. Her eyes were large and a pale blue; so pale that the irises were verging on white. They were not her natural eyes, Nathaniel was willing to bet, but augmetics of some kind. It was a strange sort of fashion, he decided, to want to look like a fish.

  ‘Are you Sinnaria Gryce?’ Again the snapped question, and the woman nodded her head slowly, her hair falling into her face.

  The inquisitor smiled warmly and reached out a hand, switching from cold logic to compassion in the blink of an eye. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Come with me. We will get you to safety.’ The words were not spoken in a gentle manner and the order in her tone was unmistakable.

  Just like the inquisitor Lady Gryce underwent a complete shift of mood, though in a different direction. The fear and anguish fled and were replaced by a righteous indignation. ‘They shot me,’ she declared furiously in a quavering voice. ‘How dare they? They were my husband’s personal house guard and the treacherous dogs turned on me. I managed to get myself in here…’