by Henry Zou
Perhaps they would know of fertile gorges in the region, or even of karst caves with edible rodentia. Better yet, Abena hoped that despite the famine, the kinship would honour their ties and perhaps spare her a cup of fermented milk for Ashwana.
Through the haze of noon dust, she could recognise the distinctive silver of their long carriages. The road trains, mechanical beasts from a lost age of mining, were drawn like protective wagons in a circle around the settlement, the rusting bulk of their segmented carriages protecting the tents and lean-tos that clung to their bellies from wind and sandstorm. In all, Abena remembered the Nullabor as a generous but poor kinship. They did not own many heads of caprid, and their road trains were in disrepair, the engines temperamental after sixty centuries of maintenance. They owned only early prospector models with loud engines and noisy wide gauge tracks. Some of the corroded carriages had been shored up with hand-painted wood panelling, giving them a roguish, antiquated air. Yet Abena knew the kinship would still share whatever meagre supplies they could.
Drawing a zinc whistle from her belt, Abena blew a long, warbling note. It was to herald the arrival of a peaceful visitor and its sound travelled far across the sandscape. Yet there was no response whistle from the Nullabor.
Unsettled by the silence, Abena shielded her eyes with her hand and tried to search for the tell-tale signs of carrion birds in the sky. If the Nullabor had fallen ill to plague then surely she’d be able to see carrion birds. Yet there were no birds, just a pervasive sense of lifelessness from the clutch of carriages.
She stood for a while, unsure of whether to enter the settlement or turn back. But Ashwana needed the food, and her old painful knees would not allow her to hunt game so late in the day. Easing an arrow out of her quiver, she rested it across the strike plate, ready to loosen. It was the custom for women of the plains to participate in hunting and herding as much as the men engaged in domestic chores, and although she could no longer run or jump like she used to, her arms were strong from carrying pails of water and stone-milling, more than enough to draw the recurve.
The carriages were occupied. Huddled around their protective bulk, light wooden frames had been erected and then draped with heavy cloth to form lean-tos. Plainsmen would take off their red shukas and spread them over the frame of their tents before they entered a home. The purpose was twofold: one was that the red cloth would ward away evil spirits who would see that a house was already occupied, and the second, perhaps more pragmatically, was to prevent dust and dirt from being carried into the home.
The carriages were hoary with a film of red dust. Dust storms were worst during the night and any respectable plainsmen would have beaten the walls with a stick by morning. The fact that the carriages had accumulated so many days of red dirt meant the kinship had not moved for many days, perhaps weeks. As that notion slowly crept into her mind, Abena suddenly became aware that all the Nullabor could have perished.
‘I do not wish to harm you. Restless spirits, do not harm me,’ she chanted under her breath as she stepped towards the nearest carriage. At that moment, as if roused by her superstition, a brisk south wind picked up, gusting oxide dust in her direction and flapping the cloth draped across the carriage frames. With it came the sudden stink of rot.
Abena held her breath in fright as she recognised the smell. In her younger days as a shepherdess she had come across a caprid that had strayed from the herd and been mauled by some plains predator. The stench of that carcass under the thermal suns had been horrendous, bloated as it was with gas. The smell coming from the carriages was almost the same.
‘Ashwana’s grandmumu? We must eat soon before the food is cold,’ said a voice from behind her. It was a quiet voice, a young voice.
Startled, Abena turned quickly, drawing her bow smoothly. But when she turned there was nobody there. Perhaps the voice had been carried by the wind? She strained her eyes against the gust of wind to look at the other carriages, set in a concentric ring around a communal firepit.
Whip-fast, in the furthest corner of her vision, she sensed movement. She did not quite see it, but felt that sudden absence of stillness.
‘How de body?’ Abena called out in customary greeting. ‘I cannot see you.’
The wind gust picked up, drawing a veil of rusty particles across her vision. No more than twenty paces away, she saw a figure stand up from between two carriages. Judging by the raw-boned shoulders and narrow torso it was a young plainsmen of the Nullabor, but she could not see him well.
‘What is your name, little son?’ Abena asked the man, making known that she was a person of elder seniority.
‘I can’t remember my name. I remember yours. You are Abena. We should put out the fire pit so the others can sleep,’ said the silhouette.
The man must be so feverish he was talking nonsense, Abena realised. Her grandmotherly instincts wanted her to tell the boy to sit back down until the rust storm had passed, but something cautioned her to keep quiet. The silhouette began to stumble towards her, speaking fragmentary phrases that made no sense.
‘Remember to lock the talon squall pens,’ he ordered angrily, before lowering his voice and chuckling. ‘This is my best and most favourite shuka.’
Abena was wary. She remembered folktales of the dead who returned to their homes with only fragmentary memories of a past life. Vodou they had called them, and although they had no minds, they retained enough fragments of their past – things they had said often in life, or certain things people had said to them, and they mimicked the living with their vocal cords, luring out distraught relatives with pleas and familiar phrases. She had never believed in such things – raising Ashwana on her own had required a sturdy head – but now she was not so sure.
‘I do not know you,’ Abena shouted.
The rust storm died away, leaving the particles to twirl and settle. Like a curtain falling away, Abena saw the corpse that was walking towards her. That was what shocked Abena more than anything, the corpse walked with a loping gait as it had in life. Despite the fur of mould that grew across its pale, bloodless skin, it was walking. It appeared unhurried as it approached her, although its face, bloated by fluid beyond all recognition, was angled away towards the sky. It was as if the man was stuck between life and death, the skin and flesh rotting away while it talked of a past life and moved like the living.
Abena aimed and fired a hunting arrow into its chest. The dead man wheezed painfully as one of its lungs collapsed, but it kept walking. It was close now and Abena found herself paralysed by a mixture of fear and fascination.
It was so near, she could see the man was dressed in a sarong of undyed funeral wool. It meant the man had been buried and sealed in the bole of a boab tree. Somehow, it had clawed its way out and had returned to its home. Perhaps the tales were true.
It reached out a hand towards her and touched her upper arm. The coldness of the palm on her warm skin shocked her into movement. She ran several steps, her bow already drawn before she swung around and released another arrow. The copper head cut deep below the dead man’s ribcage and punched out through his back with a dry, meaty thud. Entirely unfazed by the wounds, the man snatched for Abena with stiffened fingers. She wrenched away, frantic with adrenaline. She began to run, racing down the dune slopes.
Wordlessly, the corpse pursued her. She could feel its presence on the nape of her neck. It no longer tried to talk to her, its intent had become singular. It hit her hard from behind, knocking her down the hill, sending her rolling down the rocky slope. She came to a jarring stop as the creature loomed over her. As it reached down to seize her, Abena thought about Ashwana, lying in her hut alone. How long would it be before these ghosts came for her?
Chapter Five
Barsabbas woke from his sleep to an aching in his left primary lung. Abruptly uncomfortable, he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of his cot. Grimacing, he rubbed his lower ribs slowly. It was
not real pain, not real damage, but it seemed real to him nonetheless.
‘Your lung is troubling you again?’ Barsabbas called out.
Sargaul appeared in the door frame, dressed in a bodyglove for early sparring. ‘The same. I feel it most in the mornings. The Chirurgeons were not thorough in purging the residual shrapnel.’
Barsabbas nodded thoughtfully. He was feeling the old wounds of his blood bond, a common experience between pairs. After all, it had been Barsabbas’s left primary lung they had excised and transplanted into Sargaul in their rituals of pairing.
Years ago, as a young neophyte, Barsabbas had not fully understood the rituals performed upon him. He remembered vaguely the surgical pain. The multiple waking horrors as the Chirurgeons sheared his bones for marrow and opened his muscles like the flaps of a book. There were not many memories from that time, but those were the ones he recalled.
Now, as an older, wiser battle-brother, Barsabbas still knew little of the secret bond. The process itself had become blurred with folklore and mysticism, to the point where effect and placebo became one. Paired with the veteran Sargaul, Barsabbas would become strengthened by their shared experience. He would inherit not only Sargaul’s genetic memory, but also his bravery and ferocity. There was an element of witchcraft in this, but whenever Barsabbas felt that twinge in his lung, he was convinced there was substance to their ritual.
‘How is your knee?’ Sargaul asked, flexing his own.
Barsabbas stretched out his right leg, the thick cords of his thigh rippling. ‘Better today,’ he shrugged.
‘I thought so,’ nodded Sargaul, flexing his own right leg. ‘They were ferocious, those tau. Much better at war-making than I expected.’
Barsabbas had almost repressed the memory of defeat but Sargaul’s words invoked the images back to wakefulness. Just ten lunar cycles ago they had deployed on the tau world designated ‘Govina’ – a planet targeted for its lush natural resources and relatively weak military presence. It should have been a simple plunder raid for Squad Besheba: hit hard and retreat with a mid-grade quota of slaves. But they had underestimated the aliens, and the tau military presence proved entirely capable.
They engaged on the tundra, trading shots between dwarf shrubs and sedges, low grasses and lichens. By the hundreds, the tau had come, their firing lines disciplined and their shots overwhelming in sheer volume. Pulsating blue plasma hammered them so hard their armour systems had been pushed to failure, and Barsabbas’s suit had reached seventy per cent damage threshold within the first few volleys.
The squad had fought with customary aggression and speed. They had burst amongst the tau infantry squares, ploughing through their chest-high adversaries, splintering their helmets and bones. They had killed so many.
But it was the tau’s home and they did not flee. Squad Besheba had been driven back, overwhelmed by sheer numbers. In the end, they had fled, chased by ground-hugging tau hoverers. They escaped, but without dignity and their wounds were many. Like Barsabbas’s disintegrated patella and Sargaul’s collapsed lung, the shame had stayed with them, agonising them for the past ten months.
Thousands of slaves woke to the pulsating itch in their left cheekbones, scratching their scarred faces. It was an urgent, pressing discomfort that could not be ignored.
Beneath each scar could be seen the outline of a flesh burrowing thrall-worm. Agitated during sleep cycle, when the slaves were at a distance from their masters, the thrall-worms bulged against their cheeks like distended tumours. With clockwork precision, at the six-hour mark, the parasites would rouse their hosts by feeding on the rich fat beneath their skins. Sleepy-eyed, fatigued and forlorn, the slaves would wake to their daily work.
The workforce were of all kinds and pasts, both strong and feeble, soldiers and clerics, shift workers or merchants; here an artisan, over there a human Guard colonel, all of them slaves to the bonded brotherhood. Those strong and young set about the tasks of burden, carrying equipment lockers and hefty pallets. The old and feeble, those who had been branded many years ago, fanned out into the corridors to light the upper halls with sconce lanterns. Others fetched haunches of roast for their twin masters, for although the post-humans did not need such food for sustenance, they enjoyed the taste of rare meat.
The most unfortunate of all were those who formed the work teams – the delvers. They were given the impossible duty of clearing the encroaching bio-flora that threatened to overwhelm the ship. Such teams often disappeared into the forgotten sectors of the ship, which had become a cavernous ecosystem. Those regions became wildernesses and the delvers with their hatchets and chain cutters could do little to stop their spread. Many were lost to the apex predators that flourished in the abyssal depths of the space hulk.
Slaves who had become favourites were allowed to rise one ship’s cycle later than the rest. The black-turbaned sentries in their hauberks of brass, the gun ratings, the deckhands and pleasure pets were all among the number who enjoyed relative luxury.
But on this day, all the slaves, regardless of hierarchy, would forgo sleep or food for the Blood Gorgons mobilisation. It was not full Chapter strength deployment, but it would still be a time of solemn ritual and ceremony. The drop chambers would need to be cleaned and the vacuum locks cleared; weapons would be oiled and armour polished. Sacrifices would be made. There was much work to be done.
It was not yet dawn cycle, but Barsabbas and Sargaul were already in the Maze of Acts Martial. Squad Besheba had set up a three-point fire pattern in a little-used section of the maze.
The ceiling of the tunnel had collapsed under the bacterial acid, forming a natural cave shelf. The collapse had also breached several water filtration pipes and the resultant fluid had allowed a host of micro-
organisms to thrive and grow. Through the thermal imaging of his helmet, the interior wilderness appeared to Barsabbas as a low-lying pattern of fronds, reefs and fungal caps. He opened the vents of his armour and allowed the moist, external air to creep into his suit. Tasting with his tongue, he judged seventy-two per cent humidity in the air combined with a high blend of toxic carbon, likely released by the nearby floral growth. There was something else in the air too, the animal scent of sweat or something similar.
There was a flash of thermal colour to his left and Barsabbas turned to meet it, his ocular targeting systems already synchronising with his bolter sights. A human shape rose from behind a mound of viral lichen and opened fire. The first shot went wide, a ranging shot that left the searing after-image of its trajectory across Barsabbas’s vision. The next one clipped him on the hip, ricocheting with a whine off the ceramite plate. His armour’s daemon spirit groaned sleepily in protest.
Before Barsabbas could return fire, the human was already dead. Sargaul had finished him with a clean chest shot. Bond-Brothers Hadius and Cython shot him repeatedly, tearing him down to constituent fragments.
‘Cease fire!’ called Sergeant Sica, waving down their violent excess. Hadius and Cython whooped with glee.
‘That’s it, we’re done here,’ added the sergeant’s blood bond, Bael-Shura. ‘Thirty kills. That’s the last of them.’
‘No,’ said Sargaul, holding up the auspex. ‘Squad, hold. I’m getting ghost readouts on the auspex.’
A caged pen of thirty Guardsman captives had been released into the maze less than two hours ago. They had been a platoon of Mordians guarding a merchant vessel en route to Cadia. The men had put up a stoic fight, but by Barsabbas’s count, they had killed all thirty. There shouldn’t be any more targets within this section of the maze. Yet their auspex was pinging.
Barsabbas took the auspex from Sargaul and studied the tracking device. Whatever it was, the target was large and moved with expert stealth. Several times it moved so quietly that the auspex sonar reflection lost track of its movement. It closed in, only to disappear, then reappear, slightly closer than before.
‘A maul
mouth?’ Sargaul suggested. He was referring to the apex predator that had evolved in the confines of the Cauldron Born.
Barsabbas shook his head. Maul mouths were light-framed creatures, their slender, hairless bodies suited to hiding within circulation vents and underneath walkways. This was too big.
Abruptly, the auspex began to ping again. ‘Fifty metres!’ Sergeant Sica hissed urgently. As quickly as the warning came, the auspex settled again.
The squad fell into interlocking arcs of fire. They couldn’t see any targets. Except for the bubble of a dimorphic yeast fungus as it corroded the tunnel walls, there was no sound.
‘Thirty-six metres,’ Sargaul voxed through the squad link as his auspex caught a fleeting glimpse. The target was moving fast, darting between the auspex’s blind spots.
‘Eighteen metres.’
Barsabbas toggled between thermal imaging and negative illumination. Neither showed a target. He loosened the muscles of his shoulders and placed one hand on the boarding axe sheathed against the small of his back.
‘I’ve lost target,’ Sica voxed, his voice laced with frustration.
Without clearance, Hadius and Cython loosed a quick burst of their bolters. The distinct echo of the jackhammer shots signalled they had hit nothing.
‘Cease fire, you soft-backs!’ Sica barked.
Suddenly, Cython was flying backwards, as if struck heavily. Hadius lumbered to the aid of his blood bond, but he too was sent sprawling. It was happening so fast that Barsabbas cursed as he tore the hand axe from its casing and looped small circles to warm up his wrist.
Sergeant Sica aimed his bolter at a large dark shape that was suddenly in the middle of their position. Sargaul did the same while Bael-Shura brought the squad flamer to bear. The shape was black, its negative luminescence making it appear colder than its thermal surroundings.
‘Hold your weapons, Squad Besheba,’ came a familiar voice through their squad’s direct link.
