Carcharodons: Red Tithe

by Robbie MacNiven

The light of the ancient Carcharodon’s force staff led the way. The shadows seemed to flit and dart over and round them, like living, breathing beings. Te Kahurangi knew that wasn’t far from the truth. The rest of the strike force had stopped transmitting, and their vital signs had all turned red and static. After a second, even those auto-sense displays flickered out. Te Kahurangi and Rull were left in darkness.

  ‘Pale Nomad,’ hissed a voice. The end of the last flight of stairs was ahead, the lumens in the corridor beyond it turning the figure filling the doorway into a silhouette of dire spikes. Two eyes burned from the horned darkness, redolent with ten thousand years of hatred.

  ‘Kiri mate,’ Te Kahurangi said. ‘Dead Skin.’ He climbed the last few stairs, his force staff vibrating with power. The great scythe grasped in the shadowed giant’s hand flared with its own unnatural light, tendrils of blue flame coiling around its wicked edge.

  ‘You should not have come here, dear brother,’ the shadow told Te Kahurangi. ‘For one so old, you are a fool.’

  ‘For one so weak, you are overconfident,’ the Chief Librarian replied. He lashed out, releasing the power he’d been drawing into the force staff. An invisible bow wave struck the shadow at the top of the stairs, the unstoppable, natural force of a tidal surge. The darkness was hurled back down the corridor, crashing into the floor at the far end with a crack of splitting rockcrete. Te Kahurangi pushed up out of the stairwell, leaning heavily on his staff. He could feel blood dripping from his nose, running down the inside of his helmet.

  The moment the green light of his staff left the stairwell, he heard a screech. He spun in time to see the shadows falling upon Rull. The Carcharodon’s chainsword roared, and black daemonic ichor splattered the walls.

  ‘Go on, Pale Nomad!’ the Carcharodon shouted, driving his weapon through the mass of dark, fluttering wings and snapping maws. Te Kahurangi turned back down the corridor without hesitation. Rull was doing his duty to the Chapter and the Void Father, as the rest of the strike force had before him. Te Kahurangi would do the same.

  The shadow figure regained its feet. In the lumen light the Carcharodon saw him clearly for the first time – a Chaos Space Marine sorcerer, the flayed flesh draping his armour dark with newly crusted blood.

  ‘Your skins are fresh, traitor,’ Te Kahurangi said as he advanced, forcing himself to stop leaning on his staff and raise it. ‘What rituals were they a part of? What did you have to give your daemon master in order to escape the void I left you in? Your soul?’

  ‘I gave far less than I will take from you, Pale Nomad,’ the Chaos sorcerer snarled. He advanced to meet the Chief Librarian, and the corridor shuddered as the haft of the great warp scythe crashed against Te Kahurangi’s staff. For a second the two psykers strained, mentally and physically locked, limbs trembling and servos grating. The lumen strips overhead started to pop, and the rockcrete underfoot began to buckle and give way.

  Eventually both relented. A crash like thunder reverberated down the corridor, and they were hurled apart.

  The sorcerer regained his feet first, coming for Te Kahurangi with his burning scythe swinging. He chanted, the dark words snagging and dragging the shadows after him, coiling around his ghoulish frame.

  Te Kahurangi struggled onto one knee, gripping his force staff in both hands. His body was shaking, and his skull felt as though it had been shattered into a thousand shards. He tried to drag the broken pieces together and hurl them at the Dead Skin, his psychic hood vibrating as he delved deeper into his reserves of strength. With a litany of binding he sent another invisible tide of psychic energy crashing towards the Chaos sorcerer. This time the Night Lord simply laughed, a gesture of the scythe parting the wave. The shadows coiling about him had grown monstrously, transforming him into a looming, cackling revenant that towered over the Pale Nomad.

  Te Kahurangi glanced at his visor display. Rull was dead. The sorcerer made a contemptuous gesture and the last of the lumen strips in the corridor burst. Only the green glow of the stone on Te Kahurangi’s force staff offered any illumination. Even as the Pale Nomad tried to marshal his strength for one last blow, it flickered and went out.

  The shadows fell, and he knew no more.

  ‘We are too late,’ said Tonga. Kordi could not bring himself to agree, though the truth of his void brother’s words were evident.

  The room had been a refectorium. Now all it served was butchered meat. Corpses of Carcharodons and heretics lay strewn where they had fallen, armour and flesh pulverised and ripped apart by indiscriminate, close-range gunfire or by the tearing edge of chainblades.

  ‘A strike force,’ Ekara surmised, surveying the carnage. ‘Perhaps they used the same tunnels as us to gain entry.’ The survivors of Fourth Squad had followed the winding sewer channels and flumes up through Sink Shaft One, until they’d found an entry hatch into the Precinct Fortress’ vaults. Tonga had blown them open with melta charges, triggering the lower level alarms. There had only been a handful of cultist guards to respond. Now they realised why there had been so few.

  ‘Arm yourselves,’ Ekara ordered. Kordi bent and retrieved the nearest bolter, pulling it from beneath the headless corpse of its former owner. From the exile markings and bionic left leg, Kordi recognised Brother Imau of Fifth Squad. He murmured a Void Vow of Quietening for the restless spirit of his brother, promising to return for him and the rest of his wargear once the mission was over.

  Haru and Tongo were also rearming. The latter had discovered Brother Rull’s multi-melta amidst the slain, notched with the Devastator’s distinctive burning maw crest. With no sign of Rull himself, Tongo hefted the dual-nozzle weapon and its heavy pack, disengaging his own. The pyrum fuel in the melta’s backpack throbbed with barely contained potency.

  ‘Which way?’ asked Haru as he locked a trio of fresh magazines to his mag-belt. Three hatchways led off from the decimated hall.

  ‘Right,’ said Ekara. ‘And look for a schematics terminal. That, or pray our auto-senses come back online and we can access the retinal display again.’

  ‘Do you think there were any survivors?’ Kordi asked, looking over the bodies of his brethren, almost buried by the filthy corpses of the heretics.

  ‘If so, there’s no evidence of which way they went,’ Ekara said. ‘Our objective remains the same. We find the leader of this heretical warband, and we kill him.’

  ‘From the Outer Dark we come,’ Haru intoned.

  ‘Darkness there and nothing more,’ the other Carcharodons finished.

  The right-hand door gave way to a long barracks corridor. Hatches led off to sleeping blocks, all of them still pristine from morning inspections. There was no sign of any Carcharodons having passed this way already – if any had survived the battle in the refectorium, Kordi feared they’d taken another route. Then, at the third door on the right, Haru paused.

  ‘Movement,’ he said, voice clicking over the inter-squad vox. ‘Open hatch, breach.’

  The four Space Marines stacked to the right before sweeping inside. Kordi tracked the undisturbed rows of bunk beds, the metal frames and starched sheets bright in the buzzing lumen light. They split off and advanced down the separate aisles, armour whirring softly.

  It was Tonga who flushed out the figure skulking behind the bunks. It tried to make a dash past the Carcharodon, towards the open hatch and the empty corridor beyond. A reflexive blow sent it sprawling across the nearest bed. As it struggled to rise, stunned, it found itself staring down the barrels of the multi-melta, the deadly weapon vibrating with power.

  ‘Please, no,’ the woman sobbed. She was clad in bloody and battered arbitrator plate, but barely looked old enough to be out of schola, her short hair spiky with dried sweat and her pale face etched with wide-eyed terror.

  ‘Identify yourself,’ Tonga blared over his external vox.

  ‘I-I’m a servant of the God-Emperor!’

  �
�Name and rank, now!’

  ‘Sub-Warden Jade Rannik, arbitrator designate zero-two-oh-six-five, Zartak Penal Mine Colony Detachment, Sub-Precinct Twelve jurisdiction.’

  ‘You’ve been cowering in here since the Precinct Fortress fell?’ Ekara demanded.

  ‘N-No lord. I came here with… more warriors like you. I brought them up through the sewers.’

  ‘The warriors in the refectorium at the end of the corridor?’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘Why did you not see fit to die with them? Were they not worthy of you?’

  The human was shaking violently, eyes darting from one Carcharodon to the next.

  ‘Do you believe her?’ Haru asked over the inter-squad vox.

  ‘Her armour is heavily damaged, and she is showing signs of distress common in unaugmented humans who have been exposed to recent high-intensity combat situations,’ Ekara said. ‘I believe she is telling the truth. Even if she has been found wanting at the final test, she led our brethren this far. And she can still lead us.’

  ‘You are familiar with the layout of this facility?’ the strike leader asked out loud. Rannik continued to look from one expressionless grey visor to the next, her features thrown into darkness by the giants that surrounded her.

  ‘I am, lords.’

  ‘Then rejoice, for an opportunity to absolve your recent failings has presented itself. You will lead us immediately to this site’s Centrum Dominus, or die with us in the attempt to reach it. As the Void Father wills. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, lords.’

  + + Gene scan complete + + +

  + + Access granted + + +

  + + Beginning mem-bank entry log + + +

  + + Date check, 3679875.M41 + + +

  Day 92, Zartak local.

  We are still uncovering more bodies. We are taking a direct route to Sink Shaft One – it appears to be the epicentre of the fighting. I have noted well over a thousand corpses in prison overalls now, displaying a wide variety of fatal injuries – las, bolt, shotgun blasts and severe close quarter trauma wounds are all evident. I can only assume such scenes of carnage are mirrored in the surrounding tunnels. They appear to have turned upon one another after gaining their freedom, and in turn been cut down by the Space Marines, though whether their killers were the slain traitors we have already uncovered or those who put them to the sword, it is impossible to know. Nor do we yet know how they escaped their cells to roam the mine works seemingly at random.

  Lexmechanic Forren has sent 2486 back down into the mine with news that the astropath aboard the Saint Angelica has received a reply from Lord Rozenkranz. I have halted our progress through the mines at a junction while the data is transferred into a readable format and brought down after us.

  Signed,

  Interrogator Augim Nzogwu.

  + + Mem-bank entry log ends + + +

  + + Thought for the Day: Seek faith before seeking wisdom + + +

  Chapter XV

  Skell sat in the midst of patterns of blood and chalk, his head in his hands, and wept. The thing in his skull was enjoying it. The daemon’s cackles rose above his own thoughts, drowning them out, causing his sobs to grow louder and more uncontrolled. He could taste the salty bitterness of the tears on his lips, and the vile dirt they’d tracked through. He could taste blood too. The daemon was taunting him.

  My name is Bar’ghul. We shall be getting to know one another very well indeed, Mika Doren Skell.

  ‘If you don’t say anything back, it’ll enjoy it less,’ said a different voice. Skell’s head shot up. Through his blurred vision he saw a leering skull poised mere feet from his face, eyes glaring red from its sockets. He sprang back with a cry, almost disturbing the fresh markings the sorcerer had daubed on the floor around him.

  ‘Your fear is amusing First Kill, child,’ the nightmarish giant said. Beside it two of its brothers were wheeling in a gleaming surgical rack from the medicae bay, leaving it at the edge of the pentagram. The one that had spoken to him was kneeling, so that its gaze was level with Skell’s. As the boy stared in terror at the visage that had haunted his nightmares it reached up with its spiked gauntlets. There was a thud of locks, and the helmet came off in its grasp. Skell found himself looking into black eyes, framed by alabaster skin and a shock of jet hair. The face was the last thing Skell had expected. It was young.

  It smiled, revealing metal teeth etched to wicked points. The boy shuddered.

  ‘I was like you, once,’ it said. ‘Not so very long ago. Torn by guilt and fear. But the galaxy has a strange way of righting wrongs. The parents who adopted me spent their lives living off the same class of people they plucked me from. When I was your age, I lowered the shield protecting their home and let my future brothers slaughter them. The galaxy rewarded the way I had righted that wrong. It elevated me.’

  Do not listen to him, snarled the voice in Skell’s head. It was by my will that he was raised up, no other’s. Skell moaned. The kneeling giant went on.

  ‘You see these things…’ He gestured up at the darkest corners of the Centrum Dominus. They were filled with rustling, clicking shapes. Skell caught an impression of bat-like wings, slavering maws and eyes that burned with pale blue warpfire. He flinched away, looking back down at the bloody inscriptions around his feet.

  ‘These things are not worthy of your veneration,’ the giant told him.

  He lies, the voice in his head spat.

  ‘These things are nothing more substantial than your thoughts and whims. The Eighth Legion has never served them, and it never will.’

  All will serve the true glory of Chaos, Skell. I will show you that soon enough.

  ‘Remember this night, child. My name is Amon Cull, Prince of Thorns. Your prince. You are a part of the Eighth Legion. We are beholden to no one, mortal or immortal. The galaxy is a sea of victims, and we are the predators.’

  ‘Get away from him.’ The order rang out from the figure striding back into the Centrum Dominus. It was the sorcerer. Behind him a great flock of black-skinned, hideous daemonic creatures were dragging something which their fluttering wings and scrawny limbs half obscured. The sorcerer pointed his scythe at Cull, who stood to face him. The warriors around the edges of the room shifted, and the daemons roosting in its shadows shrieked and gibbered.

  ‘Flayed Father,’ Cull said. ‘I see you’ve finally won your prize.’

  ‘More successfully than you,’ the sorcerer replied, stopping barely a foot from Cull. His daemonkin clustered behind him, chittering, their claws scraping at the rockcrete.

  ‘This is supposed to be a harvest,’ he went on, his words harsh as a bared blade. ‘Not some excuse for butchery. I thought letting you loose in the Nemisar and Talith systems before we arrived here would quench your youthful murderlust and allow you to focus on the task at hand. I can see I overestimated your abilities.’

  ‘You speak as though you are my master,’ Cull snapped. Skell saw his claws tighten around the flesh-bound grip of the long, curving runeblade locked to his hip.

  ‘I do not have time for your petulance,’ the sorcerer said, snapping a finger at the daemons cowering in his shadow. They dragged the thing they’d been carrying past Skell, placing it with difficulty on top of the surgical rack. It was another of the giants, except this one had been stripped of its upper armour. While its torso gleamed with a strange, hard-looking black carapace, its bared arms and head were deathly pale and blotched with patches of strange grey scabs. It seemed unconscious, and had been bound with the explosive magnicles usually reserved for Zartak’s convicts. Two of the daemons not hauling the figure into place were grappling with a long, carved bone staff, a shard of green stone clamped in its maw-like tip.

  ‘We must hurry,’ said the sorcerer, standing over the pale prisoner. He’d drawn his ritual dagger, its silver edge still crusted with blood from the runes it had cut int
o Skell’s back. He bent to touch the wicked blade to the prisoner’s bared throat. The giant snapped awake just before the long knife reached his flesh. His head turned, black eyes locking with Skell’s, as though he had been aware of his presence even while unconscious.

  Do not hesitate, said a thought in his head. The thought Skell hadn’t heard since he’d driven it from his mind in the air exhaust backtunnel. Now, looking into the fathomless black eyes of the pale giant, he realised just whose thought it was.

  Do not hesitate when the time comes, Skell.

  He could feel the daemon in his head squirming with anger at the intrusion, even as he sensed Cull move behind the sorcerer. The flesh-clad giant was bending low over the prisoner, the voice dripping from his vox-grille slick with scorn.

  ‘So, you have rejoined us, Pale Nomad. You have woken just in time to die.’

  ‘But he’ll watch you die first, Flayed Father,’ Cull said from behind the sorcerer, and plunged his long, rune-etched blade through the Chaos Space Marine’s back. The unnatural steel punched, quivering, out through the sorcerer’s breastplate.

  The daemon in Skell’s head tried to shriek a warning, tried to fling his weak, bloody body at Cull, but Skell bit back. He clamped his teeth down so hard that blood ran from his split lip, refusing to let the daemon move him like its puppet. He could feel the gaze of the pale prisoner still on him, lending him the strength to resist, to hold himself rooted to the spot even while his psychically charged hands itched to close around the throat of the Prince of Thorns.

  Slowly, the sorcerer looked down at the tip of the blade that protruded from his body. Cull gripped the sorcerer’s shoulder, and dragged the warp-cursed steel free. The sorcerer turned to face him, scythe still in his grasp. Then, with a crash of ceramite, he collapsed onto his knees.

  ‘I hoped you wouldn’t lose yourself to the daemon’s will,’ Cull said. ‘I’d hoped you were still a true member of the Eighth. But you have expended your last chance. You had none of the primarch’s foresight – you only saw what Bar’ghul allowed you to see. In your greed you became its slave. You wanted to become a god, so you made yourself a monster. You served others when the Eighth Legion should only ever serve itself. And I will not allow a daemon to rule this warband through an old puppet like you.’