Sepulturum - Nick Kyme

by Warhammer

  Proctors scrambled as all pretence of order devolved into a desperate fight to survive. They were killing now – Karina watched them through the gaps in the panic – scything through the citizens of Meagre like butchers culling cattle. Mauls rose and fell, slick and bloody. Riot shields crushed and bludgeoned. Loudhailers fell, discarded. Shotguns replaced them.

  Amidst the scrum of bodies, Karina caught a glimpse of what had terrified the proctors. And suddenly her father’s fear made perfect, horrific sense.

  Another mob, but this one ran towards the carnage, their eyes glaring with feral hunger. A tide hit the proctors, pulling, tearing, biting…

  Death swept through Meagre.

  Karina fought. She kicked and thrashed and punched until she lurched to her feet. She found her knife, providence skittering it back within her reach, and held the blade before her like a torch to ward off the dark.

  Except the dark could not be kept at bay. It would engulf the town and everyone in it.

  The dimmed lamps in the booth framed a slight-looking figure in dark blue robes. The figure wore a deep hood to hide its face, but the dull flicker of augmetics caught the light. The figure’s hands, concealed in the folds of voluminous sleeves at first, shone with a metallic glint as it steepled mechanical fingers.

  Morgravia glanced at the drover – in lieu of a name, she had come to think of him as such – who dabbed at the wound on his neck with a cloth, then she looked back at the robed figure apparently waiting for her.

  ‘You’re the Broker,’ she said, a statement of fact, not an interro­gative, and took the seat opposite.

  The robed figure gave a shallow nod.

  Close up it was possible to discern that the Broker was female – or at least the parts of her that were still flesh and blood.

  ‘You’re a data-smith,’ Morgravia realised, ‘or at least you used to be.’

  Another nod confirmed it.

  ‘So, what now?’ asked Morgravia.

  At a curt gesture from the Broker, a servitor in a sweeping velvet robe brought over two long-stemmed crystal chalices. Far from the gruesome automata that toiled in the labour-pits or the holds of voidships, the creature looked almost civilised, though its visible skin was utterly devoid of hair and its gender impossible to determine. Apart from an odd dewy complexion, the only concessions to its ‘otherness’ were a small aural circuit chip behind its left ear and a hexagonal, ruby-like vox-emitter that had been fitted into a brass torc around its neck.

  ‘Incarnadine wine,’ the servitor explained, in an incongruous, urbane voice. Only one of the chalices had any liquid in it, a dark substance that put Morgravia in mind of blood.

  ‘I’ll pass, if it’s all the same to you.’

  The servitor paused, its courtesy protocols momentarily wrong-footed, before retreating back into the shadows with its offering. ‘As you wish.’

  ‘I had thought a drink before we begin,’ offered the Broker once the servitor had become one with the bar’s dubious ambience. Her voice was resonant, almost mechanistic.

  Morgravia raised an eyebrow. ‘You do speak, then?’

  ‘I speak.’

  ‘Fortunate, given your line of work, though I suppose your sommelier could act as intermediary.’

  ‘I am the intermediary,’ she replied. ‘That is my function.’

  ‘Is buying your clients a drink part of the transaction too?’

  ‘It can be.’

  ‘Though you won’t drink with me.’

  ‘Neither of us are drinking.’

  ‘Ah, but I’m thinking you never drink?’

  ‘I have no need to. Though I do appreciate the ritual, if not the actual imbibing,’ she conceded, interlacing her fingers. ‘But I do not believe you are interested in my habits.’

  ‘On the contrary, I always like to know with whom I am dealing.’

  ‘That’s a formal and antiquated way to put it.’

  ‘I am from a very formal and antiquated profession. One of the oldest, in fact.’

  ‘I see. Perhaps that bodes well for our transaction then?’

  ‘Too early to tell, though I have taken some pains to arrange this meeting.’ Morgravia glanced around. ‘I admit, I’m surprised you chose this place.’

  ‘What’s surprising about it?’ The Broker’s keen, artificial eyes remained intent on Morgravia’s. She had yet to blink. ‘It is a public establishment, but one of questionable moral repute. I can imagine there are many in here who would take issue with a profession as, how did you put it, “formal and antiquated” as yours.’

  Morgravia smiled thinly. ‘Does your drover not provide you with adequate protection?’

  The drover had finished tending to his wound and gave Morgravia a wink as she glanced at him.

  ‘Does your death cultist? I assume she is lurking here somewhere?’

  Morgravia hid her surprise behind a curt laugh, and chose to bluff.

  ‘She’s as near as I need her to be,’ she said.

  ‘I see. He is not a drover, by the way.’

  ‘Of course he isn’t. He dresses like one, though.’

  The Broker appraised her gun-hand as if doing so for the first time, then looked back to Morgravia. ‘I concur, he does.’

  ‘Does he have a name?’

  ‘That is highly likely.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I am the Broker.’

  ‘I see,’ said Morgravia, her expression neutral.

  ‘Do you? See, I mean?’

  Morgravia decided upon a different tack and wagged a remonstrating finger. ‘You’ve been watching me.’

  ‘As you say, I am a data-smith. My currency is information, and information keeps me alive.’

  ‘And rich. I assume the gun-hand and the silky major-domo aren’t your only servants.’

  ‘And rich,’ the Broker reiterated, though Morgravia caught a flash of something – anger? – in her eyes. Her next sentence confirmed it. ‘I have enjoyed our parlay but I believe one of us is perhaps wasting the other’s time.’

  ‘That’s an astute observation.’

  ‘Indeed. The only thing I do not comprehend is why?’

  ‘Information keeps me alive too.’

  ‘That is… reasonable, but perhaps we should move to business. Shall we begin with you confirming what it is that you want?’ The Broker paused, laying her hands down upon the table. ‘Assuming, of course, you can get what I want?’

  ‘Passage off-world on a rogue trader vessel. Undocumented, uninhibited. Yes, it is within my means to grant you this favour.’

  ‘And I am to take this on faith?’

  ‘How is this for faith?’ said Morgravia and showed her Inquisitorial rosette.

  A tremor of unease rippled through the Broker at the sigil that had condemned heretics and witches to death and torture the galaxy over. Morgravia took no small amount of satisfaction from watching the Broker squirm.

  ‘That will more than suffice,’ she said, gently clasping her hands over the rosette to hide it, a silent urging for her companion to put it away. ‘We can proceed.’

  ‘I’m glad we could establish a measure of trust,’ Morgravia said, returning the ordo sigil to the folds of her longcoat.

  ‘I would not say that.’

  Morgravia gave a mock frown. ‘You hurt my feelings.’

  ‘I sincerely doubt that,’ said the Broker. ‘Your terms, then?’

  ‘First I want to know why you want passage off-world.’

  ‘You definitely live up to your profession’s namesake,’ the Broker replied, trying to hide her annoyance. ‘Why does it matter?’

  ‘Why does anything matter? I don’t know, yet, but if I am to do this for you then I would like to know for what reason you need a ship.’

  ‘Let us just say that in my trade I make c
ertain people nervous. Knowledge is power, and there is nothing the powerful fear more than knowledge. I have an abundance of it.’

  Morgravia’s eyes brightened with a sudden revelation. ‘So that’s why you wanted us to meet here. You’re in hiding, aren’t you?’

  The Broker’s silence answered for her.

  ‘You took a sizeable risk by treating with someone like me,’ said Morgravia.

  ‘I have. I am. Now you know my reasons, so all that remains are your terms. If you please.’

  Morgravia stared at the Broker, still weighing and measuring. She had little choice, though. In thirty-one days she had not found a better lead, and the fact that the Broker was scared enough to make this deal with her when she knew she was being hunted went some way to assure her of its authenticity.

  ‘I have been…’ she tried to find the right word, ‘compromised. My memories are incomplete. This is a state I cannot allow to continue.’

  ‘Because you too are hunted.’

  Morgravia saw no point in dissembling further. ‘I believe so, yes. My business here is my own, and you want no part of it, but I cannot conclude it without–’

  ‘Your memories. You say I would want no part in your business here, but you cannot say truly what that business is. The heretic or mutant or witch you were hunting is unknown to you, your purpose here likewise. It puts you at great risk and I think, perhaps, you have already fallen foul of these men or women before.’

  Morgravia felt herself tense self-reflexively at the reference to her obvious physical injuries, the scarring on her hands and face all too apparent even in the dingy light of the bar.

  ‘How do you know they are men and women?’

  ‘That is true. Then let me correct myself and say, the parties whom you were hunting and now hunt you inflicted this hurt. And it was they who shattered the mirror of your memories also.’

  ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

  ‘I believe you know the difference, inquisitor.’

  Morgravia held the Broker’s gaze, putting a little steel in it.

  The data-smith’s augmetic fingers tapped the table nervously. ‘I am in touch with an unsanctioned–’

  ‘The ordo I serve is not interested in rogue psykers. Tell me about the witch.’

  ‘She is called the Empath.’

  Morgravia scoffed. ‘Really? Do any of you in this business have actual names?’

  ‘For someone used to the precautions of a clandestine agency, I am surprised you have to ask.’

  Morgravia shrugged, then said, ‘The Empath, you were saying…’

  ‘She is what is sometimes regarded as a psychic chirurgeon. I know her whereabouts and can ensure an audience.’

  ‘I don’t need an audience,’ snapped Morgravia, harder than she intended, ‘I need my mind. Restored. Can she do that?’

  ‘She can do that. If she’s assured your intent is not hostile.’

  ‘How do you know my intent won’t be hostile?’

  ‘That measure of trust you mentioned, and I can detect your desperation.’

  Morgravia wondered what else the Broker’s augmetics could discern, acutely aware of the risk she was taking and still wondering what had become of Hel. She was about to ask how she would make contact when a sudden scream made her turn.

  A drunk had staggered in from the outside or some other part of the bar and was wrestling with one of Fharkoum’s courtesans. The girl screamed, struggling in her assailant’s grip. Addled by obscura smoke, the fat merchant was slow to realise the transgression against what he regarded as his property but now he cursed and spat, incensed at the interruption to his revels. He snarled something in a foreign tongue, prompting his hired gun to step into the fray and draw his weapon.

  The hired gun barged in, jacked on stimms, sweeping out his flechette pistol like it was a badge of authority.

  ‘Release the chattel…’ he growled, exuding violence.

  The girl staggered, having wriggled free. She was gasping for breath, pale with trauma. As she turned, the kohl and rouge bleeding down her tear-streaked face, Morgravia realised why.

  Then everything changed.

  The courtesan clung to her own severed forearm, like a mari­onette showing its broken parts to its master and not understanding why it was broken. The joint had been bitten through. Arterial blood painted the vicinity. And the chaos began.

  Chapter V

  Shotgun

  Cristo knew his daughter was about to die. She knelt in the middle of the main street, a lonely light surrounded by darkness and about to snuffed out. Proctors surged past her, oblivious. They fled with utter abandon now, throwing off helms, breastplates, discarding anything that could slow them down. A few even dropped their weapons, a crime punishable by death according to the book of the law, the Lex Imperialis. Something worse than death followed them, a hungering tide that slowed only to feast on flesh.

  Back in the gully, Cristo had tried to deny it. He knew of men who had eaten the dead, explorators who had ventured into the ash wastes in search of fortune. Cannibalism was not an uncharted map. It had history. Certain dubious cults, those amongst the outlander tribes as well as others, venerated the flesh, believing it passed on the strength and memories of the owner. This, whatever it was, defied definition.

  They lingered just beyond the far edge of the crowd, an undulating host, killing, feeding.

  Cristo had made it to the edge of the road but as the crowd thinned, either dead, dying or scattered, he saw a way back. He ran, upending a proctor who had the misfortune of getting in his way. The proctor’s helm came loose as he hit the ground, revealing little more than a youth, his face chalk white with fear. He didn’t fight and limped away, leaving his combat shotgun where it fell. Cristo took it, holding the weapon in both hands as he barrelled into the mob. He barged into a rake-thin scrivener, heaving the man aside, then smashed a dockhand with the butt of the shotgun. Someone grasped for the weapon, so he struck out with an elbow and they fell back. In his urgency to get to his daughter, Cristo barely registered any of it.

  Karina had a knife held out in front of her, and a burly proctor was about to trample her when Cristo wrapped an arm around her midriff and hauled her clear. He let off a burst from the shotgun, keeping his aim high. It served its purpose as the crowd screamed and scattered out of his way.

  They reached the side of the street and Cristo pulled her into a side alley, guarding the entrance after he put her down. No one followed.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, and glanced over his shoulder. Fleeing bodies rushed past the side alley in a frantic blur. One stumbled and died beneath the feet of those that followed.

  Karina rose unsteadily, her fingertips touching her ear and coming back wet and crimson.

  ‘Think I hit my head…’

  Then she fell.

  Cristo cried out, slinging the shotgun over his shoulder on its strap as he ran to his daughter. Then for the second time that day, for the second time in only the last five years, he swept her up into his arms.

  ‘I’ll get help. Hang on, Karina,’ he said, and ran.

  Fharkoum gagged as the girl collapsed, her vitae jetting over his face and general corpulence. The hired gun cried out as the blood lanced across his eyes, and he desperately scrabbled to clear his vision. What he saw, what everyone saw, defied belief.

  The attacker had been human once, female, but was now undeniably inhuman. Like the myths of changelings taking on the appearance of their victims, something else inhabited the flesh now. Her red eyes gleamed hungrily from a gaunt and shrunken face. Pallid skin clung to her emaciated skeleton like shrivelled parchment as she crouched over the girl, stripping the bone clean with a hurried, eager gnawing. Blood spittle flecked her chin and smeared her mouth. Whatever crude sentience remained in that cadaver-like shell became aware of being watched. Her head jerked
up, agitated, rabid, and she glared between greasy strands of lank hair.

  Morgravia reached for her weapon, having seen enough, and made for the creature.

  Fharkoum threw aside the courtesan that had been fawning on his lap. She yelped, hitting the floor hard, but the merchant could have been discarding a glass for all the regard he paid her. The last courtesan he barged aside, trying to put as much distance between himself and the cannibal thing gorging on the least fortunate of his harem.

  ‘Kill it,’ he spat in heavily accented Gothic.

  The hired gun experienced a moment’s pause before his master reiterated in the most strenuous of terms.

  ‘Fucking kill it!’

  The hired gun pulled the trigger, lacing the air with dozens of scything discs. They ripped through the stricken girl, turning her to chunks of meat, and cut down a slew of patrons unlucky enough to be in the way. The cannibal took the brunt of it, her torso shredded and one arm torn off. She reeled with the impact of the flechettes but did not fall. Either she could withstand the immense pain or simply didn’t feel it. Drooling blood, her mouth matted with gore, she dropped the bone and sprang towards the nearest warm body. Her teeth clamped around the soft flesh of a dockhand’s neck, and the man shrieked. She clung to him, arms and legs wrapped around his body as she bit down savagely. He thrashed briefly but then was still.