The Outcast Dead

  Kai had no idea what had just happened, but every scrap of self-preservation was begging him to find a place of safety. Screams clung to the air, the whisper stones carrying them around the interior of the tower like horrible secrets. Alarum bells rang and barking gunshots swiftly followed angry bellows from the Black Sentinels.

  ‘Throne!’ bellowed Gregoras. ‘Pick up your feet, Zulane.’

  ‘I can’t,’ sobbed Kai. ‘I can’t do this again.’

  Gregoras stopped and backhanded Kai across the face. The slap was shocking and sharp, the sound like splitting wood. Kai flinched from the blow, blood and snot mingling on his top lip as he dropped to the floor like a beaten slave.

  ‘Get up, damn you,’ said Gregoras.

  ‘Why?’ hissed Kai. ‘We’re all going to die here. The daemons are coming in and they’re going to kill everyone. I won’t survive a second time.’

  Gregoras hauled him to his feet, his previously bland and unremarkable face now clenched in fury. ‘I said, get up! This is the pattern. Get up or so help me I will hand you over to Maxim Golovko myself and laugh as he puts a bullet in your brain.’

  Kai wiped his bloody nose with the sleeve of his robe, understanding only a fraction of what Gregoras was saying.

  ‘Why do you need me?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Gregoras. ‘I wish I did not, but this is what I have been searching for all my life. You have glimpsed a portion of it, and you will help me understand it. Do you understand?’

  ‘No, not even a little bit.’

  Gregoras shrugged. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘You’re coming with me anyway.’

  He hauled Kai by the scruff of the neck, propelling him along an iron-framed corridor that looked as though it ran between one of the mindhalls and a section of the Oneirocritica Alchera Mundi. Whisper stones bled thoughts of rape and murder, torture and degradation, and Kai fought to keep them out. It had been thoughts like these that had turned the crew of the Argo into debased monsters, cannibals and violators of the dead.

  Kai had only lived by isolating himself in his astropathic chambers, to which no one but the captain and his equerry had access. They had been the first to die when the protective shields collapsed, and though the fiends had clawed at his chambers, none could reach him.

  While the monsters and maddened crew could not drag him from his sanctuary, he could not shut his mind to the horrors that devoured their humanity. He heard every scream from their murderous orgies and tasted the loathsome appetites of the creatures that emerged from their bloody murders.

  Aboard the Argo he had a place of refuge. Here he was horribly exposed.

  How could he possibly survive this?

  He followed Gregoras blindly, dragged along in his wake, not knowing where they were going or what had happened to the tower. Were they under attack? Had the forces of Horus Lupercal already reached Terra and begun their invasion by crippling the Telepathica?

  ‘What in the Emperor’s name is happening?’ he shouted.

  Gregoras didn’t answer, and Kai saw him crouch to run his fingertips over the notched marks on the wall next to him.

  ‘Do you even know where we are?’

  ‘Of course I know,’ snapped Gregoras. ‘We are in the bleed channels under the Zothasticron.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The bleed channels,’ said Gregoras, running his hands along the opposite wall. ‘The whisper stones gather the excess energies of communion and carry it down to the trap chambers beneath the towers. How else do you think we dissipate the psychic energy?’

  ‘I didn’t know we needed to,’ said Kai.

  ‘Then you are a bigger fool than you look.’

  Despite his dislike of Gregoras, Kai wasn’t about to abandon his only anchor of safety in this maelstrom of unleashed horrors. So far they hadn’t seen anything beyond running Sentinels, but the flickering images of bloated bodies, fly-ridden corpses and skinless faces parading through his hindbrain told him that the Whispering Tower was now a place of horrors to match the Argo.

  Gunfire echoed down the channel, followed by an explosion and the dull cough of grenade launchers. Kai heard screams, the sounds amplified by the acoustics of the narrow tunnel, but he couldn’t be sure he was really hearing them or if they were being carried into his mind by the whisper stones.

  ‘What’s happening here?’ asked Kai.

  ‘Magnus is here,’ said Gregoras.

  ‘Magnus the primarch?’

  ‘Of course Magnus the primarch, who else could unleash such powerful psychic force?’

  ‘How can he be on Terra? He’s halfway across the galaxy.’

  ‘I don’t know how, but Magnus the Red is here and his coming has unleashed power unlike anything you can possibly imagine.’

  ‘So is this an attack?’

  Gregoras took a breath as he considered the question. ‘Not as such. I do not believe Magnus has betrayed us, at least not intentionally, but he has acted with such hubris that there will be no forgiveness for this act. The Emperor will have no choice but to make an example of him.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You know what it means.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Kai. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It will mean the Wolves will be loosed again.’

  Kai shivered, unsure of what Gregoras meant, but knowing on a primal level that it would be unwise to ask more.

  ‘Back in your chambers you said Mistress Sarashina’s name,’ said Kai. ‘Is she in danger?’

  ‘The very worst kind,’ confirmed Gregoras, finally finding the mark he sought on the walls. ‘The warp is giving her exactly what she wants. Damn, but I should have seen this. The Maiden and the Great Eye. Truth and the future, all bound together. The silver vixen, the heralds of the final truth. It all makes sense now.’

  Gregoras was rambling now, random phrases from his insane researches spilling from his lips like a madman’s stream of consciousness. None of it made sense, but nothing of this made any sense. Who better to make sense of madness than a madman?

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but if Mistress Sarashina is in danger, then we need to help her.’

  Gregoras nodded and said, ‘If it is not already too late for her.’

  KAI AND GREGORAS emerged from the bleed channels in one of the central hub chambers towards the base of the tower. Yellow light flashed from warning lumens and a number of bodies were stacked like cordwood at the entrance to one of the libraries. Kai gagged at the stench of blood and the actinic tang of lasfire. Streams of hard light blasted into the library from a ranked up squads of Black Sentinels.

  Another group worked at the door to the Choir Primus mindhall, rigging melta charges to detonators, while Maxim Golovko paced impatiently behind the demolition crew like a caged predator. Alone of the Black Sentinels, Golovko went without a helmet, an open insult to the psykers of the Whispering Tower.

  I do not fear you or need protecting from you the gesture said.

  A handful of Black Sentinels spun to face them as they emerged from the channel, rifles brought to bear with exacting precision and speed.

  ‘Hold!’ cried Gregoras. ‘Protocol cryptaesthesian!’

  The guns were lowered, and Golovko strode through their ranks as more gunfire blasted into the library. The major general was livid, yet Kai sensed that he was taking great relish in his task of extermination.

  ‘I might have known I would find you drawn to the heart of this,’ he said.

  ‘Sarashina is in there?’ said Gregoras, pushing past the commander of the Black Sentinels.

  ‘With the Choir Primus,’ replied Golovko. ‘Do you know what’s happening?’

  ‘I have my suspicions, but we don’t have time for discussion. You need to get that door open. Now.’

  An explosion blew out a choking cloud of dust, splinters and mulched paper from the library, and a howling scream of something unnatural rang from the walls. Whisper stones shatte
red with glassy pops, and Kai felt a surge of bloodthirsty rage fill him. His teeth bared and his fists clenched, but it passed as soon as Gregoras touched his shoulder. Kai felt the anger pour out of him, blinking away the red veil that had descended on him.

  Gregoras had one hand on his shoulder, another pressed against a whisper stone that had survived the psychic surge.

  ‘Think!’ snapped Gregoras. ‘Maintain your defences.’

  Kai nodded, ashamed he had allowed his mental buttresses to become so weakened in his fear of what was happening.

  ‘Get some null grenades in there,’ said Golovko, his tone brusque, but clipped and businesslike. ‘Don’t let that happen again.’

  Kai had never liked Golovko, but the man had just endured a psychic attack without flinching. The only sign of the strain of holding it at bay was a pulsing vein at his temple that throbbed like a hydraulic pipe. Golovko saw his look and shook his head with a sneer.

  ‘It’ll take more than that to get by this soldier.’

  Kai didn’t answer, and concentrated on maintaining his own wards against the power washing from the library. Through the smoke and sliced up bodies at the entrance, Kai saw a swirling morass of light and flesh, a patchwork monstrosity formed from still-living hosts and torn flesh given form and mobility by immaterial energies. He looked away as the entity sensed his scrutiny and wisps of light darted towards the door.

  ‘Don’t look at it,’ hissed Gregoras. ‘You of all people should know better than that.’

  Another volley of gunfire stitched across the nascent form of the thing in the library, followed by a dull crump of psychically resonant grenades. Immediately the air took on a thick, grainy quality, and the raging static of the warp spawn diminished to bearable levels.

  ‘Yeltsa, get in there and push that thing out of my tower,’ ordered Golovko, before turning back to the mindhall of Choir Primus. ‘How’s that breaching charge coming on?’

  ‘Done, sir,’ replied the demo-tech, backing away from the rigged door and handing the detonator box to Golovko.

  Kai and Gregoras pressed themselves to the walls as Golovko stood in front of the door, unlimbering a bulky grenade launcher from his back.

  ‘Remember that’s Aniq Sarashina in there,’ said Gregoras.

  ‘We don’t know what’s in there,’ said Golovko. ‘But if it’s hostile, it’s going to die.’

  ‘If you kill her, you’ll answer to the Choirmaster.’

  Golovko shrugged and pressed the activation thumb-switch on the detonator box.

  Kai had been expecting a thunderous detonation and had his ears covered, but the melta charges simply glowed a fiery blue-white, and the only sound was the hiss of metal flashing to superheated liquid in seconds. Gobbets of molten metal drooled down the carven face of the door as the charges burned through the lock.

  Golovko dropped the detonator and racked the loading tube of his grenade launcher.

  He kicked the door open, and a host of gibbering voices flew from the unsealed chamber. Shrieks of babes yet to be born and corpses cold in the ground for millennia blasted from the mindhall, a chorus of the dead and still to die coalesced in one almighty bellow of fear and regret. Golovko stood firm in the face of this cyclone of the dead, unmoved and uncaring of their torments or lives unlived.

  Kai felt the torrent of unleashed psychic energy and winced as it battered the defences of his mind. He felt the horror of each death within the mindhall, and impossible tears spilled down his cheeks as he felt the last moments of each of the astropaths within. A pale light, like a beacon lit far beneath the surface of a clear ocean spilled from the mindhall, wavering and uncertain. It threw Golovko’s shadow out behind him and, for a fraction of a second, Kai could have sworn his face was a mask of blood, as though some nightmare parasite had exploded from within his skull.

  ‘Are you coming in then?’ asked Golovko, and the impression of his horrific injury vanished. ‘I might need your help.’

  Gregoras pushed himself from the wall and Kai saw his indecision.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ he said. ‘If Sarashina’s in trouble, then I want to help.’

  Gregoras nodded and they set off after Golovko. A dozen Black Sentinels came with them, and they plunged into the wavering, uncertain light. The mindhall was cold, like a frozen tundra, and the floor crunched with newly-formed ice beneath their feet. Spiderwebs of frost crazed the wooden panels of the lower tiers, and puffs of ventilated smoke rose form the backpacks of the Black Sentinels.

  Kai kept close to Gregoras, knowing on a very basic level that the cryptaesthesian was helping to shore up his mental defences. The power at work within the tower was so great that Kai didn’t think he’d have been able to resist it were it not for his help.

  It was difficult to see exactly what was happening in the mindhall. The light at its centre was so powerful it outshone everything else. Kai had the powerful impression of a black silhouette, a black slice of limbs touching a sun that burned with a blinding sapphire light.

  ‘Mistress Aniq!’ he shouted, and the words left his mouth in a trail of colourful smoke, giggling gleefully as they took form and life before dissolving into the fertile air. Gregoras shot him a say nothing look, and Kai’s mouth snapped shut before he could do anything else stupid.

  The Black Sentinels spread out, rifles raised and grenades primed. Golovko marched at their head, the bulky launcher held out before him. He said nothing, but his manner suggested that he had seen this sort of thing before, though Kai couldn’t imagine where. He’d heard of warp-spawned creatures using astropaths as vessels to force their way into the material universe, but an entire mindhall?

  Scraps of light swirled at the apex of the chamber like flocking birds, and Kai forced himself to look away from them. As his eyes began to adjust to the power of the light, he lifted a hand to his face and looked up into the tiers surrounding the centre of the chamber.

  The astropaths of Choir Primus lay rigid in death, their eyes alight with eldritch fire that streamed from their useless sockets like phosphorent smoke. Their mouths were stretched in skeletal grins, and that same dead light burned between their burned lips as though they were screaming light.

  The Black Sentinels surrounded the sphere of light, and Kai saw its surface was alive with writhing patterns, sun-bright streamers and spiralling grooves of emptiness. It shone like a miniature sun, but one that was the antithesis of Terra’s star. This was a dead sun, one that sucked life from the bodies around it.

  Aniq Sarashina stood before the dead sun, her hand outstretched and bathed in the fires of its unnatural energies. Corposant lines of raw energy coiled up her arms, and her flesh was translucent. Veins, bones and muscle were plain to see, and the same light that streamed from the eyes of Choir Primus burned in hers.

  Kai wished he could cry, for the sadness he felt was all too real. Mistress Sarashina was dying, any fool could see that, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. He wanted to save her, as she had once saved him from a life wasted, but he could do nothing but watch as the warp light burned her away from the inside.

  Ghosts of energy limned her body with ectoplasmic mist, creatures that pressed almost too lightly on the matter of the universe to be seen. They were little more than shimmers of consciousness, barely able to hold their presence in this world, yet they swirled protectively around Sarashina as though she was a prize they were unwilling to relinquish.

  ‘Gregoras?’ said Golovko. ‘How dangerous are these things?’

  ‘They are nothing,’ said Gregoras. ‘Base desires given form. They cannot hurt us.’

  ‘Really? This seems like quite an intrusion for something so powerless. Doesn’t seem like nothing to me.’

  ‘They are opportunistic parasite creatures. They crossed over when the walls collapsed.’

  ‘And what about that ball of light? Should I be worried about that?’

  ‘When you are dealing with the warp you should always be worried.’

&nb
sp; ‘So how do you destroy it?’

  ‘You don’t,’ said Gregoras. ‘I do.’

  Gregoras stepped towards the sphere of light, his hands outstretched, and Kai felt the build up of potent psychic energy. Gregoras was already a powerful psyker, with abilities Kai would never be able to understand or wield, but in the aftermath of the Crimson King’s arrival on Terra, his strength was so much greater.

  ‘My mind is untouchable. It is as a locked room,’ he said. ‘None can enter without my authority. You have no power over me.’

  The creatures of light withdrew from him, recognising a more powerful entity than they could hope to overcome. The burning sun seethed in mute rage, its brightness diminished, but still awesomely powerful.

  ‘These are not the fields you know,’ continued Gregoras, infusing every syllable with power and will. ‘This world is not yours and you do not belong here. Leave and befoul this place no more.’

  The creatures hissed soundlessly, but retreated still further. They were not completely cowed, for they had a wellspring of energy to draw upon. The sphere of energy spun with ever greater urgency, as though its purpose here was not yet done, and a keening screech filled the mindhall. Kai’s hands flew to his ears, and even Golovko winced at the piercing volume.

  The black armoured Sentinel commander took aim over the oversized barrel of his grenade launcher.

  ‘No!’ yelled Kai. ‘Please.’

  At the sound of his voice, Sarashina turned towards him, and Kai felt her pain descend upon him. She knew she was dying, but she had held on for just this moment. Kai sank to his knees as he saw the weight of guilt and sorrow within her. He saw the anguish that she had been forced into this path, but beyond that was the determination that she would not fail, as though the fate of the galaxy itself hung upon what she must now do.

  ‘Don’t you move,’ warned Golovko, taking a step forward.