Chaos Child (1995) Slaanesh / EC Excerpts

[MolotovKraken]

'THIS WORLD WAS once infested by genestealers,' Jaq told Rakel at the dinner table. 'Do you know what those are?'

Yes, her criminal contacts had told her about the infestation by Old Four-Arms. 'Not all hybrids may have been destroyed,' said Jaq. 'The courthouse does not seem to be exercising enough diligence these days. I do not suggest that the courthouse is contaminated. However, an inquisitor must always harbour many suspicions - and often act secretly. You may have seen an inquisitor storming about on that other world you visited. The best work of the Inquisition is often pursued unseen, until the crucial moment. That book downstairs contains secrets about genestealers and their origin.' Did it? Did it not?

They're bred by tyranids, Lex almost said; but he kept silent. In the tyranid hive-ship, in that evil leviathan shaped like a snail, Biff and Yeremi had died...

To read the book I shall need something which is probably stored in the courthouse. I must not reveal myself prematurely to the Arbites. So your arrival is timely. However, you must be tested. We intercepted you, after all.

'I'm told,' Jaq continued, 'that the Oriens Temple was once home to the ancient thigh bone of a Space Marine, housed in a reliquary.' The real Meh'lindi had told him this. 'I wonder whether that thigh bone survived the destruction of the temple? I wonder whether the Occidens Temple sequestered that bone, just as they have done with the Emperor's fingernails. Find out, Rakel, find out from your criminal contacts! If that femur is hidden away in Occidens I want you to steal the bone and bring it here for Lex to ornament with his graving tool.'

'Oh yes indeed,' said Lex. 'Oh yes!' His fists opened and closed as though already grasping the revered bone.

Why Lex should wish to engage in such an activity was not to be confided. Rakel knew Lex's name - but not his identity.

'Ask about illegal cults as well,' continued Jaq. 'Is there any cult devoted to metamorphosis - or to revolutionary change? Is there any cult devoted to lust and wanton pleasures of the flesh?'

Rakel ventured to ask: 'Is that why I should not praise the food we eat, no matter how fine it is?'

'Not at all! We eat well because austerity narrows one's perspectives.' Grimm tilted his pot of ale. 'You used not to allow any alcohol aboard the good ship Tormentum, Jaq.' These days, Grimm had been allowed to provision the larder with beer and wine and even some of the strong local djinn spirit. Jaq himself still drank no alcohol. For Lex, with his supplementary preomnor stomach and his purifying oolitic kidney, indulgence would be futile.

'Alcohol disorders the senses,' Jaq explained. 'I may need to exploit disorder.

You, Rakel, in your new assassin shape, should not express sensual preferences regarding food. It isn't fitting.' Jaq placed the assassin's sash upon the table. From the sash he removed three small hooded rings, baroque thimbles. 'Wear these on your fingers, Rakel.'

With a professional, if puzzled, eye Rakel was assessing the possible value of these supposed items of bijouterie.

'You crook your finger suddenly just so,' Jaq mimed. 'These are rare digital weapons of jokaero manufacture. One fires a toxic needle, the next a laser beam, and the third is a tiny flamer. Each will fire once. We have no means to replenish these. They are only for use in case you are cornered, with no other means of escape.'

Rakel eyed the three digital devices, and the three other persons seated at table.

'See how we trust you!' sneered Grimm.

'You would not defeat me,' Lex growled at her, 'not with toxin nor flame nor laser burst. Even blind, I would break your back.'

'And your body would soon go into flux,' said Jaq. Nodding, Rakel slid the three digital weapons on to different fingers. 'You're perfect,' Jaq said bleakly.

The abhuman dabbed a stubby finger in the spiced milk and sucked as if on a teat. 'Huh, this sauce is getting cold!'

 

[MolotovKraken]

RAKEL'S BEST ROUTE into Occidens would be through one of the apertures in the dome of the atrium, through which the smoke of incense vented. Clad in black, she would descend on a thin strong rope like a spider on its silk, then drop cat-like to the floor. At night, when the temple was closed, no armed deacons might be on patrol in the atrium of the basilica. She had noted that residents of the temple - as opposed to visitors - rarely glanced upwards. Upwards was wreathed in smoke.

From the atrium she would proceed silently into the basilica. Apply lockpicks to the plasteel altar. Heave out the reliquary, heavy with gold. 'Heavy on account of the femur too,' insisted Lex. 'Space Marine bones are big, and reinforced.'

Rakel glanced at him curiously, but did not question. Next: open a body-bag.

'Hide the corpse away inside the altar?' queried Grimm. 'No,' said Jaq. 'That would be sacrilege.'

Put the reliquary inside the bag along with the body. Tie the bag up again. Return to the atrium. An accomplice would let down the rope for Rakel's retrieval.

'Am I to be on the rooftop?' Grimm demanded. 'What sort of solo test is this?'

Rakel smiled wanly. 'There'll be other ways into the temple. Sewers, for instance. I'm sure Chor Shuturban will tell me if we promise enough gold. Wouldn't we prefer to amaze him?'

She wasn't Meh'lindi. Meh'lindi would have found a way in through the sewers, contorting herself and dislocating her limbs if need be. Yet Rakel was cleverly analytical.

The morning after robbing the altar she would present herself at the temple accompanied by a burly slave. She would identify a head poking from the bag.

She would weep with mingled grief and joy. The slave would help her carry the burden away.

And if the reliquary proved too large, even in its crushed state, why, the night before she would cut off the head of the corpse, hide the headless body, then fasten the head to the top of the reliquary. The reliquary would substitute for the body. 'Hide, where?' demanded Jaq. 'I'd hoped to make use of the altar,' Rakel said humbly. 'Sacrilege. Blasphemy.' 'Indeed,' said Lex. 'I suppose,' grumped Grimm, 'this means I might have to haul up this rotting headless corpse on the end of the rope after you've climbed it?' 'A thief uses every means she can,' said Rakel. Jaq said sternly. 'You're attempting to manipulate us to compensate for what has happened to you.'

Rakel shrugged. 'I serve you,' she said flatly, 'in whatever way I best may.' Jaq's eyes widened at this echo of his dead assassin-courtesan. 'It's a plausible plan,' he acknowledged.

'Just so long,' jeered Grimm, 'as you don't fasten yourself inside the body-bag as a way of getting out of the temple! Even with verdigris and cosmetic slime on your face the priests might decide you were uncorrupted, and a miracle. Ach, that prompts a thought. Don't you reckon a corpse that's getting a bit high might fall to pieces en route to the roof?' 'I shall take a net with me,' explained Rakel. 'A net with a narrow mesh. Plenty of suitable fishing nets are on sale in Shandabar.'

'A net with a corpse in it,' muttered Grimm. 'What a haul.'

'I feel corruption gathering around me,' Jaq murmured sombrely. He added very softly: 'As I suppose it must gather.'

'Cults,' continued Rakel. 'I was to ask about cults. There is a private society of lust in the Mahabbat district of Shandabar. Aphrodisiacs, orgies. Mardal Shuturban attends its debauches. And his brother has heard rumours of a cult of ''transcendental alteration''. Evidently some people aspire to evolve beyond our human condition.'

Grimm asked: 'Do these dental alterationists by any chance file their teeth to points so they look like genestealers' fangs?'

'Mardal has only heard vague rumours. My startling change in appearance seemed to explain my interest.'

'Could be a remnant of genestealer hybrids, boss.'

'Or else unwitting disciples of a certain Power, who foolishly imagine that evolutionary change is virtuous! Oh, the courthouse is surely all too lax in
its investigations,' declared Jaq. 'Praise be that there is an inquisitor here, to test just how lax.'

 

[MolotovKraken]

THE SHUTURBAN BROTHERS were duly impressed by the ruby. Word had already reached them of a fracas outside the Occidens Temple - and undoubtedly within as well, and perhaps involving a fire, so it seemed. Two residents of the temple had been shot outside its walls. Searchers had climbed up on to the rooftops. In the morning the sextons hadn't opened the temple doors as usual.

Worshippers had queued in vain.

Evidently one of the beggars who lived in the vast courtyard had been alert enough to make his way across the city to the Shuturbans. Rakel the Thief now wished for certain details about the Imperial courthouse.

Was there no limit to her enterprises?

The Shuturbans' source had noticed a robed man fleeing from the vicinity of Occidens; while another beggar had told the same informant how he had spied a giant and a dwarf in the vicinity that night...

Details about the courthouse were possible - such a fine ruby was persuasive.

However, Chor Shuturban insisted on giving such information to Rakel in the presence of her mysterious patron - whose existence she could not reasonably deny. Chor wished to meet this new sponsor of crime. The new-style Rakel had left her former lodgings in a hurry. A wagging tongue said that a giant slave had escorted her away.

The meeting should be on neutral ground. Rakel had been curious about cults of lust, hadn't she? Therefore the neutral ground should be a certain building in the Mahabbat district a week hence. Rakel's sponsor, and herself, were invited to an entertainment.

Chor assured Rakel that there was no obligation to join in the frolics physically. Entirely up to herself and her patron! The giant and the dwarf could come too.

Those two might be amusing performers.

'CHOR SHUTURBAN HOPES to unsettle our minds,' said Jaq, 'so that one of us may be indiscreet.'

Yet did he himself not wish his sanity to be unsettled and deranged? 'My mind is staunch against carnal temptations,' declared Lex. Now he had the thigh bone to caress if need be. Already Lex had begun to prepare the femur for scrimshaw, by sanding and waxing. While he worked he would pray to Rogal Dorn, silently in case Rakel overheard his prayers.

Grimm pouted. 'Huh, that a squat like me should join in some orgy with regular human beings! Slim chance. If there were some sturdy females of
my kind I might be tempted.'

 

[MolotovKraken]

DURING STAGES IN Lex's novitiate as a future Space Marine he had been initiated dauntingly enough - by a feast of foul excremental unfood and by other formidable ceremonies.

The forced rite of initiation which took place like a ravishment within that Chaos vessel was execrable and almost unspeakable. How could Lex obliterate from memory the Kiss of Corruption, the Communion with Chaos, the Prayer of Perfidy, the spells and the invocations? And all the while he was experiencing the slither of tendrils within his spinal sockets. These invaded his nervous system, generating nauseating visions of the fragility of the cosmos, of the feebleness of reality which daemonic fingers sought to unpluck and reknit, with such vile success.

Lex in torment saw the whole cosmos burst forth from a mere bubble in the energy-warp. A sparrow's fart the universe was! That fart inflated suddenly. It caught fire and exploded outward. Gas became matter. Space ballooned to accommodate the gush. Matter became the stars and worlds of a billion galaxies.

All was mere froth upon the surging unseen ocean of the warp. Finally the pull of the warp would drag all galaxies and all space back together again, abolishing this temporary interruption which was the whole of space and time, and all of struggling suffering life.

The lusts and rages of life caused terrible entities to coalesce in the warp, and to give rise to sub-entities, to daemons and sub-daemons. Daemons clawed at reality to try to drag it and its denizens back into the warp prematurely. Tzeentch and his daemonic lieutenants especially sought to twist the future of the cosmos askew. Tzeentch would triumph. The Emperor on Terra was no more than a guttering candle in malevolent darkness. The radiance of Rogal Dorn and other primarchs were pathetic glimmers.

What of the shining path which Jaq sought? What of the good light which might be awakened by benevolence and compassion and self-sacrifice arising universally? A sparrow might as well fart into a hurricane. The spirit of the Numen slumbered, unaware of itself except in dreamlike spasms.

Oh, do tell your tormenting initiators that the name of your Chapter is the Imperial Fists! Oh, do hand over the Book of Fate to the worshippers of Tzeentch! Oh, do join them joyfully in the disruption of this futile cosmos, and be rewarded.

All along Lex's nerves, and in his mind, potent daemonry squirmed like an invasion by tiny ants which were really all one collective manifold beast. 'Which Chapter did you desert?' Lex heard.

He gibbered. His mouth frothed. His very soul was being drowned in vileness, and revived, and drowned again. Soon it would no longer be his soul, but Tzeentch's property; and he would be a willing puppet.

'Which Chapter?'

As he opened his lips to reply, his left hand tore free from the gauntlet which held it. His left hand rose as if to stifle him, to throttle him. That was the hand on the bones of which were inscribed the names of Biff Tundrish and Yeremi Valence of Necromunda, and of the Imperial Fists... Lex seemed to hear from afar in the sea of souls the voices of Biff and Yeri crying out to him to resist - no, to let them resist on his behalf, to let them be his strength and his salvation. Yeri particularly had always yearned to protect Lex, hadn't he?

Let Biff and Yeri be his own protective daemons who would lurk within; who would snatch his soul back to safety even though it seemed to be lost to Tzeentch. The inscriptions hidden upon the bones of that left hand were the most potent sorcerous runes. By virtue of those runes, his left hand clasped Rogal Dorn's own hand through the intermediary of his dead comrades. Though he fell, they would raise him in the final moment. Sweating and shuddering, Lex submitted to the Chaos Marines.

The name of his Chapter? He could tell them that without blame, because
it was the proudest of names.

The Book of Fate? He could betray that. They already knew it was nearby. Who should they wickedly send to fetch it, and to kill or be killed, but this traitor, this new cadet kinsman in Chaos? 'That's his initiation test!'

'In that house they'll think he has escaped from us-'

'Instead he will kill or concuss-'

How Lex relished the prospect of incapacitating the inquisitor with his bare hands. How he hoped to hand Jaq over to his new brothers in sorcery. How he relished the thought of swatting the impudent squat to death or tearing him limb from limb. As for Rakel, that sham - what fate would be best for her, to torment Jaq the most? To inject her again with polymorphine so that she would go into fatal agonizing flux - providing the visible dissolution of Jaq Draco's stupid ambitions!

There was also the Death Jester, to serve up to these new elder brothers. Lex could relish these deeds and allow his hormones to riot, because his left hand enshrined his salvation. That hand was calm now. It feigned. Chaos Marines were laughing. What if their new initiate were killed as soon as he returned to the mansion? Why, he would die utterly subverted - traitor to his Chapter of naive musclemen and to the ramshackle Imperium. Then the Princes of Chaos would overwhelm the mansion and seize prizes.

Lex himself was a prime prize - but a prize best enjoyed perhaps in the squandering of it.