First Edition Novels: Deathwing (1990), Inquisitor (1990), Space Marine (1993) Chaos Excerpts

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15th
Humanity begins to colonise nearby solar systems using conventional sub-light spacecraft. At first, progress is painfully slow. Separated from Terra by up to ten generations in travel time, the new colonies have to survive mainly on local resources.

20th The Dark Age of Technology
Discovery of warp drives accelerates the colonisation process and the early independent or corporate colonies become federated to Terra. The first alien races (including the ubiquitous Orks) are encountered. The development of the Navigator gene allows human pilots to make longer and faster 'jumps' through warp space than was previously thought possible. The great Navigator families, initially controlled by industrial and trading cartels, become a powerbase in their own right. Humanity continues to explore and colonise the galaxy. Contacts are established with the Eldar and other alien races. A golden age of scientific achievement begins. Perfection of the Standard Template Construct (STC) system now permits an almost explosive expansion to the stars.

25th The Age of Strife
Humanity reaches the far edges of the galaxy, completing the push to the stars begun over ten thousand years before. Human civilisation is now widely dispersed and divergent with countless small colonies as well as many large, overpopulated planets. Localised wars and disputes with various alien races (especially the Orks!) continue, but pose no threat to the overall stability of human-colonised space. Then, two things happen almost simultaneously. First, humans with psychic powers begin to appear on almost every colonised world. Second, civilisation starts to disintegrate under the stress of widespread insanity, demonic possession, and internecine strife between these new 'psykers' and the rest of humanity. Countless fanatical cults and organisations spring up to persecute the psykers as witches, and/or degenerate mutants. At this time, the existence of the creatures of the warp (later known and feared as demons), and the dangers they pose to thehuman mind with newly awakened psychic powers, is far from understood. Terrible wars tear human civilisation apart. Localised empires and factions fight amongst themselves as well as against fleets of Orks, Tyrannids, and other aliens whose forces are quick to seize the opportunity to sack human space. Many worlds fall prey to the dominance of Warp Creatures whilst others revert to barbarism. Humans survive only on those worlds where psykers are suppressed or controlled. During this time, Terra is cut off from the rest of humanity by terrible warp storms, which isolate the home world for several thousand years, further accelerating the ruin of humanity.

30th The Horus Heresy
Humanity itself teeters on the brink of the abyss of extinction. Civil war erupts throughout the galaxy as the Emperor of human space is betrayed by his most trusted lieutenant, the Warmaster Horus. Possessed by a demon from the warp, Horus seduces whole chapters of humanity's greatest warriors the Space Marines into joining his cause. When the final battle seems lost, the Emperor defeats Horus in single combat, but only at the cost of his own humanity. His physical life maintained by artificial means, and his psyche by human sacrifice, the Emperor begins the long task of reconquering human space. With the creation by the Emperor of the psychic navigational beacon known as the Astronomican, the foundations are laid for the building of the Imperium, as it to beknown in the 41st millennium. Fuelled by the dying spirits of those psykers who would otherwise fall prey to the demons of the warp, and directed by the Emperor's indomitable will, the Astronomican soon becomes an invaluable aid to Navigators throughout the galaxy. Interstellar travel becomes even easier and quicker, while the repression and control of psykers and creatures from the warp releases much of humanity from its hellish bondage.

41st The Age of the Imperium
Throughout the portion of the galaxy known as the Imperium, humanity is bound within the organisations and strictures of the Administratum. The Emperor grows ever more detached from the day to day concerns of his mortal subjects, while the Inquisition works ceaselessly to protect humanity from the ever-present dangers posed by renegade psykers and the terrible creatures inhabiting warpspace. The armies of the Imperium the Guard and the almost superhuman Space Marines Ñ maintain a constant vigil against the threat of invading Orks, Tyrannids and other aliens. But still the numbers of psykers increases steadily, and other more sinister groups associated with Warp Creature domination continue to gain ground...

 

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To scan even the approaches to the home system from beyond the outermost challenge-line would seem ample confirmation that the hub of the Imperium could never falter. Yet Jaq hardly needed to remind himself how warp storms had formerly isolated the home system from the stars for several thousand years. The first flowering of human civilization throughout the galaxy had wilted, rotting into the cesspool of the Age of Strife. That earlier heroic age was eclipsed so utterly that it was now whelmed in obscurity. He hardly needed to remind himself that during the thirty-first millennium the possessed rebel warmaster Horus had laid waste to Luna and invaded Earth, breaking through to the very inner palace. The putsch was defeated, oh yes, but at what dire cost. Thereafter the wounded Emperor could only survive from grim millennium to grim millennium immobile in his prosthetic golden throne. What Horus had almost accomplished by main force and using fighting machines of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Jaq hoped to finesse by guile-assisted by a lugubrious Navigator, a Squat whose reliability was now in question, and an Assassin whose thought processes increasingly puzzled Jaq.

Unless... unless she realized as Grimm and Googol undoubtedly did not suspect that it was the sacred duty of the Ordo Malleus to erase the very knowledge of monstrous Chaos from human minds, lest this knowledge seduce the weak. Such knowledge must be obliterated. Was Meh'Lindi forgiving him in advance for the possible fate of his companions, supposing that he succeeded! That indeed was loyalty. Jaq staunched the flash of anguished pride he felt. Loyalty to anyone who was not the Emperor was a dangerous commodity, was it not? As the hosts of Horus had proved. Still, he promised himself then and there that he would do his utmost to save Meh'Lindi and Googol and Grimm. Even if this made him, in some small way, a traitor. Even if, in so doing, he denied Meh'Lindi the gift of utter amnesia she requested.

NOTHING THAT SAFEGUARDS HUMANITY CAN BE EVIL, NOTEVEN THE MOST STRENUOUS INHUMANITY. IF THE HUMAN RACEFAILS, IT HAS FAILED FOREVER. Maybe Jaq was too young by hundreds, by thousands of years, and his intellect was too puny to comprehend the multiplex mind of the Master who was forever on overview, whose thoughts battered in his mind. Or maybe the Master's mind had become chaotic. Not warped by the Chaos it surveyed, oh no, but divided amongst itself as its heroic grasp on existence ever so slowly weakened...WHEN WE CONFRONTED THE CORRUPTED, HOMICIDAL HORUS WHO ONCE USED TO SHINE LIKE THE BRIGHTEST STAR, WHO USED TO BE OUR BELOVED FAVOURITE WHEN THE FATE OF THE GALAXY HUNG BY A THREAD WERE WE NOT COMPELLED TO EXPEL ALL COMPASSION? ALL LOVE? ALL JOY? THOSE WENT AWAY. HOW ELSE COULD WE HAVE ARMOURED OURSELVES? EXISTENCE IS TORMENT,A TORMENT THAT MUST NOURISH US. EVIDENTLY WE MUST STRIVE TO BE THE FIERCE REDEEMER OF MAN, YET WHAT WILL REDEEMUS?

 

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DEATHWING ANTHOLOGY

Deathwing

‘They strapped me to a steel table and opened my flesh with metal knives. I had endured the weasel claw ritual to prove my bravery, but the pain was as nothing to what I then endured. When they opened my flesh, they implanted things which they said would bond with my flesh and grant me spirit power. ‘For weeks, I lay in feverish agony while my body changed. The walls danced, and my spirit fled to the edge of the cold place. While I wandered lost and alone, one of the brothers stood beside me reciting the Imperial litanies. ‘In a vision, the Emperor came to me, riding Deathwing, mightiest of thunderbirds. It was different from that which had borne the sky warriors home. It was a beast of spirit; the other had been a bird of metal, a totem cast in its image. ‘The Emperor spoke to me, telling me of the great struggle being waged on a thousand thousand worlds. He showed me the races other than man and the secret heart of the universe, which is Chaos. He showed me the powers that lurked in the warp and exposed me to their temptations. He watched as I resisted. I knew that, if I had given in, he would have struck me down. Eventually, I awoke, and I knew then that my spirit belonged to the Emperor. I had chosen to abandon my people, my world and my bride for his service. I knew I had made the correct choice. ’Cloud Runner glanced around at the other Terminators. He hoped he had told the story well enough to catch his listeners’ minds and remind them of their duty to the Emperor. He hoped he had reminded them that they had all made the same decision as he had and that they would once more make the correct choice.

‘We did not have long to wait for an answer. They swarmed down the corridor toward us in a vast wave. They were garbed in the armour of Marines, but they were horribly mutated. Some clutched rusty bolters in tentacles instead of hands. Some had faces that were moist and green and slimy like toads. Some had claws and extra limbs. Some dragged themselves along, leaving a trail of mucus behind them. ‘The mark of Chaos was upon them. They called on Horus and those powers that are better not named. And we knew them – they were renegades, survivors from the Age of Heresy who had pacted with Chaos in exchange for eternal life. The fighting became close and heavy. They had the weight of numbers, but we had our Terminator armour and the strength of righteousness. ‘For a moment, it looked as though they might overwhelm us, but then our thunder hammers and lightning claws came into play, and we cut through them inexorably. They fought like daemons, and they had the strength of the damned, but eventually we won. ‘I stood looking down at the body of my last foe, and a thought occurred to me: this man had once been a Marine like myself.

He had undergone the same training and indoctrination as I had. He had sworn to serve the Emperor. And yet he had betrayed humanity. How could this be? ‘How could a true Marine become forsworn? It seemed unlikely that he would suddenly turn his back on the pattern of a lifetime and pact with the darkness. What had Chaos to offer him? Wealth? We have no use for the baubles that other men covet; we already have the finest of everything that a man could wish for. Sensual gratification? We are taught its transitory nature. Power? We know true power, which is the will of the Emperor. Who among us could equal his sacrifice?‘ No – as I stood over his body I came to understand. He had deviated not in one leap but in small steps, by increments. ‘First he had come to place trust in the Warmaster. An easy step, for was not Horus the chief champion of the Emperor?‘ Then he had come to follow the Warmaster. Who would not? A soldier follows his commander. ‘Then he had come to believe Horus divine. An easy mistake. Was not the great heretic one of the primarchs of the first founding, gifted with god-like powers second only to the Emperor himself?‘ Thus did he stray from the path of truth, till eventually he lost both his life and soul. It is a way that is open to anyone, one small mistake leading to another until at last the great error is reached. This I came to realise as I studied the body of the renegade on Prison of Lost Souls. I resolved then and there to submit myself to the Emperor’s will. I knew that all our regulations and our codes have a purpose, and it is not for us to question them, for they keep us from the path of the deviant.’

They are dreadful foes: ferocious, relentless, knowing neither pity nor fear. They do not use weapons, perhaps because they do not need them. Their claws are capable of tearing adamantium like paper. They do not use armour; their hides are so tough that they can survive, for a time, unsuited in vacuum. They have the aspect of a beast, yet they are intelligent and organised. They are the most terrible enemies any Space Marine has faced since the time of the Horus Heresy. ‘How do I know this? I have faced them, as have others here.’ Cloud Runner shivered, recalling the times he had faced the stealers. He remembered their chitinous visage, their gaping jaws and four rending claws. He tried not to recall their blinding, insect-like speed.

 

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LACRYMATA

Solonaetz Di Cavagni, navigator of the Imperial trader ship Dea Brava,coasted the warp tides of neural ecstasy, oblivious of all save his ownblistering responses and the guiding screamlight of the astronomican, theEmperor’s own psychic beacon, searing through the heat of Chaos. He andthe ship were one; a shining world speeding through the warp, hisconsciousness the benign god that nourished it.

Whatever protections Dea Brava might have, Solonaetz was alwaysdeeply relieved when they dropped back into real space, even if he neverconsciously admitted it. Sometimes, the things he saw out there were justtoo tempting. One sleeptime, he’d had a nightmare about the astronomicansuddenly blipping away to nothingness, leaving him alone, withoutguidance, in a ship screaming blindly into entropy. He’d woken up sweatingand pawing the air, his ultimate fear being that his dream self, despite beingterrified, had also enjoyed a wild exultation. He had yearned for the finalembrace of Chaos. If his subconscious toyed with such sentiments in sleep,Solonaetz was all too aware of how vulnerable he was in the warp.

But then, who wasn’t? He’d seen the burn-outs, shielded by theirfamilies, newly released from Ministorum retreats, where the priesthoodtried to launder the frazzled brains of those who succumbed. It was a riskybusiness he was involved in: his lifeblood.

Solonaetz descended to the walkway leading to the camera recreata,rubbing his neck as he walked. It was always the same, this aftermath:vague depression, insecurity. He knew very well by the time the next warpshift was due he’d be aching to ride the stuff of Chaos once more.

‘So,’ he said, leaning back in his silk-cushioned chair, ‘you essay an entreaty to the Dark Lady of Nepenthe!’ He helped himself to a biscuit, nibbling thoughtfully. Graian and Solonaetz had both leaned forward expectantly. ‘My family have captured the essence of the mystic flower for centuries,’ he continued. ‘Mysteria Hypno Morta – a prayer, her name, a prayer!’ He sighed. ‘We call her the lacrymata, the moonskin, the last breath of a favoured concubine. Mysteria – dark maid of the hidden caves. Fragrant, fragile bloom, whose fleeting kiss is spiritual joy, whose bitter juice is oblivion!’ He smiled. The speech was obviously a sales pitch, Solonaetz thought. However, the plain truth would be lacking in romance. The Palamas grew a rare flower in underground catacombs, whose perfume was highly narcotic and whose essential oil was a deadly poison if ingested. It could also be sold for ridiculous amounts throughout this corner of the Imperium. Naturally, suchan honest description would not have excited Graian’s desire for purchase as much, but then, why bother anyway? The Palamas were rigidly discerning about who they dealt with in the world of commerce. The fact that Graian was here at all indicated the sale had already been finalized with the Fiddeus clan back on Terra. Graian was just a courier. Guido Palama obviously liked to romance his merchandise.

Several other crew members were gathered in the shuttle, intent on visiting Assyrion, Brother Gabreus amongst them, which caused a certain amount of good-natured mockery. Gabreus settled himself fussily into a seat, pretending to be affronted. ‘May your tongues be black!’ he said grandly. ‘All I seek is an assortment of puissant fumes. This you all know, so caw away, as you like! We’ll see the grins wiped from your faces when we’re back in the warp and only my incenses keep the effluent of Chaos from your sweet, untainted minds!’ He wriggled his considerable frame into a comfortable position. ‘Come, pilot, let’s away! Night spreads her black, feathered fan upon the bosom of Assyrion and I, for one, want to be on the streets before the essence-blenders close shop!’

She shrugged. ‘The interest was casual, really. It was only a rumour. I heard the lacrymata stimulates psychic sight – far beyond what a humble astropath can imagine.’ She shrugged again, jerkily. ‘However, I’ve smelled the stuff now, and my inner sight has not improved significantly.’ ‘I should hope not!’ Solonaetz exclaimed. ‘Whatever properties the perfume has, it is also very dangerous, and possibly attractive to hostile forces.’ ‘And that, dear navigator, is probably just as much a fable as any other connected with the lacrymata. Palama has to sell the stuff, doesn’t he? It was all just talk.

She removed his bandana and kissed the closed lid, bringing a fragrant memory of the lacrymata to his throat. She was so beautiful and skilled with such dark voluptuousness that, in the midst of their love-making, he did open his eye. Is this woman, he thought, this that I see? Pure female, her overlapping currents of spirit rivalling even the chaos of the warp. He had never thought to do such a thing before; no one had requested it. His eye was a danger as well as an intrigue; a glance could kill. Shivania, in her blindness, was immune, but she cried that she saw the light of him unveiled, his forehead shedding radiance which she claimed shared the same brightness as the Emperor’s own beacon. Heresy. Maybe. ‘If we only had a sample of the cargo,’ she said, close to his ear. ‘Think, Solonaetz, what ecstasies we could share!’ ‘Or what pain,’ he added. A shiver of presentiment summoned a vision of the next warp drop: he, alone, in his pod, with the dark, moving liquid ofthe lacrymata, in the vaults below, singing its insidious song to the ever vigilant powers of Chaos. ‘You fear it!’ Shivania laughed. ‘Ice and passion of the wounded navigator!’ She stroked the scars on his chest and belly. ‘I envy you your sight,’ she said. Afterwards, she curled into his arms, humming a strange little tune, running her fingers over his smooth, white skin, reaching up to wind them in his long, fine hair. ‘Divine mutant!’ she said. ‘Hush, don’t say that!’ ‘Well, you are! As I am, in truth. Both of us tolerated for our uses. Blessings upon our Imperial Father that we may find solace with each other.’‘Sometimes, Shivania, I think you say dangerous things.’ She scorned him gently. ‘Faithful navigator, always quick to obey, to bend his back before the whip of Imperial doctrine.’‘Shivania!’ He tried to ease himself away from her, suddenly feeling she had become a twining, suffocating thing. ‘What are you saying? Listen to yourself!’ ‘I have done that for years!’ she said sharply. ‘Always listened to myself, from the day the blackship came and took me from my home!’ ‘You are an astropath. Privileged, honoured! Your very soul is bonded with the Emperor’s!’ She sneered. ‘Hah! A bonding that burned away my eyes! Bonding is another word for slavery, is it not?’ Solonaetz shook his head in confusion. ‘I will not argue with you, but when you say these things, remember what your fate could have been!’ ‘And you think this is any better?’

 

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He breathed an essence of salt and spume, euphoric, riding the wave of the astronomican as it pulled him homewards. Salt. Sea. Dunes. Dune-flowers. Flowers. Fruit. Musk. Sandal... Sandal? Solonaetz gulped and was pulled into a momentary reality. He inhaled. What? By the Emperor’s sweet blood, what was this? Lacrymata? Impossible! He consulted the warpscreen, his head dizzy with the insidious perfume. The blister was full of it! A pulse glowed on the screen, signifying warp activity. But where? Solonaetz wondered frantically. Behind us? Before us? Where? So close. So close! He fixed his eye towards the warp. Nothing definite and yet, a suggestion of imminence. The immaterium was excited! He scanned for Chaos emanations. Perhaps something had clung to the ship. The screen seemed poised, waiting to bloom with information, denying him the knowledge. He strained his senses to penetrate the cause as the perfume flowed over him in delicious, wicked waves, perverting the purity of his concentration. His skin prickled with sweat. The cargo! A focus! He must ignore it, banish it. The scent was an illusion. He must...‘Solonaetz!’A husky call. As a lance of pain pierced the muscles of his neck, the navigator’s head whipped towards the access ramp. The hatch was open and there, creeping towards him, naked and glowing as a hot flame, was Shivania, her mouth open, red tongue licking her lips, hair flowing like a cloud, her fingers idly stroking her breast. The perfume assaulted him in waves. He tried to speak. Shivania laughed and opened her shrivelled lids. Had he thought those deadeyes milky? No, they were more than that! Opal, fiery, shifting with a hundred colours.‘Solonaetz,’ she said, shaking her head, so that her lustrous hair seethed like a nest of furred vipers. ‘Come to me. The essence is my flesh. It gives me sight! I have anointed my eyes! I see! I see so much! I see you, Solonaetz!’‘No!’ he said, in a strangled voice. He felt as if the very substance of the Dea Brava was melting before his eyes. All that existed was the pale, shining form of the astropath, and the hideous seductions of the warp waiting to take him in the final, everlasting embrace. ‘No, Solonaetz? What is this no? We are in our place, are we not? Mutants, we! I can hear my sisters calling, vapours upon the warp tides! Allthose that die, Solonaetz! All those that die! You slide this ship upon a torrent of their blood! Open that great eye of yours and really see! Look at me! Touch me! Open the blister and take me home!’ For a few moments Solonaetz wondered whether he was hallucinating his own desires. Is this what I want, what I’ve always wanted? Then, Shivania reached out a hand to touch him, her fingers flexing, curdled eyes blinking and leaking sluggish tears. She hissed and smiled. ‘I spit your seed into Chaos!’ she cried and lunged forward to throw herself into the blister upon him.

Acting reflexively, Solonaetz winced back and then, with an extreme spurt of effort and will, pulled himself from his chair and flicked out his leg to kick the access-way shut. He heard an agonized squeal, and an infinity of violent colours smacked against his warp-sight, bringing peals of agony, pain he could not have imagined in the worst of nightmares. His body writhed and his stomach convulsed. The surface of the blister was a swarm with foul shapes, all grinning, all scratching at the plascryst, telling him with sickening gestures of all they planned to do with his body when they reached it. Solonaetz tasted salt, knew he was biting his tongue. He slammed his head against the console, screaming, ‘Fiddeus! Gabreus! Anyone!’ but the communications node seemed a million miles away, beyond his reach. Had the ship left its course? His eye was blind to the route, seeing only a tangle of voluptuous shapes that beckoned and tempted, promising eternal pain, eternal ecstasy. He could hear Shivania scratching at the hatch, her voice a hoarse whisper of desire. ‘My Lord Emperor!’ Solonaetz screamed. ‘Help me! Help me!’ And then a pure strain of unadulterated thought forced its way through the melee. ‘Take my hand,’ it said. ‘I am with you, navigator. Take my hand.’ And he focused on that beam, his consciousness flowing with it, melding with it, following. Although he knew in his heart the Emperor was cocooned within his palace on Earth, his aged, tortured body kept alive by machines, the navigator’s spirit saw a figure walking the astronomican’s beam as if it was a shining path, leading the Dea Brava away from danger, dismissing the effluvia of the warp with the strength and the grief of its soul. A vision of his faith, maybe? But to Solonaetz it was the Emperor himself, spirit-walking in the void.

 

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She was in her cabin, dressed in her finest robes, brushing out her hair. She wore her mask, the eyes unseeing, staring into nothing. ‘I thought you would come,’ she said, laying down her brush. Solonaetz didn’t comment. ‘I have something for you,’ he said. ‘A gift. It is the best I can give you under the circumstances, Shivania. I know you will understand and use it wisely.’ She accepted the gift, closing her fingers over the small, crystal bottle. Her laugh was shaky. ‘Well, Solonaetz, there goes your bonus, I suspect! Such generosity!’ ‘Not generosity, Shivania. I loved you in a way. It is compassion. Merely that. A report will be made to the Scholastica when we return. You know what the verdict will be, and its consequences. You are tainted; you must know that. You complained before about your lack of freedom. Well, if you reach Terra, your life aboard this ship will seem like paradise. They will send you to feed the Emperor’s soul. Because of what we shared, I want to spare you that. Thank me. I grant you your dearest wish: a full draught of the maiden of oblivion. If you are lucky, for a moment, you’ll have the sight you craved.’ He left immediately and, for a while, Shivania sat motionless, the bottle held in her lap.

She could not cry, no matter how much she yearned for that release. Her lips shook around the shape of his name. He’d possessed a strength she had not anticipated; to her, a hideous strength. Then she opened the bottle. A languorous, sensuous aroma flooded her cabin, sweet with desire, poignant with loss. Its crescendo was the last damp fires of autumn, before the winter comes, when all is burnt, the rubbish from the fields, the deadwood. She smelled dark earth and sensed a welcoming. Somewhere. With shaking hands, she tipped a little of the essence onto a single finger and anointed her throat. Moonskin, lacrymata, lady of tears, dark sister. Not for the weak, oh no. As the siren scent rose around her in a final, embracing cloud, Shivania tilted back her lovely head on her perfect neck and tipped the contents of the bottle down her throat. For a few, fiery seconds, her body sang a maniac dance of unendurable beauty and passion, but for a few seconds only. It was a swift death.

‘Come now, lift your head, young man. Fiddeus is pacing outside like a brooding leopard. Don’t give him cause for concern. Be strong!’ ‘Why, though?’ Solonaetz asked helplessly. ‘Why her? She was so...’‘Tainted!’ Gabreus interrupted sharply. ‘Believe it, Solonaetz! The lacrymata was merely a catalyst, and a lucky one in the event. Worse could have occurred if you think about it. You bested the powers of Chaos in your own way. No trivial feat, I assure you. No system is infallible. There will always be mistakes. The Adeptus Astra are thorough but their dominion is vast. Because of this, it is inevitable the odd blight slips through their screening net. It is true she might never have succumbed, and that the essence itself was the cause, but that is irrelevant really. Live your life, navigator. Forget her! In scant days, we shall be home and your family awaits you.’ He smiled. ‘And don’t forget the feast Fiddeus has promisedus!’

Graian was waiting outside, as Gabreus had told him. ‘One thing I have to know,’ Solonaetz said. ‘The lacrymata: where is it bound? The Adeptus Terra would never allow such a substance to pass hands in the free market, surely. Who commissioned its purchase?’ Graian Fiddeus scratched his neck, wrinkled his nose uncomfortably. ‘Well… Guido Palama is indentured to one department back on Terra, just one. The dispersal of the perfume, the true lacrymata, is rigorously controlled.’ ‘Who bought it, Graian?’ He sighed. ‘The Inquisition.’Solonaetz laughed. ‘I should have known! An instrument of torture!’ ‘Hardly a matter for humour!’

 

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THE ALIEN BEAST WITHIN

The Oriens temple of Shandabar, built at what had once been the eastern gateway, was in fact the least of the holy city’s three major temples. However, it boasted a giant, guarded jar of long, curving, talon-like fingernails. These were undoubtedly clippings from the Emperor’s own hands, dating from the mythic days before He had been encased in the golden throne. Due to His immortal power and reach throughout the galaxy, these disembodied nails were understood to continue growing slowly as if still connected to His person. Thus priests could trim and shave off authentic parings for sale to the faithful, who might wear them or grind them to dust so as to drink in potions. The temple also housed, in a huge silver reliquary, the thigh bones of a Space Marine commander from long ago – and, in a baroque copper cage, what was reputed to be the partial skeleton of a ‘daemon.

When presently she saw the partial skeleton of the supposed ‘daemon’ in that copper cage, filigreed with hexes and a-crackle with blue sparks –energized so that no daemonic claimant could return – she wondered whether the hunched alien bones were actually those of a purestrain stealer, set up sardonically in that place of honour by the patriarch while the real relic languished elsewhere… The tour lasted for two hours, comprising lavishly decaying halls, sacrariums, and lesser shrines. She saw some evidence of on-going embellishment and repair, yet evidently wealth was not being squandered on the Imperial cult.

‘Seeing the blessed Emperor defeating the daemon you were witnessing within!’ cried a herald. Daemons and aliens were creatures of a very different stripe; and genestealers certainly fell into the latter category, of natural beings. The less known about the daemons of Chaos, the better! Ironically the herald –knowing no better – blared out something forbidden so as to advertise whatever flummery would be staged…

 

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SEED OF DOUBT

‘But surely–’ dismay tinged her voice– ‘surely the infestation has waned. The girl’s no harm to anyone now.’ ‘The girl?’ Valdez chewed the word out contemptuously. ‘One less psyker worm to blight the Imperium. But whilst she still lived she was an open channel for the poisons of Chaos. Now the infection’s running in her brother’s veins. Who can say how fast the seed may spread?’

 

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WARPED STARS

‘This witch uses a cunning trick,’ Reverend Henrik Farb, the preacher, proclaimed to the crowd from the ebon steps of the headman’s residence. ‘He can hex time itself. He can stop the flow of the time stream. Though not for very long… so do not run away in fear! Witness his punishment, and mark my words: the witch looks human, but in truth he is distorted. Beware of those who seem human, yet are not!’ Farb was a fat fellow. Beneath his black cloak, leather armour bulged in a manner that, had he been a woman, might have been described as voluptuous. Womanly, too, was the jade perfume phial dangling from one pierced nostril, intercepting the odours of manure and of bodies on which sweat had barely dried. The tattoo of a chained, burning daemon caged within a hex symbol writhed upon one chubby cheek while he spoke, guarding his mouth and porcine eyes from contamination. Usually the preacher wore loose black silks on account of the heat, which was only now draining away. For combat with evil, though, he must needs be suitably protected. A holstered stub gun hung from the amulet-studded belt around his rotund waist. Horses snickered and stamped. Men patted their long knives for comfort, and the few who owned such, their rune-daubed muskets. ‘Destroy the deviant!’ shouted one fervent voice.‘ Break the unhuman!’ cried another. ‘Kill the witch!’
Farb eyed the brawny, half-naked executioner who stood beside the wheel gripping a cudgel. As usual, the agent of retribution had been chosen by lot. Most townsfolk might sport wens, carbuncles, and other blemishes of their burnt skin, but few were feeble. Even if so, a puny executioner would only take the longer to perform his task to the tune of jeers and mocking cheers. ‘Aye,’ declared Farb, ‘I warn you that this witch will try to slow down his punishment – stretching it out till nightfall in the vain hope of rescue.’

Over the course of the next year a dozen more witches and muties died in the square of Groxgelt. A few of the more vocal townsfolk began to ask in their cups whether there could be some sickness unique to the human seed, which did not plague beast kind. Mares did not give birth to foals which developed strange powers as they matured, did they now? Jomi’s father, who was a tanner of lizard hides, discouraged any such speculation under his own roof; and Jomi had long since learned to hold his tongue. Preacher Farb encouraged the townsfolk as well as terrifying them. He promised that the Emperor would not let his people drift into chaos.

‘But then all over the galaxy that we had guilelessly populated, psykers such as yourself started to be born.’ ‘So there weren’t always psykers around?’ ‘By no means to such an extent. When the powers and predators of Chaos took heed of those bright beacons, they spilled into reality to ravage and warp the worlds.’ ‘Those powers are what Preacher Farb calls daemons?’ ‘As it were.’ ‘Then he’s right in that respect! You said I shouldn’t worry my head about daemons.’ ‘Your sweet head… your puissant mind…’

‘Beauty must mean something,’ protested Jomi. ‘I mean, if I’m fair and I’m a psyker… isn’t there any connection, voice?’ From far away Jomi seemed to hear a stifled cackle of laughter. ‘So you subscribe to the theory that body and soul reflect one another?’ Heavy irony coloured the reply. ‘In a dark sense that’s often true. Should Chaos seize a victim, that victim’s body will twist and warp… if body there be!’ ‘How can a person not have a body?’ ‘Maybe one day you’ll learn – how the spirit can soar free from the flesh. ’Was the voice telling him the truth? And how could that be the road to ecstasy, whatever ecstasy really signified? As if agitated, the voice began to ramble. ‘I was one of the earliest psykers back in the epoch when true science gave way to strife and anarchy… Oh the madness, the madness… I was marooned. Our ship malfunctioned… it died in the warp. All through the dark aeons since, I’ve heard the whisperings of telepaths from the real universe. I’ve eavesdropped on the downfall of civilization and on its grim and terrible, ignorant revival… I could never escape. I lacked a beacon that cast a suitable light.’ ‘How long do aeons last?’ Jomi still had very little idea. For a period there was silence, then the voice answered vaguely, ‘Time behaves differently within the warp.’ ‘Has your body been warped at all?’ asked Jomi. Again, that distant cackle… ‘My body,’ the voice repeated flatly. ‘My body…’ It said no more than that.

Battle banners hung from ochreous plasteel walls which were the hue of dried blood. Bleached alien skulls and captured armour were mounted as trophies. For this was a ship of the Legiones Astartes, the Space Marines. Yet aliens as such rarely worried Serpilian. Even the most devious of aliens were, after all, natural creatures born and bred in the same universe as humankind. Aliens were as nothing compared with the terrible parasites that dwelled in the warp. On Serpilian’s home world a certain unpleasant wasp would inject its hooked eggs into the flesh of beasts and men. Warp parasites could lay their equivalent of eggs in human minds. Those ‘eggs’ would hatch into entities that controlled the body, consuming it and using it to spread contamination. Other warp creatures could seize human souls and drag them back into darkness to feast upon, slowly. And there were far mightier daemonic entities too. Psyker-witches were beacons shining into the warp. They attracted parasites and daemons that could lay waste a world and make its people unhuman.

‘I see a strapping, comely boy. Though his face isn’t clear. I see the circle of a portal opening from the warp, and coming through it is…abomination.’ ‘What species of abomination? Enslavers again?’ A sensible question. The warp entities known as enslavers could open a gateway through the very flesh of a vulnerable psyker and spill out – to do as their name suggested. Serpilian shook his head. ‘The boy’s being given an aura of protection now to hide him. He’s somewhere within a hundred or so kilometres of the capital city. He’s becoming a powerful psychic receiver. Other psychic talents are sprouting in him. I think he’s about to be possessed. Unless we reach him first.’ ‘To capture him, or destroy him?’ ‘I fear for his potential power. One day perhaps,’ and Serpilian sketched a pious obeisance, ‘he might be a little like the Emperor himself. Just a little.’ ‘Not a new Horus, surely?’ What loathing crept into the commander’s voice as he uttered the name of the corrupted rebel Battlemaster who had betrayed the Imperium, and besmirched the honour of so many Space Marine chapters, long long ago. ‘If that’s the situation, maybe the relevant quadrant of the moon should be sterilised… though that would include Urpol city and the spaceport, and many grox farms. Delta Khomeini II would starve as a consequence… And the moon has orbital defences as well as its surface troops, who would fight us… They won’t have much battle experience. I think we could do it. I think. Perhaps with our last drop of blood…’

One night, during a raid on the lower tech levels of Magnox, Torq sensed for the first time the presence of ambush. A glowing, multi-dimensional map of human life-signs swam within his head, distorting, shot through with static, needing tuning…Subsequently, in that mysterious multivalent map, he was to sense the eerie mauve glow of intrusions from the warp. He led the brat gang against a nest of psykers. These psykers were on the verge of being possessed by daemons. A rival gang were protecting them, and were making a playful erotic cult of them. Had Torq’s gang discovered those psykers first, events might have fallen out otherwise. Avid for thrills, the gilded youths from the upper tier might have made gang mascots of the psykers. Torq might have become a coven leader. Eventually, pursued by fervent witchfinders, he might have been forced to flee and hide among the scum of the undercity. Yet events did not fall out in this fashion. Furthermore, Torq had studied and he knew the lineaments of the Imperium rather better than his fellow brats. He thought he understood the strength of its muscles and the way those muscles pulled. His gang bested the patrons of those psykers, who had been pampered and abused by turns. Along with those captured playthings he presented himself to the Ecclesiarchy as a would-be inquisitor; whereby he would enjoy the wildest experiences, within a learned framework.

 

[MolotovKraken]

DEVIL'S MARAUDERS

For the first time Nipper thought that he detected a trace of what might have been fear in the commissar’s voice. He thought back to the strange runes he had seen on the robot. He had heard stories, muttered tales, of daemons who existed in the dark between worlds and sought to undermine the works of the righteous. He had always dismissed them as stories to frighten children.

 

[MolotovKraken]

WARPED STARS

Serpilian said sharply, ‘Only the Emperor knows what really happened during the Dark Age.’ How the inquisitor wished that he too knew. Godless science had flourished back then. From time to time remnants were still found: precious, arcane techniques and equipment of utmost value to the Imperium. Long ago the human race had spread throughout the galaxy like a migration of lemmings – heedless of the beings lurking in the warp, for it was heedless of its own psychic potential. Innocents, innocents! Puppies in a daemon’s den! Like a sudden storm, insanity and anarchy had erupted till the God-Emperor arose to save and unify, to control the human worlds, to calm the psychic tempest with utmost and essential rigour.

From the voice’s moaning words Serpilian gathered ample confirmation that its owner had been a psychic eavesdropper on millennia of war-torn history and even of hidden pre-Imperium history. How the inquisitor thirsted for its knowledge. But the ancient survivor was also, he strongly suspected, possessed. Possessed by a daemon of the warp. This was an unusual species of possession, for the survivor plainly owned no body at all, other than the vast metal body of the robot. The survivor consisted only of mind, wrought within a talisman of crystal wafers or some other occult material, a talisman which strove to maintain the stability of that mind – strove with a fair degree of success, considering the awesome timespan, yet of necessity imperfectly. The daemon had no tangible flesh to twist and warp and stamp its mark upon. It could only lurk impotently, glued to the imprisoned mind, tormenting it spasmodically by stimulating memories and sensuous hallucinations. Maybe the goad of the daemon was what had prevented the survivor from lapsing into sloth…The voice spoke of science. The truth was corruption. Conclusio: its science was heresy. Serpilian must not thirst for that! And now that the castaway’s dark scheme to possess Jomi had failed – a cursed, daemon-inspired plan! – the survivor was intent on at least carrying the boy back into exile with it. At Hachard’s command the Grief Bringers ceased fire. Just as the ogryn squad was commencing its assault, the robot aimed a plasma blast low at the grox compound, crisping several beasts yet also tearing a long gap in the fence. Serpilian sensed the aura of venomous intent which the mind in the robot – daemon-assisted? – directed at the reptiles to stir their blood lust.

 

[MolotovKraken]

Courtesy of the voice, Jomi knew now that former ages had existed, unimaginable stretches of time unimaginably long ago. The current age was a time of ‘superstition,’ so said the voice. An earlier age had been a time of enlightenment. Yet that bygone era was now called dark to the extent that so much had been forgotten about it. So the voice assured him, confusingly. He mustn’t worry his pretty mind overmuch about foul daemons such as Preacher Farb prated about. Such things existed, to a certain extent, that was true. But enlightenment was the route to joy. The owner of the voice said that it had been captured by the storms of ‘warp space’ long ago, doomed to wander in strange domains for aeons until finally it sensed a dawning psyker talent that was peculiarly attuned to it.‘You aren’t a witch, dearest boy,’ the voice had assured him. ‘You’re apsyker. Say after me: I’m a psyker, with a glorious mind that deserves to relish all manner of gratifications. Which I, your only true friend will teach you how to attain. Say to yourself: I’m the most lustrous of psykers – and remember to think of the circle, won’t you?’

A robot higher than any building in Groxgelt, a robot that bristled with what Jomi took to be weapons, lurched through the gate of darkness. ‘Here I am, dearest boy,’ exulted the voice in Jomi’s brain. ‘Don’t fear this metal body. This is the shell that has sheltered the kernel of myself while I drifted alone for aeons in the warp in a derelict hulk. Now at last I can touch the soil of a world. Now I can hope to be a fleshly body once more. Oh the sweet endearing flesh, the senses that sing, the nerves that twang like harp-strings! And what song did they sing so long ago? Sooooon I shall remember.’ The robot took a tentative step towards Jomi. As if exercising limbs which hadn’t encountered the pull of gravity for many millennia, the robot swept an arm around. Energies crackled from the tips of its steel fingers, gusting across the herd of groxen. The reptiles began to snort and hiss and rip at the soil of their compound, and butt their horns against the fence. What fleshly body was the kernel of this huge machine hoping to be? As the juggernaut took another lurching step in Jomi’s direction, he began to sweat. He crouched. Serpilian shook the bag of rune bones at his waist so that he sounded like an angry rattlesnake, then switched on his energy armour. Beneath his cloak subtle forces wove a cocoon that clad his body, and his cuirass glowed faintly.

The inquisitor stared at the giant gunmetal-grey relic, trying in vain to classify it. It was squatter than a Battle Titan, its limbs less flexibly jointed, nor did any obvious head protrude from the top of its chest in the way that control-heads jutted, turtle-like, from Titans. However, it looked almost as formidable. And what was more, it housed someone who had endured literally for aeons. Serpilian knew of no mechanical system other than the Emperor’s enormous immobile prosthetic throne which could sustain a person’s existence for such a long time. What remnant of flesh and bone could possibly lurk inside that mobile juggernaut? Only the head and spinal column of the castaway? Only the naked brain, bathed in fluids? Or maybe – could such a thing be? – only the mind itself, wrought within some intricate interior talisman by ancient eldritch sorcery? That robot was treasure. Its occupant hoped to steal a human brain which housed such great psychic potential, to add to its own psychic powers…Whosoever controlled such a boy…

The robot’s own inbuilt lasers and plasma cannon fired back, tracking the sources of the energy beams. At the same time a wave of confusion lapped at Serpilian’s mind. The creature in the robot possessed psychic weaponry too, so it seemed.

‘Jomeeee! You’ve almost reached meee! Run just a little bit more and leap inside meee!’Looking up at the towering machine, Jomi suddenly perceived it – by that blazing light from within him – not as a mountain of metal in approximately humanoid shape, but as……A VAST, NAKED Galandra Puschik looming over him lustfully. Her legs were squat trunks. The hatch was her secret opening. Her enormous torso, thick with fat, writhed with desire to entertain him. Her great muscular arms reached out…‘Jomeeee! My dearest delicious boy, my joy–!’What confronted him was a robot again. Yet the light from within him did not cease. It changed hue and wavelength, so that he peered appalled into the world of what-might-be…Assisted by a tentacle, he had leapt into a womb of steel, a metal pod barely large enough to stand up in. The tentacle withdrew, and he was thrown upon the floor as the robot rocked, starting to march back towards the portal, brushing aside the brawling bodies of brutal ogryns and rabid groxen. Its cleated feet crushed deep craters. The hatch was descending, to close him in. Through it, while still open, by the resuming, spasming light of energy beams Jomi glimpsed a man in glowing breastplate and blood-red cloak – a thin, tall man with a drooping black moustache and a staring eye tattooed upon his cheek – sprinting frantically towards the decamping robot. Jomi could hear the man’s thumping thoughts. ‘Even if I can paralyze him… too late to drag the boy out…! At least cling to some handhold on the robot… Don’t lose it entirely, or all has been in vain… Accompany it, willy-nilly, through the doorway of darkness…

The hatch closed, plunging Jomi into utter obscurity and silence. The body that carried him lurched and swayed. Presently little lights winked on. Jomi hugged his own body protectively. How could he escape from this pod? Surely he couldn’t live inside this miniature chamber even if the machine fed him? He imagined the narrow floor as will with his urine, in which nuggets of excrement bobbed. ‘Welcome to my kingdom,’ the voice purred. Bitter mockery tinged the accents Jomi heard in his mind. ‘Our kingdom, now–’(‘Mine tooo…’) A malicious, disappointed echo seemed to haunt the voice, perhaps unheard by it, perhaps all too familiar. (‘Failure, feeble failure… But here’s a soft body at least…’)The lid of a small porthole slid aside. Jomi pressed his face to the thick plascrystal as floodlight beams lanced from the robot. He stared at a great grotto of metal, from which several steel tunnels ran away into stygian gloom. Strange machines jutted from the plated floor and from the ribbed walls. A debris of loose tools and cargo floated like dead fish in a dank pond.‘ There’s one other such machine as mine on board,’ the voice confided, as if oblivious of the soft, sinister echo that Jomi had heard. ‘It has been inactive for millennia, lacking a person’s mind to fill it, but I can revive it now. With my science, I’ll put you into it. First, of course, I’ll need to cutaway your body–’(‘That’ll be an exquisite hour or so…’) Jomi vomited in terror. ‘Soon, before you use all the air I sucked in on that moon. Once you’re activated we can play games. Hide and seek, for instance… You’ll need to rely on the resources of your lovely mind. At least I’ll have company now. Oh the madness, the madness. Maybe my imaginary companion will go away. Into you, maybe…’A figure in a blood-red cloak drifted into view, out in the giant grotto. Its frozen arms stretched out vainly towards a vista which, prior to the flare of illumination, it couldn’t possibly have seen. What-might-be – and might still be – vanished. Jomi still stood before the robot.‘ Daemon, daemon, hidden daemon!’ he shrieked at it. He spat. Reaching into his memory for an incantation, he recalled Farb’s prayers, and howled: ‘Imperator hominorum, nostra salvatio!’ ‘Jomeeeee! Do not betray meeee!’ The white-hot cauldron inside Jomi spilled over. The inner furnaces, so suddenly revealed to him, gushed psychic fire. Hardly knowing how, he sprayed a fountain of defensive mental energy, ill-focused yet incandescent, at the voice, which would have betrayed him.‘ Nostra salvatio, hominorum imperator!’ ‘Aiieee!’ cried the voice, keening through his head like a scalpel blade attempting to severe the sinews of his new-found psyker ability, raw and unshaped as yet. Recoiling, his brain in agony, Jomi nevertheless summoned another spout of hot repulsion to hurl at the robot. The boy’s raw power! And his piety too, albeit born of terror! Bathed in the backwash of inner light from the volcanic upheaval within the boy, with his own senses extended Serpilian had partaken of Jomi’s vision of what might-be

The robot launched jets of plasma and energy beams. A Land Raider exploded, raining hot shards of plasteel. Several Marines fell victim to beams and jets. The Imperial energies cascaded off the robot’s shields, pluming into the sky, rendering the landscape bright as day. Yet now the robot seemed confused. It backed. It lumbered. Perhaps the mind within was anguished. Perhaps, infected by Jomi’s vision, it imagined that it had passed safely back through the portal, though the nightmare evidence was otherwise. Perhaps it was running low on energy. At last an Imperial energy-beam tore loose a weapon arm. Another beam pierced the vulnerable hatch. Part of the robot’s mantle flared and melted. Still firing – but falteringly now, seemingly at random – the great, damaged machine stomped back towards the portal. Land Raider beams focused in unison upon its back, so that it seemed to be propelled in its retreat by a hurricane-torn, white-hot sail woven from the heart of a sun. As it entered the portal, the robot incandesced blindingly. A detonation as of a dozen simultaneous sonic booms rocked the torn terrain. Glaring fragments of the robot’s carapace flew back like angry boomerangs, like scythes. The bulk of its disintegrating body pitched forward, out of existence, vanishing.