Onyx Read online

  Onyx

  Chris Wraight

  Kaivon had always considered Valmar’s Gorge a fortunate posting. He made good money, which he was able to transfer back to his family on Herephalomos Tertius. He planned to work for another two years or so, relying on the crackly vid-bursts of his two daughters and single son that arrived on data-slates with each six-month deep-void transport to keep him sane.

  It was hard graft, working the lifters that carried the ore up from the mine-face and into the greedy maws of the processing hoppers. Dangerous, too – the infirmary was usually full of broken limbs, respiratory problems, the occasional cloth-covered corpse – but then everything worth doing, he had always told himself, carried danger with it. The priests reminded them of that often enough, and he paid attention to what the priests told him, and so worked harder.

  In any case, there wasn’t much else to do on Valmar’s Gorge besides work, sleep, and listen to devotional screeds. The rest of the workers, men and women both, were just like him – scraping together enough of a nest-egg to set up somewhere more civilised, keeping sweat-dripped heads low, working the machinery, thinking of better times ahead.

  They would come. They all knew that.

  The mining installation was small by the ancient standards of the Phalomos ore-belt – a single building cluster occupying a speck on the rocky face of the deep-void asteroid Valmar. There had once been dozens of similar stations – Valmar Primus, Valmar’s Edge, Saint Violetta, Karlspar Magna – but they had been mined out over the centuries, and were now abandoned to emptiness. Only Valmar’s Gorge remained in operation, though all knew that even there the workings would one day wind down.

  Kaivon occasionally speculated on what would happen when all the worlds of the galaxy had been exploited. The quantity of minerals in the charted Imperium must once have seemed infinite, though he had overheard mutterings from overseers that supplies of all but the most abundant raw materials were becoming harder to locate. Humanity’s peerless fecundity, its endless wars and voracious appetites had, over ten thousand years, done the near-impossible and depleted what had once seemed limitless.

  Still, that mattered little to him. He was twenty-nine standard years old and, if lucky, could expect to live for twenty more. He’d be reunited with Janna in time, and the children, and they’d petition for a work-slot on an agri-commune, using the product of his labours to procure passage, permits and grease the palms of the officials where necessary.

  It was a good plan. It was sober and considered. It was industrious. He was doing his duty and advancing the cause of his family, just as the Imperial cult demanded. Kaivon had every reason to believe that it would cause him to prosper.

  The installation itself clung like a limpet to the inner cliff-edge of a vast caldera of gouged rock. The chasm below, broken open by ancient tectonic movements, delved into the very heart of the obsidian-dark asteroid, its edges limned only faintly by a distant sun. Valmar’s Gorge was a motley collection of constructions, dominated by the colossal shell of the processing foundries. Mined ores were funnelled into the receiving end via hundreds of trackways, beyond which kilometres-long manufactories beat, sorted, hammered and refined the contents into usable ingots. At the far end of the production lines lay the lifter stations, each capable of berthing massive Grade IX ore-carriers.

  The station’s accommodation section was tiny in comparison. The main domed assembly hall was capable of holding the roughly five thousand workers who were stationed on the Gorge’s edge at any time. Radiating out from that hub were the administratum buildings, the infirmary, the comms station, the chapel complex, the armoury, then the long, grim lines of dormitory blocks. It was all covered and insulated, for Valmar’s old terraformed atmosphere was now barely thick enough to breathe. The installation was a precarious thing, established with the sole objective of sucking up the vital resources needed to keep the starships and hive-spires of the Imperium functioning.

  One day they all knew it would be gone. All of them believed that day would be a long way off.

  Kaivon was returning to his dorm-unit after a five-hour shift at the ore face when it happened.

  He was covered in a thick layer of dust, and, as ever, wanted nothing more than a scrape-shower, to dump his fatigues in the corner of his hab-unit and crawl into his bunk. Every muscle throbbed with lactic acid, and his head was beginning to ache. If he could summon the energy, he might take a detour to the infirmary and see if he could grab some anti-inflamm from the dispenser he’d become friendly with.

  As he reeled down the corridor with the drunken fatigue-walk that all off-shifters affected, the sodium lamps set in the walls suddenly flickered out. Kaivon stood still, surprised. He could hear the breathing of the other workers around him, all doing the same thing.

  Then the lights came on again. Kaivon found that he’d been holding his breath. That surprised him – it was just a power fluctuation.

  ‘End of the world,’ said the woman next to him wryly.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kaivon.

  He’d got to the end of the corridor and into the dorm-unit’s antechamber before the lights failed again. This time, they didn’t come back on. Instead, emergency lumens glowed up from the floor, red and flickery.

  Now he was unnerved. Everyone else in the antechamber did the same thing – look stupidly up at the low ceiling where the lumens were now unlit. Why were they doing that?

  Then he heard it. It was a like the wind moaning across the distant rooftops, except that Valmar’s meagre atmosphere had no winds. Something about that noise chilled Kaivon to his stomach – it was like nothing he’d ever heard before, not even on vid-reels.

  He went over to a cogitator pillar placed at the centre of the antechamber. It was a communal facility, one capable of patching into the installation grid and showing up processing movements and carrier positions. He brought the pict screen into life and punched in the command for a full system overview.

  For a moment, he thought that the system might have gone down with the main lighting grid, as the readings made no sense to him – there were location markers shooting all over the installation schematic, whirring in and out of life like insects. They might have been flyers, but for their speed – nothing moved that fast.

  Then he heard a crash from deep in the heart of the installation, followed by more high-pitched whines. An alert klaxon started to sound and was quickly silenced. The emergency lights flickered badly, threatening to plunge them all into darkness.

  Kaivon felt his heart thumping hard. Something about what was happening scared the hell out of him. The others, too – they were already hurrying for their dorm-units, shouting contradictory things about core-breaches or processor malfunctions.

  Kaivon didn’t follow them in. There were procedures for events like this, protocols to be followed. He started to run, jogging back down the corridor he’d walked along, heading towards the installation’s heart. If there had been some major systems failure then they had to congregate in the main assembly area and await instruction. He tried to ignore the sweat on his palms as he went. Why was he so scared?

  As he closed in on the station centre, he saw that others had had the same idea, and soon dozens of ore-workers and administratum staff were jostling to get into the assembly hall’s outer chambers. More crashes made the walls shake, and the high-pitched whine began to mask out all other sounds. Kaivon heard people shouting – or was it shrieking? – from both ahead and behind. He began to doubt whether he was doing the right thing. Perhaps he should have stayed in the dorm-cluster and waited for more data from central command, but by then it was too late, and he was being carried along by the crowds.

  They all broke into the domed assemb
ly area, and Kaivon instantly found himself gagging. The air felt painfully thin, as if the hall’s outer skin had been pierced and the compensators hadn’t kicked in yet. He looked up, towards the high curved roof that covered the main seating area, and his heart missed a beat. A perfectly circular hole had been burned into the apex, and there were intruders streaking down to ground-level on lengths of gossamer-thin wire.

  For a moment, all he could do was stare at them. They were outlandish figures, oddly compelling, kitted out in glossy black plate armour with tall, smooth helms. At first Kaivon thought they were human, until he saw the way they moved.

  He tried to back up then, to push his way into the doorway again and out of the hall, but the press of bodies kept pushing him inward. More armoured figures emerged, seeming to spin out of the air like black twists of lightning. Crackles of cold energy snaked across the chamber’s width, followed by the stink of ammonia.

  Kaivon began to panic. Others around him shoved and jostled, and the whole mob surged further in. As they did so, the intruders opened fire.

  Their slender-barrelled rifles were near-silent but the projectiles were deadly. Kaivon saw the man in front of him ripped into shreds by a rain of razor-sharp slivers. The dying man’s blood splattered hotly across his face, shocking him into immobility.

  By then the screaming had started in earnest. Kaivon did what everyone else did – frantically kicked his way through the masses to get out. More bodies exploded around him, throwing blood up against the walls. He heard laughter, but it wasn’t human. He was screaming himself by then, tearing at those around him to get to the safety of the doorway. Somehow, propelled by the energy of sheer terror, he made it to the portal before the razor-shards caught up with him, and he stumbled over the threshold.

  As he broke clear of the hall, he risked a last look over his shoulder. The intruders were now at floor level and opening fire with their shard-guns. Others were swooping into the crowds on grav-boards, grabbing their prey and hauling them up into the heights. The xenos were killing, but not quickly or cleanly. They were enjoying themselves.

  He ran on, feeling vomit rise in his gorge. He staggered down the feeder corridor, knowing they’d be after him soon, knowing he couldn’t possibly escape them. As he gave in to primordial urges, running like an animal, only one cogent thought flashed through his terrorised mind.

  Why us?

  The chamber was lit intriguingly. Inquisitor Aoart Halliafiore of the Ordo Xenos, was a man who enjoyed the theatre of the clandestine, and every station he oversaw was kitted out in an almost parodic image of the secretive. Shadows pooled and clustered. Sigils nestled under the faint glow of lanterns, tracing old lineages back to the distant days of pre-Crusade Terra. Perhaps he even knew what they signified. It was not impossible; the Inquisition had a long memory.

  He was a thin, spare man who wore finely tailored robes. The only badge of office he allowed himself was an iron aquila icon on his left breast; otherwise, he could have been any courtier on any civilised world. His skin was smooth, almost youthful despite his several centuries’ service, and he had tight features, the result of over-aggressive rejuvenat work. His movements were measured, precise and contained.

  He stood in the centre of a circular chamber, illuminated by a single shaft of blue light. Seven giants stood around him, each towering over the slight figure in their midst. They wore black armour, relatively unadorned, in the Mk VII pattern. Only the right pauldrons varied, giving away the Chapter origins of the squad-members: Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Executioners, Angels Puissant, Iron Shades, Space Wolves. They were helm-less, which was the only other source of variation. Callimachus of the Ultramarines, the squad leader, had a close-cropped, blocky visage. Jocelyn of the Dark Angels wore his dark hair long. The Blood Angel Leonides’s pale skin looked almost ghostly in the low light.

  Ingvar of the Space Wolves struggled to maintain the icy composure of his brothers. Halliafiore’s mannerisms wore at his nerves. The mortal was so quiet, so dry, half-dead, hardly worthy of a warrior’s attention. The others were nearly as bad. They were deadly – he had trained with them long enough to know that – but they were... bloodless. None of them, not even the Blood Angel, truly had the rage, the heart.

  Perhaps that would come out during the mission. It felt like he had been waiting months for it to come, though it was hard to mark the passage of time in the lightless tunnels of an Inquisitorial fortress.

  ‘This is your target,’ said Halliafiore, summoning up a ghostly hololith from his outstretched palm. It showed a schematic star-cluster. Several of the systems were marked with a death’s head. ‘The Phalamos Belt. Value to the Imperium: production of raw materials, rhodium, magnesium, sundry rare earths. Predated by xenotype eldar, sub-species tertius, for nine standard years. Seven installations lost. Three hive worlds raided, resulting in heavy loss of life and, more to the point, frequent interruption of tithe production.’

  The inquisitor’s manner, more suited to a scrivener than a lord of the Allfather’s everlasting realm, never ceased to grate.

  ‘Study the pattern,’ Halliafiore said. ‘What do you note?’

  Ingvar looked at the star-map, and saw nothing but a trail of destruction. The raid-marks all had a date-stamp on them, which told him nothing.

  Xatasch, the spectral member of the Iron Shades Chapter, was the first to respond. ‘The mark is incomplete,’ he said in his near-whisper.

  Halliafiore nodded. ‘Elaborate.’

  ‘Xenotype datum 347,’ said Xatasch, recalling the element of Deathwatch training pertinent to the species. ‘Attack-patterns subordinate to aesthetic considerations. The breed takes pleasure from marking the void in certain symbolic forms. They are tracing a rune.’

  The hololith zoomed in, homing down to a point on the edge of the attack distribution. Soon it showed a single point – a remote asteroid bearing the ident ‘Valmar’.

  ‘This completes the symbol,’ said Halliafiore. ‘Xenosavants identify it as the rune yllianua, known to be significant for seven eldar factions operating in the subsector. One of these is of particular interest, given the physical presence, so reports allege, of a flesh-twister.’

  Flesh-twister. The colloquial name for the xenos subtype haemonculus, identified in Inquisitorial intelligence as being part of the species’ command hierarchy. To catch one on the battlefield was rare, for their attacks were so rapid and so well-coordinated that few records were ever left behind. Ingvar remembered the scarce scraps of vid-footage he’d been shown in orientation training – grainy images of warped, hunched grotesques floating on suspensor cushions, their long clocks hanging with hooks. The purpose of the haemonculi was not fully understood, though it was clear that they were the often the architects of the raids, and therefore the primary target for retribution.

  ‘Then we know where they will strike,’ said Callimachus. ‘We can protect it.’

  The Ultramarine was always keen to propose the squad’s course of action, as if itching to gain the inquisitor’s approval. Ingvar loathed that and was pleased to see Halliafiore give Callimachus a disdainful look.

  ‘Do you think they would strike, if we were known to be protecting the station?’ he asked.

  Callimachus glanced at the installation statistics, undeterred. ‘Its annual tithe production is significant. Its loss will harm weapon production in the subsector.’

  Halliafiore gave him a tight smile that said stop talking now. ‘The flesh-twister is the target. It will be disabled, contained and brought here, to be placed under the instruments of information-extraction. All other considerations are negligible.’

  The inquisitor turned his pristine visage to the rest of them, looking at them in turn. ‘Your first mission, Onyx,’ he said, using their squad designation. ‘Always a delicate time. Greater tests will come, should you perform adequately.’ Hallifiore fixed Ingvar with a particularly lingeri
ng gaze. ‘Operate as a unit. Do not deviate from the mission parameters.’

  He smiled for a final time, just as mirthlessly and perfunctorily as before.

  ‘The Emperor protects,’ he said, which told them all that the briefing was at an end.

  Tallia ran down the corridor, pushing past the bodies around her. They had lost their heads, all of them, giving into a kind of herd-like panic at the first sign of trouble. Throne, they disgusted her. There were standing orders to follow. In her service in Phalamos’s militia she’d had the importance of discipline drilled into her, and the old habits hadn’t quite gone away. At forty years of age, and having seen plenty of foulness on the battlefield, she was better equipped to deal with what had just happened on Valmar than most of her counterparts.

  The whole place was now slippery with blood. The xenos were beginning to move through the complex. They worked incredibly quick. The Emperor only knew what had happened to the automatic defence grid – it seemed to have shut down as soon as the enemy arrived, perhaps jammed by some forbidden xenotech, or – as was entirely possible – maintained so badly it had failed to detect the incoming threats at all.

  Tallia swore aloud in frustration. Valmar’s Gorge was such a backwater – she should have arranged a transfer back to Tertius months ago.

  She skidded around the last corner before the comms-array chamber, and the volume of bodies lessened. They were all running the other way now, down towards the armoury to kit themselves out and lock themselves in. That was pointless, and would do little but slow the inevitable. The only chance, to the extent that any still existed, was to call for help.

  The slide-doors of the comms-chamber were open and gaping. Tallia threw herself inside and punched the lock controls. The doors hissed closed behind her, sealing her into the perfectly dark interior. As the bolts clicked home, she scrabbled around for a lumen activator. Her fingers closed over the controls and she depressed the switch.

  Carmine emergency lights flickered briefly, showing up a circular space dominated by a central console. She caught a glimpse of equipment lockers running around the edge of the far wall, each one several metres tall and wide, enough to house the racks of spare machinery needed by the array. Beyond that was the transmission room, stocked with standard message canisters. All she needed to do was get there, slot a distress canister into the proper cogitator housing and activate the transport. It would be relayed through the system network in seconds, hopefully being picked up by a Guard patrol before they were all wiped out.