Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne Read online

  Backlist

  More Warhammer 40,000 stories from Black Library

  The Beast Arises

  1: I AM SLAUGHTER

  2: PREDATOR, PREY

  3: THE EMPEROR EXPECTS

  4: THE LAST WALL

  5: THRONEWORLD

  6: ECHOES OF THE LONG WAR

  7: THE HUNT FOR VULKAN

  8: THE BEAST MUST DIE

  9: WATCHERS IN DEATH

  10: THE LAST SON OF DORN

  11: SHADOW OF ULLANOR

  12: THE BEHEADING

  Space Marine Battles

  WAR OF THE FANG

  A Space Marine Battles book, containing the novella The Hunt for Magnus and the novel Battle of the Fang

  THE WORLD ENGINE

  An Astral Knights novel

  DAMNOS

  An Ultramarines collection

  DAMOCLES

  Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Ultramarines novellas Blood Oath, Broken Sword, Black Leviathan and Hunter’s Snare

  OVERFIEND

  Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Salamanders novellas Stormseer, Shadow Captain and Forge Master

  ARMAGEDDON

  Contains the Black Templars novel Helsreach and novella Blood and Fire

  Legends of the Dark Millennium

  ASTRA MILITARUM

  An Astra Militarum collection

  ULTRAMARINES

  An Ultramarines collection

  FARSIGHT

  A Tau Empire novella

  SONS OF CORAX

  A Raven Guard collection

  SPACE WOLVES

  A Space Wolves collection

  Visit blacklibrary.com for the full range of novels, novellas, audio dramas and Quick Reads, along with many other exclusive products

  Contents

  Cover

  Backlist

  Title Page

  Warhammer 40,000

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Warhammer 40,000

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  Chapter One

  Say nothing, listen with utmost care,’ he said. ‘You understand me. You are in danger – you know this. You can see the tools against the far wall. But do not look at them. Look at me.’

  The speaker held the man’s staring eyes with his own, which were deep grey and did not blink.

  ‘I brought you here following testimony from those who know you,’ he said. ‘They came to me, and I am bound to listen. Their words have been recorded. You can see them on the tabletop, those volumes there. No, do not look at them either. Look at me. You are afraid. If you let it turn your mind, it will be the end of you, so I will ask you to remember that you are a human being, a master of your passions. When I ask you a question, you will need to answer it, and if you do not speak the truth, I will know. The truth is all I desire. You have one chance left, so hold on to it. Hold on to it. Clutch it. Never deviate from it. Do you understand what I am telling you?’

  The man before him tried to do as he was bid. He tried to hold his interrogator’s gaze, to keep his hands from shaking uncontrollably, and that was difficult. He looked ill, he stank. Two days in a cell, listening to the screams filtering up from the levels below, would do that to you.

  He couldn’t reply. His scab-latticed lips twitched, but the words would not come. He shivered, twitching, fingers flexing, unable to do what was asked of him.

  His interrogator waited. He was used to waiting. He had overseen a thousand sessions on a hundred worlds, so giving this one a little more time would serve well enough. He sat back in his fine orlwood chair, pressed his hands together and rested his chin on the apex of his armoured fingers.

  ‘Do you understand me?’ he asked again.

  The man before him tried to answer again. His face was ashen, just like all lowborn faces on Terra – Throneworld-grey, the pallor of a life lived under the unbroken curtain of tox-clouds.

  ‘I…’ he tried. ‘I…’

  The questioner waited. A thick robe hung from his armoured shoulders, lined with silver death’s heads at the hem. His hair was slicked back from a hard-cut face, waxed to a high sheen. His nose was hooked, his jawline sharp. Something faintly reptilian lingered over those features, something dry, patient and unbreaking.

  Over his chest lay the only formal badge of his office – a skull-form rosette of the Ordo Hereticus, fashioned from iron and pinned to the trim of the cloak. It was a little thing, a trifle, barely larger than the heart stone jewel of an amulet, but in that rosette lay dread, hard-earned over lifetimes.

  The bound man could not drag his gaze away from it, try as he might. It was that, more than the instruments which hung in their shackles on the rust-flecked wall, more than the odour of old blood which rose from the steel floor, more than the scratch-marked synth­leather bonds, that held him tightly in his metal chair.

  The inquisitor leaned forwards, letting polished gauntlets drop to his lap. He reached down to the belt at his waist and withdrew a long-barrelled r
evolver. The grip was inlaid ivory, the chamber adorned with a rippling serpent motif. He idly swung the cylinder out, observed the rounds nestled within, then clicked the chamber back into place. He pressed the tip of the muzzle against his subject’s temple, observing a minute flinch as the cool steel rested against warm flesh.

  ‘I do not wish to use this,’ the inquisitor told him, softly. ‘I do not wish to visit any further harm upon you. Why should I? The Emperor’s realm, infinite as it is, requires service. You are young, you are in passable health. You can serve, if you live. One more pair of hands. Such is the greatest glory of the Imperium – the toil of uncountable pairs of hands.’

  The man was shaking now, a thin line of drool gathering at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘And I would not waste my ammunition, by choice,’ the inquisitor went on. ‘One bullet alone is worth more than you will ever accumulate. The shells are manufactured on Luna by expert hands, adept at uncovering and preserving the things of another age, and they know the value of their art. This is Sanguine, and none but two of its kind were ever made. The twin, Saturnine, has been lost for a thousand years, and has most likely been un-made. And so, consider – would I prefer to use it on you, and cause this priceless thing some small harm, or would I rather that you lived and told me all you know, and allowed me to put it back in its holster?’

  The man didn’t try to look at the gun. He couldn’t meet the gaze of the inquisitor, and so stared in panic at the rosette, blinking away tears, trying to control his shivering.

  ‘I… told you…’ he started.

  The inquisitor nodded, encouragingly. ‘Yes, you did. You told me of the False Angel. I thought then that we might get to the truth, so I let you talk. Then your fear made you dumb, and we were forced to start again. Perhaps everything you have told me was a lie. See now, I am used to those. In my every waking hour I hear a lie from a different pair of lips. Lies are to me like teardrops – transparent and short-lived. If you lie to me again, I will perceive it, and Sanguine will serve you. So speak. Speak now.’

  The man seemed to crumple then, as if a long-maintained conflict within him had broken. He slumped in his bonds, and his bloodshot eyes drifted away from the rosette.

  ‘I made an… error,’ he murmured, haltingly. ‘You know it. You knew from the start. A mistake.’ He looked up, briefly defiant. ‘A mistake! See, how was I to know? They spoke of the things that priests speak of. I was confused, in my mind.’ Once the words started to come, they spilled out fast, one after another, propelled by fear. ‘It is hard, you know? To live, to… carry on living. And then someone comes and tells you that there’s another way. There’ll be rations – better than we have now. More hab-units, given to those that need them. And they’ll stop the killings, down in the underhive. They’ll send arbitrators down there, and they’ll stop the ones that hunt us. You know that we’re hunted? Of course you do. They find the bodies all the time, and no one does anything – they never have. So I listened to that, and I knew it was wrong, somehow, and that our only protector dwells on the Throne, but he’s here, the Angel, now, and he listens, and I go to listen to what his preachers tell us. And if they gave us instructions to store supplies or carry weapons, then I did it because I wanted to believe. And I did. Throne save me, but I did.’

  ‘Slower,’ warned the inquisitor, dragging the muzzle of his revolver down the man’s cheek and placing it closer to his lips. ‘Order your thoughts. I have seen the results of your work. I have seen corpses with terrible things done to them. I have seen blood on the walls, smeared in mockery of holy sigils. These are not the work of cutpurses. They are the work of heresy.’

  ‘No!’ The eyes went wide again with terrible fear. ‘You have it wrong!’

  ‘Most strange, how many who come here say that.’

  ‘It is true, lord, true. I know nothing of these… crimes, only that he told us we must arm against the dark, for no one else–’

  ‘Does anything. But now someone is doing something. I am doing something. I would like to do more. I would like to root this out.’

  ‘Yes, yes, you must root it out.’

  ‘Where do you meet?’

  ‘Malliax.’

  ‘You have told me this already. You know what I need. The place. The place where you went to hear these things.’

  ‘I do not…’ The fear returned. ‘I do not know the name. I cannot take you there.’

  The inquisitor’s grey eyes narrowed by a fraction. His finger, finely armoured in dark lacquered plate, slipped away from the trigger, but he kept the barrel pressed against the man’s chin. For a long time the two of them looked at one another, one desperate, the other pensive.

  ‘See, now I believe you,’ the inquisitor said at last, withdrawing the gun and slipping the safety catch on.

  The man took a sucked-in breath – until then, he had hardly dared to. He started to sweat again, and his trembling grew worse.

  ‘It’s true!’ he blurted, his voice cracking from fear. ‘It is true – I can’t take you there.’

  The inquisitor sat back. ‘I know it,’ he said, easing the pistol back into its soft real-leather holster. ‘You are not foolish enough to lie to me. I could break you apart, here, now, and you could tell me no more than you have already.’ He flickered a dry smile. ‘Consider yourself fortunate you met me this day, rather than when I was a younger man. Then, I would have rendered you down to your elements to seek what you hide, just to be sure. Not now. I know when there is nothing left to find.’

  The man did not relax. A different fear entered his eyes, one of new cruelty – a deception, one of the thousand that the agents of the Holy Inquisition knew and practised. There was no way out for him now – once a mortal man entered the black fortresses, that was the end. All knew that. Everyone.

  ‘I would tell you,’ he stammered, breaking down into tears, ‘if I could.’

  The inquisitor rose from his chair, and his robes whispered around his ornate boots. Fine ceramite armour pieces slid across his body as he moved, each one as black as obsidian, each one edged with a vein of silver. His movements were precise, feline, barely audible despite the power feeds coiled tight inside every segment.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said.

  ‘Please,’ sobbed the man, slack in his bonds. ‘I would tell you.’

  The inquisitor reached for the table on which the testimony parchment had been piled, and pressed a command bead. He looked over the scrolls absently – heaps of yellowed, scaly hides bearing the blood-brown scrawl of scholarly transcription, each one sealed with his own personal sigil of authority.

  ‘That is all I asked you,’ the inquisitor said, almost to himself. ‘You are free to go. You have done me some service, and you should reflect on that, when you are able, with pride. It is through loyal souls that we are able to do our work.’

  The man stared at his interrogator, open-mouthed. Lingering suspicion played across his ravaged features.

  The inquisitor glanced over towards him. ‘We’re not monsters. You have nothing more to tell me. If you recall more, you’ll come to me, I’m sure.’

  The man began to believe. His eyes started to dart around – at his bonds, at the tools, at the barred door beyond. ‘Do you mean…?’

  The inquisitor turned away, moved towards the door. As he approached it, thick iron bars slid from their housings and the armoured portal cracked open. A dull red light bled from the far side, snaking over the dark stone flags of the interrogation room. For a moment, the inquisitor was silhouetted by it, a spectral figure, gaunt and featureless.

  ‘All we wish for is the truth,’ he said.

  Then he moved out into the long corridor beyond. The air was sterile, recycled down through the levels of the Inquisitorial fortress by old, wheezing machines. Black webs of damp caked the flagstones, and the filmy suspensor lumens flickered. An augmetic-encrusted servo-skull hovered
down to the inquisitor’s shoulder, bobbing erratically and trailing a thin spinal tail behind it.

  ‘Hereticus-minoris,’ it clicked. ‘Phylum tertius. Tut, tut.’

  At the end of the corridor, a man waited. He wore the thick-slabbed armour of a storm trooper captain, dun-grey, battle-weathered. His face was similarly seasoned, with a shadow of stubble over a blocked chin. His black hair was cropped close to the scalp, exposing tattooed barcodes and ordo battle-honours.

  He bowed. ‘Lord Crowl,’ he said.

  ‘Something keeps him from talking, Revus,’ the inquisitor said. ‘A greater fear? Maybe loyalty. In either case, it is of interest.’

  ‘Will you break him?’

  ‘We learn more by letting him go. Assign a watch, mark his movements until you gain the location. I want him alive until then.’

  ‘It will be done. And afterwards?’

  The inquisitor was already moving, his boots clicking softly on the stone as he made his way towards the next cell. ‘Termination,’ he said. ‘I’ll oversee, so keep it contained – I want to see where this leads.’

  ‘As you will it.’

  The inquisitor hesitated before entering the next cell. The sound of panicked weeping could already be made out through the observation grille in the thick door. ‘But I did not ask you, Revus – how is your sergeant, Hegain? Recovered fully?’

  ‘Almost. Thank you for asking.’

  ‘Give him my congratulations.’

  ‘He will be honoured to have them.’

  The servo-skull bobbed impatiently. ‘Numeroso. Dally not.’

  The inquisitor shot the thing a brief, irritated look, then reached for the armour-lock on the cell door. As he did so, he summoned a ghost-schematic of the next subject’s file, which hovered for a second in an ocular overlay. Reading it, his lips tightened a fraction.

  ‘I will need my instruments for this one,’ Inquisitor Erasmus Crowl told Revus, then went inside.

  Terra.

  Holy Terra, marvel of the galaxy, heart of wonder. No jewel shone more brightly, no canker was more foul. At its nexus met the fears and glories of a species, rammed tight within the spires and the vaults, the pits and the hab-warrens. Spoil-grey, scored and crusted with the contamination and majesty of ten long millennia, a shrine world that glowed with a billion fires, a tomb that clutched its buried souls close. All the planet’s natural beauty had long since been scrubbed from its face, replaced by the layers upon layers of a single, creeping hyper-city. The sprawl blotted out the once-great oceans and the long-hewn forests under suffocating mountains of rockcrete and plasteel, tangled and decaying and renewed and rebuilt until the accretions stretched unbroken from the deepest chasms to the exalted heights.