The Lords of Silence Read online

  He reaches the antechamber just below the sensorium bridge. He can hear commotion – shouting from the Unchanged, and even growls and barked orders from the Unbroken. Heavy machinery is being dragged around by chain gangs, and it makes the sagging decks shed rust flakes. By the time he reaches the access hatch it has become a cacophony, and the disorder irritates him.

  He meets Hovik just before the piston lift to the next level. The ship’s master looks unsteady – she has a gash on her forehead and her hair has come undone from its bun.

  ‘What happened?’ Dragan asks.

  He towers over her. Hovik was once taller, but she is diminishing now, fattening, being crushed into a ball by her plagues. When she breathes it is with a wheeze, and her cheeks are mottled red.

  ‘I think…’ she begins, then reaches for a bulkhead for support. ‘I think the warp drives.’

  Dragan hesitates. ‘Ignited?’

  ‘Not fully. And I do not know why yet.’ She swallows, and a pop of yellow liquid marks the corner of her mouth. ‘Maybe not the warp drives.’

  She is not focusing well. Dragan looks beyond her, up into the lift shaft, from where more thunks of bulky equipment are coming. ‘A mess,’ he spits. ‘Where is the siegemaster?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘He’s not on the bridge?’

  ‘The bridge is a wreck, lord.’

  And then he has a brief flicker of concern. Vorx might have died. He might have been crushed by something, destroyed by a hand other than Dragan’s own. He moves towards the elevator entrance, going faster now, ignoring Hovik as she gradually squats down on the deck, retching.

  He reaches the access platform and sees the carnage for himself. There are Unbroken corpses among the wreckage, lit by the sparking flash of electrics going off. Armourglass has shattered, flecking the decks with a glinting carpet of shards.

  Far above him are octagonal realviewer blisters, clustered like compound eye-lenses. He can see the void through them, and for a moment thinks he catches the dark-grey slab that was the Iron Shades vessel.

  But even during the engagement that ship never got properly close. They had pummelled one another from thousands of kilometres away, hurling plasma across a burning void. Only the boarding teams had given the fight anything like a proper character, and Dragan had at least tasted the blood of the enemy before the wrench into oblivion pulled everything apart.

  If Hovik was right, something had gone strangely awry. It took hours to prime the warp furnaces. The Navigators needed to be hauled from their incubator cells and plugged into Solace’s nexus. Then again, it was unclear whether Navigators, even the vat-gorged horrors the Legion cultivated, were of much use now. The Corpse-spawn’s beacon is stuttering, run the rumours. Even so, warp drives do not just ignite.

  Dragan strides through the detritus. His boot crunches through a supine servitor, and it barely coughs as its femur snaps. He sees the empty throne ahead of him, rising out of a jumble of wreckage. There are serf crew milling around it, trying to clear the worst of the debris away, but the seat itself is empty.

  Dragan looks at it. He looks at the way the arms curve out, built for the dimensions of a human-normal but steadily augmented by Solace’s slow mutations so that an Unbroken master can be accommodated in suitable majesty.

  He considers the gravid weight of the columns. He notes the faded verdigris on the old copper, and believes he can still make out the eroded impression of an aquila somewhere in all that bulbous metalwork. He sees the sign of the closed lips over the headrest – the sigil of the Lords of Silence – streaked with oil.

  The throne cannot remain empty. That is the first principle.

  He looks at it for a long time.

  Then he hears voices – commands, requests for commands, cries for help. Hovik has followed him in, and other senior crew are crawling back to their stations. A plasma chamber bursts into life, flaring lime-green behind the crystal frontage.

  Vorx isn’t here. Someone needs to take charge.

  Dragan strides down from the empty throne. ‘Get us augurs,’ he barks at the sensorium pits. ‘We’re blind, and I want eyes.’

  He keeps half a glance on the realviewers. The stars look strange.

  Where are we? he thinks.

  Chapter Three

  Garstag is still fighting. He was among the first into action, stalking down the long accessways into the starboard decks above the main gunnery spine. He took the Kardainn with him – six battle-brothers in the same mix of Terminator-class plate. Some is Tartaros pattern, some Cataphractii, some of more obscure provenance or no longer clearly identifiable. They carry flails, mauls and combi-bolters, clattering heavily down the crowded passages with condensation steaming from their vox-grilles.

  It was a brave decision to board Solace. The enemy must have been expecting reinforcements at some stage, for even Imperial Space Marines would not be bone-headed enough to take on a fully loaded grand cruiser in scattered squads. The Lords of Silence are a powerful warband, numbering more than six hundred Unbroken and several thousand Unchanged, ably prepared to defend a ship that is more than partly alive and which harbours a vindictive streak towards its old makers. Solace was prepared not for mere raiding, but for invasion. It is equipped for decades of continuous warfare, a ship-borne army in its own right.

  So they must have been expecting reinforcements. What happened to prevent it? What had that lurch been, and why were the lumens blown? Why is Solace so badly damaged?

  Garstag does not have time to reflect on that. He pushes himself back into a combat stance, shoving aside the shattered remnants of a bulkhead hatch. The Kardainn are knee-deep in filth and broken metal, locked in darkness and only visible from muzzle-flashes and the dark green glow of their helm lenses. This chamber is where the enemy has decided to make their stand – twenty of them, he thinks, Tactical Marines of the Iron Shades Chapter, isolated and cut off and determined to die with honour.

  He does not cry out as he cuts into them. They are shouting liberally as they fight back, spewing invective and battle-chants. This seems to animate them – to give their blows added heft. They are skilled and committed, moving fast even in the tight confines and plentiful wreckage. Garstag sees a Space Marine vault across a collapsed beam and empty his bolter into the oncoming charge of Brannad, one of the Kardainn, which slows his advance significantly.

  But they are fighting a losing battle. The very environment is raised against them – glowing tentacles burst from the foaming water, grasping at their legs and arms. There are Little Lords in the rafters, and they throw themselves at the warriors with snickering abandon, chewing down on power cables and armour joints. Every time a fighter has to shake one off, it gives time for Garstag’s brothers to close in and finish the task.

  Terminator plate gives them a huge advantage, and this is no standard Tactical Dreadnought armour – like everything else, it has been changed, expanded, thickened and mutated. Brannad has a curl of sucker-encrusted hooks for a right arm, writhing like a nest of serpents. Artarion has a fanged mouth snapping over the barrel of his heavy bolter, which is linked to his body by permanent strands of glistening mucus. Garstag himself has the greatest of the Gifts – a chainsword of living talons, crackling with corposant and dripping with ever-renewing toxins.

  Garstag does not attempt to emulate the swift strikes of the enemy. He trusts in his colossal ability to absorb punishment and strides through the murk in stately measure, taking hits from bolt-rounds and barely flinching. The Kardainn are fighting as the Death Guard have always fought, like a gauntlet closing on a throat, slowly, building pressure, building and building until resistance snaps.

  An Iron Shade leaps out at him from the darkness, sable armour glinting, sweeping a power blade close, two-handed. He’s far faster than Garstag, and the crackling edge sinks into his leading shoulderguard. Living ceramite closes over the woun
d instantly, sucking the sword from the Space Marine’s grasp. He reaches for his bolt pistol, but Garstag can grab him now, seizing him by the throat with his claw. For a second the Iron Shade fights back, thrashing out as his boots leave the deck, but then Garstag squeezes – a savage contraction of servos and fused sinew – and his attacker’s neck is broken. Garstag throws the limp body aside and it crashes into the blood-foamed filth.

  Then there is another coming at him. Perhaps he is some champion, his path cleared by the sacrifice of a lesser warrior. He carries his own chainsword in one hand and a bolter in the other. The combined assault is formidable – a punch-rain of shells backed up by heavy swipes of gunning linked teeth. Garstag is rocked by it, smashed back on his heels and forced to parry with his blade. He sees the deathmask of his enemy loom out of the murk – a pair of backlit lenses like a ghost’s eyes – and realises he has miscalculated his momentum.

  But the enemy is suddenly thrown to one side, hit by a perfectly judged shot from an injector pistol. The dart slices out from the shadows and catches him at the neck, right in that minuscule sliver of weakness between helm and gorget. The champion reacts instantly, grabbing the barb and throwing it to one side.

  Garstag could strike him then, but chooses not to. There is no longer any point. Instead, he watches as the Iron Shade is rapidly consumed from within – a spasm, a shake, then blood fountaining from every armour joint. The Space Marine falls to his knees, vomiting through his helm’s grille. Garstag can hear the fizz of flesh being eaten even under his armour.

  The rest of the Corpse-spawn are beaten back now. They are falling away, harried on every side, pursued down the corridor by the Kardainn, dogged by swarms of Little Lords, struck by falling spars and foaming gouts of corrosive liquid. Garstag sees others of the Population joining the hunt now – which for them is really a race for scraps of carrion – breaking out through rust-weakened holes and rents, their faces locked into desperate grins and their eyes staring.

  And Slert is there too. Strange Slert, odd Slert, who is hateful but useful, and who seems to spirit into existence at the most opportune moments. The Putrifier is holstering his injector pistol and looking at the twitching results of his work. His bottle-lensed helm is impassive, but his awkward body mimics the death spasms of his victim.

  Garstag growls at him, feeling phlegm build up in his throat, and flexes his claw. He would like to plunge his talons through Slert and see how long it takes for the war of poisons to play out. But he holds back, of course, for he knows that the combat anger is on him, and that it will subside, and that Slert is one of Vorx’s protected, and that all these things are important.

  ‘Clumsy, Kardainn-master,’ Slert says, amused, still looking at the corpse in the murk. ‘He would have cut your throat out.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ Garstag asks.

  ‘I’ve been roaming.’ As Slert speaks, a Little Lord plops down from the roof space and splats onto his shoulder. It coos affectionately into Slert’s clogged earpiece, and Slert lets it nuzzle. ‘This is all very ­unusual, don’t you think?’

  Garstag looms closer, his hooves splashing in the bloody, oily mire. ‘Get away from me. Stay away from me. I have the just desire to slaughter, and you are now very close.’

  Slert shrinks back. The Little Lord spits at Garstag, then darts under the cover of Slert’s cloak. ‘Not nice,’ says Slert. ‘Things are running ragged on this ship. Where are we? You know that? No, you know nothing.’

  Garstag doesn’t care. He was promised a proper war, one that had been in preparation for mortal generations. These dregs are not what he came for, but for the time being they are all he has. He can still hear fighting echoing down the accessways, muffled and dampening.

  He moves off, but Slert dares to reach out, to pull him back.

  ‘Someone activated the warp drives,’ Slert says. ‘Dangerous, dangerous. We might all be atoms now. Know anything about that, Kardainn-master?’

  Garstag turns on him, towering over him, his heavy helm-plate pushed into Slert’s face.

  ‘Nothing. I do not care for the ship, and I do not care for you. We have a realm before us, its back broken and ready to scour. That is all I care about. All. If you want to play games, go and find another degenerate.’

  Slert laughs. ‘So many to choose from.’

  But Garstag has swept off, not listening. There are faint signals on his helm display – blotches of yellow in the gloom. There might be boarding parties still alive somewhere, and they all need hunting down.

  ‘So you won’t say where you were?’ Slert calls after him.

  Garstag keeps moving.

  Vorx is returning. He has left it too long already, but there were thoughts to be thought and numbers to be considered. He has not killed, and that will be noted. He guesses Dragan will have finished many of the invaders. Garstag will have accounted for many more. Before the wrench, Vorx had even considered sending a party to seek out Naum, though he is glad now that he didn’t. Naum would not have understood the situation at all. Naum is a tortured soul, for all the Gifts he has been given, and that is a great pity.

  Vorx no longer sees information flowing across the interior of his helm as he did in the distant past, because his visor substrate is now a part of his face. So his visual field is a complex thing – a psychological layering of true vision, machine overlay and dream projections, spiked with electrical impulses from what was once a tactical broadcast implant. He cannot close his eyes, which are lubricated by a steady trickle of moisture from capillary glands. When he sleeps, it is merely a haze of torpor marching with vivid, eyes-open dreams.

  These are the ways we exemplify the lessons, he thinks. These are the ways we shape the old faith.

  He climbs back up from Philemon’s cubbyhole, breathing heavily. His gauntlets grasp flaking iron and scrape across blistered synthleather.

  To reach the bridge again, he has chosen to pass through the Sanctuary. He does not know what place this was when Solace was an Imperial vessel. Possibly an audience hall for visiting dignitaries, or maybe some equipment chamber hollowed out of its machinery. Now it echoes with enormity, broken up by slender columns that strike up through a jungle of vegetation. The Sanctuary must be two hundred metres long, a snaking gallery that threads through the belly of the ship like a bloated liver, sucking up the poisons and the swills and slowly fermenting them. Vats bubble with simmering things, only to spill over into thick mulch below as their feet corrode away. Ferns and kelp-tubes thread upwards into the high gallery, each as black as nightshade and pocked with glowing phosphor-spines. Creatures whimper in the foetid shadows, all vectors of powerful plagues, their jaws pink with scurvy and their eyes half-closed from the close press of sores.

  Vorx likes the Sanctuary. It is a miniature representation of the Many Gardens of the Plague Planet, which are in themselves mere reflections of the One True Garden. It is the closest his people will ever come to having shrines. The Lords of Silence come to these groves when they are able, to breathe in the air, to feel the churn of the rotting soils beneath them.

  The Sanctuary is disturbed then, just as all things on the ship are. Its branches sway as if a wind blows through them, and spiky leaf clusters shed in thumps. The creatures nuzzle and burrow to avoid him, so Vorx travels through the groves unimpeded, and the strands and fronds drag across his armour. He only pauses once, in one of the many dark glades, to see a fresh species of orchid pushing its head through the leaf matter.

  He stoops to regard it. Its stem is a virulent green, its bulbous head strikingly purple. It has sacs under its petals that shiver when he breathes on them. He reaches out with a finger to touch it, and feels tiny pricks from hidden stingers folded within its delicate frame. They give him an unusual wave of pain that endures for several seconds before his physiology is able to transmute it.

  Vorx smiles. He will have to return to this glade soon. He may
ask Philemon to categorise the orchid, to take cuttings. Slert may even wish to use it for refining purposes.

  The Sanctuary is bountiful. Like all such gardens, it creates more than it destroys. Nothing remains the same for long – there is always the slow creep of change. That is the thing that sets his kind apart from the old Imperium. The Corpse-spawn desire, above all things, stasis. They preserve, they record, they clamp down hard on the passage of time. They are caught in their single moment, one that should have been confined to history ten millennia ago, a moment that freezes their muscles and keeps their mouths and minds shut. It will be a mercy to end that empire, for there is no greater agony than rictus.

  Vorx keeps walking. Foliage tugs at him as he passes, wrapping tiny strands around his boots and kneecaps. Everything in this place would kill him, if it could. It would strangle him, render him down, suck out his vital juices and refine them into something more diffuse. He does not mind that. It strikes him as an apt metaphor for his position at the head of this warband. He is perfectly aware that maintaining command is a matter of survival. If he delivers victories, he will be suffered to lead. If he fails, sooner or later someone will challenge him. Deposed leaders are not permitted to remain at liberty. Death is one of the better outcomes for them.

  He is philosophical about that. The galaxy has become an angrier place during the course of the Long War, but he does not share in its many pathologies. He can remember fighting in the Legion soon after it had ceased to be the Dusk Raiders and become the Death Guard, when his armour was bone pale and bore the marks of filth as a badge of pride. Before that, he can remember fighting and living on Barbarus as a child, and that was a true nightmare. Nothing could be as bad as that again – a scrabble for survival within a planet-wide prison that crushed the soul and shredded the nerves.