The Beast Arises

Mesring’s fat face was a nest of fury and confusion. Scrabbling through the water in the bowl, the Ecclesiarch found his weapon-ring and slid it onto his little finger. Pointing the weapon at Vangorich’s presented back, the High Lord thought on the toxin working its way through the pores of his skin, through his blood and soaking slowly through his internal organs. He thought on the potential antidote in Drakan Vangorich’s possession. The Ecclesiarch lowered his hand in defeat, and his eyes with it.

‘Three days,’ Vangorich’s voice echoed about the Ecclesiarch’s cavernous private chambers. Mesring looked up, but the Grand Master of Assassins was gone.

EIGHT

Incus Maximal / Malleus Mundi — orbital

Astropath Orm de Zut pulled himself through the module hatch and allowed his frail, green-robed frame to drift through the crowded weightlessness of the compartment. He wore a pair of tinted goggles to hide the empty sockets of his eyes, which, combined with his spindly frame, gave the astropath the appearance of an insect. He clutched a suckle-flask of low-grade amasec to his chest and allowed a lho-stick to drizzle smoke in his wake.

He negotiated the module in silence, inhaling through the narrow slits of his nostrils before exhaling through the grim line of his mouth. With one hand, the blind savant groped and pulled himself past various datamat, holomat and automat servitors who were wired into their observation cradles. Finding a corner of the compartment not drowning in cables, surveillance equipment or Adeptus Mechanicus priest-personnel and servitors, de Zut settled in an alcove, bobbing about in the zero gravity.

‘Master de Zut,’ Notatio Logi Lutron Vydel addressed the astropath. ‘You are intoxicated, sir — again.’ There was no hint of accusation or displeasure in the adept’s static-laced voice, no wrinkle of vexation in the ebony flesh of his hood-framed face. As ranking priest on the Addendus~727 Broad Spectra Adeptus Mechanicus Signum-Station, the notatio logi was not given to such emotional indulgence. It was simply a statement of recorded fact. Like a humpshuttle pilot on a outpost, only required during the cycle changeover of arrival and exodus, de Zut was bored, underemployed and without distraction.

De Zut said nothing.

‘My brother adept is reminding you of your responsibilities,’ Lexmechanic Autegra Ziegl said, turning away from the rune banks built into almost every surface of the compartment. She reached past the astropath. Nudging him to one side in the zero gravity, the lexmechanic adjected several plungers and dials. The outline of her cranial cogitator was like a research installation built into an asteroid, its unit-accretions dominating her shaven head.

‘This is the Omnissiah’s work,’ she said. ‘His loyal servants work hard to compile statistics and testimonia for the astro-telecommunication data package.’

‘To Mars,’ de Zut said, putting one hand across his chest in a mock salute while raising his suckle-flask.

‘It would be an unacceptable waste of time, resources and data,’ Notatio Logi Vydel added, ‘if the package were not to reach the Fabricator General’s choralis diagnostiad.’

‘It would,’ de Zut agreed, taking another slug of amasec.

‘Which is why I’ve opened a file on your fitness for such an important duty,’ Vydel told the astropath with cold indifference.

‘A file,’ de Zut repeated. ‘Honoured.’ Again, he raised the flask.

‘Auspexmechanic Kelso Tollec has been identified as best qualified to monitor your competence,’ Vydel said. Tollec turned his hooded face from the data-pulsing rune banks and refocused his ocular-quad of bionics on the astropath.

De Zut picked tobacco from his thin lips.

‘I can make Adept Tollec’s service record and signum-specifications available for your perusal, if you wish,’ said Ehrlen Ohmnio.

Ohmnio was an officious transmechanic with an annoyingly cheerful face-mask. De Zut took a long drag on his lho-stick before flooding the crowded surveillancia module with silky smoke and reaching for a plunger set in the compartment ceiling.

‘Please don’t touch that,’ Vydel said. The logi was very particular about the signum-station’s equipment.

De Zut gave him the dark lenses of his goggles and yanked down hard on the handle. The compartment rumbled as a metal blast screen lowered to reveal the thick armourglass of the module’s observation port. The searing ice-white glare of the Incus Maximal and Malleus Mundi forge-worlds dominated the void beyond. The surfaces of the pair were blotched with the black clouds of planetary destruction. Between them sat the rusted, clinker-plate body of an armoured moon: a greenskin abomination that rained swarms of invasion craft down on the frozen planets. Hanging above the decimation of xenos conquest was a flotilla of Adeptus Mechanicus ark ships and supertransports receiving the last of the forge-world survivors.