Fabius Bile: Clonelord Read online

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  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

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  Contents

  Cover

  Backlist

  Title Page

  Warhammer 40,000

  Part One - Harmony

  Chapter one

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter seven

  Chapter eight

  Chapter nine

  Chapter ten

  Part Two - Maelstrom

  Chapter eleven

  Chapter twelve

  Chapter thirteen

  Chapter fourteen

  Chapter fifteen

  Chapter sixteen

  Chapter seventeen

  Part Three - Obscurus

  Chapter eighteen

  Chapter nineteen

  Chapter twenty

  Chapter twenty-one

  Chapter twenty-two

  Chapter twenty-three

  Chapter twenty-four

  Chapter twenty-five

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Fabius Bile: Primogenitor’

  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.

  Part One - Harmony

  Within the roiling, too-bright tides of the hell-sea known as the Eye of ­Terror, a shoal of great beasts scattered in sudden alarm. Gossamer leviathans, made from tangles of warp stuff and forgotten dreams, thrashed away from the marauder that had appeared in their midst. Sleek and deadly, the Vesalius passed through the pall of their panic without hesitation, pursuing its own course through the empyrean.

  The ancient, Gladius-class frigate cut through the chromatic depths of the sea of souls like a scalpel, safely shrouded in its flickering Geller field. Its silvery hull was scraped free of any exterior insignia or colour, beyond the strange, dark stains left by its passage through the crashing waves of the immaterium. Amethyst lightning played across the scarred hull, seeming to crouch and claw at the vessel’s turret array, and azure flames spread in its wake, briefly coalescing into impossibly vast, gibbering faces, before fading back into the audient nothing from which they had sprung.

  The Vesalius was not alone in its flight. Dark shapes, sector-tall and ­system-wide, surged behind it, running across the ever-shifting starscape in pursuit. The wolves of the immaterium were lean and a-thirst and always on the prowl. They fed on unlucky ships and worlds alike, gobbling souls by the million within the incomprehensible hunting grounds of the Eye. Their shuddering howls, like the trans-sonic death-cries of distant stars, rang across the empyrean as they loped through gaseous nebulae and the crumbled remnants of a thousand worlds.

  The frigate ignored these titan horrors. Once, the artificial spirit that animated its internal systems might have felt something akin to panic, at being pursued by impossible predators. But now, the fell intelligence that inhabited the Vesalius felt neither fear nor concern. It was as much a predator, in its own way, as its pursuers, and they posed no threat to it, so long as the ­Geller field functioned. It plunged on, unconcerned, unaffected.

  A scalpel, slicing cosmic flesh.

  Chapter one

  The Eternal Sea

  Arrian Zorzi stood on the Vesalius’ command deck and watched repor
ts flicker across the hololithic readouts. The lower decks and corridors echoed with weapons-fire and the cries of the injured. Alarm klaxons and proximity alerts wailed, adding to the omnipresent cacophony. Warning lights bathed entire decks in dull crimson tones as the crew went to war with itself. The croaking voices of the servitors wired into the majority of the stations merged into a monotonous susurrus. His teeth itched with annoyance as he parsed the droning updates. ‘Sealing bulkhead on B-deck. Arming internal defensive array. Alert…alert…alert…’

  ‘Damn them,’ the Apothecary murmured, without any particular rancour. ‘Their sense of timing is unfortunate.’ He glanced at his companion. ‘Wouldn’t you say, Saqqara?’

  ‘I’d say it is excellent,’ Saqqara Thresh said. ‘They seized their moment with impeccable haste. I would congratulate them, were circumstances different.’

  Arrian chuckled mirthlessly. ‘What’s stopping you?’

  Saqqara looked at him. Arrian laughed.

  The two were a study in contrast, for all that they were both Space Marines. Arrian was the larger of the two. While his power armour might once have been the blue and white of the Twelfth Legion, the pitted plates of ceramite were now almost all a uniform, bare grey, where they were not stained a dull, reddish brown.

  A sextet of cracked and yellowing skulls hung artfully arranged from his chest-plate, wreathed in chains, their cortical implants dangling like some barbaric tabard. More chains covered his torso and arms, as if he sought to keep something within himself securely contained. Beneath these chains, he bore the accoutrements of his rank – including an ancient narthecium, the runnels of its diamond-tipped drill caked in dried blood.

  Saqqara, on the other hand, had never been an Apothecary, or anything close. There was not, so far as Arrian was aware, an official designation for what the Word Bearer was. What did you call one who wielded daemons the way another might use a blade? Other than unpleasant. Livid suture scars marked the Word Bearer’s exposed flesh, following the curve of his skull and the tight line of his jaw.

  He was clad in battered crimson power armour. The plates were covered in line upon line of cramped, curling script where they were not adorned with blasphemous iconography or fluttering streamers of brittle parchment. The helmet magnetically clamped to his belt was similarly marked. Strange bottles of clay and glass hung from his armour, each one sealed with wax and marked with warding sigils. Within them, the indistinct shapes of captive Neverborn coiled and slithered, impatient for release. Saqqara idly stroked the bottles as he studied the readouts alongside Arrian.

  ‘Nervous, Saqqara?’ Arrian continued, not looking at the Word Bearer. ‘Afraid that today is the day you finally meet those gods you so cherish?’

  ‘No,’ Saqqara said flatly. ‘Death is the greatest gift the gods can bestow.’

  ‘Really? You’ve never seemed all that eager to accept it before now.’ Arrian turned. ‘Has something changed? Or have you simply grown a spine, at long last?’ The jibe was half-hearted. In truth, Saqqara was no more a coward than Arrian himself. Fanatical, egotistical, annoying – certainly. But a coward? No.

  These days, the accusation did not even make him bridle, as it might once have done. Instead, Saqqara simply laughed. ‘Perhaps you are the one who is nervous, Arrian. His death – his final death – would confer a most horrid freedom upon you, would it not, war hound?’

  Arrian frowned. ‘He is not dead.’

  ‘No? Then where is he?’ The Word Bearer looked at him. ‘What would you do, I wonder, with no master to trot behind? Would you at last embrace the destiny of all your misbegotten brotherhood, and sink into the red warmth of Khorne’s affections?’

  Arrian studied him, palms resting on the pommels of the twin Falax blades sheathed at his waist. ‘There is no Khorne, hierophant. No Slaanesh. Only opposing natural forces, and the fools who ascribe them greater purpose than they deserve.’ The words sounded hollow, even to him. He lacked the Chief Apothecary’s certainty.

  And more than that, dog-brother. You have neither the wit nor wisdom of your master.

  ‘Hush, brother,’ Arrian murmured, tapping Briaeus’ skull in warning. His dog-brother was the most vocal of the dead, as he had been in life. ‘You lost the right to chastise me for lack of wisdom the day you took your first step on the eightfold path.’ Arrian alone of his cohort had never made obeisance before the Skull Throne. Though the Butcher’s Nails sparked and snarled within his mind, a strict regimen of chemical calmatives kept the worst of the pain at bay. Occasionally, he allowed himself to overdose, just to see what it was like on the other side of madness. But never too often. A little pain was good. It kept his feet to his chosen path.

  He needed that focus now, perhaps more so than ever before. Only a focused mind had hope of navigating the current situation.

  The coup had not been unexpected. Sudden, yes. Fierce. But not unforeseen. Such was the nature of the Traitor Legions. Treachery was in their very name and nestled in every heart, whatever loyalties they might profess. They were the cast-off remnants of the greatest army to ever stalk the stars, and they had shed the ancient, instinctive discipline that once guided them, as eagerly as they had their oaths to the Emperor.

  But just because something is foreseen does not mean that it can be countered easily. This particular uprising was akin to a recurrent inflammation, swelling slowly over the course of years and months, only to shrink and rise again.

  They – the Chief Apothecary, rather – had collected the pitiful remnants of the 12th Millennial, Third Legion several centuries earlier, in the aftermath of the Lugganath raid. In the intervening decades, the hundred or so Emperor’s Children left to the cohort had made themselves useful. An army, even a small one, came in handy in Eyespace.

  But their dissatisfaction had grown steadily, once their exultation at survival wore off. Occasionally, one or two might try something, mostly out of boredom, but little came of it. This, however, was not some display of hedonistic rebellion. This time, they wanted the ship and everything on it. If the Chief Apothecary had been here… but he wasn’t.

  Arrian took a calming breath. By rights, he should have been in the ship’s apothecarium, overseeing the necessary procedures. Instead, he was forced to deal with a band of petulant sybarites, his only allies the crew and his fellow Apothecaries. And Saqqara, of course. The thought made him smile. A miniaturised fragmentation detonator, keyed to the Chief Apothecary’s brain activity, had been surgically implanted in the Word Bearer’s skull. So long as Fabius Bile’s mind was functional, so was Saqqara. It provided quite the incentive, and Saqqara was nothing if not a born survivor.

  The crunch of heavy ceramite boots on the steps leading up to the command deck alerted him to the arrival of another survivor. One sadly less biddable than Saqqara.

  ‘Well – any word?’ the newcomer demanded.

  Skalagrim Phar was bare-headed, his scarred features hidden beneath a wild tangle of grey-streaked hair and beard. Worn and faded Cthonian glyph-markings had been etched into his black battleplate. He had once served at Horus’ pleasure, and then, later, as the Master of the apothecarion on Maeleum, before Fabius Bile had made him a better offer. When the Third had destroyed the fortress of Monument and carted away the remains of the Warmaster, Skalagrim had accompanied them.

  That Skalagrim had been so willing to throw over his brothers did not endear him to some among the Consortium. Arrian himself bore Skalagrim no particular ill will at the moment. But neither did he trust him. One who’d turned once might well do so again, if it suited him. The Sons of Horus legionary was a scrambler, always looking for the next advantage, the next opportunity. Anything to stay one step ahead of those who wanted him dead, and his hearts offered up to the restless ghost of the Warmaster.

  ‘Have they managed to sweep yet another deck clean of life?’ Skalagrim continued.

  ‘No. So far they’ve contained t
heir tantrum to below the gunnery decks. Nothing down there but monsters and their prey.’

  There were whole tribes – kingdoms, even – of mutants lurking in the deep places of the ship. They venerated the engines with a devotion equal to any Mechanicum acolyte, and waged bloody wars in service to the voices they heard within the omnipresent rumbling. Right now, he hoped that the engine-gods were telling them to repel the purple-clad intruders who stalked their kingdom of creaking gantries and rust.

  ‘You should let me go down there and kill them, war hound,’ Skalagrim said, scratching one tattooed cheek. ‘I will pry the valuable bits from their battleplate first, of course. Waste not, want not, as our absent chieftain so often reminds us.’ He patted the diamond-toothed chainaxe nestled in the crook of one black-plated arm. While he wore the accoutrements of an Apothecary, he preferred to perform surgery in the Cthonian fashion – bloodily and sloppily.

  Arrian looked at the former reaver. ‘If I unleash you, they may well kill you,’ he said. ‘Perhaps not immediately, but soon enough. And then I will be one warrior short when I might need you most.’

  ‘And when will that be?’ Skalagrim looked around the command deck. ‘When will we strike back at them? Or are you content to allow them to pillage our ship at their leisure?’

  ‘Our ship?’

  Skalagrim snorted. ‘Fine. His ship. But he is dead and we are alive, and I would like to keep it that way. And that means–’

  ‘Following my orders, brother. I am in command while the Chief Apothecary is indisposed.’

  ‘Dead,’ Skalagrim said.

  ‘Not dead enough,’ Saqqara interjected. He tapped the side of his skull. ‘If he were, I would be as well, remember?’ He smiled nastily. ‘Though, given who you’ve left in charge of the apothecarion, he might well be soon enough.’

  A quiet cough wiped the smile from the Word Bearer’s face. Arrian turned, feeling something akin to relief. ‘Igori. You yet live. He will be pleased, when he awakens.’

  ‘All I do, I do in his name, Honoured Arrian,’ the old woman said, as she strode onto the command deck surrounded by her kin, lovers and children.