Fabius Bile: Clonelord Read online

  Chapter two

  Freedom’s Chain

  The ship’s corridors were bathed in crimson, as the sound of klaxons echoed and re-echoed through the hollow places. Fabius, once more clad in his scarred battleplate, strode down the corridor, trying to get used to the weight. It was always the same. Every new body took time to adjust. Unfortunately, time was a finite resource at the moment.

  ‘We are still on schedule then?’ he asked, flexing his gauntlet, listening to the whine of the ancient servos. His armour had maintained its integrity for the entirety of its existence, a rare event in the Eye of Terror. He had never been forced to scavenge for spare parts, like so many other veterans of the Long War. The vatborn were as clever as any maintenance-servitor or Legion slave, and more than capable of keeping his war-panoply functioning to standard. Like the chirurgeon clinging to his back, the armour he wore had a dim artificial awareness, though it only rarely made itself known, and usually only to express a desire for repairs. Dim-witted and sated was how he preferred to keep it.

  ‘So far as I am aware. We are thirty-six hours out from our destination. Arrian took command, naturally. A loyal dog, that one.’ Khorag gurgled a laugh. ‘Then, why else would you keep him around, eh?’

  ‘Arrian is a tool with a multiplicity of applications, Khorag – unlike others I could name. How long was I… indisposed?’

  ‘A few days.’

  ‘Days?’ Fabius snapped. ‘It should have been the work of a few hours to complete the cerebral transference, even for you.’

  ‘Well, we did have other concerns. They made their move as soon as word got out. I daresay that they’ve been waiting for just such an opportunity. It has been how many years since the last time?’

  Fabius grimaced. ‘Paramar.’

  ‘Yes. And they were too busy fighting our mutual enemies then to take advantage. But now – well. What else can you expect from such degenerates?’

  ‘A bit of common courtesy would be more than satisfactory,’ Fabius said. Behind him, something gurgled, as if in agreement. He glanced back, scowling. ‘Must you bring that great lolloping brute with you everywhere? It corrodes the decks wherever it crawls.’ Fabius glared at the daemonic creature gurgling and gasping happily in their wake. It was a rotund, slug-like thing. Ripples of scaly, teratoma-covered flab undulated, sliding it forward as it scrabbled with clawed flippers at the deck, hauling itself along. Nauseating gases spewed from its porous flesh with every lurch.

  ‘He was a gift, Fabius. One cannot refuse the gifts of the gods forever.’ Khorag slowed his pace, so that the beast could catch up with him. He stroked its glistening flesh. ‘Besides, I kept him out of the apothecarium for you. Didn’t I, Paz’uz?’

  Paz’uz made a vile burbling sound that might have been a bark. Fabius grimaced in disgust. ‘There are no gods,’ he snapped. ‘Only monsters. And one should not accept gifts from monsters.’

  ‘Says the one who accepted practically an entire army.’ Khorag gave a rattling sigh. ‘Then again, it is in the process of trying to kill you, so perhaps there is something to what you say. A philosophical knot, to be sure.’

  ‘The Twelfth Millennial is not a gift. It is a burden, and one I have tolerated for too long, despite my better judgement.’ Fabius blinked and looked at Khorag, as the latter part of the Apothecary’s statement sank in. ‘A philosophical what?’

  ‘Or perhaps it is simply a matter of etiquette,’ Khorag said, as if Fabius hadn’t spoken. ‘Does one accept a gift, if one knows that it will turn in their hand? Is that perhaps the test at the heart of all gift-giving ceremonies?’ He shrugged, expelling deleterious gases from the loose cabling that clumped beneath his arms. ‘A thorny knot, this. Luckily, we have eternity to pick it loose, eh?’

  ‘Spare me your regurgitated philosophy, Khorag. At the moment, I find that I lack the patience for idle speculation into the great mysteries. Have all of our guests turned coat, or just some of them?’ There was a sizeable contingent of Noise Marines aboard. If the Kakophoni had turned on him as well, the Vesalius might well be destroyed in the ensuing confrontation. He could still recall the destructive forces they’d unleashed aboard the eldar craftworld of Lugganath, nearly crippling the vast world-ship with their shattersong.

  ‘Ramos and his choir have not stirred from their garden,’ Khorag said. ‘And it has been some time since you first welcomed them aboard Vesalius. They are hardly guests.’

  ‘Yes.’ Fabius shook his head. ‘Time passes so quickly. It has not seemed so long.’ He wondered idly what year it was, outside of Eyespace. The next time they surfaced in real space, he would have to find out. To allow himself to be lulled by eternity might prove a fatal error. One he did not intend to make.

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t. Time moves strangely in the Eye. Decades pass in a moment, or else days gather and eddy in the shoals of perception, until time seems to stand still.’ Khorag laughed. ‘Then, the gods would have little fun, if all of their favourite toys died of advanced age, eh?’

  Fabius shook his head. For all his talk of gods, Khorag was right. Eyespace distorted reality as well as the perception of such. It was a place of all-consuming entropy, where all things broke down, including the most inviolate of natural laws. The closer you sailed to the byssos – the pinhole in reality where the raw stuff of the Eye merged with real space – the worse things became. Time slowed, and stars became scars of light, stretched across the firmament for impossible distances. ‘Whatever the reason, it works in our favour. Only here do I have the time to do what must be done.’

  Khorag snorted. ‘Yes. Your New Men. Tell me, Fabius, what happens after you finish spreading your brood of mutants to every corner of the galaxy?’ He hiked a thumb at Nialos and the others, padding silent behind their master. ‘Will you retire to a life of monastic solitude? More so than you already have, I mean.’

  Fabius ignored him. ‘Is Diomat still secure in his tomb, or have they freed him as well?’ he asked. The ancient Contemptor Dreadnought was the only one of his kind, out of the dozens employed as an assault force, to have survived the 12th Millennial’s attack on Lugganath. He was also quite mad. Fabius had often considered ending Diomat’s misery, but pragmatism had always stayed his hand. A functioning Contemptor was a rare prize indeed, and Diomat had proven his worth on many occasions since.

  ‘Even they are not that foolish,’ Khorag said. ‘He has less reason to love them than he does you. No, he is still safely in the cage you made for him.’

  ‘Not for long.’

  Khorag started. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘I intend to end this little coup as swiftly as possible. I have more important matters to attend to than a half-hearted rebellion. Diomat will help me do that.’

  ‘He might also kill you.’

  ‘Then I trust you will be quicker with the cerebral transference the second time around.’ A transit-elevator waited at the end of the corridor. Two members of the crew stood on guard, their bestial features tense with worry.

  Both of the creatures were capric in nature, with wide, horned skulls and goatish features. Their hairy bodies were stuffed into the ragged, ill-fitting remains of what had once been naval uniforms, now brown and stiff with centuries of accumulated grime. Their uniforms, like the scalloped, rust-splotched armour they wore over them, and the heavily modified autoguns in their crooked paws, had been passed down from one generation to the next, even as those generations were irrevocably altered. The creatures brayed in surprise as they caught sight of Fabius and the others, and fell to their knees in primitive abasement.

  To the atavistic clans of mutants which acted as the frigate’s crew, Fabius was their god and father in one. For it had been his experiments which had first set their ancestors on the long, crooked road of change. His intention had been to make them hardier and self-sufficient, unlike the slave-crews favoured by so many others. A crew that could not defend itsel
f was of no use to him or the Vesalius.

  ‘You two, come with me,’ Fabius said as the transit elevator’s cage slid open automatically, in recognition of his battleplate’s broadcast codes. The transit elevators – those that still functioned, at least – were the connective arteries of the ship, and the lift platform was large enough to carry hundreds of pallets of ammunition and their servitor loaders to the gunnery decks.

  It descended down the lumen-lit shaft at great speed, the convoluted maze of access tunnels whipping past. The shrieking of the klaxons became a banshee howl, spiralling higher and higher the faster they went. Fabius did his best to ignore the irritating wail, and concentrated on preparing himself for what came next. He’d put down such revolts before, but never so long after the fact. It was best to catch them quickly and end them with a well-placed bolt-round. Once the instigators, whether Adeptus Astartes or mutant, were disposed of, their followers tended to find better things to do with their time.

  But this was different. Days had passed. If the majority of the 12th Millennial was involved, more than one or two deaths might be required. This might well be the moment he would have to erase what was left of the company from the Legion rolls. The thought brought him little pleasure, for all the annoyance they’d caused him of late.

  The Third Legion was dead, both as a military force and as a unified body. Attrition and excess had reduced it to splintered fragments of a once-mighty whole, and good riddance. Whatever sense of affection he might have possessed for the rest of his Legion had long ago been reduced to the merest cinders. But even so, cinders could occasionally flicker to life. The only constant was change, even for one such as him.

  The 12th Millennial was not a welcome reminder of old times, but it was a reminder nonetheless. A reminder of simpler times, when the way forward was clear for all to see. A reminder of when his great purpose had not yet consumed him. His grip tightened around the skull-topped sceptre he held, and the malign will within it growled in warning. He glanced down at the gilded skull, its curve etched with ruinous sigils. He thumped the ferrule of the sceptre against the platform, silencing its snarls.

  ‘You should treat your tools with more kindness, Fabius,’ Khorag said.

  ‘Perhaps. But I am in no mood to be growled at by something that ought to know its place by now.’ He lifted the sceptre and stared into the sockets of the skull. Its name, if such things could be said to have a name, was Torment. Like the Vesalius, he had renamed the hell-forged artefact to suit himself, when he had taken it from its former owner. The sceptre acted in some as yet unknown fashion as an amplifier – the slightest touch could elicit raging torrents of agony or pleasure, or anything in between, in anyone it touched.

  It was a blunt thing, with limited use. But within that narrow scope, it performed its tasks admirably. He could feel the power flowing through it, a power it shared with him, if unwillingly. Like the chirurgeon clinging to his back, there was a measure of symbiosis between himself and Torment. It required a wielder, and at times, sadly, he required the strength that it could give him. But not at the moment. ‘Do you hear? Do not pit your will against mine. Not today. Or I will leave you in your case of brass and bone for the duration.’

  Torment subsided with a sulky pulse, and Fabius lowered it. ‘A ­singular problem with the universe, I find, is that things so rarely know their place.’

  ‘Including yourself, then?’ Khorag said.

  Fabius glanced at him. ‘I know my place. It is simply that others refuse to acknowledge it. That in doing so they only strive against the tide, seems to make little difference.’

  ‘To some, you are the one striving in vain.’

  Fabius paused. There was a dark truth in that. His enemies were without number, and had only grown since Ezekyle Abaddon had cast his spear into the heart of Harmony and destroyed Canticle City. He could still recall the sight of the dying cruiser, Tlaloc, as it had plunged from orbit and pierced the last, great fortress of the Emperor’s Children, ending them as a Legion. He could still hear it – that impossibly shrill screech of abused metal and tearing atmosphere, that sound the air had made as fire spread across the horizon.

  All he had worked for ended in a single moment. The work of a lifetime, erased by the single swing of a hypocrite’s sword.

  He shook his head, banishing the memories. ‘That only proves the limits of their perception. That they cannot see what is obvious even to these crippled brutes is a sure sign of their blindness.’ He dropped a heavy hand on the head of one of the beastmen, eliciting a whimper of mingled pain and excitement. He paused and laughed. ‘Forgive me, Khorag. A new body always makes me prone to boasting.’

  ‘So I have observed. In any event, I agree with you, Fabius.’ Khorag chuckled thickly. ‘What is a plague, but the cleansing flame in another form? Only the strong survive its passing. Only those fit to claim a kingdom from the ashes. Typhus the Traveller wrote those words, more than two centuries ago.’

  ‘Yes, well, I suppose even a blind rodent finds a morsel on occasion.’

  Khorag chuckled. ‘An apt description. Calas has ever been a scrambler in the dark.’

  The transit elevator juddered to a tooth-rattling halt. The cage creaked open, revealing a trio of beastmen, weapons aimed at the doors. Like their kin on the deck above, they abased themselves instantly upon sighting Fabius, snarling and bleating in welcome. Fabius gestured sharply. ‘Up, lackwits. I have better use for you than guarding transit-shafts.’

  Even as the beasts rose, he heard the tramp of ceramite on the deck plates. A familiar smell, like iron and damp, greeted him. ‘Saqqara,’ Fabius said. The Word Bearer had a particular odour all of his own, even after all this time among butchers.

  A moment later, a coterie of familiar figures rounded the bend in the corridor. Arrian paced smoothly in the lead, hands resting on the pommels of his blades. Saqqara followed him, trailed by a pack of mutants, attempting something like military bearing. Arrian stopped. ‘Chief Apothecary,’ he said with a nod. ‘I was coming to check on Khorag’s progress.’

  ‘You could simply have voxed,’ Khorag grumbled.

  ‘I could, were I not certain that our disloyal guests would have intercepted it. I didn’t want to give them any ideas about raiding the apothecarium.’

  Fabius frowned. An unpleasant thought. ‘I’m surprised that wasn’t first on their agenda,’ he said, somewhat annoyed. It was as if they didn’t consider him a threat. He forced the rising anger down – the instinctive urge to violence was another disadvantage of a younger, healthier frame. ‘Then, I’m sure it would’ve occurred to them sooner or later.’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Arrian said. ‘The packs have them herded into the flesh market. They seem to have little stomach for being hunted in the dark.’

  ‘Igori–?’ Fabius said.

  ‘She is leading the hunts. Skalagrim is watching over the command deck.’

  Fabius nodded, satisfied. Igori would keep her packmates in line. It wouldn’t do to eradicate the 12th Millennial out of hand. He might still be able to salvage something out of it, once the gangrenous matter had been cut away. ‘Good. I am going to the Cage. Then I will descend to the flesh market and see an end to this inconvenience. You will accompany me.’

  ‘The–?’ Arrian hesitated. ‘They haven’t attempted to release him.’

  ‘Which is why I am going to,’ Fabius said, striding past Arrian. The mutants scrambled ahead of him and in his wake, yelping and bleating. They filled the corridor with a riotous clamour, and Fabius smiled indulgently. Though the mutants would, inevitably, be the lowest caste of the world to come, they had their uses. They were more depend­able, in their way, than men. And hardier, as well. But the warp had its claws in them too deep for them to be of any real use, save as chattel.

  Much like his former brothers.

  The Cage was an isolated chamber, just beneath the ship’s bridge
. During the Vesalius’ previous life, it had been a temple-shrine to the Corpse-Emperor. A vast, cathedral space, lit only by the lumens set into the frames of the immense stained-glass observation ports that lined either side of the chamber.

  The images that adorned the ports had long since been rendered indiscernible by centuries of accumulated grime and damage. There was a thin whistle, as of a hull breach, though the stale atmosphere was otherwise uncompromised. Decorative columns had fallen and been hacked into chunks, and many of the statues of Imperial saints had crumbled due to neglect. Others glared at the macabre procession that passed beneath their sightless eyes.

  Fabius led the others down what had once been the central nave, but was now a gauntlet of automated weapons systems and several specially altered combat-servitors. The latter had been wired into hollowed-out columns and to either side of the antechamber, their legs replaced by gyroscopic plinths. Their weapons cycled ominously and dead eyes tracked the group, even as Fabius’ armour broadcast an ident-pulse.

  In the past, the Cage had been a quarantine area for less viable experiments which nonetheless had some military application. Lobotomised war-brutes and horrors with no real shape, or cunning transhumans, lacking even the barest iota of Adeptus Astartes discipline. Now, however, it played host to only one resident.

  Ancient Diomat. Hero of Walpurgis. Diomat the Mad. Last of the 12th Millennial’s dozen Dreadnoughts. The rest likely still lay shattered and silent in the ruins of Craftworld Lugganath, if they had not been shot into the void by the eldar in the aftermath. Only Diomat had survived, much to his own chagrin.

  The Hero of Walpurgis had been seeking death in one way or another since the fateful day a Gheist-blade had spilled his life’s blood, and condemned him to an eternity in an amniotic sarcophagus. The Dreadnought had been confined to the Cage after his latest rampage, during which an entire pack of Gland-hounds had been torn apart, and two of Fabius’ prized war-mutants had been rendered worthless, save as raw materials.