The Reaping Time - Robbie MacNiven Read online

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  The Reaping Time – Robbie MacNiven

  About the Author

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  The Reaping Time

  Robbie MacNiven

  Sub-file 8762-443 +

  Jurisdiction: Ethika Subsector +

  Timestamp: 3551670.M41 +

  Subject header: Tithe Non-Payment Response Protocol 33/8 +

  Clerk Attendant: 4872-Amilia +

  For the attention of the Adeptus Administratum, Sub-Division Theta 16, Ethika Subsector. Contact has been lost with Tithe-Ship 531, designate Praetorian. Last known astropathic message relay confirmed successful warp jump into the Zartak System [file ref. 228-16a]. Contact is now two weeks overdue, Terran Standard. Recommending dispatch of Imperial Navy Mars-class Cruiser Andromidax [see attachment DX1-9] to investigate.

  Sub-file 8762-443 record-logged for review +

  Added to review queue +

  Estimated processing time: 6 years, Terran Standard +

  Thought of the Day: The faithful suffer in silence +

  The guildmasters were terrified. Their postures were stiff, their eyes darting, sweat slicking their pale, wrinkled flesh. One old man, stooped beneath the weight of his own sagging fat, was twitching uncontrollably. The motion juddered grotesquely through his heavy jowls, growing more pronounced the more he tried to hide it. Another balding, rheumy-eyed figure’s skeletal hands were clenching and unclenching on the grip of his silver pick-cane. A third was clutching her ermine ruff so hard her scrawny, velvet-draped limbs were shaking.

  The entire assembly, packed onto the walkway of an observation gantry, cringed at the presence of the giants towering over them.

  They were monsters, primordial terrors clad from head to foot in battleplate the colour of ash. They reeked of weapons unguents and a cloying, alien scent that turned the humans’ stomachs. None had moved since stepping onto the gantry. Their motionless state spoke of a razor-edged, predatory patience.

  Eventually, one of the ashen giants spoke.

  ‘These are all of them? All the young?’

  None of the guildmasters answered. For a moment, nothing happened. There was a click. Then, abruptly, one of the giants lunged.

  For something so large, it moved with terrifying speed. Its bone staff shattered the skull of the fat, twitching guilder. Those around recoiled from the splattering of brains and blood. Without hesitation, the other giants lashed out.

  The screaming started. It didn’t last long.

  The figure at the heart of the coral chamber woke with a start. He bit back a cry, fists clenched and shaking around his force staff.

  It had been no dream. His kind were incapable of something so human, so innocent. No, this was the third time he had seen the exact same scene – the exact same slaughter – play out since the ship had broken in-system. It was a warning. It could be nothing else.

  The figure shifted his cross-legged stance fractionally, the incisor-charms hanging from the leather bands around his wrists rattling. Without his etched blue battleplate and psychic hood, the true horror of his ancient form was revealed. The simple black shift did little to hide the ivory whiteness of his flesh, or the ugly grey denticle-scabs that blotched his elbow joints and neck. It was an affliction, the result of his unique and degraded genetic inheritance. Even more startling were the figure’s eyes. They were utterly black, without iris or sclera, as pitiless and unfathomable as the void that was his home.

  The figure drew in a long, slow breath. Should he inform Company Master Akia? Not doing so would be a dereliction of duty. But telling him ran complex risks. They could not afford the dangers of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with the Tithe.

  After a while the vox bead in his ear clicked. The figure known to his brethren as Te Kahurangi – the Pale Nomad – listened for a moment, then uncrossed his legs and stood.

  The time for contemplation was over. The reaping time had arrived.

  The sub-guild quota hall was in an uproar. Every guildmaster and guildmistress present was speaking at once. It took Thornvyl slamming his augmetic left fist – the result of a mining accident almost a century before – against the flank of the hall’s lexmechanic podium to bring some semblance of order.

  ‘Panic achieves nothing,’ he snapped. ‘There may be another explanation.’

  ‘Another explanation for an Adeptus Astartes ship arriving unannounced in our system?’ Elinara of the Freehold Prospector Guild demanded. ‘A more probable explanation than the Imperium finally coming to investigate the disappearance of the Praetorian?’

  The arched vault of the quota hall descended once more into wild chatter. The guildmasters, leaders of the mining colony of Zartak, had come together for an emergency session after the augur masts had detected an unidentified vessel breaking in-system. When the logisticators had identified it as a Space Marine warship, the meeting had descended into chaos.

  ‘They are the Emperor’s servants,’ Thornvyl, Guildmaster of Chronotech Inc., snapped. ‘As are we. And we shall greet them as such.’

  ‘Are you insane?’ demanded Maron of Broken Hill Industrials.

  ‘Unless you wish to call out the Guard, the local defence force and the mine-militia?’ Thornvyl responded. ‘Tell me, which course of action sounds more insane?’

  The other guildmasters quietened, realising the truth of Thornvyl’s words. He pressed on.

  ‘There has been a misunderstanding. We will resolve it, quickly and quietly. Trust me, Guild Brethren, these god-warriors will be gone by tomorrow.’

  It was raining hard when the Space Marines arrived. The downpour made the surrounding jungle canopy hiss, and seethed off the rockcrete surface of sink shaft 1’s primary landing plate, sited just beyond the edge of the great burrow-mine habitat.

  A behemoth descended from the near-black skies, water cascading from its broad flanks, the white oceanic predator emblazoned on its grey hull glistening. The assembled guildmasters huddled closer together as the mighty gunship screamed overhead, shivering in their drenched finery. The flier’s afterburning turbofans whipped at the embroidered hems of their robes and sent one matriarch’s shawl twisting away through the rain. The engine’s painful howl finally dropped to an idling snarl as the transport settled itself atop the plate. The dark muzzles of its many weapons systems gleamed in the rain.

  For a moment, nothing stirred. The guilders looked on, fretting. Eventually there was a thump, loud enough to make them jump. The gunship’s prow hatch began to lower, venting gouts of hydraulic steam. Through it, their armoured footfalls ringing rhythmically off the plasteel plates, came seven primeval giants.

  Each one towered head and shoulders above the tallest guilder, and all were clad in grey battleplate of different shades. Their eye lenses were black, glittering in the harsh light of the landing zone’s jury-rigged lumen strips. Around their wrists and gorgets were bands hung with vicious fangs, claws and incisors, while many parts of their armour were inscribed with flowing line-markings that formed stylised maws or darting fins. They carried weapons in their gauntlets, mighty boltguns and chainaxes, their rotors thankfully inactive.

  The seven stepped out onto the landing plate two abreast, forming a line in front of the guildmasters. With a crash of ceramite they came to a halt, the rain pattering from their armour.

  For a moment they remained still and silent. Then one, his armour a whiter shade and embossed with numerous brass molecular bonding studs, took one step forward. The g
uilders cringed.

  ‘Who rules this world in the Void Father’s name?’ the white-plated giant demanded, his voice crackling up through the arched grille of his helm’s vocaliser as though from some great depth. The words were delivered in High Gothic, stilted and unnaturally formal. The guilders didn’t respond. The giant said nothing more. Eventually, unable to stand it any more, Fargo Tork of BorerCorp Mining summoned up the few words of High Gothic he recalled from his scholam days.

  ‘We rule as a collective council, sire. We have no one leader, bar Him on Earth.’

  For a moment the giant did not respond. The guilders detected a series of low clicking noises. Some recognised it as the sound of an internal vox conversation, held in private over the Space Marines’ helmet comms. Eventually, the giant spoke again.

  ‘Well met. I am Master Akia, of the Third Battle Company. We are the Carcharodons Astra, and we have come for you.’

  The viewscreen monitor flickered and died. The sub-guild quota hall descended once more into furious recriminations, until Thornvyl snapped for quiet. After a moment’s pregnant silence the viewscreen blinked back into being again, the grainy image of Vasil Krane’s body double reappearing.

  ‘Repeat yourself,’ Thornvyl ordered. ‘We lost you.’

  ‘They are demanding to see our records,’ the Krane double said, pausing to glance back over his shoulder. He was muttering into a handheld vidcam, squeezed into the entrance tunnel of one of the tiny ratholes that wormed its way through the mineworks of Lower Six-Sixteen.

  ‘Records?’

  ‘Imperial data. Reports on psyker levels, Guard recruitment rates, xenos and heretic activity.’

  ‘And tithes?’

  ‘Yes, tithes. Their leader, Akia, claims to be here specifically for the tithe.’

  ‘It’s as we feared,’ Ghorst of New Western Mining hissed. ‘They know about the Praetorian!’

  ‘Silence,’ Thornvyl barked before the room descended once more into mayhem. He turned back to the viewscreen.

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘Waiting in upper ore hall west,’ Krane’s double said, again glancing back, as though he expected to see one of the giants loom suddenly from the half-darkness behind him. ‘Their latest request was to inspect the most junior Guard battalions.’

  ‘The most junior?’

  ‘The cadets, the new foundlings of the 10th Regiment.’

  ‘Why is that their first priority–’ began Elinara. Thornvyl cut her off.

  ‘It doesn’t matter why. It presents us with an opportunity.’

  ‘They’re here for the tithe, you heard it yourself,’ Tork said, jowls wobbling as he sought to contain his terror. ‘When they discover what happened they’ll kill us all!’

  ‘They won’t,’ Thornvyl said firmly. ‘Not if we keep our heads. Their ship is still in orbit, yes?’

  ‘So the augur beacon says,’ Maron said. ‘Holding anchor directly above sink shaft 1. Its ident-tag and keel scans are still coming up blank, but it’s definitely of ancient design.’

  ‘Their main strength will still be onboard,’ Thornvyl said. ‘But their leaders are down here, with us. That presents an opportunity.’

  ‘I do hope you have a plan, Thornvyl,’ Elinara said, her eyes narrowing. ‘Remember that not all of us supported the last one you had. This is where it has led us. We won’t all be held accountable should you fail.’

  The rest of the guilders muttered their agreement.

  ‘But you’ll expect to reap the rewards once it’s successful,’ Thornvyl said, smiling despite the steel in his voice. ‘Trust me one more time, Guild Brethren. Tell the holding blocks to prepare to enact Order 19. And pass word for Inspector DeValin. I want the 10th paraded in full combat kit in drill cavern 11 within the hour.’

  ‘We should just slaughter them,’ Akia said over the inter-squad vox. Te Kahurangi didn’t deign to reply. The Company Master was speaking in jest, venting his frustration. The Pale Nomad couldn’t begrudge him that.

  According to the chrono digits ticking over in the corner of the Chief Librarian’s visor display, First Squad had been standing at parade rest, waiting in what appeared to be called the drill-head chamber for upper ore hall west, for almost forty minutes. Akia had delivered the company’s demands to the gaggle of flunkies who claimed dominion over Zartak, and they’d been ushered into a quota collection analysis chamber, the cogitators and tithing boards currently abandoned. The flunkies had then fled. A wide-eyed attendant had offered them some sort of fungus-like local refreshment, the tray clattering in his shaking hands. The Carcharodons hadn’t so much as moved, and the human had left with haste. Since then they’d seen no one.

  ‘They dishonour us,’ said the Company Champion, Toa.

  ‘The concept of individual honour is a dead thing,’ Te Kahurangi replied, quoting from Beyond the Veil of Stars. ‘It is a lie invented by arrogant men to excuse their own foolhardiness.’

  ‘They dishonour the Chapter,’ Toa corrected. ‘And through it, Rangu.’

  ‘You think the Void Father cares if we wait an hour or two?’ Strike Veteran Dorthor rumbled. ‘We must follow protocol. The Edicts of Exile were not issued by the Forgotten One in vain.’

  Throughout the exchange, Te Kahurangi could sense Akia brooding. The Company Master had lately reached his full maturity as leader of the Third through the august title of Reaper Prime, but with experience had come a bloodthirsty edge that left the Chief Librarian in no doubt as to his particular genetic heritage. The suggestion that they simply slaughter the Zartakian mine-leaders had not been spoken entirely in jest.

  ‘Movement,’ Signifier Karra said, a moment before Te Kahurangi’s auto-senses detected approaching footsteps. A moment later the same terrified attendant reappeared, this time without his tray of fungus. Te Kahurangi suspected he was one of the few Zartakians fluent in High Gothic. The little man bowed hastily.

  ‘Lords, the cadets of the 10th Regiment of the Zartakian Astra Militarum have been assembled, as per your request. The guildmasters await you on the primary observation point of drill cavern 11.’

  ‘They do not understand, do they?’ Akia asked privately over the vox.

  ‘Perhaps it is best that they do not,’ Te Kahurangi replied. He switched to his external vocaliser, speaking in Low Gothic.

  ‘Lead on.’

  The attendant took the Carcharodons along a series of long, low earthen tunnels, propped up with plasteel beams. He was forced to scurry at an unnatural pace in an effort to match the stride of the towering transhumans. They took a grav-lift deeper into the mine workings, the mechanism rattling as it descended into Zartak’s depths. Dorthor spoke to First Squad as the lift slowed to a halt, its mesh doorway juddering open.

  ‘We’ve lost contact with White Maw.’

  Te Kahurangi realised the brutally scarred Strike Veteran was right – the sigil representing the strike cruiser’s vox uplink was gone. Even the powerful communications of the ancient capital ship could not reach the company’s Command Squad now.

  They stepped from the grav-lift and out into another tunnel. This one was more sturdily constructed, its flanks plated with hazard-striped flakboard, the lumen strips wired overhead bright and unblinking. At its end the attendant scraped into a low bow and, wordlessly, ushered the Carcharodons through the auto-doors.

  Te Kahurangi was the last to duck through. He found himself on an observation deck, a mesh gantry built into the flank of a great, dark cavern whose walls bore the bit-mark scars of megaborer drilling. A sheet of plexglas separated the gantry from the rest of the artificially carved chamber. Most of the space was occupied by the same terrified guildmasters that had greeted them on the landing plate. Beyond, in the cavern below, were hundreds of ranked figures. They were clad in flakplate and black fatigues, and carried Munitorum-stamped lascarbines, but even a glance told the Chief Libra
rian that the pallid, thin-faced figures were mere youths. They were the boys who would become men in the ranks of the Astra Militarum. There were not, however, enough of them, their ranks were shoddy, and their uniforms ill-fitting. They reeked of fear.

  His attention was only on the badly paraded cadets for a split second. His focus turned almost immediately back to the guilders standing between the Carcharodons and the plexglas. He had seen this before. He had seen it all, in every last, exacting detail.

  ‘These are all of them?’ Akia asked. ‘All the young?’

  For a second, there was only silence. Te Kahurangi knew exactly what came next.

  ‘It’s a trap,’ he said over the internal vox. ‘Kill them.’

  He lunged with his force staff, crushing the skull of the nearest guilder. As the fat man crumpled, Akia and the rest of First Squad responded without hesitation. The helpless humans wailed as the Carcharodons slaughtered them.

  Te Kahurangi kicked another guilder out of his way and slammed himself into the plexglas separating the gantry from the cavern below. The sheet gave way with a crash, and the Pale Nomad found himself in freefall. Armour streaked red, the rest of the Carcharodons followed him out, beating aside the guilders blocking their path. They were still falling when the mining charges taped to the underside of the gantry detonated.

  The shockwave flung Te Kahurangi across the chamber. His servos absorbed the impact, but the landing still kicked up a hail of grit and left the bare rock floor scarred. He found his feet swiftly, auto-senses piercing the haze left by the blast, his genhanced body unfazed by the sudden and violent dislocation.

  He’d landed less than two dozen paces from the front ranks of the Guard cadets, who themselves had been pitched from their feet by the blast. His void brothers were around him, rising. The markers representing each member of the Command Squad still blinked green and unharmed on the visor display.

  The cadets opened fire. The first las-bolt – well-aimed or fortunate – struck Te Kahurangi’s helm, cracking off and snapping his head to one side. Another shot scored off his right pauldron, while a third and fourth slashed past to his left and right, their snap-crack reports joining the echo of the mining charge blast still bouncing back from the cavern’s scarred ceiling. He snarled. More shots darted wide. Some of the so-called cadets simply scattered.