Manflayer - Josh Reynolds Read online

  ‘I killed my brother at Thessala,’ Fulgrim said, softly. ‘Not the one I loved best, or the one I loved least. The one I knew nothing about. The one I did not concern myself with.’ He was no longer looking at her. ‘And yet, it bites at me. As if… something is wrong.’

  ‘Regret is a part of desire.’

  Fulgrim stiffened. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Regret is as much a part of desire as satisfaction,’ Melusine said, her voice cracking from fear and exhaustion. ‘And desire is what you serve. Yearning. Need and want.’ She sank to her knees, head bowed. ‘I come in yearning, Lord Fulgrim.’

  ‘And what could such as you yearn for? You are not even a true thing. Merely a genetic scraping my errant son coaxed into a semblance of life. You are a mockery.’

  The words stung. Melusine felt the ground shift as Fulgrim’s coils slithered across it. He was heavier than the world around him. More real. She felt his fingertips on the back of her neck and knew that he could kill her with the flick of a wrist.

  ‘Do you know what he did, your father? He denied me. He denied me. Three times he refused me, and three times he turned away from my gifts.’

  ‘He is stubborn.’

  Fulgrim leaned close, and she gagged on the mingled stink of snake and perfume. ‘He is a fool. I would have raised him up in my esteem. I would have given him that which he took by force, and I would have stood with him, when his enemies come for his head. But he turned his back on me. On the one who protected him. As I still hope to protect him, if only from himself.’

  ‘I wish to protect him as well. That is why I am here.’

  Fulgrim reared back, studying her. ‘What do you want, child?’ he asked finally. ‘Why are you here, truly?’

  Melusine swallowed. ‘I seek a boon.’

  Fulgrim drew himself up. ‘And why should I grant it?’

  ‘I will bring him back to you.’

  Fulgrim frowned. ‘Why?’

  Melusine lifted her chin. ‘Because otherwise he will be destroyed.’

  Fulgrim looked down at her. Slowly, he smiled.

  ‘Well… we can’t have that, can we?’

  Part One

  ROADS OF BONE AND BLOOD

  991.M37

  Chapter One

  Gene-Cache

  Emil studied the sleeping god, and wondered what its flesh would taste like. He traced a fat finger through the condensation that covered the glass surface of the gene-vat, exposing the face of the being that slept within. It looked like a young man with narrow, angular features – not handsome, particularly. Then, Emil knew that he had little room to judge such things himself, given his own appearance.

  Emil was elephantine in his bulk. In all outward respects he was simply one more obese aristocrat in a galactic hegemony overflowing with such. But his creator had ensured that Emil was so much more than his appearance. Carefully cultivated rolls of fat hid slabs of gene-augmented muscle and bone.

  He had been born in a vat much like the one before him. He’d had another life before then. Before the Benefactor had made him strong. A life of hardship and privation. But then the Benefactor had come, on a day of fire and blood, and scooped Emil and the others up. Hundreds of them, some no more than babes in arms. As their parents screamed beneath the flensing knives of the Benefactor’s brothers, Emil and the other children had been shepherded aboard landing vessels. Emil could not recall the sound of his mother’s voice, or her touch. Instead, he remembered the look of pleasure on the Benefactor’s face as he spilled from the gene-vat, squalling and confused. He remembered the words of praise, as he strangled his first mutant. And the blows of chastisement as he killed one of his own packmates.

  Emil smiled at the memory, and licked blubbery lips. He had discovered early on that he possessed a gift for the omophageac intake of data. He learned by eating. The more he ate, the more he learned. And the more he learned, the greater his hunger grew.

  Saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth and he dabbed at it with a handkerchief. He knew that what he considered was blasphemy. The clone was his responsibility. The Benefactor had entrusted him with the guardianship of the gene-cache and all that it contained. He tore his eyes from the insensate clone and looked around.

  Shelves of genetic samples lined the walls, and stasis-cylinders containing harvested organs and gene-seed were hooked up to powerful generators. Racks of cloned flesh quivered between tensile enhancers, and calcium slurries burbled as newly flayed bones were broken down into a chemical broth, suitable for further use. Fabrication units hummed, crafting artificial components for use in joint-strengthening modifications or combat enhancement. Mewling vatborn scurried everywhere, arranging these components in their proper places, or attaching them to partially assembled skeletal frameworks. Others tended the neural nets growing in their trays, or programmed code into the various cogitator systems that kept everything running.

  In all ways, it was a treasure hoard. And Emil was the dragon who guarded it.

  He was not the only one. There were others. His brothers and sisters, seeded across the galaxy by the Benefactor as he made his great pilgrimage. All of them responsible for similar caches, some greater, some lesser. But all valuable. All important to the Benefactor’s great work. And in each one, a god slept.

  ‘Pater Mutatis,’ he murmured. Almost against his will, he turned back to the gene-tank and its contents. The Benefactor had many bodies – some young, some old. Each was him, and each slept until he desired its awakening. They were, in all ways that mattered, the Benefactor. Did they not have the Benefactor’s face? Did they not wear his panoply?

  His gaze flicked to the sealed vault at the other end of the cache. The one that could only be opened by the Benefactor’s biometric pattern. Emil sucked on his teeth and wondered, not for the first time, if, in devouring the Benefactor’s clone, he would gain the ability to open the vault and sample the secrets within.

  His reverie was broken by a soft chime from his dermal vox-implant. ‘What?’ he growled, annoyed by the interruption. He sealed the alcove containing the gene-tank, hiding it from view.

  ‘Governor Vargas, the enemy has penetrated the orbital defence net. Entering troposphere in T-minus–’

  Emil cut the link with a snarl. The vox-operator had sounded frightened. Then, perhaps he had reason to be. Beleghast’s defences were impressive. Emil knew this because he had overseen the construction and positioning of the orbital batteries himself – the net was designed to fold around an approaching enemy, trapping them in an interlacing cage of lance fire and torpedo bursts.

  He strode to a cogitator bank, shoving aside the vatborn at work there. His fingers danced across the keys, drawing up a hololithic sensor-map of Beleghast-Primus. Quickly, he overlaid the current situation reports. Strategic planning was one of many skills he’d gleaned from the remains of a defeated opponent, and he saw the attackers’ game at once. They’d somehow managed to jam the sensor grid, effectively cutting themselves a hole in the planet’s defensive net. Now they were pouring through the gap, and scattering across the planet. Even at this stage, he could see that it had none of the hallmarks of an invasion. This was a raid. Well, Beleghast had endured such before and would again.

  He activated his vox-link, and patched it into the command frequency, overriding all other voices.

  ‘Scramble atmospheric defence wings Bravo and Excel, signatory-code Vargas-Epsilon. Commander DeKalb?’

  ‘Governor?’ DeKalb sounded more surprised than respectful. Emil made a note to punish him, in the event of his survival.

  ‘I want you to–’

  He was cut off by a burst of static that degenerated into mocking laughter. He cycled through the secondary and tertiary channels, but it was the same. The invaders had jammed all frequencies. Emil swore and slammed a fist into the wall, denting the reinforced panel. Vatborn, all too familiar
with his rages, scattered.

  It didn’t matter. So long as the cache remained secure, the rest of the planet could burn. Even so, it rankled. He was the one who would have to explain–

  A sudden sound interrupted his thoughts.

  He turned. Smoke slithered around the edges of the sealed vault. Something was burning. He sniffed the air. A cutting tool of some kind. A plasma arc, perhaps. Someone was in there. Someone who shouldn’t be.

  He spent a moment considering whether to call in the guards positioned outside the cache. He dismissed the idea. Was he not one of the Benefactor’s children? Was he not superior to any creature that walked or crawled in the galaxy? Whatever was coming, Emil Vargas was more than a match for it.

  He growled low and long, and stalked towards the vault. He barely flinched when the doors toppled to the floor, still sealed. Smoke billowed, filling the chamber. Emil had no difficulty seeing the thin, spiked forms spilling out into the chamber.

  Unfortunately for them, they did not register him until it was too late. He was among them in moments, his heavy fists crunching through their armour. Bodies flew, slamming against the walls. Others fell and were crushed beneath his heavy tread. Splinter-weapons hissed, and he roared as they stung him. His fat insulated him like carapace armour, and his speed was such that any who got a shot off did not have time for a second.

  Emil rampaged through them, and the survivors fled back the way they’d come. Hungry now, Emil pursued. When he saw what the vault had been hiding, he paused, momentarily nonplussed.

  A portal of shimmering wraithbone rose against the far wall. A metal ramp descended from it, and beyond the milky surface of the portal he could make out the ribbed canyons of the webway. He’d seen it only once, but it had struck him as a desolate hunting ground.

  Right now, however, it was full of prey. He bared his teeth as more drukhari emerged from the portal. Pragmatism warred with hunger, and won. He tossed aside the broken body of a xenos and turned to retreat.

  ‘Is that any way to greet guests?’

  The voice spoke High Gothic with a curious accent. Emil turned, despite himself. The drukhari was tall and slim, one eye hidden behind a golden monocle of curious design. She held a heavy pistol in her hand, aimed at his head.

  Emil snarled, and leapt.

  The ship was sleek and arched like a contented felinoid. It had no colour, no heraldry, instead bending the light around it and hiding itself among the solar plains. A predator of the galaxy’s dark rim, invisible to its prey’s senses. Or so its captain fancied.

  On the ship’s observation deck, Archon Peshig lounged atop his command throne, fanning himself. It was always so cursed hot aboard the Sygilax. The heat-scrapers hadn’t worked in decades, much like every other nonessential system on the cruiser. Funds were tight, and Peshig was loath to waste them on anything that didn’t immediately and directly benefit him – clothes, weapons and slaves, in that order.

  ‘My arm is tired,’ he said. One of the several slaves within earshot took over the fanning duties, allowing Peshig to focus all of his attention on other matters. He glanced lazily at Hexachires. The lord of the Synod of Scars stood nearby, surrounded by a host of hunched and masked wracks.

  Master Hexachires was tall and thin, his body mostly hidden beneath robes of flensed and tanned flesh. His face was covered by a mask of gently shifting skin, its features changing one moment to the next. Tendrils composed of hybridised metal and muscle tissue stretched from a reinforced spinal column. Several of these grisly limbs held him aloft, and his withered legs were bound together by straps of leather and left to dangle.

  The haemonculus’ mon-keigh pet crouched nearby, silently observing the operation. Peshig grimaced as he studied the beast. It smelled of musk and blood. It was a hulking brute, all muscle and violent impulses, barely restrained by means Peshig didn’t entirely understand. It wore only a featureless iron helm reminiscent of a wrack’s mask, and a loincloth, exposing rangy limbs and scarred flesh.

  As he watched, Hexachires reached out as if to stroke the creature’s head. It jerked away, as if startled, and the haemonculus chuckled. The sound sent a chill down Peshig’s spine. He often wondered how he’d come to the notice of a creature like Hexachires. While the Thirteen Scars were not among the most powerful of Commorragh’s haemonculi covens, they were far more influential than his tiny kabal. But Hexachires seemed to prefer dealing with dozens of smaller kabals rather than a few large ones.

  Perhaps because they were easier to play off of one another. And to replace, when they’d outlived their usefulness as patrons. Whatever the reason, he was cautiously grateful. Without the bargain he’d made with the old monster, his kabal, the Bloody Blossom, would have been doomed to extinction. As it was, this expedition might well be the making of them. Soon enough, he might have his choice of haemonculi.

  But for the moment, it was his duty to be a good host. He cleared his throat.

  ‘The raid is going well. Lots of explosions – that usually means Salar is enjoying himself.’

  ‘So long as your fellow archon holds to the strategy I devised, he is free to do so,’ Hexachires said. His voice was a rough growl, as if he’d been chewing broken glass. ‘Have the Voidraven bombers launched?’

  ‘Just now. They should be entering the troposphere in the next few seconds.’ Peshig leaned forward and signalled one of the warriors standing at a nearby cogitator dais. ‘Fennysh, be a sport and bring up the feed from Klux’s bomber. Our guest would like to see if his creations work.’ Peshig was proud of his little air force – a handful of bombers and Razorwing jetcraft to escort them.

  Hexachires sniffed. ‘I know that they work. I designed them, after all. The question is whether that dissolute rabble you call pilots can deploy them properly.’

  Peshig smiled. He took no offence. The pilots were rabble, and a rowdy lot to boot. All of them of noble birth and prone to over­indulging in expensive vices, which made buying out their contracts incredibly cost-effective. Klux was the worst of the lot – overbred and stupid, unless it involved flying. But when he was in the air, he was worth every headache he’d ever given Peshig.

  ‘Klux, dear boy, can you hear me?’ Peshig asked.

  Klux’s voice echoed through the deck’s communication link. ‘I’m busy, Peshig.’

  ‘Archon Peshig, Klux. Remember we had that discussion about respect? I’m sure you do – it got rather pointed. How’s the new kidney, by the by?’

  Klux was silent for a moment. ‘I’m busy, archon. What do you want?’

  ‘Prepare to deploy the special payload our guest has devised.’ Peshig glanced at Hexachires, who nodded. ‘Pick a good spot – we want a bit of a show, after all.’

  ‘Acknowledged.’ Klux cut the link. He’d never been one for chit-chat. Peshig turned back to Hexachires.

  ‘It’ll take him a few moments to locate a spot. Enough time for Salar to satiate his bloodlust, I suppose. And for Avara to reach her own target. Are we sure about the latter, by the by? She’s going to be quite upset if there’s no portal.’

  Hexachires’ flesh-mask twisted into a leer. ‘According to the schema­tics we discovered last time, he’s begun installing them in the larger cache-facilities. A misstep we shall take full advantage of.’

  ‘What I’d like to know is how he got hold of them in the first place. That sort of technology should be beyond the skill of any mon-keigh.’

  Hexachires grunted. ‘He stole them, obviously.’

  ‘And this facility will have something of worth in it, I trust? Because the last three and everything in them were naught but ashes when we finally got through their defences.’

  The mon-keigh laughed. ‘I warned you,’ it croaked. It had an awful voice. Like rocks grinding together. Peshig frowned.

  ‘I don’t care to be addressed by such a creature. Please discipline it, Hexachires.’

/>   ‘In a moment.’ Hexachires leaned forward. ‘I think your pilot has found what he was looking for.’

  Peshig turned back to the screen. ‘So he has. I told you. Klux is quite the pilot, when he’s sober. Which isn’t often, admittedly.’ The picter units were mounted on the bomber’s prow, and they showed a wide thoroughfare expanding as the Voidraven swooped low over the hab-blocks. ‘So many statues,’ Peshig murmured. ‘Why do they need so many?’

  ‘Short lives make for short memories,’ Hexachires said idly. ‘They need to be reminded of their history on a nigh constant basis otherwise they’d forget everything.’

  Peshig shook his head in bewilderment. ‘How such a dim-witted species has propagated itself to such an extent I shall never understand.’

  Hexachires laughed – an ugly, oily sound. ‘Intelligence and fecundity are two distinct spheres. And there’s something to be said for sheer momentum.’

  Peshig chuckled politely, though he didn’t find it humorous in the least. Creatures like Hexachires might be content to watch their race dwindle into irrelevance, but Peshig felt the call of the ancient empire in his veins. Not that he had any intention of answering that call, but it was there and he acknowledged it, as well as the myriad factors preventing him from doing anything about it. Though he would never say so publicly, he was grateful for those obstacles. It was more fun to grouse about what could be than to exert oneself in pursuit of dreary goals.

  He spied a familiar banner on one of the screens – Salar, archon of the Hanging Skull, standing atop the rail of his personal raider, gesticulating inelegantly with that damned blade of his. On the screen, a flock of Hellions swooped past, answering Salar’s call. Warriors fired from the deck of the raider, adding to the confusion in the streets. Mon-keigh were fleeing in all directions, trying to escape the swarming drukhari.

  Salar was a lanky creature, clad in partial armour and silks. His arms were bare, and his hair was unbound, giving him a vaguely piratical air. In contrast to its wielder, the sword he held was a beautiful thing, all graceful curves and impossible edges. Salar talked to it – and sometimes, Peshig suspected that it answered. He frowned, watching the rival archon indulge himself. Unlike him, Salar enjoyed leading from the front. Then, Salar was a psychopath with a poor sense of fashion. He also smelled faintly of gun-oil, something Peshig might have found invigorating under different circumstances. As it was, he quite detested Salar. The other archon was an uncultured bully, lacking in the wit to even make a proper witty retort or cutting jibe. For a drukhari, he was remarkably akin to a mon-keigh.