Manflayer - Josh Reynolds Read online

  Their lidless eyes were blind, worn to milky nubs by the scouring wind, and their mouths and larynxes had been replaced by crude cybernetics. Their voices whispered through rusted vox-grilles as they circled.

  You owe a debt… a debt… ebt… t…

  Thief… ief… f…

  Stole our wisdom… om… m…

  ‘I’ve stolen nothing,’ Fabius growled. The voices were not human – had never been human. They had the sing-song lilt of the aeldari. Recordings, then.

  The angels shrieked, and his world crumbled into static. He clutched at his head as the sonic screech tore at his armour’s systems. They darted down, surgically inserted blades erupting from their hands and feet. The blades drew fat sparks from his armour as they attacked from all directions. He stumbled away, blindly lashing out with Torment. A blow connected, and the daemon-shard shrieked in pleasure as the angel came apart in wet strands of red meat.

  The others did not cease their attacks, and with his systems shorting out there was no way to vox for help. He was on his own.

  He swept Torment out in a wide arc, momentarily driving the angels back. Reaching up, he tore off his helm. ‘Who do you serve?’ he demanded, spitting the words. He snatched his needler from its holster and tracked the darting creatures. If he could capture one…

  They dived, shrieking. Blades gouged his face and armour, and the needler was knocked from his hand. Torment seemed to twist in his grip, seeking new prey. He felt a burning in his veins and realised the angels’ talons were coated in some form of poison. ‘Insult to injury,’ he muttered. The chirurgeon chuntered as it sent a universal antidote spilling through his veins. A course of stimms followed, lending him focus. He whipped around, smashing another of the winged creatures from the sky.

  He fell back as they spiralled into the air, their shrieks sounding almost like a song. He tightened his grip on Torment, and an unnatural strength flooded his limbs. He retreated to a pillar. A shadow fell over him – larger than the others.

  He looked up.

  His own face, or what was left of it, glared down at him. Like the angels, it had been flensed and remade, but he recognised his own bone structure when he saw it. His clone had been stretched and elongated, made over into something closer to a shrieker than a legionary. It had wings, but was too heavy to fly. Instead, it crawled like a bat, gripping the broken stones with talons of sharpened bone. Stringy white hair hung down in lank tatters from its sloped skull, and it bared teeth that had been filed to points.

  Fabius stared at it in fascination. The sheer artistry inherent in the mutilation was breathtaking. A work of genius, to transmogrify the flesh of an Legiones Astartes warrior so. He had crafted similar monsters in his youth, making daemons out of soldiers and sending them into battle on behalf of his Legion and the Warmaster. ‘You are beauti­ful,’ Fabius murmured, even as he readied himself for the creature’s lunge.

  It sprang towards him with a screech that was painfully familiar. Fabius lunged to meet it. Torment connected with its ribcage, and he heard the reinforced bone splinter. The creature hit the street and rolled away, bellowing. Fabius gave it no time to recover. Even as it rose to its feet, he struck it again. Torment crashed against its skull, and drove it flat. It mewled, drooling blood, staring at him in confusion.

  ‘Do you think I have not fought myself before?’ Fabius asked, out loud. ‘Do you think this is the first time I have been attacked by a ­creation gone rogue?’ He spread his arms and turned, as if for an audience. ‘I have killed faulty clones by the hundreds. My reflection, however twisted, holds no fear for me.’

  The creature roared and went for his throat. Fabius spun and caught it by the neck. Its claws slammed into his armour, tearing hoses and denting the ceramite. It was stronger than it looked, but so was he. He thrust Torment into its stomach and let the daemon-shard indulge itself. The creature thrashed and wailed as waves of pain ripped through it.

  Fabius felt a surge of pleasure – the daemon’s, not his own – and twisted the sceptre into the thing’s gut. Smoke gushed from its jaws, and its grip slackened. He shoved it back. It tottered unsteadily, eyes rolling. Then, slowly, it toppled backwards.

  Panting, Fabius forced Torment down. The sceptre twisted in his grip, like a snake trying to strike.

  ‘No,’ he growled. ‘No. You’ve had your fun.’ He turned, searching for the other angels, only to spy them dangling from the vox-lines overhead like broken marionettes, their throats slashed. Melusine perched atop the wires, as light as a bird, her arms red to the elbow.

  ‘Is this what you wanted me to see?’ he demanded. ‘Is this why you have been haunting the dreams of my creations?’

  She smiled and shook her head, the very picture of a naughty child. But her smile faded swiftly and she leapt down. He stepped back as she approached, her claws trailing blood on the ground in her wake.

  ‘This is only the beginning, Father. The gloaming of the long night to come. A message left in blood by an old ally.’ She stopped, her face close to his. ‘I can help you.’

  ‘You have said that before.’

  ‘And you refused me then. As you will refuse me now.’

  Fabius reached out, his fingers running gently along the curve of her jaw. So like his own, but so different. There was less and less of him in her every time he saw her. ‘Because it is not you speaking, child. Not really. And if I cannot trust that your words are your own, I certainly cannot trust any poisoned chalice you might offer me.’ He looked around. ‘Take me home now. I must make preparations. This attack cannot go unanswered.’

  She caught his hand and rubbed her cheek against his palm. ‘I love you, Father. And all I do is for that love.’

  ‘I know, daughter. I know.’

  She looked at him, her eyes all colours and none. ‘Then know this. Twice you have denied me. The third time you will not. You cannot.’

  Fabius tried to pull away, but she held him with a strength far greater than his own.

  ‘You cannot go forward,’ she said, her voice lowering to an inhuman growl. ‘And you cannot go back. No matter how much you push and pull, you will not escape the rut I have made for you. Soon you will see that it is the only safe place. And we will be together again, Father. Forever and a day.’

  She leaned close, and a smell like incense overlaying rot washed over him. Her teeth were like needles, and her face was not that of his daughter, but something else. Something older and hungrier by far.

  ‘Until the stars burn out and the gods fall silent.’

  Chapter Four

  Punishment

  The attack began at dusk.

  Chort sat in his laboratorium and watched it begin, his fingers steepled. Xenos raiders were uncommon in this part of the segmentum, especially drukhari. Goshen was hardly a jewel in the firmament, and there was precious little there of value.

  It was a feudal world, full of squabbling barbaric potentates and nascent republics who’d only just grasped the basics of black powder technology. It was ruled not by a governor or a warlord, but instead by the Administratum, who had long ago claimed the planet’s verdant continental forests for bureaucratic use. Every cycle, millions of tonnes of wood pulp was processed and taken off-world, to be turned into paper for the use of untold billions of clerks, scribes, auto-scriveners and administrative staff throughout the sector.

  The immense forests were patrolled by specially camouflaged combat-servitors, designed to frighten the superstitious population and keep them from harvesting those trees designated for Administratum use.

  Chort had made good use of that strategy for his own ends. A simple sensor-baffle built into his armour allowed him to slip unseen through the servitors’ patrol grids when he desired. He’d since installed numerous vox-bugs and slave-picters in no fewer than a hundred of the servitors, allowing him to see and hear everything they did.

  Ov
er the course of a delightfully dull decade several centuries earlier, he’d managed to compile a detailed grid-map of the Administratum tithe-forests, as well as co-opt a significant number of the heavy-labour servitors employed to harvest the trees. With these, he’d managed to build the reinforced tunnels that allowed him to move virtually undetected across the main continental body from the safety of the facilities he’d built in the mountains. He had constructed this private laboratorium by hand over the course of several hundred years, with occasional help from his fellow Apothecaries.

  The tunnels gave him easy access to the major urban population centres, such as they were. Walled cities of stone, often with populations of less than a million. Small sample sizes were a necessary trade-off for privacy, however. Goshen was too small to be of any importance to anyone other than the Administratum. Which made it ideal for his purposes, and a terrible target for raiders.

  And yet, here they were.

  Chort leaned forward as a phalanx of lean anti-gravity barques swooped low over the southern forests, heading not for the cities or hidden Administratum facilities, but his own laboratorium. He tapped the cogitator console built into his diagnostic throne and called up a hololithic grid, depicting his base and the surrounding region. The phalanx he’d just observed was not alone. Two others of similar size and disposition approached from the west and the north.

  ‘What do you want here, I wonder,’ he murmured.

  For a moment, he considered abandoning his base. He’d done it before. He had no warband to defend him, no allies to call on. He preferred solitude. He always had – even as an aspirant. That was one of the reasons he had been called to the Apothecarion.

  He looked around his laboratorium. It was a spartan affair. Bio-vaults containing a carefully curated selection of genetic samples lined the far wall. There were racks of bones, both intact and powdered. Alembics burbled as nutrient solutions brewed. Some of the solutions had their genesis in gifts from his mentor.

  Former mentor, rather. He shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. His parting from the Consortium had been awkward, to say the least. With Fabius on a pilgrimage through the webway, searching for the Dark City, his followers had turned on each other. Private disagreements had blossomed into little wars, waged through the ruins of Urum.

  Chort hadn’t stuck around for the worst of it. There’d been nothing to gain, and too much to lose. He hadn’t been the only one. Others like Selvo Puln and the Broken One had left as well, scattering across the stars as Gorel, Marag and the rest of the holdouts had tried to kill each other over Fabius’ abandoned secrets.

  Then he’d returned, and put an end to it. Or so Chort had heard. By that time, he’d retired permanently to Goshen. Few, if any, knew of it and most of them were dead. Rheumy-eyed Malpertus, Duco, Oleander, Scaripedes…

  He paused. He’d liked Scaripedes, for all that the other Apothecary had lacked a sense of humour. After Oleander had killed him, Chort, Selvo Puln and the Night Lord, Duco, had spent a fruitless few years trying to find the turncoat, to no avail.

  He’d been elsewhere when Oleander had returned to Urum, seeking forgiveness. Duco had told him about it later – and about Oleander’s fate. As far as Chort was concerned, the aeldari were welcome to the traitor.

  He sighed and shook his head. Anything lost could be rebuilt. But he’d grown fond of this place. It was possible that they would be unable to breach his defences, if they were even searching for him in the first place. His laboratorium was sunk deep into the side of a mountain, and reinforced to compensate for seismic activity as well as orbital debris. It would take more than a few drukhari raiders to breach his walls. Not to mention the automated weapons batteries he’d scavenged over the centuries, now scattered across the lower slopes.

  Confident in his security, he activated pict-feeds from the northern restraint paddocks and resumed his study of his ongoing projects. Mutated beasts of all shapes and sizes roared and slashed at sonic barriers. Some had once been the local variety of ursids, while others resembled canids or rats. As the waste by-product from the wood-processing manufactoria filtered into the groundwater, the local wildlife had become exceedingly susceptible to mutation. While most of the resulting monstrosities were unviable, some were surprisingly fecund. He’d begun isolating the strongest of these for further study and experimentation.

  While thus far the human population had shown only moderate mutation levels in comparison, he had some hope that future generations would display the wide-ranging abnormalities that made this sort of work interesting. Some of the creatures in the paddocks would be isolated for augmentation experiments. Cybernetic prostheses, subcutaneous stimm-injectors, cortical pain-cowls… all could be used to turn a savage mutant into a veritable engine of death.

  A chime sounded, drawing his attention back to the observation screens. A burning raider ploughed into the mountainside. The subsequent explosion barely registered. Ammunition counters ticked over as the weapons batteries burned through their supply. The surviving raiders began to peel off, retreating.

  Chort frowned. The drukhari must have got close for the weapons batteries to have begun firing. It wasn’t coincidence. They were definitely looking for him – or at least for this place. He tried to recall if he’d done anything to irritate them lately, but came up blank.

  A sudden, unpleasant thought occurred to him.

  ‘Oh, Fabius,’ he murmured. ‘What have you done?’

  Salar stood at the prow of his personal raider and laughed as they sped across the top of the forest. ‘Beautiful isn’t it, Kysh?’ he asked one of the nearby warriors. ‘We’ve never had such easy pickings.’

  ‘Indeed, my lord,’ Kysh said unctuously. Kysh was good at being unctuous. It was why he’d survived longer than any of Salar’s previous lieutenants. He wasn’t much of a fighter, but that suited Salar. More opponents for him. Salar was the sort of archon who enjoyed a good fight. He always had.

  That was why he’d wrested control of the Kabal of the Hanging Skull from its previous archon, and offered an open challenge to any who might wish to contest his right to lead. So far he’d had precious few takers. He’d hoped Kysh might make a try for it, but so far his dracon had opted for pragmatism.

  ‘Many heads shall hang from our prow before we leave this mudball,’ Kysh said.

  Salar’s expression darkened. ‘Let us hope that these put up some sort of struggle at least. Hexachires’ blasted missiles take all the fight out of them, most of the time.’ His grip on his sword hilt tightened as his mood soured. ‘Speaking of which… show me,’ he growled.

  Instantly, a holographic representation of the immediate area overlaid his vision, with reported enemy positions illuminated in red. Each of Salar’s warriors had a picter unit built into their helm. These were slaved to the cortical implants that nestled beneath his wild mane of hair, allowing him to see what his warriors saw and react more swiftly to changes in the overall situation. It had been an expensive addition to his arsenal, but Salar was of the opinion that he was worth it.

  Hexachires had overseen the implantation, of course. He’d been the one to recommend it to Salar in the first place. One of many reasons he owed the old monster. Not that Salar made a habit of paying his debts, but only a fool cheated a haemonculus.

  This world was less well defended than the others, though that wasn’t saying much. The soldiery, what there was of it, was primitive – too primitive to be any real challenge – and the feudal nation-states that dominated the planet were scattered and isolated. His kabal alone could have dominated the planet.

  But that wasn’t their goal today.

  ‘We’re approaching the mountain,’ Kysh said.

  Salar drew his knife and sliced open Kysh’s cheek. ‘We’re approaching the mountain, my lord,’ he said, as his subordinate jerked back with a curse. ‘And yes, I see it.’

  The mountain filled the ho
rizon, growing larger as they drew nearer. Idly, he licked Kysh’s blood off his knife and sheathed it.

  ‘Peshig,’ he said.

  ‘Finally. I thought you’d got distracted, Salar.’

  ‘Shut up. Is this it?’

  ‘If Hexachires’ pet is correct.’

  The air was suddenly torn by flak. Kysh yelped in alarm as the raider began to jink. Salar grimaced as one of the other raiders was enveloped in a fireball. He only had a handful of the transports, most of which had been stolen from other kabals. He spat a curse as the stricken vessel slammed into the slope below and exploded.

  Salar turned to the helmsman. ‘Break off,’ he snapped. ‘They’re too well dug in, the mon-keigh bastards.’ Even as he spoke, he felt the anti-grav generators groan in protest as the helmsman brought the raider about. As his command was relayed to the other transports, they too veered off, scattering in all directions. ‘Regroup at the predesignated grid-point. Any fool who’s not there in the next ten minutes will have my sword in his guts at minute eleven.’

  As his raider arrowed towards the rendezvous point, Salar said, ‘Peshig – they’re definitely there. And you owe me a raider.’

  ‘Alas, I suffer a distinct paucity of such vehicles at the moment. You performed admirably, however. Klux and the others were able to pinpoint the defences, thanks to your heroic efforts.’

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘As much as it warms my heart to hear you say that, I’m afraid I must cut this short. I’d also advise putting some distance between yourself and that mountain, post-haste.’

  Peshig cut the link, and Salar turned. High above the summit of the mountain, something flashed. ‘Helmsman, add some speed,’ he growled. ‘Prepare to bank on my mark. I’m not letting Avara get all the glory this time.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s wise, my lord?’ Kysh said, dabbing at his face with a rag. He flinched back as Salar fixed him with a stare. ‘No, yes, I see now how wise it is, my lord. The very picture of wisdom, in fact.’