Warhammer 40,000 - [Weekender 02] Read online

  About him, Czevak could see nothing, but it was a loud and predatory nothingness. The night forests not only creaked with ambulatory plants and mega-flora but it was also the setting for a carnivorous arms race. A layered cacophony of alien roars betrayed different species of death world killers, haunting the midnight jungle. Calls of aggression, territoriality and the agony of transmutation, as the monsters out-evolved each other for supremacy in the dark, under the Eye of Terror’s corrupting influence.

  Cranking a chunky lamp, the inquisitor watched as the environment about him retracted, with both plants and predators withdrawing like the feelers of a slug at the horror of brightness. Czevak saw that everything—the leaves hanging from the night forest trees, the gangling insects droning inbetween, the fang-riddled hunters and their brute prey—all appeared different shades of darkness. As the death world’s bleak and tiny sun rocketed up into the sky, Czevak witnessed a further, habitual retraction of the night forest flora and fauna. He saw that nothing living on Umbra-Epsilon V had much in the way of pigmentation at all. The ecology all shared the same translucence that evolution usually reserved for dwellers of the deep. The inquisitor watched the sun cut a swift path across the sickly firmament like a comet before disappearing below the opposite horizon as swiftly as it had appeared. Through some perversity of the Eye, the giant, stationary death world of Umbra-Epsilon V was in fact orbited by its feeble star, rather than the other way around.

  Lifting the lamp higher and turning, Czevak saw that the warp portal, through which he had just translated, was part of an arrangement of standing stones. Dipping a free hand inside his garish coat, he produced an arrangement of explosives. Like festive lights, melta bomb charges hung from a loose coil of cable. Dangling from the arrangement was the atomic clockwork timer with which the inquisitor intended to detonate the explosives. Slipping the coil over his shoulder, Czevak set to work examining the portal’s transference nodes and infini-circuitry, until he realised that he had not been the only one interested in the warp portal.

  Czevak found that the standing stones and their portal centrepiece were in the middle of an excavation site. Tools and digging equipment littered the monument, abandoned in the black earth. Beside them were bodies. Fresh. Human. Everywhere. As he stepped through the massacre, the inquisitor’s lamp caught the dull metallic sheen of a hull, leading Czevak along the length of a bulk transport—a drop-freighter—that the inquisitor reasoned the dig-team must have outfitted for their dreadspace excursion. The open cargo bay was laden with xeno-archeological equipment and similarly decorated with bodies. The expedition was packing serious firepower, as might be expected of an excursion to the surface of a death world, but a brief inspection of the weapons—including a sniff of their barrels and ejection ports—told Czevak that many had not even been fired.

  As interesting as the mystery was, Czevak had important business on Umbra-Epsilon V. He turned back towards the warp portal and his intended demolitions, but it was only a half-turn, as curiosity suddenly got the better of him.

  “No,” the inquisitor said, with a finger of remonstration. “Massacre. Death world. Massacre. Death world,” he repeated, attempting to convince himself of the foolhardiness of further investigation. Nodding, he turned slowly back for the safety of the portal and the standing stones. This was fortunate for the inquisitor, since he certainly would have slit his own throat on the wicked blade waiting behind him. Casually holding the weapon was a warrior in the spiked garb and armour of an alien raider. Czevak recognised its species immediately. Pirates. Mercenaries. Sadistic murderers, feasting on the anguish and terror of their victims: the dark eldar were each and all of these.

  Holding its helm under one arm and seething with simultaneous hatred and satisfaction, the willowy creature had crept up on the inquisitor like a shadow. The kabalite’s ashen expression suggested the detestation of an entire species and the murderous gleam of its eyes spoke to its intention to hurt him without end. The inquisitor searched for the appropriate words—and not even in his own language. His time spent in the Black Library had exposed him to many accursed texts about the dark eldar, some written in their wretched tongue.

  “You have me,” Czevak told it, praying to the Emperor that his poor translation hadn’t communicated something more suggestive to the alien. After a heart-stopping moment, the savage smiled. It really hated him now that he had sullied its beautifully barbed language with his sluggish human tongue. The dark eldar warrior nodded and flicked the tip of the blade towards it, motioning the inquisitor to follow. Czevak felt compelled to comply.

  The dark eldar were also infamous slavers. Their devotion to savage thraldom was known and feared the galaxy over. Czevak’s hosts did not disappoint. The inquisitor was marched at knifepoint through the night forest to a temporary camp. The complex was guarded by kabalite warriors and the tents’ canvas was flayed flesh. A collection of large orb-cages contained the raiding party’s death world prizes: all manner of weird and wonderful alien lethality, subdued into servitude by dark eldar beastmasters. Rifle-clutching sharpshooters balanced above the menagerie on barbed sentry poles like stilt fishermen. Also under their wicked sights was a cage-compound containing the raiders’ collection of off-world slaves.

  The Imperial, the alien and the mutant were all represented among their miserable number. Each was permanently manacled to the black wraithbone bars. When not employed in back-breaking labour or sick entertainment for their dark eldar captors, the poor wretches were forced to carry sections of their own cage and assemble their imprisonment under the alien eyes and vicious whips of their slavers. Stripped of his harlequin coat, melta bombs and the Atlas Infernal, the inquisitor was similarly accommodated.

  With the light of the death world sun a feeble gleam, there was little to tell between the rapid passing of day and night. Just as regular, Czevak had started to note during the first hours of his incarceration, were the horrific screams of dark eldar warriors. The inquisitor assumed that they were being taken by death world predators, prompting him to find unexpected comfort in his imprisonment. In Czevak’s section of cage the inquisitor found he had been manacled with a merchant officer—the lame master of a raided sprint trader—and a dark-skinned brute who looked like he could lift the cage-compound all by himself. Bare-chested and dressed only in labouring slacks, Czevak identified him as a surviving member of the slaughtered dig-team. Around his head, like a crown, the xeno-archeological labourer bore a distinctive tattoo: a serpent wound around his skull in a circle, attempting to devour itself. Czevak had seen such markings before, on the puppets of Ahzek Ahriman, engaged in the sorcerer’s demented and unrelenting search for the Black Library of Chaos.

  “Bronislaw,” the inquisitor introduced himself. He thought it best not to use his title and full name.

  “Huggan,” the officer told him. “Master of the Euryliad”.

  Czevak looked to the cultist, but he said nothing.

  “He doesn’t seem to talk much,” Huggan said by way of explanation.

  Czevak looked about the cage-compound. The thick wraithbone bars and the alien sharpshooters were the only things preventing the death world fauna feasting on the slaves and for that the inquisitor was thankful. There would be no escaping its confines. He decided that his incarceration would be brief. He needed a distraction. Ironically for a distraction, something that would get him noticed.

  “He’ll talk to me,” the inquisitor said confidently. The cultist was not impressed with Czevak’s confidence and continued to ignore him. “He’s content to sit and wait because he thinks a rescue is coming.”

  “Is it?” Huggan dared to hope.

  “No,” Czevak said honestly. The cultist fixed him with his deep, brown eyes. The inquisitor stared back. “Ahriman will never set foot on Umbra-Epsilon V.” Wide-eyed now, the cultist’s face clouded with surprise and vexation.

  “What know you of the master?” the hulking cultist growled back.

  “I know that the Radzner
-Gheiss manuscripts—the documents detailing the position of Umbra-Epsilon V and the location of the alien warp portal—contain a small error.”

  “There was no such error,” the cultist railed back. “We discovered the master’s prize exactly where the manuscripts described.”

  “Your copies are correct,” Czevak admitted. “Your master possesses the originals, lie raided them from the Mount Avalox Repository. I paid a visit to Mount Avalox. While I was there I made a few alterations to the originals.”

  “You lie...”

  “Your master isn’t coming,” Czevak said. “He will not arrive to rescue his loyal servants and he isn’t en route to take possession of your portal prize.”

  “How do you know such things?” the brute demanded, his building anger causing him to quake and his wraithbone wrist restraint to rattle on the bars.

  “Because I’m here to destroy it,” the inquisitor told him.

  The cultist roared and lurched for Czevak, reaching around a terrified Huggan, his great hand clawing for the inquisitor’s neck. Dark eldar warriors rushed into the cage-compound, slashing at the black earth with their razorflail whips.

  As the cultist released and retracted, a reptiloid appeared at the cage, latching onto the bars with the claws of two of its four scaly arms. In the other two it held Czevak’s harlequin coat, melta bombs and the Atlas Infernal. The inquisitor was relieved to see the artefacts. The thing was all monstrous serpent from below the waist and above the neck. Everything inbetween was clad in the barbed armour of its alien employers. Czevak knew the species as the sslyth, bodyguards and mercenaries favoured for their loyalty in the ordinarily treacherous ranks of the dark eldar.

  “Bring before the mistresssssss...” The monster spoke a sibilant interpretation of dark eldar tongue and with their feet barely touching the floor, both Czevak and the cultist were freed by dark eldar warriors and ushered from the cage-compound with shard carbines buried in their backs.

  Hurried through the camp of flesh-tents, with the light of the death world sun cruising bleakly across the sky, the two prisoners were taken to a large and heavily guarded master-tent. There was another scream—another loss to the host’s diminishing number—and the sslyth despatched two of their number to investigate. With the reptiloid slithering behind, the prisoners were dragged into the twilight of the pavilion. The cultist was wraithcuffed to one of the whipping grates that adorned the back of the tent, while the inquisitor was slammed down in a chair before a willowy table. He too had a pair of wraithbone binders slapped on his wrists.

  The inquisitor detected kabalite warriors gathered in the shadows, as much ghoulish voyeurs as guards, and saw the sslyth bodyguard come forwards and deposit the Atlas Infernal, his string of bombs and his harlequin coat on the desk. From a draped entrance to a private tent beyond emerged a pair of dark eldar. Czevak stifled his disgust as the two alien women, their skin alabaster white, came out hand in clawed hand.

  The first went to take the chair opposite Czevak. She was an emaciated courtesan: smooth skin, jutting bone and barbed corsetry took her loathsome beauty to a cadaverous extreme. Her head was shaved and her eyes sharp, glinting with an inky intelligence. From their body language the dark eldar were lovers, with the second the seeming senior of the pair. A lava flow of blood-soaked hair cascaded from an arrangement on her head and tumbled down her lithe body. With the tapered fingertips of midnight gauntlets pushing the courtesan down into the seat, she turned and withdrew a few steps. The shredded satin of her loose robe drifted open with the turn to reveal the black leather of thigh-high boots, an armoured girdle and a spiked under-bodice. Her ghastly flesh was all sinewy muscle, marking the alien filth not only as the host’s leader but also a warrior-athlete in her physical prime. Gladiator. Wych. One of the ruling succubi elite.

  Out from the drapes shuffled a hunchback. It wore a spiked collar on a length of chain that was held by the courtesan. Its face was an armoured trap of overlapping visors, from the rear of which spilled the horror of a pulsating warp parasite. Czevak had seen such hosts before as part of his work in the Inquisition but had also witnessed the parasites flowing freely through the interdimensional webway. They were known by many names but Czevak recalled them as medusae. Highly empathic, they were capable of absorbing sensations and capturing extreme emotions in the form of a dream or memory. In the Black Library, Czevak had learned how the dark eldar prized the brainfruit as both a culinary and experiential delicacy, through which they could re-experience the pain, fear and vivid emotions of their victims. The inquisitor assumed that the hybrid was performing such a function as he sat there. The courtesan adjusted the filter on an eerie green lens set in the armoured mask, as an inquisitor might a pict-caster before an interrogation.

  Czevak squinted across the table at his interrogator. The courtesan began drawing secreted knives from her corset: stilettos, lancettes, shanks, shivs, needle dirks and a selection of kris blades. Each glimmered with the hue and sticky residue of exotic toxins and alien venoms. Czevak nodded his understanding. The courtesan was a Sister of Lhilitu: skilled poisoners and experts in the art of horrible death. The inquisitor smiled. He would play her game.

  Like a connoisseur, the courtesan theatrically selected her first blade. The sslyth was suddenly behind the inquisitor, its reptilian claws holding him down and pinning his bare arm to the desk. The unsmiling courtesan picked up the wired string of melta bombs with the tip of her knife and moved them out of the inquisitor’s reach. She let slip a harsh stream of alien utterance.

  “Who arrrrrre you?” the reptilian mercenary translated.

  When Czevak didn’t answer, the courtesan used the knife tip to pick up the harlequin coat.

  “How came you by thissssss?”

  “I killed the eldar harlequin wearing it,” Czevak admitted brazenly. The courtesan and her savage kindred exchanged glances of surprise and hostility, although it was difficult to tell what shocked them more—the inquisitor’s grand boast or the fact he had delivered it in their own foul language.

  “You lie...” the courtesan hissed.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Czevak said. The courtesan dropped the coat and tapped the armoured covers of the Atlas Infernal.

  “What is this you are carrying?” the courtesan demanded.

  “I wouldn’t open that if I were you—”

  But it was already open. Unclasping the golden lock, the poisoner allowed the heavy covers to part and the atlas-plates of stretched flesh to fall open. Rather than shriek and soul-shrivel as he had observed other eldar do, the courtesan merely frowned at the pariah’s ancient blood pumping through the veins and capillaries that ran through the skin parchment. Czevak shook his head in simultaneous fascination and disappointment.

  “The children of the Fall have indeed become adept at hiding their gift from She Who Thirsts,” Czevak said. It wasn’t a compliment. The psychic atrophy of their foul race had not only protected them from the attentions of the Chaos God Slaanesh—it fortified them against the nullifying powers of the Atlas Infernal. Another sunset produced another stomach-curdling scream from outside the tent. A kabalite officer jogged in to report the obvious in a hateful whisper to his succubus mistress.

  “You know a good deal about our affairs for a preything,” the courtesan accused, playing with her knives like a distracted child. “Now let me show you how I come by my information. My anointments are swift—but pain is its own eternity. Affliction is my art and agony its medium. You will tell me all before your end.”

  “Is that the venom of the lesser Nguyan skyfish?” Czevak asked with an enthusiasm that seemed out of place.

  The courtesan’s joyless lips parted with genuine surprise. Czevak continued. “The eggs from which, if taken in the spawning season—which I have—provide a natural antidote to the adult skyling’s deadly poison.”

  Czevak watched the courtesan bite at her thin bottom lip with obvious frustration. Stabbing the tip of the blade into the desk, she took up
another in her delicate hand. The inquisitor sniffed at the air.

  “The Mount St. Hesta steam traps,” Czevak announced, his eyes closed and nostrils flared. “A natural volcanic laboratory of the most lethal toxins for twenty systems in any direction. You’ve opted for a discharge colloquially known as mother’s milk. It can be neutralised with a combination of sulphurpetre and nova lotus—which fortunately I have already taken recently as part of a Methuselan water seasoning.”

  The courtesan snatched up knife after knife, each time with the poison lacing the blade correctly identified and antidote supplied.

  “...a medley of molecular eutrophicants...”

  “...deadly voidshade...”

  “...the harvested phosphor-proteins from Fornaxian blindmites...”

  “...simple chronoflax...”

  “...hydromimetic acid, no wait—soulbane...”

  As Czevak played with his poisoner, the death world sun rose and fell. Darkness intruded upon the tent, as well as the screams of the taken. The armoured forms of kabalites entered, the remaining dark eldar sentries having fallen back.

  “Explain yourself,” the succubus demanded with an imperious snarl.

  A kabalite commander scanned the darkness beyond with his splinter pistol before following his warriors in through the tent entrance.

  “Mistress,” the officer began, “something unseen stalks us in the forest.”

  “It’s a death world,” the courtesan shrieked, turning her fury with Czevak on the commander. “Everything’s stalking something.”

  “It is one with the darkness,” the warrior insisted.

  “So are we!” the poisoner screeched. “This sack of flesh is behind this. I’m sure of it and he’ll be telling me how shortly.”

  “This isn’t me,” Czevak told her, shaking his head. The back of the courtesan’s hand slapped the inquisitor’s face aside, her sharpened nails drawing blood across one cheek. Czevak leant forwards and with the finger of one cuffed hand dabbed blood from his cheek onto his tongue. “Hive spiderpede venom,” the inquisitor told her. “Blisters, delirium, necrosis, death.” Czevak smiled. “Ordinarily.”