[Dark Heresy 01] - Scourge the Heretic Read online

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  SCOURGE THE

  HERETIC

  Dark Heresy - 01

  Sandy Mitchell

  (An Undead Scan v1.1)

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bioengineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants — and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  PROLOGUE

  Astra Incognita: the Halo Stars

  049.933.M41

  Pieter Quillem felt sick, a sensation he was depressingly used to, despite years spent in the service of the Inquisition: a calling which, in the very nature of things, tended to strengthen the stomach by repeated exposure to abominations that would have left a more sensitive soul reeling. In his time as an acolyte, and latterly as an interrogator, he had discovered reserves of mental and spiritual fortitude that still occasionally astonished him, but no amount of physical courage or faith in the Emperor could quell the rising nausea that assailed him every time he found himself in open space. He took a deep breath of recycled air, stinking of old sweat and flatulence, and triggered the attitude jets of the tiny shuttle, steadying the slow tumble that had begun to trouble his inner ear.

  As the stars around him steadied he felt the swelling tide of sickness recede, and sighed faintly with relief, misting the viewport ahead of him for a moment before the environmental unit’s machine-spirit recognised and compensated for the minute increase in humidity. As the thin layer of armourcrys cleared again, the full extent of the galaxy was revealed to him, a refulgent spiral glowing with rich, warm light in a thousand subtle hues. From here, on its very fringes, he could see the Emperor’s holy demesne almost in its entirety, stark, clear and beautiful, burning like a beacon in the endless night of infinity. For a moment Pieter wondered if this was how He on Earth perceived it all, before dismissing the fleeting thought as both fruitless and bordering on the impious.

  “Are you quite well, Pieter?” The voice in his vox was dry, precise, and carefully modulated, and even without seeing the face of his mentor the young interrogator was perfectly able to picture it. Inquisitor Grynner would have tilted his head almost imperceptibly to one side as he spoke, his deceptively mild blue eyes blinking behind his spectacles, as though the answer might be both unexpected and informative.

  “I’m fine, inquisitor.” He spoke a little too quickly, before adding, “Thank you for asking.” Grynner knew about his susceptibility to void sickness, of course, as he seemed to know about everything, and his sympathy was undoubtedly genuine. Nevertheless, as usual, he’d delegated the task of on-site investigation to one of his entourage without a second thought, preferring to remain in his quarters aboard the starship from which the shuttle had come, calmly assessing whatever information his operative uncovered. Jorge Grynner’s formidable intellect was a weapon as potent, in its own way, as the storm bolter built into the power suit he wore on the rare occasions he deemed his personal intervention to be necessary, flensing truth from lies, ferreting out secrets so deeply hidden that no one else even suspected they were there, and he preferred to let it do so without distraction whenever possible. In a way, Pieter supposed, he ought to be flattered that Grynner called on him so often. It was a mark of the inquisitor’s confidence in his abilities, an accolade not lightly given.

  His mind recalled to business, Pieter turned his back on the wonders of the Emperor’s realm, not without a certain sense of relief. Awesome as the sight of the entire galaxy undoubtedly was, it was disquieting to contemplate too. The billions of stars behind him didn’t just seethe with humanity, they were infested with uncountable xenos breeds as well, every one a threat, all of them gnawing away at the heart of the Imperium. The Ordo Xenos, which Pieter and his mentor served, defended it as best they could, but the task was an immense one, and the responsibility almost overwhelming.

  Looking out into the infinite brought little comfort. Out here, the stars were few and sparsely scattered, but the darkness was still speckled with pinpoints of light, most of them galaxies like the one blazing at his back. All of them no doubt swarmed with life too, and there was no way of telling which, if any, harboured an as yet unrecognised threat to the Imperium. Even more disquieting, in its own way, was the dark void between them. It could conceal almost anything, as the tyranid hive fleet which had slammed so unexpectedly into the eastern arm a couple of centuries ago had so graphically proven.

  There. One of the pinpricks of light was drifting almost imperceptibly against the fixed backdrop of the others, and Pieter triggered the manoeuvring jets again. Gradually, the mote grew, taking on form and definition, and Pieter concentrated on the battered bulk freighter thus revealed, picking out as much detail as he could to distract him from the roiling of his stomach. As he drew closer, it rotated gently beneath him, auspex arrays and engine pods drifting past like hills and valleys of pitted metal.

  “No sign of external damage,” he voxed, although Grynner already knew that. A fresh excrescence rotated into view above the metal horizon, and he made for it with another burst of manoeuvring thrust, recognising the assault shuttle the inquisitor had dispatched an hour or so ago. As he corrected his course slightly, a new detail caught his eye, a thick metal hatch some metres in breadth, the second “a” of the vessel’s name, the Eddia Stabilis, arcing across it. “Their gun ports are still sealed.”

  “Indeed.” Grynner’s acknowledgement gave nothing of his thoughts away, but Pieter suspected he was far from surprised. The distress call they’d picked up from the freighter had been garbled and panic-stricken, but had made no mention of another vessel in the vicinity. He felt his pulse quicken a little. “Can you see any of our colleagues yet?”

  “Yes.” With a flare of relief, Pieter noticed an armoured figure standing next to the open portal of a small cargo bay, a bolter held ready for use across its chest, despite the fact that the Eddia Stabilis seemed completely devoid of life. It watched impassively as he guided the shuttle into the makeshift hangar, before plodding across the intervening expanse of hull plating to join him. He couldn’t tell which of the kill team it was, the left pauldron of the Space Marine’s power armour, which by tradition had been left in the original colours of its owner’s home Chapter, hidden by the angle of his approach. Not that it would
help much anyway, he suspected. The Astartes veterans which the Deathwatch had assigned to the inquisitor’s security detail kept to themselves most of the time, disdaining the company of the rest of his retinue, and he wasn’t even sure of some of their names.

  “Interrogator.” The Marine greeted him formally, the deep, resonant voice, typical of his kind, buzzing in Pieter’s vox receiver. “The others are inside.”

  Brief and to the point, the apprentice inquisitor thought. Whether or not the modified supermen of the Astartes ever indulged in so human a vice as small talk among themselves, he had no idea, but their dealings with Grynner and his staff had never been anything other than brisk and efficient.

  “Good,” he responded, as the Marine entered the cargo bay, the closing outer door finally cutting off the disorientating view of the universe behind him.

  Pieter took a deep breath, beginning to feel better already, and waited for the sable-armoured giant to begin repressurising the hold. At first sight it seemed little different from dozens of other shipboard chambers he’d passed through over the years, although the walls were discoloured with age, and the air pumps showed signs of hard wear, the votive wax seals of the enginseers flaking a little. Clearly the tech-adepts responsible for their maintenance were less punctilious in their duties than their counterparts aboard the Emperor’s Justice. Or, more likely, too overworked, trying to keep the antiquated vessel functioning at all.

  As soon as the pressure had risen sufficiently, Pieter cracked the seal on the shuttle’s hatch, and sniffed the air cautiously as he stepped down onto the deck plating, fighting the impulse to tilt his head back in a futile attempt to read some expression in the Space Marine’s blank visaged helmet. He was tall himself, a hair under two metres, but even so his eyes were only level with the aquila emblazoned across the sable ceramite chest plates, and the grimly functional bolter, which the power armoured giant hefted as easily as a normal man might a stubber or lasgun. As his guide turned to lead the way, his left shoulder came into view, and Pieter glanced at the heraldry revealed there, vaguely relieved at being able to put a name to him at last. Orjen the Space Wolf, the only one of his Chapter to be serving with the inquisitor’s Deathwatch team.

  “The air’s fresh,” Pieter reported, for the listening inquisitor’s benefit. The boarding party’s instrumentation had recorded the fact, of course, but the mindless mechanisms lacked intuition, the subtle ability to draw conclusions not immediately apparent from mere data, which was why Grynner had sent him across in the first place. He coughed a little. “As fresh as it ever gets on a tub like this, anyway.” Dry and musty, from being recycled and replenished innumerable times over the centuries, the atmosphere was overlaid with all the familiar shipboard odours: the faint musk of human bodies, which seemed to have permeated the very decks: old food and cooking fat; burned incense from the endless round of repairs and maintenance required to keep the ancient vessel functioning; and the ever-present hint of latrines. As the inner door clanked slowly open, and he followed his black-armoured guide into the corridor beyond, he became aware of another odour as well, sharp, metallic and all too familiar: fresh blood.

  “Holy Throne!” The exclamation escaped him unbidden, and Orjen glanced back briefly in his direction before resuming his watchful posture, bolter at the ready. The deck plating was sticky with the mortal remains of what, judging by the quantity of metal interspersed with them, had been a group of the vessel’s enginseers. It was hard to be sure, though. Something had torn them apart, twisting the pieces inside out, and patterning the walls and floor with whatever remained. Despite the presence of his hulking protector, Pieter found his hand straying to the bolt pistol bolstered at his belt, and fought down the impulse to draw it. Whoever — or more likely whatever — had done this was long gone.

  “Watch your step,” Orjen advised unnecessarily. Telling himself that the sudden surge of gorge in his throat was nothing more that another spasm of void sickness, Pieter trotted after his black-armoured guide as fast as he decently could, trying to pick significant details out of the mess that might provide a clue as to the nature of the fate that had befallen the unfortunate tech-priests. No signs of claw or talon marks, or anything that might have been the residue of a weapon…

  “You reported signs of battle damage,” he said, quickening his pace a little to keep up with the Marine’s unhurried stride, whose every step covered two of his own. The matt black helmet swayed a little, in what might have been a nod.

  “Down here.” The Space Wolf turned down a cross corridor, shadowed between the luminators set into its ceiling, at the end of which Pieter caught a glimpse of a flight of stairs. Trying to recall the layout of the vessel, assuming it had started out fairly typical of its class and that half a millennium of shipmasters with their own ideas of what constituted an efficient use of space hadn’t changed it too much, they probably led up to the command decks. If there were any answers at all to be found, that’s where they’d be, he hoped. Orjen gestured down a side passage, and Pieter gagged again, the rank stench of charred flesh searing the back of his nostrils. “The ship’s security contingent.”

  “How can you tell?” There hadn’t been much left of the bodies, that much was obvious.

  “Because they put up a fight. You can still see the impact damage of las-bolts and stubber rounds on the walls. Didn’t do them much good, though.”

  “So I see.” The corridor had been scoured by what looked like a heavy flamer. Something didn’t seem right, though, and after a moment of worrying about what it might be, the answer suddenly came to him. Flamers would have left the unmistakable odour of burned promethium behind, quite clearly detectable even over the stench of its victims’ remains, and Pieter couldn’t smell a trace of it. The hairs on the back of his neck began to prickle. Only one answer seemed to make sense, and he silently prayed to the Emperor that he was wrong. “What were they trying to defend down there?”

  “The shuttle bay,” Orjen told him, adding what was already obvious, presumably in case the interrogator was as dense as most Astartes seemed to think unmodified humans generally were. “The shuttle’s gone, of course.”

  “Of course,” Pieter echoed, trying to make sense of the situation. “And the wraithbone?”

  “Gone too,” the sable giant confirmed. “We’re still sweeping the vessel, but if there was any left aboard, the Librarian would have felt its presence.”

  “No doubt.” Pieter followed him up the staircase, the hulking Marine seeming to fill the entire companion-way. They’d been shadowing the Eddia Stabilis in the belief that it was smuggling some blasphemous eldar artefacts, although where to, and at whose behest, they had still to discover. Perhaps that was why the crew had been killed, to preserve the secret, although how their hidden antagonists could have known an Inquisitorial vessel was in pursuit he had no idea. In any event, if even the tiniest fragment of so unhallowed a substance was still aboard, a psyker as powerful as Brother Paulus would certainly have detected it at once.

  There was no time to speculate any further, however, as Orjen moved aside at last, and Pieter realised they’d reached the bridge. Another black-armoured giant stood slowly to greet them, easily recognisable by the servo-arm grafted to the back of his torso plate, even before the interrogator noticed the icon of the Iron Hands on his left shoulder: Ullen the Techmarine.

  “Have you been able to retrieve anything from the cogitators?” Pieter asked without preamble. In his limited experience of interacting with the members of the kill team, Ullen had even less time for the social niceties than most of his battle-brothers.

  “I have not,” the towering Techmarine rumbled. “The primary logic banks have been desecrated. Any data this system contained has been totally obliterated.”

  As he stood aside, Pieter saw that he meant that quite literally. The brass frames and cogwheels of the calculating engine had been ripped apart, like the bodies of the luckless tech-priests below, and only fused and blackened stumps re
mained of the polished wooden control lecterns. There was no chance at all of finding out the freighter’s intended destination from this collection of scrap.

  Belatedly, he realised that the stench of blood and burning was strong again, and he began to discern fragments of the bridge crew among the wreckage. Swallowing hastily, he activated his vox.

  “Inquisitor,” he began, “we seem to have run into a bit of a hitch.”

  “Disappointing, I grant you,” Jorge Grynner said, absently polishing the lenses of his spectacles on the end of his neck cloth. He returned them to his nose, and blinked at Pieter with an expression of vague perplexity, his grey, formal robes making him look more like a senior member of the Administratum than the personal embodiment of the Emperor’s will. Pieter, however, had known him for far too long to be fooled by his unassuming manner, and seen far too many heretics make the fatal mistake of taking this facade of bureaucratic prissiness at face value. Those pale blue eyes missed nothing, and the mind behind them was as sharp as a monomolecular blade. “That freighter was the best lead we’ve had for some time.”

  “We could try extrapolating its course,” Pieter said, sitting forward on the lip of an overly upholstered armchair, and trying to look attentive. The inquisitor’s personal quarters aboard the Emperor’s Justice were as unostentatious as their owner, the floor thickly carpeted, and the bookshelves lining the walls of dark, polished wood. For the most part, the small suite of rooms was fastidiously tidy, only the desk behind which its owner sat cluttered with data-slates and neat stacks of paper. “There can’t be that many systems this far out they might have been making for.”

  “Assuming their destination was actually in a stellar system,” Grynner pointed out mildly. “Nevertheless, I have asked our Navigator to look into the possibility.” He sighed. “I must say, though, I’m far from hopeful.”