Lords of blood, p.93
Lords of Blood, page 93
He reached outside himself, seeking a way to escape the illusion. Mephiston had traversed many lands in many times beyond the material realm. The warp offered an infinity of vistas, for those who knew how to see them. They could trap a man.
‘None of them are real,’ he said. ‘This is not real.’
He concentrated. He pushed at the limits of his mind, but met nothing but the bony walls of his skull. He could not return from whence he came.
‘There is no way out, Kali,’ said a rough voice. ‘You are here for the duration. You have to ride this one out.’
Mephiston opened his eyes. A man stood on the slope above him. He was small and malnourished as all the peoples of Baal’s moons were, but especially ratty in appearance; a man of spare, strong muscles and crooked bones. He stood awkwardly. His pelvis tilted to the left. The lords of Baal were beautiful, all of them. Their subjects invariably were not. This one had a huge nose, bent out of shape by a poorly fixed break. His ears were lopsided from either mutation or injury. His filed teeth were blue with decay, and what little hair he had stuck out in tufts all over this head. Even so, he was no fool. He had eyes that glinted like knapped flint, sharp and dangerous.
‘Do you remember me, Kali?’
He wore clothes similar to Mephiston’s, though filthy to the point of stiffness. A sour reek came off him. In one hand he held a staff of curled wood.
‘I am Mephiston–’
‘Lord of Death,’ the man mocked in a whining voice, as if Mephiston were a sulky child. ‘You were a pompous little arse when you were a person. Power’s only made you worse.’ He shook his staff.
‘You are not real.’
The man pinched his own cheek with a filthy fingernail. ‘I feel real.’ He sniffed his armpit. ‘I smell real.’
‘You are a figure from my past given the semblance of life by whatever entity has trapped me in this psychosphere.’
The man shook his head in disbelief, hawked and spat a fat gobbet of phlegm onto the ground. ‘By all the ancient gods, listen to you. If you’d spoken like that when you were with me, I’d have tanned your hide. I don’t think there’s any saving you now.’
‘I know I am damned.’
‘I’m not talking about damnation, boy, I’m talking about pomposity.’
‘Who are you supposed to be?’ said Mephiston. ‘Are you my father?’
The man blinked in surprise, then laughed uproariously. ‘Father, your father?’ He laughed so hard tears ran from his eyes, and he began to cough. ‘Don’t you remember your father? Big man, prone to outbursts of murderous violence?’
Mephiston shook his head.
‘I remember nothing at all from before the time of my apotheosis. Perhaps I did when I was Calistarius, but since I became Mephiston, I do not even recall if I ever remembered.’
‘You are beginning to remember now, though, aren’t you?’ said the man, leaning on his staff and leering. ‘Kali, Calistarius, Mephiston… Are you going to take another name if you go back? You’re going to die, you know, back there, on that bloody table. Doesn’t matter how many names you have or how many fancy words you know.’
‘All men die.’
‘Not one of them wants to, not really, so don’t play brave with me,’ said the man. ‘How many names do you need, Kali? How many are you going to take?’ The man trudged down the hillside until he stood in front of Mephiston. He was forced to crane his neck to look up into his face, but he kept his eyes on Mephiston’s the whole time. He was not afraid. ‘It doesn’t matter if you bury yourself in names. You’ll never hide what you are.’ He poked Mephiston in the chest. The man’s finger was filthy and hard. ‘You’re a dirty little witch, like me.’ He turned about and walked further down the mountain. ‘Come on, you’ll be wanting to get this all over and done with, I’m sure. You never did have any bloody patience.’
Mephiston followed after. The man moved surprisingly quickly, hopping down the uneven path with great agility.
‘Who are you?’
‘It doesn’t matter. It never really did, not from the moment I spotted the psy-shine in you. I knew they’d take you eventually. Looking at what you’ve become, I wish I hadn’t bothered hiding you in the first place. I should have let your father kill you.’
‘Then you must be long dead.’
‘Am I?’ the man said resentfully. ‘Nothing ever dies, not really. I mean yes, obviously, I am dead, but time means nothing. Physicality isn’t the be all and end all.’ He turned round again and shook his staff angrily. ‘I tell you, it’s shit being dead. If you avoid fading away or being ripped apart by warp predators or swallowed by a god, there’s just places like this, and that’s if you’re lucky. Nowhere. Nothing. Rubbish.’
He resumed his bouncing hobble down the slope.
‘I have an inkling it’s not supposed to be this way, or else why would we be bothering with all this?’ He stopped by a cave mouth in the mountainside. ‘In there,’ the man said.
The cave was dark, and noisome, and at first glance looked to be an irregular crack, but when Mephiston held aside the swags of moss around it and brushed dirt and corrosion from the opening, he saw that once, a long time ago, it had been a metal doorway in a metal surface.
‘But this is the way things are.’ The man looked up and sniffed. ‘Though it might not be for much longer. Warp’s changing. Big things are happening. Bad things.’ The man peered at Mephiston. ‘If you’re not careful, you’ll be one of them.’
He tapped Mephiston on the rump with the butt of his staff. The gentlest of blows, but it hit Mephiston like a power-fist strike. The door rushed at him, and he was flung into darkness.
He fell a while in total darkness, so long he lost the sensation of falling. His senses were starved. Within moments time ceased to exist. He found himself in a limbo that could have lasted forever. By the time light came to him again, he was motionless, kneeling upon a hard floor, with no clue as to how he had got there.
A ruby glow spread through the darkness, lighting upon him so gradually he did not realise he was starting to see, until suddenly he could.
He got to his feet. He was still wearing the tribesman’s garb, but he was no longer on Baal Primus. There was no sign of the door or of the man. Instead, he was deep under the ground. Red crystal surrounded him on the walls, floor and ceiling. A cave of another sort. It appeared natural. It could equally have been crafted.
He looked around. The light continued to grow, until it was light as dawn on Baal, and flames danced deep within the walls of the cavern. The cave could have been a twin for the Ruberica in the Cruor Mountains. But that was a natural wonder. A sense of the supernatural clung to Ruberica even when it was inactive. This place was dead from the heart out, for all its seeming similarity.
There was a wall behind him and a tunnel ahead of him. Having no other choice, the Lord of Death went forward.
For some time he walked, his way lit dimly by the crystals’ weak inner light. The tunnel kinked about, presenting hundreds of reflections of Mephison in its faceted walls. They were all different, showing the Lord of Death as he had been at every stage of his life. In some, he was a boy with a face Mephiston did not remember. In others, Calistarius, as neophyte and initiate, as psy-acolytum and as Librarian. He saw his trials, he saw his triumphs. Calistarius fought well and laughed often. He was of a different character to the Lord of Death, and like the images of the boy walking along beside him, Mephiston did not recognise the man as himself. Fascinated, he turned to stare into a facet that showed Calistarius as if he stood in front of him.
Calistarius had Mephiston’s face, but only in a nominal way, so that if by some impossible twist of time the two of them were to stand side by side, then an observer would have taken them to be blood brothers rather than twins; certainly not the same man. A face with a knowing smile looked out from the ruby crystal, mirthful eyes above it. Calistarius was beautiful whereas Mephiston was fearsome. On Mephiston’s face, Calistarius’ straight nose was hard and angular rather than noble. His pale skin was corpselike and waxy rather than fine. There was power in both of them, but it shone from Mephiston’s eyes with a baleful intensity that Calistarius lacked.
Around Calistarius, other reflections faded into being. Each showed Mephiston rather than Calistarius. Each one was crueller looking than the last. A hundred iterations of Mephiston’s face glowered, surrounding Calistarius’ friendly mien in a hateful halo.
Mephiston examined every one. In each, he was a monster. Before his eyes, the images wavered again, and they changed. He saw in them his gene-father Sanguinius, and he marvelled at the vision. For him the Great Angel was little better than a legend, yet there he was, living and acting. He saw Sanguinius fight. He saw him speak with his brothers. He saw him perform acts of selflessness. He saw him commit atrocities in the name of the young Imperium.
‘I am not without darkness,’ Mephiston whispered, quoting the scrolls of Sanguinius. ‘No man is truly good. No man is truly evil.’ He saw planets burn. He saw entire races expunged. The parade of war went on and on, each scene darker than the one before.
‘Forget not the sins of the father,’ Mephiston said to himself.
The images vanished, leaving Mephiston reflected from a hundred angles. Only Calistarius’ unmoving image remained.
‘Forget not thy own sins,’ Mephiston said, and Calistarius’ lips moved with his own.
Calistarius lifted his left arm. It passed out of the false bloodstone.
The Lord of Death stared into the eyes of the man he used to be and grasped his proffered hand. Dead-white flesh gripped flawless blue armour.
There was a flash of heat, and the cave was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
QVO’S GAMBLE
Five hours of the droning of the Librarians’ chant made Dante’s teeth ache. Even through the psychic protection afforded him by Sanguinius’ mask, he suffered from the power in that place. Lines of sigils ran bright down the inner surface of the chamber. They swayed and pulsed, oddly alive. Red light ran in the circles cut into the floor.
At the centre of it Mephiston was carved up, a flayed sacrifice to himself. His skin floated in a nutrient tank, the plates of his black carapace in another.
‘First the old must die before the new can be reborn,’ Qvo said, as his machines removed the last of Mephiston’s skin.
Dante thought that Qvo did not understand the import of that. This was Mephiston’s second rebirth. Calistarius of old had been lost when Mephiston crawled out of the rubble of Hades Hive. Dante feared what might emerge from the other side of death this time. He checked again that his Sanguinary Guard were in place, a circle outside the ring of Librarians. They had to be ready to strike.
‘He is prepared,’ said Qvo. ‘We shall now begin the second part of the procedure, the insertion of the Belisarian Furnace. This will help the Lord Mephiston survive the process of elevation.’
Qvo bowed his head to Corbulo. The Sanguinary Priests stepped forward. A pair of blood thrall personnel came with them, helping Corbulo to cut through Mephiston’s chest muscles and pull them back from the bone. Albinus checked a number of machines, satisfied at the readings they displayed, then spoke.
‘Proceed.’
A buzzing saw descended from the chirurgeon crouched over the table. It whined loudly over the Librarians’ chants, the pitch increasing as it bit into the Lord of Death’s sternum. The sharp smell of hot bone cut through the air, the whining became wetter, then abruptly ceased. The bone saw withdrew, and at Qvo’s command a rib spreader slotted itself into the gap carved through the muscle. Cogs spun along a toothed track, forcing the spreader open.
For some time the bone refused to give. The crack Mephiston’s rib box made as the machine broke it open was as loud and sharp as a bolt-round explosion. The spreader clicked loudly. On the screens mounted away from the table, Dante saw Mephiston’s hearts exposed, red and glistening, naked to the hot air. A nozzle rotated down from the chirurgeon and squirted out a mist of counterseptic. A servitor wheeled forward. In soft grabbers it held a lidded, glassite bowl. Within was a new organ.
‘This furnace has been force-grown to maturity,’ explained Qvo to the assembled witnesses, more for the pleasure of the knowledge he possessed rather than a need to educate. ‘This is the key to the transformation from Principia to Primaris Space Marine. Once it is implanted, it will rapidly bond with the Lord Mephiston’s hearts and immediately begin to excrete specialised hormones into his body. These will soften his bones, and reactivate the ossmodula, facilitating further skeletal growth. The trick to all this is modulating its activity. It is remarkable. I would say it is Cawl’s finest achievement.’ He undid the lid and very carefully scooped out the organ with a secondary pair of hands. ‘We do not wish to be working against its formidable healing abilities while we cut, but we do need to harness them when the time comes.’
Medical servitors extended the soft paddle scoops they had for hands and gently pulled Mephiston’s hearts aside. The organs quivered unsurely but continued to beat. Into the space made between them, Qvo carefully placed the furnace.
‘Master Corbulo, if you please.’
With a signal to his aides, Corbulo directed that an electric pulse be passed through Mephiston’s body. The hearts’ activity ceased. A machine played a small clarion, and the pump within spun up to full power, forcing blood through soft tubes and then through arterial shunts into Mephiston’s system.
Corbulo looked to Qvo.
‘Begin. I shall watch. It is important you learn the steps of this procedure yourself. You have six minutes remaining to attach the organ to the blood supply, before it begins to die.’
Corbulo nodded, and bent over the Lord of Death’s open chest. With deft movements, he cut into Mephiston’s arteries, and stitched the mouths of the Belisarian Furnace’s tubes onto them. He worked fast, and Qvo intervened only once, pointing out with a fine probe the exact location of attachment for one of the furnace’s nerve clusters.
‘I am done,’ Corbulo said.
Qvo checked his work. ‘You are. A surpassingly excellent job, Master Corbulo. Stop the pump. Restart his hearts.’
A blood thrall worked a console. Mephiston’s flayed body jerked as power surged through it.
Machines keened. Lines ran flat on grey screens.
‘Again,’ commanded Corbulo.
Once more a pulse of electricity speared through Mephiston’s body.
‘We should cease the procedure,’ said Albinus. ‘If he is replaced within his sarcophagus, then he may recover.’
‘Negative,’ said Qvo. ‘We must continue whether he is alive or not. His bodily systems will restart, and all will be well, or they will not. In either eventuality, the enhancements must be in place and the procedure finished, or he will die for certain.’
Albinus looked to Dante for guidance. Above his surgical mask his eyes were angry. ‘We should never have started this.’
‘Albinus, calm yourself,’ said Corbulo.
‘Proceed,’ said Dante.
‘I will hold you personally responsible if Mephiston dies, Qvo,’ said Albinus.
‘The risk was calculated before it was taken. I shall do all I can. The furnace and hearts must be stimulated manually to release its healing cells. Do so now,’ said Qvo.
‘Albinus, aid me,’ Corbulo called. Albinus left the machines and joined him.
Together, the two Sanguinary Priests leant over the open chest cavity and began massaging Mephiston’s hearts with their gloved hands. The machines ceased their maddening chiming, settling into a rhythm that matched the priests’ efforts. An artificial pulse set, Corbulo turned his attention to the furnace.
‘Continue,’ said Qvo-88. ‘We shall proceed with the implantation of the sinew coils.’
A bundle of metal cables was raised up out of a tank by a small crane. Suspended in the air, they resembled a network of veins, roughly in the shape of the human body.
‘The sinew coils are different from other Space Marine implants,’ Qvo continued. ‘In effect, they are a cybernetic implantation where the others are purely organic enhancement. Even so, ordinarily, the coils can be grown within the body from multiple seed locations. Durasteel powder is added to the neophyte’s nutrient feeds, and the machinery of the coils is built up within his musculature. But in the case of the Rubicon we need to be quicker. Let the machines move his blood once more!’ Qvo commanded. ‘The chirurgeon needs space to work.’
Spinning pumps took over the job of circulation from the Sanguinary Priests again. Albinus and Corbulo stepped back. Mephiston’s hearts lay still.
Qvo went to an instrument bank and activated a number of servo-skulls festooned with small contragrav projectors. The skulls floated up out of the machine and into position. Through the interplay of the fields, the network of cables was lifted gently up, until it lay horizontal in the air, and filled out. Now it resembled an abstract sculpture of a man, of the sort Dante had seen in more decadent societies, where the truth of forms was abhorred.
Qvo directed the grav-skulls to lower the coils towards the Lord of Death’s body. Numerous supplementary limbs emerged from within his robes, moving about with hypnotic rhythm as if he were conducting a piece of music. When the floating steel sculpture was fractions of an inch away from Mephiston’s body, one of Qvo’s main arms snapped upright. A machine responded with a rapid pattern of blinking lights, and the coils came to sudden, writhing life, squirming around each other like a knot of serpents, losing their semblance to the human form. They speared down, slipping noisily into the spaces in Mephiston’s flesh. For a moment Mephiston’s body jiggled with the coils’ activity as they infiltrated every part of his body.
