Soldiers of the Imperium, page 50
But as he spoke, Krasykyl grasped the Shaper’s arm and pulled him back towards the remaining members of the Kinband. Obeysekera watched them talking, their language to his ears a combination of clicks, whistles and trills, stretching up into frequencies at the edge of his hearing. When the kroot went silent but, from gesture and look, were clearly still speaking, he realised that much of their speech was conducted at frequencies above the human range. He took a step further backwards, ostensibly to allow the kroot to speak among themselves, but he used the greater distance to speak into the squad vox-channel.
‘The kroot use ultrasonic sounds when speaking. Remember this for when they cease to be our allies.’
He switched out of the group channel and turned to the general and the commissar.
‘If the kroot change their mind, have you any other ideas?’
‘You mean, how are we going to find the command core of this necron tomb and stop it opening?’ asked General Itoyesa. ‘Or whether we should simply try to escape from here and carry word of what is happening under his feet to our esteemed and somewhat surprised lord militant?’
‘If you know a way out, I would be happy to escape,’ said Obeysekera. ‘But unless you can also get us off-world, we won’t get far if the tomb wakes. Our best chance of survival with the necrons beginning to stir is to go deeper rather than higher.’
‘We only have the word of your winged friend that the necrons are waking,’ said Itoyesa. ‘I would prefer confirmation of that.’
‘I confirm it.’
The general turned, nearly into the beak of another of the kroot. This one was rangy and long-limbed, with a looseness and rhythm to its movements that suggested a dancer or a gymnast to Obeysekera.
‘I am named Krasykyl the Stalker. I climbed high and there saw the necrons start to wake.’
The general stared at the kroot, then snorted and turned half away. ‘They will cause us little trouble if they wake up there,’ he said, pointing. ‘It is the ones down here that might be a problem for us, but I see no sign of them waking.’
But as the general spoke, they heard something. It seemed distant at first, a metal rumble like the approach of a squadron of Leman Russ tanks but with less rattling, but then the sound rose in pitch and proximity.
They turned, they all turned, looking for the location of the sound, only to realise that it was coming from all around. The sound was coming from the tomb towers. They were rising. Slowly, slowly, slowly, but they were all moving, ascending before their appalled and wondering eyes. Obeysekera looked up and saw the tops of the tomb towers opening out, like flowers unfurling at the end of the stem, and the petals joining together to create an increasingly complex pattern of walkways and gantries. The tomb towers continued to push upwards, carrying their sleeping cargo towards the distant day.
‘I think that’s how the necrons assemble their armies,’ said Obeysekera.
‘Yes.’
Obeysekera looked down from the assembling army above his head to the kroot, Tchek, standing in front of him. From what he knew of kroot, he was most likely their Shaper, the one responsible for deciding what genetic material to assimilate into their own phenotypes.
‘I am ready.’
Obeysekera gestured towards the other kroot. ‘They are happy?’
‘Yes. But they have asked that I give you warning of a consequence of what I am doing. We require knowledge – of the location of the necron’s command centre, of what we might do to stop the opening of this tomb, of ways that we can take to escape from this place. If the necron itself has this knowledge, I will acquire it by consuming part of his body – it will not require much. But necrons are not as living creatures. By eating it, I will be poisoning myself. This has happened before. When others tried this on Caroch, consuming the necrodermis of the necrons attempting to take our world, they themselves fell victim to what they ate. After a period of time, hours in some cases, days in others, the kroot who consumed the necrons were themselves consumed, their bodies bursting as nanoscarabs that had multiplied within them exploded out.’
Tchek paused and Obeysekera saw the quills lying back from his head flashing through various subtle ranges of colour.
‘I will attempt to regurgitate that which I consume before it can infect me,’ Tchek continued, his quills still cycling through a subdued colour cycle, ‘but others have tried that before and failed.’
Obeysekera, General Itoyesa and Commissar Roshant looked at the kroot, saying nothing, for there was nothing they could say in the face of such matter-of-fact courage.
‘It may therefore be necessary to kill me,’ Tchek continued. ‘I have given instructions to my Kinband so that they will know when to make such a decision. Should it become necessary, they will know what to do. I ask you to allow them to do as I have asked, should this be the case.’
Obeysekera said nothing.
He felt Itoyesa glance towards him, then back to Tchek. ‘Your, er, kroot will of course be given the time to do this if they have to,’ said General Itoyesa. He turned to Obeysekera. ‘Won’t they, captain?’
Obeysekera nodded. ‘Yes, they will.’
‘Thank you,’ said Tchek. ‘There is little time, therefore I will begin.’ The kroot went over to the body – if it could be called that – of the necron they had levered from its coffin.
Tchek crouched down over the necron. It lay, still as death, a dull grey-silver sheen limned with the green light of the tomb overlaying its limbs, torso and skull. Its eye sockets were dark holes with no sign of the green light of animation that marked functioning necron warriors.
Obeysekera watched with fascination as the kroot reached into his body armour and removed a sheath. Taking the knife it carried, Tchek held the blade up, turning it so that he could see the light reflect from the metal. The very air seemed to cut upon an edge stropped to a molecular angle and the kroot pulled a feather from the back of his arm and, turning the knife-edge upwards, dropped the feather and let it float downwards.
The knife cut through the feather, its two halves falling on either side of the blade.
Tchek nodded in appreciation of the knife’s cut then turned towards the necron. He picked up its hand – Obeysekera saw the way the kroot squeezed the necron’s wrist to overcome his own instinctive revulsion against touching such a creature – and lifted it so that the fingers splayed.
Taking the knife, Tchek brought it down sharply on the first knuckle of the final finger. The knife cut through the joint with little less ease than it had cut through the feather, and the necron’s severed finger fell, clanging, metal on metal, on the ground. Tchek sheathed the knife and stored it once again, under feathers and next to skin, invisible to any eye.
The Shaper picked up the necron’s finger, holding it between his own forefinger and thumb.
‘No blood,’ Tchek said.
‘It is a necron,’ said Itoyesa. ‘They do not bleed.’
‘But we creatures of flesh, we bleed,’ said the kroot.
As Tchek lifted the necron finger to his face, Obeysekera found himself shivering at the horror of what he was watching.
The kroot held the finger up in front of his eyes, turning the digit one way and then another, regarding it with all the intensity of a chef to a noble house selecting the best cut of meat for cooking. Obeysekera had grown up in Kasr Gesh. The first time he had seen a cut of real meat, he had been fourteen and about to enlist in the Whiteshields. Not that he had actually eaten any of the meat roasting on the spit, but the memory of the way his mouth had watered and his stomach yearned had remained with him through all the years, even past his own first meal of proper meat, on to the present.
‘I see you can believe what they say about the kroot eating their own.’ The voice was Itoyesa’s, speaking on their private channel. ‘But how much different is that to the way the Adeptus Astartes extract and preserve the gene-seed of their warriors?’
‘They don’t eat them.’
‘The aim appears similar even if the method differs. Ah, it’s chow time, I see.’
Tchek held the necron finger. He turned it one way and then another, examining it.
It was cold. In this aspect, it was no different from most of the flesh he had consumed in the Feast – it was rare to commune with the dead while their remains were still warm. But the necron’s metal flesh had none of the looseness of dead flesh, none of its flab. The dead sagged. But the necron, not living, remained unchanged when its animating spirit departed: hard, unyielding, cold.
Tchek brought the finger to his mouth. He opened his beak. The Shaper felt the stares of his Kinband, he felt their horror and their disgust.
He felt the disgust himself. His gorge was rising.
Tchek dropped the necron finger into his mouth. He began to chew. The hard bone plates of his palate, the hardest bone in his body, ground upon the metal, while mouth acids from salivary glands added their vinegar flavour to the Feast. Tchek chewed, his beak working to break the necrodermis of the necron down to something that he could ingest.
Tchek swallowed. He felt the finger slide down his throat, a swelling moving down his oesophagus.
The finger ingested and sitting in his gut, Tchek squatted back on his heels, his hands pressed over his stomach area, swaying backwards and forwards. The nictitating membrane slid over his eyes, then back again. The Shaper clutched his stomach tighter and began to groan, a long, drawn-out moan of pain. The other kroot groaned in sympathy with Tchek, creating discordant harmonics that resonated through the tomb towers rising around them.
Tchek opened his eyes, wide, staring, although what he saw was inside, not external. Then he slowly collapsed onto his side, shivering in every part of his body, his crown quills clicking against each other in a fast, staccato measure.
The other kroot rushed to him and helped Tchek back to his feet.
‘Get it out,’ Krasykyl whistled.
Tchek began to heave, making no sound, his torso moving in convulsive waves. The kroot stroked the Shaper’s back and stomach, trying to help the muscle contractions push the necron finger up and out. The Shaper choked, choked again, then coughed.
A glob of sputum flew from his mouth and landed wetly on the metal floor. It hissed, sending up wisps of acrid, acid smoke.
Tchek coughed again, still clutching his stomach. He vomited, voiding the contents onto the metal floor, every muscle of his abdomen joining together in the convulsive expulsion of all that had been within him.
‘Did you get it all out?’
Tchek looked up at Krasykyl. He shook his head. While there was nothing left to vomit, he could already feel things moving within him, burrowing, multiplying. The metal was alive and it was starting to eat him from within.
‘You didn’t learn anything?’ It was the human who spoke.
The Shaper turned to Obeysekera.
‘I learned enough.’
CHAPTER 15
‘Here.’
Tchek, clinging for support to Kliptiq’s shoulder, pointed to a gap between the coffins on the tomb tower. ‘The door. But I do not know how we shall open it.’
But even as the kroot spoke, the green-tinged metal slid aside, revealing a green-lit space within.
‘A trap?’ asked Obeysekera.
‘No,’ said Tchek. ‘The tomb is waking. But it does not expect such as we to be here.’ The kroot stepped through the door and turned to face the rest. ‘This is the way we must go.’
‘The lift to hell,’ said Obeysekera.
The captain waited while the general, the Kasrkin and the kroot entered the lift, until only he and the Kamshet were left outside. Obeysekera looked to Amazigh. The Kamshet had retracted his wings and draped his robes over his shoulders, but it would be a matter of moments for him to fly again.
‘Let’s go.’
But Amazigh pointed back.
There, between the slowly rising columns of the tomb towers. Movement. Multiple movements. Light splitting on long, clicking, flensing blades.
Obeysekera looked left and right. He could see at least five Flayed Ones approaching, their long finger-knives stropping to molecular cutting edges with the scissor motions they were making as they came on. The sharpening motion made a distinctive clacking sound, like standing at the back of a row of barbers all busily plying their trade.
‘Gunsur, Malick, to me.’ Obeysekera moved aside so that the Kasrkin could stand beside him and Amazigh in the entrance to the lift. ‘Hold them off.’
As Malick and Gunsur opened up firing economic three-round bursts, stopping the oncoming Flayed Ones with the first one or two shots and then knocking them back with the third, Obeysekera targeted a necron coffin.
The crystal casket shattered. The Flayed Ones, seeing the necron precipitated from his casket, hanging half out, turned away from their advance on the lift and moved towards the warrior.
‘Hope we don’t have to come back this way,’ said Malick. ‘That’s another of those things.’
‘Speed they were coming, we’d never have got down in the first place if we didn’t give them something else to do,’ said Obeysekera. ‘Pull back.’
Gunsur, Malick, Amazigh and finally Obeysekera retreated into the lift, and the doors slid shut in front of them, closing them from the sight of the Flayed Ones gathered around the prone necron.
The lift jerked. Obeysekera looked round to the kroot. Tchek met his glance, shook his head. He did not know.
Then the bottom fell out of the world.
The lift was dropping, apparently in free fall, plunging into the depths. Within, humans and kroot looked around, searching the sides of the lift for some clue as to how far they had to travel. Yet the lift itself was blank to human or kroot eyes, its designs the green symbolic language of the necrons.
But Tchek could read it. ‘It is all right,’ he said, then coughed, his sides heaving. ‘It goes deep.’ Already the downward plunge had changed to a more measured descent.
‘What is below?’ asked Obeysekera.
‘The mind that controls all that is above,’ said the kroot.
‘Does this mind have a body that can be killed?’ asked General Itoyesa.
The kroot shook his head. ‘I do not know the answer to that. But if we may stop what is happening, it is there.’
Obeysekera looked around as they were speaking. The lift was no longer accelerating but moving at a steady speed, yet there was a sound to its passage that was growing louder as he listened. Then he realised it was not the lift making the sound. It was coming from outside. It was coming from all around them.
It was a deep sound, rolling and quiet at first, like the wash of waves upon a faraway beach. But the sound grew louder, passing through the very material of the lift and into the bodies of the kroot and humans hearing it, their flesh resonating in time with its stately rhythm.
And Obeysekera recognised it.
‘The song of the sands.’ He looked round at the rest. ‘I heard it before.’
‘Yes,’ said Amazigh. ‘It is the voice of the desert.’
‘How can we hear it down here?’ asked Obeysekera.
‘The Tabaste is an island in the desert, set in a sea of flowsand.’ The Kamshet, his wings furled and his eyes blue through the gap in his cheche, spread his arms. ‘The desert hates the Tabaste and now I understand why – it hates that which hides beneath the mountain.’
General Itoyesa snorted. ‘You make it sound as if the desert is alive.’
The Kamshet looked at the general. ‘It is.’
The general snorted again, but before he could answer, the lift began slowing. They were coming to the end of the shaft.
The lift stopped.
‘Ready,’ said Obeysekera.
The doors started to open. They stood with their weapons trained upon the opening: hellguns, kroot rifles and autogun, their mute, death-dealing muzzles ready to speak. Only the Shaper was not pointing his rifle at the doorway, for he could hardly hold the weapon up, he had so little strength left.
The door opened to black.
CHAPTER 16
Nebusemekh looked at his creation.
A perfect model of the heavens, rotating about him, for he was its centre. Suns and planets and stars moving in their stately pavane, their aspects and natures defining and describing the events below. There, a shuddering square told the making of the tomb. Here, a tense quincunx revealed how he had had to whip his people to finish their labour before the cataclysm struck.
As above, so below.
Nebusemekh moved his hands and the planets shifted and stars fell.
‘As below, so above.’
The present might form the future as well as telling the past. He really felt he was on the brink of discovery. He could feel it through to the tips of his fingers.
The door creaked, cracked, opened.
Nebusemekh turned, startled, and the planets fell and the stars crumbled. He heard the hiss of sand falling on sand. That was annoying. He had been sure that this time – this time – the experiment would work and now it had been ruined.
Nebusemekh watched the door continuing to open. Outside, it was dark.
That door had not opened for a very long time. He raised his hand and made light. The light was green, a glowing globe, and Nebusemekh sent it floating towards the opening door, sending the light out into the darkness.
Lift. That was it. The memory surfaced from somewhere very deep. A lift to the great hall of the sleepers.
Where the infected were roaming…
Nebusemekh started. He clamped a hand over his mouth and nose: an ineffective mask, but better than nothing, while he looked for something more useful. He fumbled with his other hand in his clothing, found a cloth – a handkerchief – and wrapped it round his face, covering his airways.
