Deathwing (20 page)

Daemons and aliens were creatures of a very different stripe; and genestealers certainly fell into the latter category, of natural beings. The less known about the daemons of Chaos, the better! Ironically the herald – knowing no better – blared out something forbidden so as to advertise whatever flummery would be staged…

‘A shekel apiece, good pilgrims, so that we may be proceeding!’

A scrofulous dwarf scurried to and fro, collecting coins in a sawn-open skull fitted with silver handles, till he was satisfied with the height of the pile. The herald clapped his hands.

The illusion of a huge and ornate, though melancholy, throne room sprang into being all around, cast by hidden holographic projectors. The sandy ground of the courtyard now seemed to be tessellated marble. A horde of gorgeous, abject lords and ladies grovelled before a leering, green-hued, sag-bellied monster sprawling in a great, spike-backed throne. Mutant guards wearing obscene and blasphemous armour kept vigil, cradling bolt pistols and power axes. The “daemon” glowed luridly. Jagged threads of lightning flickered between its froggy hands. Meh’Lindi was wryly amused.

At that moment a parody of Space Marines with brutish, bulbous heads burst into the throne room. They fired explosive bolts at the guards, who fired back in turn. Caught up in the illusion, the audience of pilgrims screamed. Rapidly, as if matter met anti-matter, all of the guards and all of the mock Space Marines died and vanished. So did the lords and ladies, leaving the stage clear…

A tall, aura-cloaked figure entered, wearing a flashing golden crown. A mask of wires and tubes hid the “Emperor’s” face. From his outstretched hands sprouted nails which were as long again as his fingers. He gestured challengingly at the daemon – or alien – lord. As Meh’Lindi stared, transfixed, these nails swelled into claws, and an extra set of hands, and arms, burst forth from the sides of the “Emperor’s” rib-cage.

Plainly this pageant was designed to confuse the beliefs of onlookers – already confused – so that they would identify the holy Emperor with the image of a genestealer… who would soon tear the fat green daemon-alien apart and claim that throne…

‘Fool!’ cried a voice. ‘This being the climax, not the prelude!’

Behind the goggling, gasping pilgrims a tall purple-cloaked man was rebuking the herald, whom he was hauling along by the scruff of the neck. Like a ventilator cowl or a radar dish, the newcomer’s high stiffened hood cupped a long, menacing, yet enchanting face. His cranium was shaved bald. Knobbly bumps above his brows were tattooed with butterflies unfurling their wings, as if beauteous thoughts were bursting forth from chrysalises there.

It was indeed a magus.

Meh’Lindi slipped closer to him.

‘Not noticing our error, exalted one,’ babbled the herald. ‘Being outside of the holorama. Apologizing. Soon rectifying. Recommencing the performance—’

As Meh’Lindi concentrated all her attention on the magus, the man seemed to sense her scrutiny and gazed towards her piercingly. His nostrils flared like a horse scenting fire on the wind.

His gaze was compelling… but did not compel her.

Shucking her hood further forward, the more to gloom her shadowed face, she withdrew, and walked through the illusory walls of the throne room. She strolled away across the gritty courtyard back towards the boulevard and the caravanserai. The bloated sun of dull blood was sinking.

Let her not be distracted by grief at what she must now do! Let her not betray her shrine – even if her shrine had, in a sense, betrayed her. She was an instrument. And now the shape of the tool must change.

T
HAT EVENING
M
EH
’L
INDI
crept through a twisting, turning, cobwebbed tunnel, exerting her chameleon instinct. Best that she should be quite close to those whom she copied. The metamorphosis would proceed more speedily; and she by no means wished to linger over it.

The electrolumen in her hand feebly lit ancient, rune-carved stones matted with dusty spider-silk in which the bones of little lizards hung.

Presently she reached an appendix to a deserted crypt, in which a solitary nub of candle burned low. Ahead were branching catacombs lit by the occasional oil lamp, leading towards a brighter glow and the moan of a distant choir.

Her robe was loose, and would accommodate the changes, but she dropped it nonetheless. She did not wish to disguise her new form.

She injected polymorphine, and swiftly hid the tiny empty syringe in a crevice where no one should ever find it. She had left her assassin’s sash in the caravanserai. With her hands transformed into claws, she could hardly have manipulated garrottes or knives, let alone a miniature jokaero gun that was meant to slip on to a fingertip. She hoped the device she had rigged up in her room to re-inject her and restore her, would penetrate her toughened body. Maybe she would be obliged to inject through her eye.

A wave of agony coursed through her, and she blocked it.

She hunched over. Her body was molten. As she focused her attention, the implants began to express themselves. Bumps thrust up along her bending spine. Her jaw tore open, elongating into a toothy snout. Her eyes bulged. Her arms swelled, and the phalanges of her fingers became long thick claws. Her hips distorted. Now her very skin was hardening into a tough carapace, which she knew would be a livid blue, just as her cordy ligaments were a purple-red in hue.

Fairly soon, she was an extreme specimen of genestealer hybrid, whom no one could surely suspect to be anything else underneath the skin, underneath the carapace.

S
HE EXERTED ALL
of her empathy as she loped onward through the catacomb… and into a great subterranean chamber, pillared and vaulted, awash with torchlight, alive with brood kin, many of whom were brutish, others of whom might pass muster as human.

The hiss of many throats silenced the unhuman choir that was serenading, or communing with, the patriarch on its horned throne.

Human-seeming guards directed weapons at her. Broodkin rushed towards her, snarling.

Oh, the hunchbacked steward of the caravanserai had dreamed of a pretty prank to play on this high-born pilgrim daughter from another world. He must have been well aware of what he would guide her into.

Hybrids, more human than herself, formed a menacing circle around Meh’Lindi.

On his throne, nostrils flaring, the patriarch bared his fangs. Through the midst of the deadly cordon, strode the magus, cloak swirling.

‘I…,’ Meh’Lindi hissed, ‘seeeeking sanctuary… with my kiiind.’

Issuing from a distorted larynx, over a twisted tongue, her voice was far from human. Yet the magus must be well accustomed to such voices.

‘Where coming from?’ he demanded, fixing Meh’Lindi with his mesmeric gaze.

‘Hiiiding on starship,’ she replied. ‘Imperials destroying my brood, all of my clan but meeee. Craving sanctuareee—’

‘How finding us here?’

‘Wrapping myself in robe… skulking by night… checking temples. Temples being where maybe finding my distant kin.’

The magus scrutinized Meh’Lindi searchingly. ‘You being first generation hybrid… Excellent stealer body, mostly…’ He locked his gaze with hers, and she felt… swayed; but was trained to resist ordinary mesmeric enchantments.

The magus chuckled. ‘Of course we are not compelling one another… We are only compelling the human cattle. Our own bond being one of mutual devotion. Of heeding the calls, which you cannot heed, being not of our brood.’ He turned. ‘As I am now heeding… our Master. Be coming with me.’

The patriarch was gesturing with a claw.

‘Escort her carefully, brothers and sisters,’ the magus told the guards with a radiant yet twisted smile.

And so Meh’Lindi approached the monster on the throne: a leering, fang-toothed, armoured hog of a grandsire alien. Its eyes glared at her from under ridged bony brows. One of its lower, humanoid hands, adorned with topaz and sapphire rings, contemplatively stroked a fierce claw-hand that rested on its knee. One of its hooves tapped the floor. Loaves of armour-bone jutted from its curved spine, and it rubbed these against the carved back of its throne grindingly, as if to dispel an itch. Its spatulate tongue stuck out, tasting.

Meh’Lindi bowed lower than her stoop dictated, thrusting from her mind any hint of assassin thoughts, soaking up and re-radiating as best she could the ambience of grotesque, evil worship.

‘Craving sanctuary, greatest father,’ she hissed.

This was the crucial moment.

The patriarch’s nostrils flared, sniffing the faintly oily odours of her spurious body. Its violet, vein-webbed eyes, at once odious and alluring, scrutinized her intently. Its gaze caressed her and pried intimately like some dulcet scalpel blade smeared with intoxicating, aphrodisiacal mucus. The grandaddy of evil clicked its claws together contemplatively. One of its hooves drummed the flagstone which was worn, at that spot, into a rut.

No, not evil… That was no way to be thinking of this fine patriarch!

Empathy was the key to impersonation.

Identification.

How Meh’Lindi’s yearned to flee from this den of monsters and demi-monsters! – though of course it was far too late to flee.

Flee? Ha! While the very same monstrosity resided within herself? In such circumstances, fleeing made no sense whatever. For she was monstrous too.

So therefore she must perceive the patriarch as the incarnation of…
Benevolence. Fatherliness. Wisdom. Maturity.

The armoured monster that confronted her personified love. A profound depth of love. Love which quite transcended the passions and affections of mundane men and women – whatever such sentiments might feel like to the possessors.

Meh’Lindi had certainly mimed such emotions in the past. With an assassin’s eye she had studied the victims of amorousness, lust, infatuation, and fondness, even if she herself had not been vulnerable…

This genestealer patriarch radiated such a powerful, protective, brooding love – of its true kin, and of itself, of the monster that it could not help but be: the perfect, passionately dedicated, self-sanctified monstrosity.

Yes, love, fierce, twisted love.

And utter, biological loyalty.

And a dream that possessed it, almost like some daemon: an inner vision of its mission.

The mission was to perpetuate its kind. Human beings seemed to manage this same feat almost incidentally and accidentally – all be it that the result was a thousand times a thousand human worlds, many pulsing to bursting point with the festering pus of the human species.

Genestealers were compelled to try harder. They couldn’t simply writhe in copulation with their own species and produce a litter of brats.

Genestealers would willingly – nay, compulsively – infiltrate any species. Human. Ork. It didn’t matter which. Eldar. To bring about, incidentally, the corruption and downfall of those species.

In a sense, a genestealer almost represented cosmic love. A love that knew no boundary of species. That heeded no distinction between male and female. Between human and abhuman, human and alien.

So this patriarch was love incarnate! Hideous, enslaving love. Almost…

Its mission also demanded hair-trigger, homicidal fury in defence of its own destiny.

And, at the same time, cunning restraint – intelligence.

Its intelligence knew naught of machines, of starships or bolt pistols, of dynamos or windmills. Tools? Our broodkin can use those things for us! Yet its mind kenned much of glands and feelings, of hormonal motives, of genetic and hypnotic dictates.

The patriarch’s rheumy, violet, magnetic eyes, set in that hideous magenta countenance, considered Meh’Lindi in her hybrid guise… Seeing… true kindred?

Or seeing through her? About to turn down its claw?
Loving you,
she thought.
Revering you. Admiring you utmostly.
In the same fashion as she revered Callidus. As she honoured her omega-dan director… (No! Not that one. Not Tarik Ziz!)

In the same way as she reverenced… the Emperor on Terra. This clever, loving patriarch was her Emperor here. Her great father-of-all.

Did it possess a personal name? Did any genestealer? The patriarch grunted wordlessly.

Beside her, the magus rocked to and fro, heeding the alien monster’s mental sendings. A hybrid from another star system need not be similarly attuned to those.

‘Granting refuge,’ murmured the magus at last. ‘Embracing you in our tabernacle, and in our crusade.’

The patriarch closed its eyes, as if to dismiss Meh’Lindi. It folded its humanoid hands across its jutting, carapace-banded belly, and seemed to drift into a reverie. Its claws twitched rhythmically. Perhaps it was numbering its children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Of whom, Meh’Lindi of course was not one. So though it accepted her into the fold, or at least into the fringe of the fold, she was hardly a total communicant, as were all others in this subterranean stronghold.

And how many there were! Brutishly deformed broodkin rubbed shoulders and preened and sang praise. They hissed intimacies to one another. They went about their cult duties. They kept watch and ward. They nurtured the juveniles of the clan, some of whom were marked with the taint, others of whom almost appeared to be sweet, comely children, save perhaps for bumpy brows and the eerie light in their eyes.

As Meh’Lindi gazed at a nursery area, she wondered how many of the deadly, infected children she might need to kill before she could leave this place.

If the patriarch – in the wisdom of its alien glands – had chosen to tolerate her presence, the quasihuman magus retained an edge of scepticism.

‘Most welcome refugee from far planet,’ he said, ‘how being speaking Sabulorbish so readily?’ He stroked one of the butterflies – of saffron and turquoise hue – upon his knobbly forehead, as if deep in thought.

‘After hiding on ship? After skulking in city? What opportunity of learning? Seeming remarkable to me! Knowing of the plurality of languages in the galaxy. Many worlds; many lingos and dialects, hmm?’

The magus was sufficiently persuaded by her body; that passed muster. How could he disbelieve the evidence of the hybrid body that he saw before him? He could not. Yet he had come up with a question which she had hardly expected from a fanatic posing as high priest of a somewhat dodgy provincial cult devoted to miraculous Imperial fingernails.