The Inquisition War (78 page)

Draco would become an Illuminatus, he believed. As such, he would help seek out and gather together the human Emperor’s undisclosed Sons. The Emperor had sired those Sons before He was crippled and encased in His golden throne ten thousand years previously. He did not know of their immortal existence. Those Sons were psychic blanks to Him. Nor did the Sons understand their own nature until Illuminati enlightened them.

The Sons would become sensei knights, forming the long watch. When the Emperor finally failed and when Chaos surged to devour the cosmos, those sensei knights – all of whom were aspects of the Emperor – would fight the last fight. Or so they believed.

The eldar’s name for the last battle between reality and Chaos was
Rhana Dandra.
In the eldar Book of Fate it was written that the outcome of this final battle would be cosmic cataclysm, the mutual annihilation of Chaos and reality. This at least would be preferable to the triumph of Chaos.

Chaos!
Four major Gods of Chaos already existed, like malign rival monarchs amidst the countless potent entities of the warp. When the proud star-spanning eldar civilization collapsed in psychotic spasm ten millennia previously, the foul deity Slaanesh had coagulated into existence.

If the feebler human race collapsed, a fifth great Power of Chaos could emerge, finally to unhinge reality and sanity. But there was an alternative...

In the psychic ocean of the warp, fed by whatever was noble in mankind, a force of goodness could coalesce: the Numen, the luminous path, the light for New Men, to renew mankind.

Such a frail hope! Eldar farseers had glimpsed that the Numen could emerge when the Emperor finally failed – if his Sons were fused in mind-fire, if they were consumed to give birth to a phoenix of salvation and renewal. Thus the apocalypse could be averted. Farseers would steer a luminous numinous renewed cosmos. The eldar would regain a measure of glory.

Supposedly Jaq Draco was to play some small yet crucial role in this process. Alas, the exact nature of that role was shrouded in mystery. Now Draco had stolen the Book of Fate.

Maybe he did so out of sheer revenge! Draco had discovered the plan to engineer his possession by a daemon, and his subsequent purification. He had reacted very negatively.

If Draco were now to become insane – why, madness was only a membrane away from daemonic possession. Madness was an open doorway for a daemon. Draco was unsupervised. He had with him the precious potent
Book of Rhana Dandra
! Such a catastrophe, such a disaster.

Terrible doubt assailed Zephro. What if the eldar did not
really
control the majority of the llluminati – and thus the Emperor’s Sons? Zephro owed his very salvation to the eldar – as did other llluminati. Yet it was a fact that renegade llluminati were trying to create a psychic doomsday weapon with which to lash out at loathsome Chaos and at aliens alike.

Those renegades were busily infesting worlds of the Imperium with an insidious psychic parasite. The Hydra parasite would lie dormant for centuries. At some moment in the future it would suddenly fuse the human race into mind-slavery. The slaved minds of trillions of hosts would lash out in a lethal paroxysm – the most likely result of which (so farseers feared) would not be a purifying purge but the unleashing of the fifth Chaos power.

To sabotage this dangerous plan, Zephro had infiltrated the Hydra conspiracy.

What if he was only a catspaw? What if other secret illuminati existed unknown to him – who had purged themselves of Chaos, and who were also trying to gather in the Emperor’s Sons to create a true long watch? What if the activities of the eldar, and his own activities, were merely a travesty of that genuine search by illuminated individuals, a genuine search which was indeed nudging the Numen closer?

What if the intoxicatingly persuasive eldar were so sure of the inevitability of the Rhana Dandra apocalypse that their aim was merely to consume the Emperor’s Sons in the hour of cataclysm – so that the mutual destruction of Chaos and cosmos should be absolutely guaranteed, and nothing whatever survive?

He, Zephro, must not give a place in his mind to such doubts! He was feeling alienated because of the Draco disaster. Because some Harlequins now despised and blamed him.

Ro-fhessi did not blame him. Surely not.

R
UNES FLUXED AND
shimmered. Stones glowed white hot. Energy was surging through those stones, from warp into wraithbone, from wraithcore into warp. Even the trees of wraithbone shivered. Away in the groves the crystalline statues of Seers would be vibrating.

‘Where might Draco succumb to insanity?’ shrilled Eldrad. ‘Where in all the worlds?’

A thunderclap came – an ear-piercing
crack.

For a moment Zephro imagined that one of the rune stones had exploded.

No! The sound had come from above – from the dome itself.

Up there, where one particularly titanic tree pierced through into space, a vessel had impacted. The ship’s contours were shifting weirdly. One moment it resembled a scarab. The next, it seemed like a crab. Coruscating with malign energies, its frontal claws were ripping at the substance of the dome.

Beyond it drifted another incoming ship.

Moments earlier those vessels hadn’t been there. Or rather, they had been. They had been cloaked in invisibility. They had been veiled from eldar lookouts by sorcerous shielding.

As the first ship burst through the dome, plasma gushed from its snout. Gobbets of compact superheated gas incandesced against one massive tree, and then another. Shattered trunks toppled upon shorter trees, snapping them. The scream of escaping atmosphere might have been the agonized voice of the ravaged trees.

Already the shriek was dying to a whistle as the dome resealed itself – only to be ripped open a second time, by the following ship. Slowly the first intruder was descending. Rotating upon its axis, it jetted plasma in every direction other than where the divination had been taking place...

...and where it was still taking place! Never before had Chaos mounted a raid upon this place of power. Yet for a while the urgency of the divination outweighed the demands of the violent intrusion. Pray that enough guardians and aspect warriors responded to the intrusion. Eldrad shrieked at the stones: ‘
Where in all the worlds? Show me! Show me!
’

W
HERE INDEED
? As soon seek a needle in a haystack, or a bug in the coat of a cudbear. Draco’s possession of the Book of Fate seemed to block perception, blinding the farseer to the infernal inquisitor’s whereabouts...

From the Black Library, Draco would have fled through the webway, that maze of energy-tunnels through the warp. Many exits and entrances existed on human worlds, unknown to their inhabitants.

‘S
HOW ME
!’

What was shown was something else entirely.

Nausea assailed Zephro – and with this came a fleeting vision. He saw a nightmare landscape of volcanoes and plains of lava and jagged crags. In a sombre sullen sky lightning of many colours flickered: incessant discharges of unnatural energy. From a precipitous peak there rose a skyscraping black tower. On top of that tower glowed a great crystalline eyeball.

Oh, but this brand of nausea was all too familiar to Zephro. It was the sickness of daemonic influence. With a surge of will Zephro dispelled it.

Had the others seen the same vision? No longer could they delay reacting to the attack. Warlock Ketshamine discharged bolts of energy from his witchblade at the descending ship. Those eye-searing pulses reached the vessel. Immediately they were deflected into the forest, as if from a sling, harming the wraithbone.

The ship was going to land upon the great scar it was creating for itself.

Harlequins plucked shuriken pistols and laspistols from holsters hanging amidst all the belts and scarves and buckles of their tight bright cling-suits. Those suits were gyrating with rainbow hues.

Black guardians had emerged in the distance, cradling long-barrelled lasguns. Their golden helmets were the heads of bees attached to the bodies of upright ebon warrior-ants. On their back-banners was the rune of the eye shedding a tear of passionate vitriolic grief for the sufferings of Ulthwé.

Spiders were swarming from out of the naked wraithbone. Those tiny white spiders materialized out of the very substance of the bone itself. Thousands of spiders, tens of thousands, in psychic defence of the craftworld! A carpet of these spiders rippled – towards the white-hot rune stones.

Of course! The stones were acting as a psychic beacon. The rune stones were in such an intense state of activation that they had guided raiders to the Dome of Crystal Seers.

Spiders surged over the stones, sizzling into steam. More followed. More again, to quench the runes. The divination was certainly at an end. How appalling that it had attracted not the hoped-for truth but disciples of Chaos instead!

An urgent sending assaulted Zephro’s sensitised consciousness – and an image: of a domed abandoned wasteland elsewhere in Ulthwé. Of intrusion through a webway portal – by armoured Chaos Marines! Chaos warriors were spilling forth, attended by deadly daemonettes, the creatures of Slaanesh. Emergency, dire emergency!

A second attack was underway – conducted by vile perversions of human warriors who had once been so proud and noble, but whom Chaos had subverted ten millennia previously, and who were now the timeless standard-bearers of vicious depravity. The battle-standards rising from the backs of those erstwhile Marines were so grotesquely obscene as to sicken witnesses of the intrusion. And Zephro shared their nausea.

The profile of the foremost vessel had stabilized. That ship had become rectangular – with razor fins, with pincers at the bows. The following ship was still fluctuating as it descended, wreaking more havoc upon the sacred forest.

High above the dome, a third raider swam into view. But out there in space a wraithship of Ulthwé was sailing to the attack. The wraithship’s high sails tacked in the thin ether. Ether, ha! To a large degree it was radiant pressure from the Eye of Terror itself which the wraithship used to propel itself and manoeuvre. Upon its deck a fusion cannon opened fire dazzlingly.

A moment later the third raider ballooned with a light so intense that sudden shadows of trees were like physical blows from great cudgels impacting all across the beloved terrain. After-images wrought bars of darkness and blinding streaks upon Zephro’s vision.

So much psychic surge! In stroboscopic flashes he was glimpsing that wasteland, elsewhere in Ulthwé.

A
SPECT WARRIORS WERE
responding to the invasion. Howling Banshees, in their white and red armour, were advancing. Imbued with the spirit of their shrine, those females would be uttering stunning mind-shrieks. Their masks were screaming feral faces. Energy pulsed from their laspistols. Their power swords would be humming in anticipation.

Daemonettes rushed at the Banshees. Oh, those daemonettes so desirable as regards the swell of thigh and bosom and curve of loins, so lethal in other respects! How jealous of the Banshees they were. How eager to rip the eldar females apart with the pincers of their hands. How keen to impale a Banshee upon the barbed prongs of their tails.

Behind came the Chaos warriors. Crustacean codpieces jutted from their armour. They toted such obscenely shaped boltguns. And those banners! Displaying such gross bizarre erotic icons!

Scorpion warriors of Ulthwé were attacking on the flank. Striking Scorpions! How nimbly they darted. Agility was their defence against the explosive bolts which ejaculated from the boltguns of the Chaos renegades. Agility, and strong green armour banded with funereal black.

Scorpions fired shuriken stars from their pistols. Stars glanced off Chaos armour. Those Striking Scorpions were so alert for a chance to rush in and deliver their sting. Once they were at close quarters the pods in their helmets would discharge stunning psycho-conductive needles. The final coup would be by chainsword.

F
ROM THE GROUNDED
vessel, yet other Chaos Marines were emerging accompanied by a mob of beastmen.

These Marines were burdened with heavy bolters and lascannon. How angular their power armour was. Shoulder pauldrons were rounded, yet as for the rest – such cruel angles! Above their helmets jutted vanes like axe-blades. Their very stance was angular. They sported blasphemous totems which would have wrenched at the mind of any devout Imperial Marine – mockeries of honour, mementos of foul victories over former battle brothers.

‘Renegades of Tzeentch!’ cried out Ro-fhessi.

The beastmen were swifter than the Chaos Marines. Shaggy-legged, they only wore light armour. From their brows twisty horns jutted forward. Clawed paws clutched boltguns. From scabbards at their waists they pulled cutlasses. Their hooves were stamping marks of Chaos upon the bare wraithbone. Oh yes, these were creatures of Tzeentch – of the Power of Mutability, of Change the Destroyer.

‘I glimpsed the watch tower,’ Zephro called out by way of extra confirmation.

Aye, Zephro’s psychic vision had been of the Tower of the Cyclops. Zephro had recognized it from horrific sketches which Ro-fhessi once allowed him to see. That tower stood upon the Planet of the Sorcerers in the Eye of Terror. That planet was the stronghold of magicians dedicated to the Lord of Change. Those had once been true Marines. Nowadays their foul master peered through the warp by means of that cyclops eye. He spied upon the realm of reality, greedy to find arcane trophies... such as sacred rune stones.

Those other Chaos Marines who had invaded the wilderness were blatantly servants of Slaanesh, the lord of Perverse Lust. Was it by coincidence or by malign collusion that both groups had chosen the same occasion to attack?

Black guardians fired their lasguns at the beastmen and their masters. Marines of Tzeentch responded by discharging lascannons and heavy bolters. Many bolts hit trees. Penetrating deep, the bolts exploded. Mighty trunks quivered from bole to crown. A guardian was blasted apart by a bolt. Another was burnt open by a lightning spear of laser energy...