The Inquisition War (27 page)

The bull-man gazed at Meh’Lindi. Did he truly perceive her as someone possessed? He licked his lips and turned to his band.

‘We embrace
renegades
, do we not, my carnal companions?’ He snorted mightily. ‘Though of course first we must test their sense of ecstasy, hmm?’

Their thenth of ecthathy...
The Imperial Gothic of these degenerates was decadently accented with lisps.

The fly giggled. ‘Oh yes, an initiation is doubtless in order.’
Inithiathon ith doubtleth in order.

Which, thought Jaq, it was doubtless important to avoid if possible. Adopting an air of lordly disdain, he gestured around.

‘This is a sordid, dreary refuge. I seek more than a rocky desert watered with pus. I seek the home of the hydra. I’m an emissary from the High Lords of the Hydra.’ Jaq plucked a strand of the entity from the containment pouch in his suit and threw it, writhing, upon the ground.

‘Haaa,’ the bull replied with a grin, ‘those lovely cheating lords...’

Cheating? In what way, cheating? Had the cabal cheated the traitors on this world – or were the cabal cheating on the Imperium? The bull-man called out, ‘You must visit the delightful torment dungeons in our city, Renegade, for full appreciation of what this world has to offer.’

Was that an invitation, or a terrible threat? The thought processes of this champion of Chaos eluded Jaq, being in themselves... chaotic.

At that moment Jaq felt a powerful urge to divest himself of his armour and grapple with Meh’Lindi. If he should but demonstrate his boast before this audience of monsters, why, they would let him pass. They would tell him everything he yearned to know.

The malign insinuation blasphemed against all that he had felt was precious in their lovemaking on the ship. He was under psychic attack of a lascivious and perfidious kind.

So was Meh’Lindi. She hissed and clutched a claw to her midriff. Stealers did not possess reproductive organs other than their tongue that kissed eggs into victims. Yet now a pouch was forming below Meh’Lindi’s belly, as if to receive Jaq. Her mind – the mind that controlled her false body form – was being manipulated. Not by the scrap of hydra that flopped on the gritty ground. She was immune to that. But by...

And the aim? Why, to divest Jaq of his power armour, to seduce him out of its sanctuary. The dozen mustn’t exactly trust their own weapons and strength against power armour. Jaq snatched out his force rod and fired at the goat, who staggered back, his sly psychic attack neutralised.

‘I shan’t be cheated so easily,’ Jaq shouted in defiance.

‘Evidently not,’ replied the bull. ‘Graal’preen here misinterpreted me. As I said, we must test your ecstasy before we embrace you. This means that
your
loving champion must accost
our
paramour.’

The lovely and ghastly female shimmied forth, tail slicing the air, pincers clicking.

‘Are they well matched? Perhaps not well enough. Our nephew – and niece – in debauchery, Cammarbrach, will assist her.’

The hermaphrodite with the giant claw and the power sword clutched in his/her true hand stepped forward, and bowed derisively. ‘And, I think, Testood too. Though without his gun. We do not wish to be unfair.’

So the tortoise tossed down his boltgun and advanced, still armed with a power sword.

‘Ah, but wait,’ added the bull. ‘We will draw a battle circle and enforce it with a little spell of containment. With which, lord psyker,’ and he eyed Jaq venomously, lowering his horns, ‘you will not interfere. Slishy, do it!’

The mutant woman danced at speed, dragging her sharp tail through the dirt. She cut a wide circle, leaving only one little gap unsealed.

Jaq calculated. Surely he and Grimm and Googol, being better armoured, stood a good chance of cutting down all dozen of these warped renegades?

Yet what would he learn then? Of course, they might succeed in taking the leader prisoner...

What use would Jaq’s excruciator be against a disciple of Slaanesh who taught his minions how to revel in agony? Meh’Lindi chittered. Grimm interpreted.

‘Use subterfuge, boss. She’s prepared to fight.’

Subterfuge was the better strategy. So therefore Jaq must seem to accept the challenge. Meh’Lindi must fight against three opponents, two armed with power swords. She wasn’t a complete genestealer with four arms. Wouldn’t her stealer crouch impede an assassin’s acrobatic skills?

Meh’Lindi didn’t wait for instructions but paced into the circle to join the other three. Slishy sealed the line with her tail. The air shimmered as if an energy dome enclosed the arena.

‘I can’t bear to watch,’ muttered Googol.

‘Go to it!’ shouted Grimm.

Jaq reminded himself to remain wary of any psychic thrusts; he mustn’t let the fight occupy his entire attenrion.

Rearing as high as she could, Meh’Lindi darted at the tortoise, who looked to be the most cumbersome of those who faced her. He swung his sword high. She threw herself flat. Rolling under the swing, she gripped his feet with her claws and tugged, sending him crashing backwards to the ground, head already retracted within his shell.

Instead of pressing her advantage by mounting her adversary, she immediately rolled in a different direction. Thus she avoided the down-sweep of Cammarbrach’s power sword – which sawed into Testood’s shell instead, opening a rift, before the wielder reversed its course.

During that moment while the hermaphrodite and the tortoise man were tangled, Meh’Lindi leapt at the pseudo-daemonette. Claws grappled with pincers. The tail whipped round, slashing Meh’Lindi’s horny skin. The mutant woman pivoted backwards in Meh’Lindi’s grip bringing up both sharp-taloned ostrich feet in an effort to eviscerate her opponent. Talons raked across Meh’Lindi’s toughened carapace. Already Meh’Lindi was tossing Slishy away, one pincer crippled. Meh’Lindi even caught an ankle in her claw, crushing quickly, releasing her hold while Slishy shrilled with what seemed to be elation.

Meh’Lindi wasn’t seeking to kill any of her opponents outright. The extra moments involved in such a manoeuvre could have hindered her long enough for one of the others to surprise her.

Instead, she darted from one to the next, delivering a blow, a bite, a pinch of her claw... until the three who confronted her were tattered and tired.

Now Meh’Lindi paused a little longer with each. Batting Testood’s sword arm aside, she ripped at his riven shell, wrenching it further apart. She snipped off Slishy’s injured pincer. Wary of Cammarbrach’s lobster claw, she tore armour from his/her sword arm – and returned to lacerate flesh and muscle; the sword fell.

Slishy died first, warbling deliriously.

In a moment of confusion, Testood slashed Cammarbrach; the lobster claw sagged, spasming.

Moments later Testood was disarmed. Meh’Lindi punched through the gap in his shell, crushing organs. The tortoise man collapsed. Cammarbrach fled, though only as far as the edge of the circle. Shrieking, he/she batted against the invisible barrier of force – until Meh’Lindi reached the hermaphrodite, whose neck she crunched with a claw.

‘Ha!’ cried Grimm.

‘So we embrace you,’ roared the bull-man. He pointed. ‘That jelly thing is some powerful talisman.’

‘You don’t know what the hydra is, do you?’ Jaq accused. ‘Or who the High Masters are?’

‘Maybe I do, cousin renegade. Truth is mutable in the Eye of Terror. All is mutable. You too will soon be mutable – if you’re to win favour.’

‘Cancel the force field.’

‘The enchanted circle?’

‘Psychic barrier! Whatever. Lower it.’

‘You have destroyed our luscious deadly heart-throb. You must donate your champion to our group in exchange.’

‘Boss.’ Grimm was nudging Jaq’s midriff.

From the east, scuttling from the shelter of one rocky column to the next, came Chaos spawn: dozens of spiderkin, hideous hairy unhumans with eight arachnid legs.

‘Bastard’s been playing us for time, boss.’

‘I regret so.’

‘What do those things do, you reckon?’

‘Spin webs around us? Sting us?’ Jaq levelled his force rod and discharged it at the circle inscribed in the grit. Meh’Lindi charged free and ducked out of the line of fire as Jaq shouted, ‘Destroy the polluted!’

After which, he could no longer keep up any pretence of being a renegade. He and Grimm and Googol opened fire simultaneously at the devotees of Slaanesh.

Jaq’s laspistol sewed silver lines across air and armour and parts of warped limbs that were exposed. Grimm’s boltgun bucked and clattered, its little shells exploding percussively on contact or else winging away vainly to fall elsewhere – until, to his annoyance, it jammed. He too plucked free a laspistol to cross-stitch the scene. Googol had levelled a shuriken catapult resembling a species of miniature starship with its flat round magazine apeing an elevated control deck and its twin pod-tipped fins abeam of the muzzle suggesting thrusters. Their magnetic vortex hurled a swishing hail of star-discs with monomolecular cutting edges.

Most targets fell quickly. However, the big Chaos Marine charged, firing bolts. An explosive concussion against Grimm’s armour knocked the abhuman over like a skittle. A similar hit winded Jaq, blurring his vision. Blinking, he slammed his visor shut and fired a stream of superheated chemicals at the bull-man who was charging thunderously too. All was happening within moments. The bull raced past, screaming rapturously, haloed with clingfire, trailing an odour of boiling gravy.

The Traitor Marine was singling out Googol. That statuesque bare head seemed impervious to weaponry, protected by some great hex. Googol’s star-discs flicked to left and right as though deflected by a fierce magnetic or anti-gravitic field. Shurikens, that could slice bone like butter, only scratched the man’s armour. Though the false Marine’s boltgun had also seized up, he had pulled a power sword from a scabbard in his armour. That warrior was almost upon Googol when the Navigator dropped his catapult and reached inside his own open helmet. Googol tore the bandana from his brow and stared death from his warp eye.

At last that mighty blasphemy of a Space Marine sagged, drooled and fell, almost crushing Googol.

Jaq wrenched the ribbed, flanged, exorcistically garnished psycannon from his weapons rack and sprayed at the onrush of spiderkin. Those were summoned creatures. In the normal universe outside of the Eye summoned creatures were unstable, vulnerable to a psycannon beam. But here inside the Eye?

One burst followed another.

Googol writhed free. ‘Don’t look me in the eye,’ he warned. Finding his bandana as first priority, he wadded the material across his brow inside the helmet. By now Grimm was on his feet again, lasering at the spiderkin, severing legs, though there were many legs to laser. As the rush arrived, Meh’Lindi leapt high to stomp down on the Chaos spawn with her genestealer feet. She crumpled bodies with her claws. Spiderkin keened. Their spinnerets gushed milky adhesive threads, which she dodged. Jaq reverted to laser. Googol joined in.

Presently, thwarted and leaderless, the remaining spiderkin scuttled away, scaling spires.

‘We won,’ said Googol.

‘We lost,’ Jaq corrected him. ‘We learned nothing.’

They continued circumspectly through the desert of spires, Meh’Lindi ranging ahead as a scout.

FOURTEEN

L
UMINOUS VEILS DRIPPED
from the glowing soup of the night sky. The buildings of the city ahead were gross idols to corrupted pleasure.

Some of those buildings were modelled to represent lascivious deities: many breasted, many organed avatars of twisted lust. In the weird veil-light the hunchbacked shadows of dark gods seemed to brood everywhere. Spouts of flaming gas leapt up, adding further spasmodic illumination.

Other great buildings were giant mutated solo genitalia. Horned phallic towers arose, wrinkled, ribbed, blistered with window-pustules. Cancerous breast-domes swelled, fondled by scaly finger-buttresses. Tongue-bridges linked these buildings, sliding back and forth. Scrotum-pods swayed. Orifice-entries pulsed open and shut, glistening. Some buildings were in congress with each other: headless, limbless torsos lying side by side, joined abominably.

Through his magniscope Jaq spied nipples that were heavy-duty laser nacelles, and lingam shafts that were projectile tubes. The inhabitants were mere ants by comparison with this architectonic orgy. Eager, scurrying ants. Jaq’s ear-bead picked up wailing music, drumbeats, screams, chants, and the throb of machinery. The city pulsed and palpitated flexibly. Somehow plasteel and immaterium were alloyed together. Thus buildings moved, butted one another, penetrated one another, crawled upon one another. Towers bowed and stiffened. The deity buildings caressed and clawed at one another. And the ant-like inhabitants swarmed within and around and over, sometimes being crushed, sometimes sucked into vents, or spewed out.

Jaq turned away sickened, muttering exorcisms. Meh’Lindi’s claw closed on his gauntlet and squeezed a couple of times consolingly.

‘Are we to go into the body of that city?’ whispered Googol. ‘The
body
, aye, the body!’

‘Huh, living in that lot it must be some relief to get into the desert!’ said Grimm. ‘You reckon the hydra was made there, boss?’