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'...seem to have routed insurrectionists with — praise his glory — no reported casualties! Truly an example to us all...' The little man waved an arm grandly at the scene behind him — some u
She wondered, distantly, how many millions of eyes were fixed upon communal hivecasters throughout Equixus. Most worlds practised compulsory viewing: at least an hour of every day spent by each citizen in passive absorption of CW doctrine, and from what Mita had seen of this hive its customs were no less rigorous than elsewhere. She prayed to the Emperor with what small part of her mind remained untarnished by doubt and exhaustion that Inquisitor Kaustus was not amongst this broadcast's audience.
Not that it would stop him from hearing about it, one way or another.
'...a surge of rebels, but in praise to Him-on-the-Throne-of-Earth — Ave Imperator! — heroes of the Preafectus Vindictaire have broken through the barricades to dispatch the filthy heretics...'
Mita clenched her teeth. Not heretics. Just people. The worthless and the dispossessed, the ones who fell through the cracks. The ones being slaughtered in the name of revenge.
She could imagine the scene all too clearly. The winding column of Preafect Salamanders, grinding across drifts of waste and rust. Perhaps their intentions were pure, at the start, perhaps they really did intend to seek out those responsible for the attack on the star-port, to hunt down the villain behind it all. But the underhive was a warren of suspicion and paranoia, and it would not have taken long for the first shots to ring out, for the first angry outlaws to panic at the sight of such a force and lash out.
The Preafects had no idea who was responsible for the massacre at the starport. They had no clue as to the motive or the goal. In the main theirs was a simple role, and at its crux was an elegant assertion: Resistance implies guilt.
Orodai had led his warriors into the shadows to hunt and kill a monster. Instead they found themselves conducting genocide — a glorious, wanton, bloody pogrom upon those who had slipped from the light.
Blood ran thick through the streets of the underhive, and though its inhabitants begged the Emperor for mercy, wept his name as they died, screamed in prayer as their families burned — still the slaughter continued, and it was conducted in the name of the same god to which its victims cried out for help.
As she left the room, feeling sick, a servitor twitched at her side and fixed its dead eyes on her face, a telescopic array of circuitry and shattered bone creaking forwards from its shoulder, pushing a miniature hivelink headset towards her.
'A call,' it a
'I'm not here,' Mita said, hurrying past. 'He's missed me.'
She left the chambers with bile in her throat, and tried to ignore the sounds of cheering from the viewspex gather-halls she passed as she went.
PART THREE
EXODUS
Give me a child to teach with abacus and chalk and I shall give you a scholar. None but knowledge is his master.
Give me a child to mould with scripture and incense, and I shall give you a priest. For him divinity alone is worthy.
Give me a child to train with sword and shield, and I shall give you a warrior. His obedience is as fickle as his courage.
But give me a child to form as I see fit, with dagger and blade, with the blood of strangers upon his hand, and I shall give you a slave who will ask not for food nor wealth nor glory, and remain at your side throughout all his life.
Nothing forges loyalty like guilt and complicit bloodshed.
Zso Sahaal
The underhive bared its necrotic breast to the knives that assaulted it, and poured its blood out onto cold stone streets.
The scouts were abroad, creeping in stealthy corners with eyes peeled and curiosity piqued, regarding each act of terror, each fiery calamity, each bloody attack, with insect fascination. And then one by one, slinking though soot-brick wastes, sliding silent feet along rusted ducts where no Preafect could see or hear, they turned back to their deep, dark terrain to make report to their dark lord.
The pogrom had not yet reached the Shadowkin's lair. Ensconced within their frail homes, casting bright eyes at the vaulted roof of their watery island-cavern, they listened as the lightless territories of the underworld tore themselves apart, bone by brittle bone. The pulses of remote explosions — like the roar of avalanches in the night, echoing from peak to peak — filtered in waves of dislodged dust and shrapnel. The Shadowkin shivered and prayed, and threw stricken glances at their dreadful lord, cloaked upon his throne once more.
Sahaal had not troubled himself to clean his armour. Where once a host of slaves would undress and bathe him — now he was left to fester. He could demand such a service from his tribe, of course, but in truth he did not care for cleanliness in this place. In this anarchy, in the depths of the depression that gripped him, to adopt a feral countenance seemed a fitting response. The tentacles of failure had returned, the bright pincer-teeth of hopelessness. How could he ever know if his ruse with the astropath had succeeded? How would he ever find the Corona now — whether it be through Slake, or Pahvulti, or by chance alone?
How could he ever resume his vengeful crusade?
Such thoughts robbed him of all energy, imbuing his flesh with a brooding indolence. Far easier to sit and burn in self-hatred, to consume his own mind with reproach and guilt, than to stir to activity.
What else, ultimately, could he do?
He was, he knew, terrible to behold. The swirls of decoration on his helm's swept-back crest were speckled now by a frieze of gore. The astropath's fluids coated him head to foot, and where blood had pooled in the gulleys and joints of his armour it clotted to a dirty brown powder, like an iron giant beset by rust.
The scouts came one by one, ferried across the swamp in makeshift barges, flicking away questing tentacles when they crept too close. The rest of the tribe gathered to hear their testimonies from the worlds above, and with every fresh report they murmured and bit their lips. Their concerns were as palpable in their eyes as had they spoken them aloud, and Sahaal regarded them from the shadows of his helm with a shrewd eye.
How far would the Preafects descend their faces asked? How deep would the massacres cut?
Had they not suffered enough beneath their master's frenzied rule?
Guilt upon shame upon failure upon horror. Sahaal couldn't begrudge them their fear.
The scouts spoke of death and blood and horror. Of whole townships ripped to cinder, populations driven before the clubs of riot-mobs, warriors ground beneath tanktracks and booted feet. Of Preafects with electric shields, charging down fleeing townsfolk, breaking heads and snapping bones.
One spoke of a brothel, half collapsed, as its shrieking women were shot down one by one, soot and blood staining naked flesh, whilst they crawled to escape the flames.
One had watched an alliance between rival mobs — a friendship born in shared peril — only for both to fall to the last man and woman, sliced to slivers when vindictors bottled them in and killed and killed until none remained.