Sarpedon turned on his eight chitinous legs and headed back towards the bridge. They were close enough now that the fleet would not have to make another risky warp jump. However in real space there were sharp-eyed battleship captains and pirates to avoid.
The strange alien fighters lanced through space in formation, carrying a cargo of the Emperor's finest warriors, with one of the most dangerous places in the Imperium as their destination.
TETURACT'S FLAGSHIP WAS a vast flying tomb. Billions had died on Stratix before Teturact saved the survivors and bound them to his will. That had left mountains of corpses heaped from the undercities to the palaces and cathedrals, a festering monument to the power of Teturact's disease and the fate of those who opposed him. Such a volume of death was an end in itself - a great and glorious reminder of how Teturact could wield death like a king's sceptre. He wanted to surround himself with death at all times, to take it with him when he left Stratix so he would always be immersed in it.
The dark, heavy sensation of being drowned in death was an inspiration to Teturact and a reminder to all in his presence that he was not just their leader, he was their god. He decided who would die and who would live, and the form those lives would take.
The flagship itself had once been an Emperor-class battleship, a wedge-prowed slab of a ship that had rained fire on the enemies of the false Emperor. It had been taken to Stratix for refitting and was a stripped-down hulk in the naval dockyards when Teturact saved the planet. It was as if the planet had presented the ship to its new lord as a gift, and Teturact had accepted it. It had been refitted with masses of weaponry and shielding devices, replacing the life support systems and accommodation decks that were of no use when the crew needed neither air nor rest.
Then the dead had come - wrapped in their shrouds. They were entombed in their thousands, along the walls of the corridors and the cavernous spaces of the fighter decks. Teturact's loyal servants had broken bodies apart and used the bones to decorate the bridge and Teturact's own chambers. They had flayed skin off corpses to cover the walls and hang as curtains. The instrument panels were inlaid with human teeth. Columns of vertebrae ringed the bulkhead doors. The corridors leading to the bridge were paved with fragments of skulls. The ship was a magnificent monument to death, and death coursed through it like Hfeblood.
The circular hall in which Teturact now stood had once been a briefing theatre, where the ship's captain would deliver his battlefield command to his underlings. Now it saw something far greater - a conclave of Teturact and his wizards.
Every system had its rogues. Amongst these were psykers, the witches and shamans that were hunted by inquisitors, Arbites, witchfinders and law-abiding Imperial weaklings. When Teturact's empire began to spread he had sought out these psykers and made them the most loyal of all his followers. Through them, his mastery of disease was complete. Their powers could let him raise a plague on a world light years distant - so it had been on Eumenix, where his touch had made the world ripe for conquest even while he was on distant Stratix.
The wizards were from a hundred worlds and they now all wore the filthy robes of Teturact, and were cowled like monks of an order devoted to him. Beneath their robes their bodies had changed: some had become bloated, others emaciated, and many sported tentacles or segmented clawed limbs. Each one was a receptacle of immense psychic power, and they were so subjected to Teturact's will that they couldn't even remember what names they had carried before he found them.
The seating of the auditorium had been replaced with benches of carved bone. The spotlight that fell on Teturact at the centre was tinted yellow by the corruption that seeped through the ship. The wizards were shambling, seeping things, and yet in the eyes that peered from underneath their cowls Teturact could still see their devotion.
None of them dared to be leader, so they all spoke in turn.
'Eumenix is ready.’ one of them slurred.
'We have seen it.’ said another. 'The only living things are nomads in the wastes, and they will be gone soon enough.’
Have any others visited my world? asked Teturact, speaking with his mind rather than his rotted vocal chords.
'Few, my lord. There were some fanatics who came to spread the word of their Emperor, but they did not survive. There were others who looked like the Emperor's warriors, but they carried the taste of rebellion and anger with them. But there were few and they were the last to escape the world.’
Teturact plucked an image from the head of the wizard who had spoken. It had been gleaned by the wizard from the collection of dying minds of Eumenix. Space Marines had visited his world -probably to find out what was happening on the planet. He saw them sprinting across one of the spaceports in Hive Quintus, swapping fire with the desperate citizens of the hive as they headed for the last off-world shuttle. They had fled like frightened children when they had seen the scale of death -such was Teturact's power he could even send the vaunted Space Marines running.
How long until my arrival 1 he asked.
'The warp looks on you with favour, my lord. Seven days more and we will return to real space.'
Good. Make them seven days of very particular suffering.
The wizards bowed as one. Then one of their number shambled forwards. It was a horribly misshapen, bloated creature with a bundle of dripping tentacles where its face had once been. The wizards began to chant, a low, atonal drone that filled their air with the sound of a billion plague-flies. The wizard's body opened up, it was a hideous tentacled maw of miscoloured flesh, with internal organs pulsing. A thousand eyes were set into its innards and they rolled madly, seeing across the warp all the way to the depths of Eumenix.
As the wizards worked their magic, Teturact could see the images the central wizard projected. Endless layers of hive were knee-deep in gore. The dead had risen and were wandering, waiting for a purpose. The view panned across battlefields where factions fought in the vain hope of securing supplies or transport, or just to give voice to their horror through combat.
The wizards drew more and more dead from their graves. Whole mounds of mouldering bodies writhed like nests of worms as the corpses dug their way out. In the barren toxic wastes between the hives, nomads watched in horror as columns of the dead marched from the cities. Soon there would be no trace of life left on the planet to spoil the pure magnificence of death.
For a moment, Teturact could feel the whole planet simultaneously, projected into his mind through the wizards. It was a beautiful thing - it was as if the whole of Eumenix was composed entirely of suffering and fear, an imprint so intense that it still drove the walking dead to prey on one another in desperation. He had seen a hundred worlds reduced to such a state, but it still filled him with pride.
The images faded as the wizards finished waking all the dead they could muster. Eumenix seethed to new levels of horror as it disappeared from Teturact's mind, and its aftertaste was like pure victory.
Teturact mentally ordered his bearers to take him back to his quarters to wait out the rest of the journey. There was much to contemplate before he became the god of yet another world.
THE INQUISITORIAL FORTRESS on Caitaran would, in saner days, have served to coordinate the efforts of the Ordo Hereticus for several sectors around, so the ordo could effectively face threats that spanned worlds and systems. But now it formed the wartime headquarters of the Inquisitorial effort against Teturact, with a quarantined halo around it. It was now the gathering point for information submitted by inquisitors and their agents throughout the war-zone.