The Escarr Incident

By James D. Stone

Below is the short story I had attached to my Genestealer Cult Armies on  Parade board currently on display at Warhammer World. It recounts the series of events that led up to the Cult's infestation.

Extraction of Data Log from Subject: 14L/A. Current Status: Unknown. All recordings correct as of time of writing. All recordings are considered effects from early on in The Escarr Incident of 1.1 post VCM.M41.

Information printed here is classified under order 7/11B of the Crolisarus Treaty.

For eyes of the Ordo Xenos only.

++ Thought For The Day: “Secrets are the bane of Conformity.” ++

I had not seen a star, nor heard music or read even a poem since I was a small child on Daelaria, and even then, they had all been in reverence to the God-Emperor I didn’t believe in and His litanies I knew were false. So, it came as a surprise, then, that I was staring down what could only be a poem, a real poem, for the first time in my entire adult life.

‘…and the heavens part from which the sinful fruit shall be taken, carved, in which the name of understanding will be written…’ 

I read off the transmission holo-screen, wondering, on second thought, if I had been mistaken, and if it was even a poem at all. It was more of a scrawl of never-ending text, never concluding, but always proclaiming some kind of divine-sounding assertion that might have been blasphemous to someone an ounce more religious than I. The transmission carrying the poem had been flooding in for thirty-seven hours so far, endlessly chanting, but never repeating.

‘…for when revelation comes, you shall understand the Children above for the fruit of what is beginning is only the end, for that there shall be a time, a promise and a moment…’

I couldn’t quite remember how the poem had started, nor what had brought my attention to it. It was likely some ghost transmission leftover from when the Throne-forsaken planet had last been inhabited—likely stemming from the few Imperial Foundries that were still standing amidst the dark and rain and ash. Two hours into its run, my commanding officer had not-so-politely requested that I delete whatever was distracting me and focus on the establishment of our settlement. Our mission was to be short; the order had been decreed by Calla, our commanding Rogue Trader, that we were to make a landing, establish a base of trade with the greater Imperium and colonise the long-dead planet as it nestled around a cluster of Halo Stars. But, there wouldn’t be any more progress for months, and the rain had extended the mission considerably. The ghost transmission wasn’t hurting our timing, surely?

‘…cry to mother for answers of the retribution of the divine as we fall into the eye that can only worship eternity…’

Thirty-seven hours since the transmission had started. Thirty-seven hours since half the mastiffs had gone missing.

And the Academy had said serving under an Imperial-loyal Rogue Trader like Calla would be dull.

‘…we are every deity who has failed to show its face at the end of days for we will bring the deliverance and purge of the soul you so crave as the forbidden fruit is not…’ the transmission went on.

There were moments when it felt like it was scratching itself into my mind, like the words were eating away at me. So, I muted it and crept over to the windows, quiet as to not wake Velos. I couldn’t see much, though; the rain was still as unrelenting as ever, lashing against the cold of the night.

Through the haze, I could make out the foundry as it reached up to the tortured sky, and then to the old, brownstone pyramids on the horizon. 

Escarr was nothing like Daeleria—my home had been a veritable paradise of beaches and sand, thick with lush jungles and rings of moonlets. It had been those jungles which had hardened me; the terrible creatures that had stalked those wildernesses had been so terrible, they’d made me quite partial to Xenos fauna, especially the gene-hanced doves we’d shipped here—symbols of the Emperor’s love and purity. There was one sitting beside me in a cage, actually, plucking at its feathers and bloodying itself. It was a sorry affair, never meant to be cooped up for so long, instead to be released on the second day of colonisation, before the rain had begun hammering. I’d been half-tempted to release mine into Calla’s quarter’s, just to see the look on her face as it—

My thoughts were cut off by the transmission; it had started up again, which was odd as I’d been quite sure I’d muted it. I wandered back over, flicked the screen as the words began scrolling across it, which only seemed to cause the overhead lamps to flicker. I began wishing Velos would wake to whisk me away from all of this, but then again, I couldn’t allow him to know… this was my secret.

‘…for the divine are not what you think but they are born in all of you and all of us as we are born again…’

The words were beginning to startle me at this point, so I tried muting the transmission again. But as expected, the moment I turned away, it only started playing again.

A moment passed when I wanted to steal for my laspistol and see an end to the bloody thing. But then, I noticed something frightening me even more than the words themselves.

‘…callous lives will absorb us for you are not what you think because blood is boiling inside, and soon your heart will become stone, and your children will become The Children for they are you and you will be us.’

The text had stopped. And then, there was only a single word scrawled across the screen: 

‘Hello.’

 ++ Thought For The Day: “The Emperor’s Light is Selective.” ++

Five letters. I must’ve been staring at them for hours before I hazarded to make a move. A thousand different thoughts were spinning around my head; I couldn’t tell anyone—any gibberish was to be deleted—but this wasn’t gibberish—it was calling to me. And so, I was left with only one choice: reply.

Hello, I typed into the interface, metal keys rustling beneath my fingertips. On behalf of the Imperium of Man of Holy Terra, state your name, rank and intention or be destroyed.

There was a quiet pause as I anticipated a response, my mind running cold with apprehension. Was there something intelligent on this barren planet communicating with me? Had it all just been a ghost transmission, misplaced in time from the Empyrean? I was starting to think I was imagining it all. 

After a few more moments of no response, I set my head down on the table and closed my eyes, frustrated. But a moment later, sleep took me.

The next I knew, there was a piercing grip on my shoulder—and then, a brutish shove. I awoke to see the table collide with my forehead, and then I shot up, in pain and a daze. I felt my brow for blood and, once content there was none, swivelled around to my attacker, praying that whatever god really did exist would have mercy on me.

I looked up to find Saley in her brown-stained uniform, staring down at me, bionic eye twitching. I was about to call her by her name, but I caught myself in time to mutter, ‘Shepherd?’ That was how she preferred to be addressed, for her role in the expedition was to shepherd the colonisation servitors that frequented the grounds.

‘If someone less merciful than I would’ve found you asleep at your post, you would’ve received a las-round through the back of your skull,’ she scorned. ‘What are you doing?’

Suddenly, I remembered the transmission and turned back to the table in earnest—there was no new reply.

‘Monitoring,’ I shot back, wiping my hairline free of sweat. ‘Nothing much of note, really. A few loose psychic transmissions. Why are you here?’

‘Well,’ Shepherd started. ‘I wanted to know if you’d picked up anything. Anything significant.’

‘No, no. Why’s that, ma’am?’

‘There’s been a development.’ She bit her lip. ‘You’ll need to come with me.’

That was odd, I thought. She’d usually scorn me for calling her ma’am. Either way, I nodded and stood. ‘Of course, ma’am.’

I was growing anxious, but excited. This was the first notable thing to happen since the mastiffs disappeared. But what did I have to do with it all? I pushed the thoughts to the back of my mind as I followed on through rigid bulwarks and across Sector Mechanicus pattern walkways until we arrived in… the medical facility of all places. A servo skull carrying lit incense floated past, staring at me quizzically, if such a thing could stare, before Shepherd hurried me through an airlock and into the surgeon’s room, lit by dim light, yet unequivocally whitewashed and awfully clinical.

Before I could regard the surgeon, I noticed a curiosity on the operating bay and reeled back in disgust, bile warming my throat.

‘Throne-dammit,’ Shepherd cursed, steadying me and forcing me closer to the abomination. ‘I thought the God-Emperor would’ve chosen someone hardier.’

‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ I lied, straightening myself. I locked eyes with the surgeon behind his goggles and tried my best to ignore the creature between us. But I finally broke and stared down to find one of the missing mastiffs. Its cyber implants were still firing, but for lack of a better term, it had been… mutilated. Guts were spilling out, eyes were trailing, flesh was flayed. I tried to hold back my horror, but I could tell the others were seeing straight through my façade.

‘What am I looking at?’

‘FCH 4104,’ the surgeon replied robotically, gesturing to the thing with his scalpel. ‘Not the first of the mastiffs to have gone missing. Wasn’t the last, either.’

‘Well, it was attacked,’ I said, to state the obvious. Medical terminology isn’t my forte. ‘So, we’re not alone on this planet. There must be some fauna or flora out there that did this.’

‘Nothing recorded on any data-log; from this mission or a past one,’ Shepherd replied. ‘Besides…’

‘There’s no point of entry for the wound,’ the surgeon said. ‘Something came from inside the bloody thing.’

‘Oh,’ I conceded. ‘A parasite? A bio-organic bomb?’

‘Perhaps,’ the surgeon said. ‘There were also traces of this found ingested through its mouth.’ He held up a small vial of translucent, black liquid.

‘So, it caused the body to erupt or something? I’m not a biologist,’ I said. ‘If it’s some kind of Xenos weapon or bacteria, we’re to use our God-Emperor given munitions to purge it and claim this planet for ourselves. But you hardly need me to tell you that, do you?’

‘No,’ Shepherd said. ‘We wanted you to listen to this transmission. The local voxes picked it up accompanying the return of this hound. The only one that’s returned so far, I might note. I want you to listen and see if it sounds like anything you’ve recognised from the planetary transmissions.’

‘Alright,’ I said, apprehensive. The day was draining me.

Shepherd, in response, produced a small vox transceiver from her jacket, pressed several buttons on the display and placed it to my ear. It was quiet at first, simple static, but soon enough, the static erupted into a screeching. I couldn’t be sure what was making the sound, but it was almost familiar, and it was wrenching its way inside my head.

‘…the cradle that rocks the song at night knows that..’

The transmission was inside my head! Impulsively, I snatched the box from Shepherd’s hands and switched it off. The voices stopped, and I looked to her, eyes wide.

‘Disturbing, no?’ She took it from me.

I nodded.

‘Have you heard it before?’

Truthfully, I replied, ‘No.’ Though I wasn’t willing to divulge about the voices. I knew I would receive some sanction for that, shipped off as a mutant or heretic.

Upon my response, the pair nodded to each other and hurried me out of the room. 

‘Don’t dare speak of this among the troops,’ Shepherd scorned before I found myself back in my quarters. I checked the transmission—no response. I stared back to the window, gazing through the rain. 

Around the site, Shepherd’s servitors were ambling around the dirt, their mechanical limbs whirring in the storm.

And then, lightning flashed. And for a second in the illumination, impossibly, the servitors had reformed—into the shape of a coiled wyrm.

After a moment had passed, it was as if not a thing had happened. They were back to normal. I decided to diagnose myself with a fever that night rather than face the truth. I stole a sedative from my supply crate and retired, locking the door as I did. I didn’t dare face the window before I began my slumber again.

++ Thought For The Day: “Change cannot be forgiven.” ++

Shepherd summoned me again the next morning.

I didn’t question it, didn’t mention the servitors during the lightning the night before, nor, in truth, did I speak a word. I just followed her back through the labyrinthine corridors until we found ourselves outside a wooden door—the only wooden door in the entire complex. Shepherd spared me a glance before knocking on it.

An answer came a moment later, and we timidly crept inside.

‘My Lady,’ we addressed the Rogue Trader Calla as we bowed before her mahogany desk, trying our best to keep our eyes trained on the floor and away from the miscellaneous Xenos artefacts stationed around the study. There were ornate Kroot hunting spears, a bio-artefact from a Zoat, and even, quizzically, a runic knife that had appeared upon her ship during a warp translation. We were told not to examine that one too closely.

Those were the artefacts I recognised, anyway. As we were permitted to stand before Calla, I noticed a number more of strange items I couldn’t begin to place nor understand. I wondered if Calla even did.

‘Our Astropath has been receiving some… disconcerting visions over the last few hours,’ Calla began, not even addressing us. ‘Strange, almost religious, murmurings from beneath the planet’s surface.’

My blood went cold. Calla likely noticed.

She continued on anyway, ‘We’re sending a search team down there. And I want you, Voss, to go with them a survey the frequencies.’

I was frozen; Had they caught on to me? Still, I could do nothing but reply, ‘Of course, My Lady.’

‘One more thing,’ Shepherd began. ‘Something is interfering with the Mindlock of the servitors. As if there’s a shadow or virus over their programming.’

‘That’s strange,’ I concede, trying to sound neutral.

‘Any clue as to what it could be? Based on your readings?’

‘No…’

I received a nod. ‘Alright then, adies,’ Calla began again. ‘If you’re to find any kind of… Xenos,’ she spat the word with disgust, ‘I want it sedated and brought back for testing. Purge the alien, kill the Xenos and whatnot. But as you can see…’ She gestured around the room. ‘We must research our enemies to proficiently deal with them. Something not understood by a number of our Ministorum agents. Anyway, you leave tomorrow. At dawn.’

I returned to my quarters defeated. I stared out the windows and watched the servitors amble mindlessly about the grounds, un-watching. I stared at the dove and sighed. Something was clearly going on—some conspiracy bigger than myself. I didn’t want to know what it was.

I slumped down before the transmission and tapped through various holograms—there had been no reply—however, the strange texts had started up again, proclaiming, ‘…thou shall turn away from the deceiver and understood what is known by the righteous God-Emperor’s rule for what is known is what is taught…’

It continued on. I noted the specific use of the Emperor’s title, however; that hadn’t been mentioned before in any of the transmissions. 

And with that, I groaned, locked the transmission and retired for the night.

I was awoken a couple hours later by a Primus Sergeant and rushed through with the other troops when a lasrifle was forced into my arms. Silently, Calla blessed our expedition and hurried us out of the facility and into the dark of the morning, beneath the pounding rain and the black and white suns that rose in the skies above. The black devoured the white, slowly, as the planet’s light faded.

Whoever had considered this Throne-forsaken world to be ideal for colonisation was beyond me.

That conceit was cut short as we passed a row of Inquisitorial Servitors, and they moved like automatons to stare at me, faceless and cold, their heads sealed behind holy parchment. I could do nothing but shiver and move amongst the ranks.

It was there, for the first time in an age, I spotted Velos and allowed him a curt nod. He returned the favour with a salute, quiet as he always was.

We quickly cleared the facility, though I wouldn’t have noticed had I not been told; the ground here was equally as industrialised, the grime of the earth fastened with iron walkways and bunkers. It didn’t take us long to reach the source of the signal, though; through the rain and between a pair of charcoal Xenos mountains, we found a mound of hard stone. After no short amount of time ambling about and trying to find an opening, we did exactly that—Velos uncovered a small crevasse within the rock, likely artificially made and… eerily close to the size a mastiff would need to squeeze through.

Our Primus voxed back to the landing site for reinforcements, and within the hour (well after getting drenched), a small number of men arrived, mounted on cargo horses and carrying no shortage of munitions and explosives. I cringed in anticipation as we were forced away from the crevasse in the stone and told to wait for the explosion.

Duly, it came. Amid heaps of dust and rubble, the riders returned to the landing site, and we inched our way over to the new opening in the rock, our lasguns lighting the way. The crevasse had become cavernous, black as night, but large enough for the host to the continue on through, engulfed by the dark.

And the dark was all we knew for the next half-hour. The dark and the silhouettes of my fellow soldiers lit dimly against the jagged, black stone walls. There were no signs of life, but it was clear we were nearing the source of the transmission. Would my lies and deceit be exposed once we reached it? Or would whatever was waiting there finish me before my commanding officer could? I suppose, in serving the Emperor, that was a common worry.

After a short while longer, the tunnel declined slightly into the earth, and we were met with the occasional puddle of familiar black ooze, a couple inches deep where it pooled, frothing around its edges like frogspawn. I shot Shepherd a look as the Primus bottled a sample, and we continued on, hopefully away from any evidence of my faithlessness. But the further we went, the greater the amount of filth there was. By no means, there were even enough to fill a bucket, but it was alarming enough—evermore so when we found minute Xenos lifeforms writhing about in it as if the ichor had made them manifest; they were some crude concoction of shrimp and worm, clearly low-celled and unintelligent—experiments. They seemed to die mere moments after spawning, but we finished them with a couple bursts from our flamers just to make sure. That was the Emperor’s mercy towards the Xenos. 

Yet still, the Primus made sure to collect a sample beforehand.

I tried to push my uncertainties to the back of my mind; the layers of secrecy were eating me alive.

Eventually, we reached a clearing in the cavern and spread out across it, finding a network of tunnels heading out in different directions. There might have been a dozen. A couple of them were too small for humans, and a couple had runic scratchings above them, which might have been natural if I didn’t think too hard about it. The Primus split us up into various groups to scout them out; I was placed with Velos and a couple others. And so, again, we joined the blackness.

The tunnel spiralled down and inwards this time, random and complex, but always allowing us just enough footing. There were patches of black ichor from time to time, but nothing concentrated until we found a pool a few feet across which could’ve contained a thousand intertwined wyrms. Their shapes reminded me of the arrangement of the servitors I’d seen that night. We brought a vial.’

Wait, I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. To show weakness was to cower before chaos and turn from the light of the Emperor. I couldn’t allow that now, not with my faith wavering as it was.

So, I simply allowed Velos to step forward, combat knife in hand. He raised it high, but the moment the metal made contact with the tendrils, the creature(s?) shuddered.

And then, it frenzied and spasmed, and lasgun fire lit up the chamber.

It was too late, though; the thing’s tendrils were encroaching down Velos’ throat.

'Get that thing off him!’ I cried, raising my laspistol to fire. After a short while of violence, the thing finally stopped moving and hung limply from the mouth of the cave.

Velos staggered away, at last, vomiting against the floor. I went to steady him but was pushed away by my comrades. They were right to do so; we couldn’t risk contamination—but we also couldn’t wish any kind of causality on a mission as small as ours. 

And so, as we watched him and collected a small tissue sample from the creature, the four of us got our stories straight, and we all trailed back to the tunnel from where we’d come.

The journey back seemed different as if the cave had rearranged itself. But we reached the others all the same. I tried my best to hide my shakes and cover and signs of the attack on Velos.

We waited a short while for the others to return, all reporting dead-ends in our respective caverns.

‘We encountered some kind of Xenos fungus,’ I said. ‘We dispatched of it and collected a small sample. No need for any more investigation.’

They accepted our stories. I wondered if they were lying too.

We returned to the landing site with little to show for it save a short debrief. Wherever the transmission had been coming from, it had been much deeper in the cavern. I tried to force those thoughts aside as we returned to our chambers. I managed to persuade Velos to shower and take as many med-packs worth of pills as I could find him.

And to my surprise, as the night drew near and the transmission jittered on and on with the same prophetic wisdom, Velos appeared beside me. I shut off the transmission and beckoned him to sit with me,

‘How are you feeling?’ I asked, quiet.

‘Fine, I really am,’ he answered. ‘The thing must’ve seen my mouth as a weak spot, I suppose. But there’s been no contaminates. I checked.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘May the God-Emperor watch over us.’

He stayed long into the night, and we began speaking about—well, everything. Everything from the brave new world we were building to our service of the Emperor; we even mocked Calla while we were at it. We hadn’t been drinking (it wasn’t allowed), but tiredness had made us drunk all the same. Drunk enough for Velos to lean over and kiss me as the night drew long.

There hadn’t been anything between us until then. But when he kissed me, it felt right, despite me pushing away after a couple seconds. His tongue had shot into my mouth, cold and stabbing like a needle injection.

I dismissed him from my quarters and stayed up the rest of the night watching the transmission. It wasn’t until dawn that a gnawing began in my stomach.

  ++ Thought For The Day: “Your faithful children shall know the Emperor’s grace, your heathen offspring shall not.” ++

I write this now, on the eve of my passing, or whatever is to happen next. This is my last testament after… what happened happened. 

I woke the next morning, my head pounding as I hauled myself over to the transmission.

The words seemed different now—they were the same strings of text, but when I read them, they weren’t quizzical or prophetic anymore; the words were embedding themselves into my soul like I’d known them since my birth. The static was only feeding my migraine, so at last, I found the nerve to shut it off. It was then that, to my shock, Velos pushed his way through the door and looked to me in earnest.

‘My lady,’ he said to me, stern. ‘Carrion wants you.’

‘The Stranger?’ I shook my head. No one knew his true name; perhaps not even our Rogue Trader. His business often operated in the grey area of things, I’d heard, so it seemed apt. Men came back from meetings with him changed, and I’d sworn to myself to never accept his counsel. Yet here I was.

I had nothing to do but stand, nod and grope for my stomach as I left. 

‘About last night,’ I whispered to him.

‘It never happened,’ he cut me off.

I nodded again ‘Are you still feeling well?’ My head throbbed. ‘After yesterday?’

‘Honestly?’ He asked, shrugging. ‘Never better.’

I followed the halls of the landing site to Carrion’s chambers and racked my fist against the door—but before I could finish knocking, it was opened swiftly, and a robed figure revealed themselves to the doorframe. I bowed my head, averting my eyes from the shadowy creases across his brow and the crown of candles atop his hood.

‘Come in, sit,’ he said, though he didn’t make it easy to enter. His flowing, ashen cloaks made much of the space around my feet a minefield. Once I did eventually scramble to a chair opposite his desk, I found it cold and hard, difficult to get comfy. Such was the life of serving the Imperium, though this seat, in particular, seemed to have been engineered with unease in mind.

‘My Lord.’ I bowed my head, not looking up until he allowed me a response.

‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked me, and my head shot up. ‘You look awfully pale. I’ve got Grox, Black Sala… water?’

‘No, thank you,’ I replied, confused.

‘Are you sure?’ He poured himself a drink from a small flagon, the liquid black as pitch as he downed it. ‘You really do look pale…’

‘I’m quite alright,’ I asserted. ‘If I may be so bold as to ask, my lord—why was I summoned?’

‘Oh yes, well.’ He shuffled some papers about his antique wooden desk, the rest of the room rather bland and nondescript. ‘I’ve been notified that you haven’t been reporting the findings from your local transmissions.’

I must’ve gone red. I certainly could feel it in my cheeks. ‘I reported it, sir,’ I said. ‘I reported that there was nothing to report.’

‘That’s not what Velos told me this morning,’ he tutted to my shock. ‘He took a look at your transceiver and confirmed that there had been transmissions coming from the planet—mostly throwaway lines of text, but a brief communion was made between you and the communicator.’

I could feel the oppressiveness of his aura against me, yet I found the nerve to protest, ‘That’s not true.’

‘Don’t lie to me,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m the only one standing between you and the barrel of Calla’s favourite pistol.’ He gave me a coy smile, and despite the warmth against my face, my blood turned to ice. My game was up.

‘Promise me, no more lies. Not from me. Not from you.’

Reluctantly, I said, ‘I promise.’

A nod. ‘Well, something strange has clearly been happening on this cursed planet; and that’s alright; we are watching with great interest,’ he said. ‘Simply put, though, the transmissions, servitor inconsistencies and the Xenos creatures and mutations… they’re terribly troubling to me.’

I nodded in agreement. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There have been several strange happenings. But the reason I withheld the knowledge I had was for morale. For the mission. If word got out that we were fighting some terrible Xenos then…’

‘Then nothing. We would’ve simply purged them. You know that. So, what’s the difference in the case of these Xenos?’

‘They are unlike anything I’ve ever read about,’ I said. ‘They aren’t simple raiding Orks or torturous Drukhari, feeble T’au or even misguided cultists. Whatever we’re facing is so unlike us, so disparate, that it knows us. It knows how we are, what we are. I can feel it in me…’ I looked down to my stomach in anguish—or was it excitement?

‘Like a mutant, then?’ he asked back duly.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Like a mirror.’

The Carrion nodded. ‘I should tell you, after reading your logs, Velos may have admitted to a fit of madness. And mutation.’

‘What?’ I exclaimed.

‘Before we could detain him, he disappeared. A vast amount of Xenos bacteria was found on him before he left, however.’ He coughed. ‘’You didn’t happen to come into contact with him since the… incident?’

‘No.’

The Carrion shook his head. ‘You agreed not to lie to me.’ His eyes flit past mine then, to some shadow in the corner of the room.

And before I could scream for help, the shadow turned to a pair of hooded men, one with a large, ceremonial Aquila in hand, another holding a length of chain that was quickly tossed around my wrists and throat. In truth, I don’t recall much of what happened shortly after.

I do remember waking up in a familiar cave, however, carved with runes and organic sacks running up and down the walls.

I writhed at the first flare of light above me, attempting to scream through the restraints of whatever I was facing—be it mutants, heretics—Emperor forbid, daemons, if such a thing existed.

But here I was, calling them mutants when there was something stirring inside me, writhing against my skin as I writhed against my restraints. As I regained my sight, I saw my comrades studying me the way Shepherd studied her servitors, and so I turned away from them and tried to study my surroundings with the same emotionless scrutiny. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t easy.

I was in the same cave system as I’d explored before, that much was certain, but there was a larger amount of black ichor; we must’ve been deeper inside. While I had at first thought the merging of carved stone and natural rock was strange, I soon become even more bewildered when I noticed what might have been metal or plastisteel fused into the stone; there were some sorts of interfaces, windows and apparatuses, advanced like the Aeldari, but somehow more familiar.

My thoughts were cut short when I realised that among the scrambling men around me, there was Velos; he was standing limp against one of the soldiers, sickly pale with veins like pitch running all across his skin.

‘Where am I?’ I found the nerve to squeak through the chains. ‘What are you doing with him?’

To my surprise, I received an answer: ‘Deep in the caves beneath the planet.’

‘What is all this…?’ I tried again.

A shrug. ‘Some ancient ship… temple… settlement. Thousands of years old… perhaps older than that.’

‘Necron?’

A shake of the head. ‘Human.’ The word sent a shiver down my spine. ‘It seems this new aspect of the God-Emperor has been around longer than we first thought.’

‘New… what?’

‘It’s been trapped here, and time and time before, It’s tried to escape the hold of this place. This time, we’re going to set It free…’ He looked at my belly. 

I writhed again and received a hard blow against my cheek in response. I didn’t stay quiet this time.

‘Velos!’ I pleaded, tasting iron. ‘Let him go! He’s sick!’

‘Sick?’ A deathly cackle. ‘Would you call the spirit of the Emperor coursing through your blood a sickness? He’s blessed.’ The soldier tutted. ‘But it’s not all for him, not for long. We all want a taste of the blessing… and besides; whatever this place is, whoever these humans were… they were bloodthirsty.’ He cocked his head. ‘We’ve monitored the interface in the wall. A sacrifice needs to be made to break past its failsafe.’

Realisation hit me, and then, I noticed a rusted blade in the soldier’s hand. I screamed, but they paid me no heed. Not even Velos—he didn’t even seem to be registering the situation.

‘Ancient travellers,’ the soldier spoke to the interface in the walls. ‘Harbingers of the God-Emperor. Accept our sacrifice.’

I screamed again, as, in a single, fluid movement, the rusted blade was raised and drawn twice against Velos’ throat. It seemed only once he had been entirely emptied of blood and my eyes had started watering, that the interface responded.

‘Override accepted.’ An ancient female voice, glitching, broken. ‘Bloodshed has determined this as a case of an emergency. What is the procedure?’

‘What are you?’ the soldier asked.

‘I am the avatar of Selsiuia Seven, seventh convoy crusader of the Last Empire of—’

‘A ship,’ the soldier interrupted, nodding. ‘Avatar, you say? Where is your human component?’

‘No human component. The Avatar of Selsiuia Seven was formed from the Black Treaty of Artificial Thinking—’

‘Bloody tech heresy,’ another of the soldiers spat.

‘Throne forgive us for communing with such a… abomination,’ the first soldier continued. ‘Tell us—you had cargo. You were transporting an aspect of the Divine Emperor of Mankind, you had It caged—’

‘No such cargo is recorded in our database. Our cargo includes the following: eight-thousand counts of rations, personal effects and equipment, four-hundred crew members, all deceased, and an alien form, in stasis, as well as several effects of its own—parasitic embryos, detachable spines and other unidentified aspects. Its current whereabouts and conditions are unknown—’

‘The alien? No, no,’ the soldier said. ‘I don’t care about any filthy Xenos. I care about the Emperor! The God-Emperor of Mankind incarnate! Can’t you feel his divine light? It’s inside us all!’

‘The alien cargo has been observed to breed through alien hosts,’ the interface said.

‘Alien hosts?’ A soldier scoffed. ‘This is not science, this is religion! What you call infection is divine spirit!’

‘As you say.’

‘You trapped the Emperor. Why?’

‘Procedures were put in place to contain and subdue the cargo,’ the interface seemed to agree.

‘Because you were primitive.’ The soldier said, seemingly understanding at last. ‘Too young. Not yet a galaxy-spanning empire, too-young to bask in the divine light. So, you captured It.’ Another nod, before the soldier looked to my belly again. ‘How do we set it free?’

I froze, and my head turned heavy. I had no strength to open my mouth any longer.

The interface, coldly, just replied, ‘Although the reproductive cycle of the specimen is hypothesised to take generations, in extreme circumstances, in a matter of days, prototype offspring can be borne.’

‘Days?’ The soldier raised a familiar bloodied knife. ‘What if we want the Emperor to bless us now?’

‘Extraction is possible from the host, though not recommended without safety procedures and—’

‘How?’

I could feel it then, as shiver as if death itself had graced me as some ancient woman whispered sweet nothings in the soldier’s ear, describing in detail how exactly he should carve me open to preserve my cargo. It was times like this, on the brink of disaster, when all my faith, whatever was left of it, fled me. But I didn’t feel the pain as he began cutting, nor the pain as the something that was moving inside me began climbing out.

But this time, from the purple-red gash in my belly, all my faith returned to me.

Six limbs. A seventh if you counted the spiney tail.

The chains around my back were tightened.

An eyeless head emerged, a jaw like a shark’s snapping open and drooling ichor.

The Aquila was pressed to my back, held there, locked in place.

It was white and pallid, veined like a toad’s belly. I watched my very blood melt off the oils of its skin.

The world turned as the Aquila was lifted, and with it, I was too.

And at last, my child stood, twitching and clicking, haloed in the light from the interface as all the others began to praise me.

Crooked legs, warping and convulsing, it disappeared into the darkness of the cave. Prayers echoed through the chamber, but I just kept my eyes trained to every inch of shadow, trying to recall its pallid skin and croaking, rasping form. For that was the last thing I saw of the God-Emperor of mankind before a pale blindfold was forced across my face, and like my child before me, I was greeted by the dark. But for just a moment, at last, I thought I could see the stars.