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The Karsharat Abomination – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The Karsharat Abomination

George Mann

The sky was bleeding.

The rent in the atmosphere was a thick, purple scar, an angry ribbon across the heavens, casting everything below in its vague, unreal light. Shadows danced in twisting interplay, describing shifting patterns of movement. Figures seemed to emerge threateningly from behind every broken lintel, every stub of tumbledown wall, before dissipating again within moments, nothing more than an unwelcome trick of the eye.

From the heart of the rent, fat droplets tumbled in a drizzly veil, pattering against Bledheim’s cloak, so that his hood and shoulders had become sodden, cumbersome. The red fluid streaked his upturned cheeks, oily and gritty against his skin. The air was filled with its rich, iron tang. It sloshed around his boots with every ponderous step.

Bledheim turned to regard the others, who were trudging along beside him in the slick loam. ‘Anyone would think we weren’t welcome here,’ he said, wiping more of the foul liquid from his mouth with the back of his hand.

Inquisitor Sabbathiel turned to meet his gaze, her features set in a grim smile. Despite the torrent, she looked resplendent in her white and red armour, although her hair, loose and tumbling across her gorget, was now streaked with the greasy fluid. It ran in rivulets down the front of her chestplate, pooling in the graven Inquisition symbol that adorned her lower torso, turning the ceramite pink. ‘Your insights never cease to astound me, Bledheim,’ she said. Next to Sabbathiel, the woman, Mercy, emitted a wet chuckle, regarding him with a half-cocked eyebrow. He’d never liked her, and the wicked smile on her lips did little to alter his opinion.

Bledheim sighed. While he understood the necessity of their visit to this Emperor-forsaken backwater, he longed for it to be over. He didn’t even know why Sabbathiel had brought him here, to Karsharat. Mercy and Brondel – well, they were muscle, pure and simple – but it wasn’t as if Bledheim could do much to help in a fight. He supposed she might be anticipating the need for interrogation – his own particular speciality – but that wasn’t what she’d said back on the ship. To all intents and purposes, it was a straightforward mission: storm the ruins, kill the heretics and put a stop to whatever abominable weapon they were devising in there. He’d heard the same story a dozen times before; more, maybe. This was what they did – what Sabbathiel did – and yet, somehow, this time it felt different.

He supposed he’d find out soon enough. He should have paid more attention during the briefing.

The ruins here had once been an Ecclesiarchy outpost but, from what he’d been able to ascertain, had been abandoned some time during the last century. He hadn’t managed to establish why, and he didn’t suppose it mattered all that much, except that the moon had been left unguarded, and now something else had moved in. A renegade Martian, was the working hypothesis, one that Metik – who, Bledheim noted, had somehow managed to remain behind on the ship – had been tracking for some time. A renegade with a particular interest in experimentation. A renegade that Sabbathiel had decided she wanted destroyed.

Still, that didn’t explain the constant shower of blood or the rent in the sky, which raised the dismaying prospect that there might be other forces at play here, too. Forces that Bledheim didn’t want to begin to consider.

And they still had to find a way into the ruins.

Bledheim peered into the hazy curtain of rain, cupping his hand around his eyes. Ahead of them, the remains of the citadel were a towering silhouette, jagged and half-collapsed. Why would anyone choose to come to this place? As a base of operations, it lacked subtlety – and a roof – but he supposed it might very well be the last place people would look for a wanted outcast. Unless those people were Metik and Sabbathiel, of course.

He saw a shape emerging from the rain, and slipped his other hand inside his cloak, his fingers curling around the grip of his pistol. Then he caught sight of the flickering blue light, drifting lazily over the figure’s head, and he relaxed, coming to a stop to await the arrival of the newcomer.

Moments later, a filthy, mud-encrusted squat emerged from the rainstorm, flanked by a servo-skull that seemed to be guiding his way with its winking diodes.

‘Frecking Krull, but it’s a beautiful day,’ said Brondel, his voice a low, throaty growl. He shook his head, shaking loose a cascade of blood from his matted beard.

‘Brondel,’ said Sabbathiel, her voice level. ‘You’ve found a way in?’

‘Aye,’ said Brondel. ‘There’s a door on the west side. It looks as if the structure there has been partially rebuilt, although you wouldn’t know it until you’re on top of it. Whatever’s holed up in there isn’t going to look kindly on visitors.’ He spat, and then ground the phlegm into the mud with the heel of his boot.

‘All the more reason to get on with it and crack some skulls,’ said Mercy. She, of all of them, looked truly menacing, her exposed face and arms spattered in blood, towering over the diminutive squat. The whirring instruments in her chest – an artificial set of heart and lungs, installed by Metik some years earlier after he found her wounded in the lower levels of a hive city – seemed to grind and sputter noisily in the damp. She was clutching a lasrifle in both hands, and the immense two-handed power sword that she usually wielded was slung in a harness across her back. Bledheim knew that, no matter what she said, she had deeper motives than simply cracking skulls – she’d never truly forgiven Metik for what he’d done to her, bringing her back from the brink of death by riddling her body with machine parts, and perhaps taking down a rogue Martian with a penchant for experimenting on people might go some way to at least temporarily quelling her need for vengeance.

Sabbathiel glanced up at the servo-skull. ‘Fitch?’

‘There are life signs within the structure, ma’am,’ said the servo-skull, its voice mimicking the speech patterns of its erstwhile owner, but laced with a sluggish, technological burr. Bledheim shuddered.

‘How many?’

The servo-skull hesitated, as if pondering the answer. ‘Difficult to ascertain. No fewer than five, no greater than twelve.’

‘That’s quite a range,’ said Bledheim.

‘The readings are in flux,’ said the servo-skull.

‘You can say that again,’ murmured Brondel.

Sabbathiel swung her force stave up and around, indicating the ruined citadel with its tip. ‘Fan out and approach the building slowly. We’ll converge again by the door. They might be watching us from the ruins, waiting for us to get close.’

Bledheim nodded, and then slipped away into the rain, edging ever on towards the melancholy ruins. At least, he decided, they might finally get out of the bloody rain.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Inferno! Volume 4 in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Mauro Belfiore.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-393-2

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