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Onyx – Chris Wraight – Extract

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Onyx

Chris Wraight

The chamber was lit intriguingly. Inquisitor Aoart Halliafiore of the Ordo Xenos, was a man who enjoyed the theatre of the clandestine, and every station he oversaw was kitted out in an almost parodic image of the secretive. Shadows pooled and clustered. Sigils nestled under the faint glow of lanterns, tracing old lineages back to the distant days of pre-Crusade Terra. Perhaps he even knew what they signified. It was not impossible; the Inquisition had a long memory.

He was a thin, spare man who wore finely tailored robes. The only badge of office he allowed himself was an iron aquila icon on his left breast; otherwise, he could have been any courtier on any civilised world. His skin was smooth, almost youthful despite his several centuries’ service, and he had tight features, the result of over-aggressive rejuvenat work. His movements were measured, precise and contained.

He stood in the centre of a circular chamber, illuminated by a single shaft of blue light. Seven giants stood around him, each towering over the slight figure in their midst. They wore black armour, relatively unadorned, in the Mk VII pattern. Only the right pauldrons varied, giving away the Chapter origins of the squad-members: Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Executioners, Angels Puissant, Iron Shades, Space Wolves. They were helm-less, which was the only other source of variation. Callimachus of the Ultramarines, the squad leader, had a close-cropped, blocky visage. Jocelyn of the Dark Angels wore his dark hair long. The Blood Angel Leonides’s pale skin looked almost ghostly in the low light.

Ingvar of the Space Wolves struggled to maintain the icy composure of his brothers. Halliafiore’s mannerisms wore at his nerves. The mortal was so quiet, so dry, half-dead, hardly worthy of a warrior’s attention. The others were nearly as bad. They were deadly – he had trained with them long enough to know that – but they were... bloodless. None of them, not even the Blood Angel, truly had the rage, the heart.

Perhaps that would come out during the mission. It felt like he had been waiting months for it to come, though it was hard to mark the passage of time in the lightless tunnels of an Inquisitorial fortress.

‘This is your target,’ said Halliafiore, summoning up a ghostly hololith from his outstretched palm. It showed a schematic star-cluster. Several of the systems were marked with a death’s head. ‘The Phalamos Belt. Value to the Imperium: production of raw materials, rhodium, magnesium, sundry rare earths. Predated by xenotype eldar, sub-species tertius, for nine standard years. Seven installations lost. Three hive worlds raided, resulting in heavy loss of life and, more to the point, frequent interruption of tithe production.’

The inquisitor’s manner, more suited to a scrivener than a lord of the Allfather’s everlasting realm, never ceased to grate.

‘Study the pattern,’ Halliafiore said. ‘What do you note?’

Ingvar looked at the star-map, and saw nothing but a trail of destruction. The raid-marks all had a date-stamp on them, which told him nothing.

Xatasch, the spectral member of the Iron Shades Chapter, was the first to respond. ‘The mark is incomplete,’ he said in his near-whisper.

Halliafiore nodded. ‘Elaborate.’

‘Xenotype datum 347,’ said Xatasch, recalling the element of Deathwatch training pertinent to the species. ‘Attack-patterns subordinate to aesthetic considerations. The breed takes pleasure from marking the void in certain symbolic forms. They are tracing a rune.’

The hololith zoomed in, homing down to a point on the edge of the attack distribution. Soon it showed a single point – a remote asteroid bearing the ident ‘Valmar’.

‘This completes the symbol,’ said Halliafiore. ‘Xenosavants identify it as the rune yllianua, known to be significant for seven eldar factions operating in the subsector. One of these is of particular interest, given the physical presence, so reports allege, of a flesh-twister.’

Flesh-twister. The colloquial name for the xenos subtype haemonculus, identified in Inquisitorial intelligence as being part of the species’ command hierarchy. To catch one on the battlefield was rare, for their attacks were so rapid and so well-coordinated that few records were ever left behind. Ingvar remembered the scarce scraps of vid-footage he’d been shown in orientation training – grainy images of warped, hunched grotesques floating on suspensor cushions, their long clocks hanging with hooks. The purpose of the haemonculi was not fully understood, though it was clear that they were the often the architects of the raids, and therefore the primary target for retribution.

‘Then we know where they will strike,’ said Callimachus. ‘We can protect it.’

The Ultramarine was always keen to propose the squad’s course of action, as if itching to gain the inquisitor’s approval. Ingvar loathed that and was pleased to see Halliafiore give Callimachus a disdainful look.

‘Do you think they would strike, if we were known to be protecting the station?’ he asked.

Callimachus glanced at the installation statistics, undeterred. ‘Its annual tithe production is significant. Its loss will harm weapon production in the subsector.’

Halliafiore gave him a tight smile that said stop talking now. ‘The flesh-twister is the target. It will be disabled, contained and brought here, to be placed under the instruments of information-extraction. All other considerations are negligible.’

The inquisitor turned his pristine visage to the rest of them, looking at them in turn. ‘Your first mission, Onyx,’ he said, using their squad designation. ‘Always a delicate time. Greater tests will come, should you perform adequately.’ Hallifiore fixed Ingvar with a particularly lingering gaze. ‘Operate as a unit. Do not deviate from the mission parameters.’

He smiled for a final time, just as mirthlessly and perfunctorily as before.

‘The Emperor protects,’ he said, which told them all that the briefing was at an end.

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