The Cache, James Brogden [ebook e reader TXT] 📗

front of which there was a raised, circular platform many yards across. It gleamed with what she assumed to be more condensation, and a tumble of organic shapes was stacked in the middle. She smelled shit and old blood, the miasma of violent death, and was about to turn away because no good could come from whatever this was, but then she caught it – that fire-spark flicker, a tremble of amber right in the middle of the stack.

Her excitement at the promise of tech turned to revulsion when she saw what surrounded it.

Around the platform’s circumference, unlit candles sagged in their own tallow like degenerate monks, some cupped in severed hands, some socketed in skulls, all joined by a perimeter rope of intestines. Lines painted in blood linked them, and where they intersected something had been built out of the remains of those who had given hands, heads and viscera. Whatever abomination it was supposed to be had no place being formed from human parts. It had far too many limbs, for a start. The teeth in its leering mouth were the stumps of a shattered ribcage; its eyes were the loops at the bottom of a pelvis with the wings flaring high above like a crest. In the effigy’s lap was cradled a blood-crusted bowl, and littered around its feet were smaller bones that she didn’t have to look at too closely to know were scored by gnawing.

Cannibalism itself didn’t particularly shock her. The Spike’s dead were routinely given to the corpse-starch vats. It was only in lean times, when there was a blight or a power failure, that a clan might resort to the flesh itself to survive – and even then, it was kept firmly within the family, with Prime Adjutant Galla Domitia using her arbiters to enforce a ban on inter-tribal killing. For the Urretzis there was only ever reverence and gratitude towards those who gave their bodies for the clan’s uttermost need. This, though, revolted her on every level. There was no love here. No respect. This was an abomination, mutilation for its own sake, a glorification of torment in worship of… what? There were rumours of some who gathered in forgotten chambers and raised shrines to the things Outside that hungered to get in – as they surely would if her family failed in their duty to maintain the machines that kept them at bay. There were few absolute heresies in the Spike: as long as nobody endangered the welfare of all, Prime Adjutant Domitia was content to let them do as they liked. Worship of the Outside most definitely was an absolute heresy. Lyse would report it, and delight in watching this atrocity put to the torch, along with those who had committed it.

But not before she helped herself to the glimmering thing that hung around the effigy’s neck.

She tiptoed across the dais, careful to avoid touching any of the body parts. They glistened as she passed, as if shifting to watch her, and she couldn’t shake the impression that nothing here was entirely dead. Up close, the effigy’s stench was like the breath of something rotting alive. The tech was a large and ornate medallion hanging about its throat; she checked for booby traps or alarms, but whoever had built this was obviously arrogant enough in their power to not bother. Her knife made short work of the cord, and the medallion fell into her hands.

It was a lot heavier than it looked – probably gold, but in this light that was a guess – and ridged with concentric dials that were themselves busy with slide-switches and mechanisms whose purpose she couldn’t begin to guess at. All she cared about was that the large central crystal held a dim flicker of amber within its depths, like a welding torch seen far down a shaft. She hoped it was enough for Brother Putorius to keep the machines running – maybe just for a day, maybe only for a few hours.

It would now be a simple matter to follow the tracks of those who came here, ideally back to the hab-halls or at least somewhere close. She stashed the medallion in a pouch and turned to go, and as she did so her biolux caught something metallic woven into the drapes cloaking the wall – some kind of tapestry created from stripped electrical wiring. Maybe there was another chamber behind it, a door, a passage and stairs up. There was a cord running from somewhere high above and anchored to the edge of the platform. She pulled it slowly and the covering drew to one side.

Instead of a door or passage there was some kind of twisted mural, and the shock of seeing it made her reel backwards.

‘Blessed Saint Geller,’ she whispered, aghast.

Daubed in pigments made from human bodily fluids and who knew what else, it was like the twisting roil of fire in a no-grav zone, or a multi-fingered hand of static electricity discharging at a worm’s crawl through a haze of blood-coloured smoke. It was as if the darkness behind her eyelids had spilled free and vomited itself across the wall, seething with half-formed shapes and punctuated by eldritch sigils that squirmed away from direct attention. She uttered a small, terrified whimper as she realised what she was looking at.

It was a picture of the Outside.

The artist who had rendered this could not have seen the Outside directly, as the Spike’s viewports were protected by Saint Geller’s intervention, and so this must have been how it appeared in their mind – in which case surely they must have been irretrievably insane. A deep, throbbing ache grew at the base of her brain, and her vision blurred. The image’s churning grew more agitated as if it could sense her distress, coalescing into the forms of leering faces and clutching claws in her peripheral vision. They wanted her to look at them, because then they could become real – all she had to