The Disaster at Mot

Chapter 4: The Use of Spies

It was a shame to have to shoot Šakû in the back, but so it goes. If the lay brother had done as he ought and died in that last attack, Kaašhk wouldn’t now be forced to resort to such distasteful measures. So whose fault was that, really?

Stepping over the body, the Pater began the walk back through the under-hive, making his way to the hovel that had served as his team’s base of operations these past few months. His strategic aims seemed to be accomplished, but the fastidious Pater wanted to be sure by taking stock. The privations of war time had made the under-hive even more desperate than usual; his gunshot carried no risk of detection. He could take the time to think as he walked, given strength and focus by the (literal, attuned to the warp as he was) taste of rage in the air. Pater Kaašhk resolved to take the long route home, and use the opportunity to think things through.

One of many benefits of service to the true Lord — eightfold blessings upon His blades — was that Khorne was a straightforward god. He made no secret of what he wanted: viscera, carnage, slaughter; fury, rage, bloodlust. The Pater was not at all a sentimental man, but he loved these things, truly; with all humility, he doubted any were more committed to the Khornite cause than he. But, unfortunately, many of His followers made the mistake of thinking that a straightforward desire must be satisfied in a straightforward fashion. The Sherden Pact, and the Church of the Burning Massacre that guided them, took a more holistic view of the matter.

If gallons of blood was good for the blood god, think how much better barrels of blood would be! In fact, when you thought about it, wasn’t it best of all to maximise the blood spilled, to leave no skull needlessly untaken? Magister Ishtaria had said it best in her Parable of the Bridge, now taught to young warriors throughout the Sanguinary Utnapishtim. Kaašhk himself had taught the parable many times, and remembered each occasion fondly.

“Imagine you are walking across a bridge, beneath which is a magrail line. You see before you a coward, a weakling, one who flinches from battle and does the blood god no honour by their continued existence. And you hear approaching a maglev. It is clear what you must do, is it not?”

— at this point the instructor will pause for hands, and inevitably some eager young fool will offer that we should push the coward in front of the approaching mag-train, spilling their blood in His name and bringing glory to the Empire by one’s decisive action. —

“Wrong!”

— the lesson will now pause to make time for the eager child to be thoroughly thrashed. Kaašhk gave a wry smile as he recalled the last time he had taught this lesson. It had been especially enjoyable because he had managed to ensnare the most annoying child in the class with this little trick, and got to relish beating that infuriating nine year old to within an inch of his life. —

“For, had you but looked, you would have seen the maglev was hurtling towards eight sacrificial victims, arranged in proper ritual order, who by their anguished deaths would not only have given our god their blood, but also allowed some of our mighty Sherden to ascend to the status of Blood Wolf, and bring down much carnage upon His enemies. By pushing the coward down in front of the maglev you activate its halting procedures, bringing it to a gentle stop with just the one weakling killed. On net you have not spilled blood, you have saved it; whatever your intent, you are acting as a peacemaker.”

— when the parable is taught to younger warriors they will typically gasp, shocked to hear such a taboo word uttered in a scholum. The parable concluded, the lesson could then be driven home in a million more ways through practical demonstrations. But the central point was simple enough: Khorne cares about blood, not intentions. He wants skulls, not displays of eagerness. Sometimes that requires rushing in with abandon, but sometimes that requires taking a step back, thinking about things, forgoing immediate gratification for the sakes of the greatest slaughter of the greatest number.

This, at least, was the doctrine of the Church of the Burning Massacre, and through them the Sherden Pact and the entire Sanguinary Utnapishtim. Their ever growing domain, the blessings and boons Khorne had given so many of them (the Pater himself was by this point a hulking brute of a man, his musculature swelled beyond natural proportions), the oceans of blood they had shed; all this was surely proof that their way was right, for their way was Mighty.

But, the Pater reflected, idly twirling his flail around as he ambled home, not everyone had sufficient vision to see this doctrine all the way to its end. Take Gal-Uru. He was no doubt a pious man, and Kaašhk could see why the blood god had been willing to watch over him so closely; certainly he made a good faith effort to maximise murders per moment, and was a more than competent combatant and commander. Good for him — the Pater always appreciated talent. But he lacked vision. He still thought like a soldier. On one occasion Kaašhk had barely been able to hide his disgust upon hearing the High Demigaur’s confession. The old man had been honestly concerned that some stratagem was not honourable, that it might do the Taker of Skulls more glory to make open war rather than slaughter cowering civilians and force a confrontation that way. Vile! Fortunately the Pater had kept his cool well enough to give Gal-Uru some pablum about how Khorne would understand, and he had been persuaded to send the Qarnu Anšar in after all. But even though the disaster of skulls-untaken had been avoided on that occasion, Kaašhk knew there and then that the High Demigaur was a limited, parochial, thinker.

So it was that when Kaašhk had begun receiving visions from his lord, he knew they could not be entrusted to Gal-Uru. For Khorne had sent him dreams of a great bird of prey, its talons dripping thick blood. In each dream, this raptor swooped down and seized a small mammal that had been about to pounce upon another, tearing the frustrated predator limb from limb as it soared away. The erstwhile prey, given a new lease of life by the raptor’s predations upon that which had hunted it, was then free to enter the warren of some rival. Safe at last, it set about slaughtering the young it found there. The great cycle of slaughter, nature’s testament to the truth of their doctrine.

Pater Kaašhk found no difficulty in interpreting this. Clearly the blood god was telling him that the people of Mot needed to be saved from the predations of the Sherden, in order that some greater slaughter might take place later. He knew Gal-Uru could not be trusted with this, since the weak-minded fool would balk at deliberately sacrificing his men for the sake of bringing about defeat. Why not simply retreat, he would say? Missing the rather obvious point that this too would fail to maximise slaughter achieved. No. He could not be told. Indeed, not even the lay brethren of his Church could fully be trusted with this, so ingrained were outdated notions of martial honour and glorious victory within the culture of the Naramutu’s crew. Subtlety would be required.

When word from the Stygius system had come through the warp, Kaašhk had seized his moment of opportunity. His network of spies, augmented by his dream-visions, made it clear that within Mot-Secundus was a smaller astropathic relay centre. Small though it was, its positioning along empyric fault lines meant its detonation would have great ritual power. This would be his call, his means of bringing down upon them the great bird of prey. With a bit of subterfuge he’d even managed to secure an escort of Gal-Uru’s finest warriors for the insertion into the city, something that bought him no end of satisfaction. Nor did his sense of professionalism prevent him from enjoying spinning that yarn about the last survivor of the eighth going into prophetic raptures about Gal-Uru’s favourite holy book. As if he hadn’t simply cut the man’s throat when he slept!

In any case, once in, the matter had been simple enough. The Pater was blessed with the ability to create mighty warriors, intermingled with the Blood God’s kin, known as Nēšu Kārum. These mutated monstrosities would burst forth from within mortal flesh, growing horns and braying for blood. Their every moment of existence a torment to the accursed mortal whose flesh they inhabited, but fortunately it was inevitably brief. They burned themselves out with ultra-violence, preferably directed in such by a well trained apostle of the Church of the Burning Massacre. No survivors, no witnesses to what the short-sighted would consider betrayal. Cleaner that way. What’s more, since the lay-brethren viewed becoming Nēšu Kārum to be a most honourable way to die in service to the Throne, it was never difficult to find volunteers for this. Most of the lay-brethren who’d accompanied Kaašhk into Mot-Secundus had thus willingly given themselves to the divine mutation, and spent their lives in wrecking the relay centre beyond all salvage.

Khorne’s word is ever true, and sure enough the disruption to the empyrean caused by the sudden destruction of the astropathic centre by warp monstrosities such as the Nēšu Kārum had been enough to knock some Astartes off course. The Holy Judges had arrived just had foretold, and turned the tide of battle.

… Eventually. Somewhat disconcertingly, there had been early signs that Gal-Uru High Demigaur might actually turn the tide, and salvage the situation. Fortunately, Kaašhk had planned for this eventuality, deliberately remaining within Mot-Secundus to monitor events until he could be sure Khorne’s will was done. So it was that, along with Šakû and the other two remaining lay-brethren, he had managed to infiltrate a poorly run vox station being used by Mot’s PdF to coordinate their forces. Posing as maintenance workers (he was not entirely proud of how plausible an Ogryn menial he made), they had been able to gain access to a cypher centre. There they could plant enough evidence for even these dimwitted loyalists to work out how to break the Qarnu Anšar’s shoddily encrypted void-codes, along with some information on the Pact’s deployment around the besieged cities of Mot. With this in hand, Kaašhk was sure the Qodeshi Sufetim would be able to convert this advantage into final victory.

(It was shortly after this that Šakû had shown just a bit too much initiative, and started asking questions which indicated he was aware that their mission may not actually be helping to secure final victory for the Sherden Pact. Kaašhk had tried to send him and his brethren on a suicidal assassination mission for a local garrison commander, but the snot nosed try-hard had only gone and done it. This was what had forced the Pater to shoot his subordinate in the back.).

Yes, Kaašhk thought as he finally stepped into his empty abode, all had gone exactly to plan. He had already arranged extraction by some of the Church of the Burning Massacre’s agents in a few day’s time. He thought he might see some of the sights in Mot-Secundus before leaving; his mission log included the detail that a local reliquary had a display dedicated to The Art of Warfare. Always useful to understand the martial culture of the enemy — such an intelligence gathering opportunity would not be foregone. In any case, Kaašhk thought as he started to put away his vox equipment, he had done good work for the skull throne on Mot, and he was surely one step closer to Ascension.

It was in fact just as Kaašhk was packing up that, above him in the near-void battle around Mot, the Qodeshi Sufetim broke the Sherden’s blockade. They had been monitoring the traitor Astartes’ vox communiques for some time now, hearing their unhinged commander grow ever less rational and ever more desperate. What is more, it was clear from surface reconnaissance that their battle plans depended crucially on rapid redeployment capabilities maintained by void assets. They could win this war in a stroke by breaking their hold on supra-atmospheric zones.

Once the traitor Astartes was heard demanding a meeting on the primary vessel, Brother Captain Hannibal of the Sacred Band had given the order to spring their trap. Their expert psycho-heretical profiler had identified this one as liable to overcommit his forces if sufficiently provoked, and they would not have a better chance to induce him to do so than when he was at the nerve centre of the traitor command structure.

Indeed, it had gone better than Hannibal had expected. The normally disciplined traitor forces had been ordered forward in an almost uncoordinated way, rushing headlong into piecemeal fights that did not exploit their numerical advantage. As noted they had indeed identified the heretic scum, an offence to the omnissiah who embodied the flesh’s emotional frailty, as a weak link in the enemy command. But they had expected more from this warband as a whole! As it was, they had barely needed to deploy their actual pre-planned ensnaring manoeuvre, scuttling the better part of the traitors' void capacity and sending surviving ships scrambling into the deep void, or the warp.

The war on Mot’s surface still needed to be won, but it was now simply a matter of time.