Part 9
The Angels of Brutality.
Chapter 56(orphan)
Deep space Imperial monitoring station Beta-37-Beta-5072-Lambda-93/048-Alpha-17 maintained it's perpetual radio silence. For hundreds of years this station had not let slip a single signal, hidden deep inside a natural rogue interstellar ball of conglomerated ice and dust, passively scanning the surrounding heavens for any evidence of another dreaded Black Crusade.
Benjamin Toff the resident station astropath rubbed his blind eyes, discomforted by the moving raging warp storm the station had been tracking for many weeks now.
Over a month ago a very small and concentrated warp storm had appeared just beyond the Cadia Gate, and had been jumping around in a more or less straight line ever since, staying in one place for a day or two, then suddenly moving at warp speed for hours before suddenly staying still once again, then repeating the cycle.
The warp storm was far from subtle, every Imperial psyker in 6 sectors had detected it by now, and all monitoring stations were on alert to track the storm and try to determine it's cause if possible.
The countless monitoring stations had a number of different hypotheses about the storm, but based on the movement patterns it might be focusing around a warp capable ship that was performing short calculated jumps. It should be easy to see when it entered real space if it was indeed a ship, but unfortunately space was big, really REALLY big. So big in fact that unless you were in exactly the right place it might take months or even years for the light to reach you. All of the stations so far had been just so far away from the eye of the jumping warp storm, that any light from the theoretical ship had not had time to reach them yet.
This time however, Benjamin Toff's station had gotten extremely lucky. Almost three hours ago the central "eye" of the warp storm had come to rest approximately 3238000000 kilometres away. And it just so happened that approximately 3238000000 kilometres was the distance light beams traveled in about 3 hours.
The telescopes and sensors of the monitoring station were already fixed on the location of this storm eye, and any ship present would be coming into view in the next few moments.
Benjamin Toff gestured to the modest crew of technicians and servitors who permanently manned this lonely station, and they plugged Benjamin's bionic head cables into the sensors to let him "see" the images in his brain.
Light flickered in the optical centres of Benjamin's brain, and he then saw blackness and bright stars, just empty lonely space, devoid of anything at all.
Minutes passed tensely, nothing was happening...
Benjamin's brain suddenly filled with simulated bright magenta light signals!
A single dot of magenta warp energy had appeared exactly where predicted!
The magenta dot grew rapidly, swirling in a turbulent circular pattern, then belching out vast plumes of glowing warp ether.
It was an opening to the warp, and growing absolutely VAST in diameter!
Something huge and dark blue suddenly shot out of the opening like a bullet, moving at hypersonic speed!
The instruments automatically tracked the moving object, decoding and recording every photon of light in every spectrum, learning a wealth of information about the object.
It was 20 kilometres in length, ornately shaped, marked with heraldry of the Night Lords traitor legion, and had the words "NIGHTMARE ASYLUM" written along it's flank in giant blood red letters.
The infrared sensors detected 40 terawatts of heat being radiated from the object's hull, but cooling rapidly, apparently powering down energy heavy systems after exiting the warp.
It's mass was unknown, as it had not changed its rate of motion at all, but it must clearly be hundreds of millions of tons judging by its size.
Faint radio signals were emanating from the ship, heavily encrypted vox signals from internal communications, so faint that the ship was obviously deliberately heavily stealth modified. If the station sensors hadn't been state of the tech priest's art and looking right at the ship, then they wouldn't have even detected these faint signals.
Vast quantities of data collated in detailed files, and Benjamin's psychic powers immediately began transmitting the data in code to the astropathic choirs of all nearby authorised Imperial authorities.
The station cogitators cracked part of the vox encryption in the faint signals, and immediately heard a conversation between two women complaining about their boyfriends.
More and more information was decoded, the station had cracked all but the most high security encryption.
Thousands of decoded conversations were now being recorded, too much data for Benjamin's brain to transmit in even ten years!
Benjamin desperately shut off his mind from the torrent of information before it drove him insane, gasping with stress and pain.
Benjamin Toff composed himself and transmitted a request for a ship to visit the station as soon as the storm passed on by again, this volume of data could only be handled by direct electronic transfer, between the monitoring station cogitator and a shipboard cogitator.
Benjamin relaxed, he had sent all the most pertinent information. The library's worth of recorded vox chatter could wait for a ship to collect directly. He had done his duty.
Benjamin looked at the broader information he had so far, and pondered, checking the markings and details of the strange ship with the recorded details of every known vessel on record.
He found an instant match:
"NIGHTMARE ASYLUM"
"Class, GLORIANA BATTLESHIP"
"State, CORRUPTED"
"Status, PRESUMED ACTIVE"
"Affiliation, CHAOS - EXCOMMUNICATUS TRAITORUS"
"Faction (if applicable), NIGHT LORD TRAITOR LEGION"
"Captain(s) (if known), WENDY SEVENSON, CHAOS CHAMPION OF SLAANESH, AND LUKE SEVENSON, NIGHT LORD LEGION TRAITOR ASTARTES, CHAOS LORD"
"Estimated crew compliment (if known), OVER ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND"
"Tonnage (if known), UNKNOWN, (VIOLATES ALL KNOWN GLORIANA STC DESIGNS)"
"Length, TWENTY KILOMETRES"
"Weapons (if known), SUPER HEAVY PROW TORPEDOES, 20 SUPER HEAVY MACRO CANNON BATTERIES, 20 SUPER HEAVY LANCE BATTERIES, 6 HEAVY ORDINANCE LAUNCH BAYS, STERN MINE DEPLOYMENT TUBES, CYCLONIC TORPEDO TUBES, DROP PODS, DORSAL MISSILE PODS, DEFENSIVE TURRETS."
Benjamin paused and gulped, this ship was EXTREMELY dangerous!
Benjamin skipped the rest of the scary ship descriptions and moved straight to instructions of how to respond to this ship.
"CONTACT INQUISITION IMMEDIATELY! Failure to immediately contact Inquisition is punishable by..."
Benjamin Toff wet himself with terror and sent an Astropathic message to the Inquisition immediately!
He skipped the list of horrific punishments and read more of the instruction information.
"The Nightmare Asylum is to be considered a highest level security threat, engaging battle with the Nightmare Asylum by anything less than a battleship with full fleet escort is considered very high risk of losing valuable naval resources, to be engaged ONLY with prior authorisation from the local sector admiralty. Disengage and evade if encountered if able to do so, engagement of Nightmare Asylum is an Admiralty or Inquisitor level decision."
Benjamin was chilled to the bone!
He was horribly aware that this extremely dangerous ship was just a tiny 30 second warp hop away from his own monitoring station! If this "Nightmare Asylum" detected the hidden monitoring station then they were doomed!
Benjamin Toff wet himself again, he had never felt so afraid!
Long minutes passed, but the light from the Nightmare Asylum showed no signs of the ship detecting the monitoring station camouflaged inside the floating space ice rock.
This light was over 3 hours old, and the monitoring station ice rock had already been reflecting ambient starlight and infrared radiation off itself long before the Nightmare Asylum exited the warp. If the Nightmare Asylum had been going to detect the station then they would have already done so 3 hours ago, performed a 30 second warp hop, and killed them all before the station even saw the ship 3 hours later.
The warp storm had not moved the entire 3 hours, and warp detection traveled faster than the speed of light. With that warp storm doggedly following it the ship was about as unsubtle as it was possible to be. The Nightmare Asylum was clearly still just sitting at a relative state of rest in real space, approximately 3 light hours distance away, doing nothing.
Benjamin let out a cautious sigh of relief.
The Nightmare Asylum was the source of the anomalous warp storm, that much was now certain. Benjamin was not sure how it had achieved this feat, but it was clearly an excellent defence mechanism. Even if the entire sector fleet was mobilised and ordered to attack it, the Nightmare Asylum would remain untouchable, surrounded by a tiny but intensely powerful warp storm that prevented warp travel to it's location at any given moment!
The insidious forces of chaos could use this ability to rampage across the entire Imperium of Man! They could hop from one isolated minor world to the next, cutting off any rescue or reinforcements!
Benjamin made the sign of the Emperor with his hands, this was utterly horrifying!
Benjamin quickly studied the plotted course of the Nightmare Asylum so far, fearing to find a string of devastated planets in its wake.
Nothing...
Benjamin sighed in relief, the Nightmare Asylum had traveled in a straight line and had, by random chance, managed to avoid any Imperial planet, absolutely none had been along its entire trajectory so far.
Benjamin wondered where the Nightmare Asylum was even trying to reach?
Assuming they kept to their more or less straight line... (Benjamin sensed a nearby map of the galaxy on a table, and blindly put a long straight edged ruler over the map to line up the trajectory so far). Hm... the line went directly to the warp saturated hell zones of the Maelstrom.
Benjamin almost wept with relief, the Nightmare Asylum was seemingly simply moving between the chaos hells of the Eye of Terror and the chaos hells of the Maelstrom!
Benjamin quickly used a lexicon servitor wired into the monitoring station cogitator to do an indexed topic search of all the decoded vox conversations so far, specifically looking for any mention of the Nightmare Asylum's destination. He immediately found thousands of criteria matches and listened to one at random.
A strangely accented woman's voice drawled poshly through the speakers wired into the servitor's head:
"Renee, darling, I simply CANNOT ABIDE the bras I have left! They are SO last season! The MOMENT we limp our way home to the Maelstrom through this nuisance of a warp storm, I am changing my ENTIRE wardrobe! If this weary journey is not over by the next season I really might scream darling, really I DO mean it!"
"Uh huh," another woman with a similar accent replied, sounding slightly bored.
"Well anyway, Renee, DARLING girl, could you be just a COMPLETE dear, and let me borrow some of your bras?"
Benjamin sighed with relief, the ship seemed to be just passing through. Even better that woman had referred to the warp storm as a "nuisance", suggesting that they were not using the warp storm as a weapon. This was excellent news if true!
Benjamin checked other decoded vox conversations, searching specifically for any mention of the word "plan" to find out what the ship was up to.
The servitor speakers blared out another conversation between two women:
"So what's the actual PLAN with Wendy's wedding now?, Is it going to be rescheduled after that debacle?"
"I don't know sis, half the crew is in an uproar, we might need to raid a planet soon along our journey just to replace all the casualties from the Wedding, the Apothecarion is overflowing with wounded and the Night Lords are going berserk after all their wives got bashed! I don't think a new wedding is happening anytime soon..."
Benjamin yelled in dismay and hurriedly sent an Astropathic message informing the Imperium that the Night Lords were considering an imminent slave raid of a planet along their journey trajectory!
Benjamin frantically checked the line on the map, looking for any planet that would cross the path.
Benjamin hissed in dismay to immediately discover that a nearby and highly strategic Imperial planet lay right in the path of the Nightmare Asylum!
Based on it's previous movements and speed, the Nightmare Asylum was no more than two days from blundering directly into the planet 92/EHY/55! This was an unmitigated disaster!
Benjamin Toff fearfully sent an Astropathic warning message addressed directly to the governor of the planet, he could only hope that they had enough warning to ready sufficient defences to survive!
***...
92/EHY/55 "Scum Pit" was a hot and miserable planet, a dry parched ball of dust, a never raining endless lifeless desert from pole to pole. It had never had native life, never would, but was yet still crawling with billions of miserable wretched human beings.
The parched dusty rock of the surface was gashed open in huge pits, vast brutish mining machinery ripping into the bedrock, tearing out millions of tons of low grade aluminium ore from the heavily depleted ground. Thousands of years of exhaustive mining had long ago exhumed everything more valuable, the almost worthless low grade aluminium ore was all that was left worth digging up.
Huge ore trains carried endless loads away from the open cut mines, traversing hundreds of miles to many hundreds of city sized prison complexes, for the ore to be smelted and processed by convict labor.
92/EHY/55 or "Scum Pit" was an Imperium Penal World, one of the worst in the entire sector. Billions of the worst kinds of criminal scum called this miserable place home, murderers, rapists, deserters, iconoclasts, pedophiles, (minor) heretics, rebels, insubordinates, (serious) looters, (serious) thieves, vandals of sacred chapels, saboteurs, and other serious criminal offenders.
The all male population came to this planet to die, one way or another. Some were assembled into the penal legions to immediately die fighting, some were simply executed, some were murdered by other inmates, some got sick and died of diseases, and any who somehow escaped these other fates were simply slowly worked to death with endless years of extremely hard labor. Everyone who came to "Scum Pit" as a convict, all without any known exceptions, died one way or another as a result, and the convicts all knew this.
The dusty hot dry air was filled with the sounds of anger and despair, rage and woe and pain, as wretched hardened convicts were worked to death in the infernal heat. Most died inside of a year, but the toughest and strongest endured, year after year, stubbornly refusing to die, until their youth finally failed and age made them weaken.
In the air conditioned control building of one of the many vast prisons, wardens and guards lounged uneasily, always keeping an eye on the surveillance monitors.
Images scanned from side to side, as camera mounted lasgun turrets swept from side to side, hanging from the ceilings and keeping the inmates in check.
The screens showed countless thousands of miserable half naked men, all sweating profusely in the shocking heat of the convict sections of the prison. Around every neck was a collar bomb with a glowing red light, able to be detonated by any guard on a slightest whim.
Even as they watched, a few more heads exploded, some of the guards had been slightly irritated by the mere look of some of the convicts, and detonated their collar bombs just for the fun of it. Nobody cared, at least nobody important, these criminal men were scum that came here to die, completely expendable, replaced every few days with fresh shipments of new scum.
The planet had no women at all, not even female staff or the wives or families of guards and wardens. The convict scum didn't deserve to ever see a woman again, not even a glimpse of one. The sexual starvation made their short lives here all the more unpleasant, and encouraged no end of prison rape to add to the living hell.
The monitors showed guards in refrigerated uniforms cruelly raping cowering inmates, the guards holding remote collar bomb detonators in warning to make even the fiercest convicts submit. The guards had no access to women during their entire tours of duty on the planet, and freely used the inmates to satisfy their urges like this. Sometimes after raping an inmate the guards would still detonate their collar bombs anyway just for fun, there was no "justice" for these worthless scum.
Some of the convicts snapped under the abuse, swung at the rapist guards. The blows never landed, necks liquified by collar bombs before they even got the satisfaction of the slight revenge of landing a punch.
The other convicts gripped their collar bombs in terror, and grovelled before the guards, afraid for their lives. The guards detonated a few more heads just for fun, before letting the rest return to their hard labor with their lives.
The aluminium smelter and adjoining foundries were hellishly hot, as damned wretches worked 16 hours a day working and moving the barely valuable hot metal. The planet had so little left of value, aluminium ore was SO abundant in the crust surfaces of pretty much even the most overly mined hive worlds, that it was barely worth the cost of exporting it to other planets.
(Author's note: Aluminium is seriously so cosmically abundant (at least in the form of lower grade ores) that it is the third most common atomic element in Earth's crust rocks, with only Silicon and Oxygen atoms being more common in the crust rocks. Any other rocky planet or moon has a similar abundance of aluminium. The thought that even somewhere like Necromunda or Terra or anywhere else would ever run out of the stuff is completely ridiculous. The only reason it is expensive at all in modern times is because it is a bitch of a metal to smelt from its ore, requiring a lot of energy. The Imperium of Man has working deuterium-deuterium and helium-3 plasma (fusion) generators (which is the holy grail of current nuclear power research), so has far more than enough energy at its disposal to extremely cheaply make more aluminium than they could ever run out of). (Back to story now).
92/EHY/55 would have gone bankrupt long ago if it was self funded, so feeble was the value of what it produced. Fortunately it was fully funded by the Adeptus Munitorum as a (particularly nasty) military prison, paid for by the taxes of the bloated million world Imperium, a place of punishment that technically didn't have to produce a single thing.
Had the guards and wardens been paid better wages then they wouldn't have bothered with the aluminium, and the prison would be a slightly less nasty place, but life was crueller than that. The aluminium was still worth SOMETHING even if not much, and the labor was free. Likewise slightly valuable was reselling the food rations they saved from the dead convicts.
The convicts were each assigned to the prison with a shipment of food estimated adequate to feed them for two years. The wardens and guards in turn constantly killed off the convicts at an unnecessarily high rate, letting them keep all of this leftover food to resell to regular Merchant Navy ships at a profit, as well as making a very slight income from selling the aluminium to these merchants. The wardens and guards all got a cut of these profits, earning far more than their lowly wages.
The prison staff further saved food by actually feeding the bodies of the dead prisoners to the living prisoners, supplemented with only just enough "real" food to ward off nutritional deficiencies that the commissars of the penal legions might notice in their recruits. It was quite a profitable little venture.
The especially callous disregard for the lives of the convicts was a natural result of this homicidal policy, and the abuses had exacerbated over time until Scum Pit was the hell it was today.
The staff had it made here, the only complaint they had was the lack of women, but years of gay sex with the dehumanised prisoners had gotten so familiar that they barely missed women now. They would all retire rich one day, and be able to afford their own harems of female sex slaves to satisfy them for the rest of their lives!
More rape and murder of prisoners filled the monitors, and no one cared at all. The staff were completely untouchable.
A beeping message alert reached the control building without warning. A warden read the message, it was a message copy being relayed by radio from the Astropathic choir building of the planetary warden-governor. This was a high level communication!
The warden read the message curiously...
He then screamed.
***...
