He heard her final scream, mangled by the screech of the bone saw.
Blood squirted out of the doorway and spattered three slashing lines across the floor and up the opposite wall.
Meryn got up, almost crippled by terror. He was tangled in the sling of his rifle. Shadows began to ooze out of the vault like black silk swirling in a breeze. He could smell blood, promethium and burned flesh.
He opened up, firing from the hip at full auto as he backed away. Brick and whitewashed plaster exploded from the walls and ceiling around the doorway. The air clouded with white dust, and the shadow poured through it like a stain.
Meryn hurled the gun away and started to run. He screamed, sprinting for his life.
The hallway was suddenly very long and very straight. There was no end to it. Every three metres there was a burner scorch on the whitewash.
He kept running. Behind him, one by one, the low-burning lamps went out. He heard the pop and fizzle of each globe chasing him like gunshots.
He tried to run faster. He tried to stay ahead of the darkness. His bladder had gone, and he realised the piercing squeals he could hear were his own.
He fell, skinning his palms. He couldn’t breathe. Terror had closed his windpipe.
He looked up. His vision had tunnelled down to a grey haze.
There were two people standing over him. Merity Chass was looking down at him in utter bewilderment. Luna Fazekiel was staring past him, her eyes narrowed.
‘Stay the feth down, captain,’ Fazakiel said.
Fazekiel and Merity opened fire. Meryn screwed into a foetal position, arms clasped around his ears, as Fazekiel’s autopistol and Merity’s carbine blazed over his head. Hot brass bounced off his cheek and neck.
And then it stopped.
‘Check him,’ he heard Fazekiel say. He felt Merity’s hand on him, trying to turn him, trying to uncoil him. He wrenched away from her with a whimper.
He raised his head. Merity was staring at him.
‘What the Throne happened to you?’ she asked.
He didn’t answer. He looked back at the hallway. He didn’t want to, but he knew he had to.
Fazekiel had stepped past him and was staring down the hall, checking the clip of her weapon. The long hallway was empty. The three ceiling lamps closest to them were still lit, fizzling weakly. Beyond them, it was just shadow.
‘I don’t know what we saw,’ said Fazekiel, ‘but it’s gone.’ She turned and looked down at him.
‘What was it, captain?’ she asked. ‘I don’t understand what we glimpsed. We drove it off, but I don’t know if we could do it again. I don’t think I can protect you again. I can’t fight what I don’t understand. Captain? Do you hear me? What was it?’
Meryn shook his head. His mouth wouldn’t work.
Fazekiel crouched down.
‘What did you see, Meryn?’ she asked without a scrap of compassion.
‘I saw everybody die,’ he said.
Eleven: Contact
Handbells were still ringing along the shore line. Squads of packsons hurried through the steep streets of the stacked little cliff-town, going building to building and stopping to question everyone they passed.
Mkoll watched from the top of a bale stack in one of the quayside barns. The roof of the open-fronted barn extended over him, preventing anyone spotting him from above, and he had taken a sheet of tarp from the loading dock and pulled it over him.
Every inch of him ached. His scalp wound had finally stopped bleeding, but the whole area behind his ear was too painful to touch. Dried blood crusted his scalp, the side of his neck and his shoulder. He didn’t have a mirror, but he knew the side of his face was probably purple with trauma.
He was drawn tight with fatigue. He’d rested under the tarp for an hour, but hadn’t dared sleep. Fatigue was just something he’d push through. He’d done it before. It was a matter of will. Body-tired didn’t matter. Mind-tired was the killer. His mind was sharp. The pain had done that.
He watched the scene below him, wishing he still had Olort’s field glasses. The whole of the Fastness was on security vigil – the equivalent, he fancied, of an amber alert in an Imperial garrison. The search teams didn’t interest him much. They were sticking to the higher levels of the city, around the records building. They would have little idea who they were looking for. Their quarry had made a reckless escape across the rooftops of the high town. He was either hiding up there, or had fallen to his death in one of the ditch gullies between the stacked dwellings. They were probably dragging for a body already.
What interested him was the area directly below, a stretch of wharf around the base of one of the loading gantries. Internal freight hoists steadily ferried loads up to the level of the bridge spans where teams of servitors rolled them across to the cruiser’s hold gates. Sixty or more men were working on the rockcrete pan below him, mainly servitors and stevedores, plus a few gangs of Imperial slaves. They were being supervised by several Sekkite officers. They rolled metal carts out from the barns beneath him, carts laden with bales and crates, and shunted them into the hoist cages. A few men rode up with them. The rest waited as empty carts came back down, then clattered them back to the barns to be restocked.
A lighter bumbled past at low level, heading for the ship. Mkoll kept his head covered under the lip of the tarp. The small craft was chased by a shadow that flickered across the working dock and then out across the shivering water. Daylight had gone. Above the mouth of the cone, the sky was a starless grey. The shadow had been cast by the banks of floodlights framed on the edge of the wharf. Mkoll had thought about a lighter or a small lifter, but he wasn’t sure where they were working from. A landing area would be guarded, and it was hard to be anonymous among a small crew.
He watched the lighter turn and settle, lights winking, into a hold cavity further down the flank of the immense ship.
More agriboats were coming in, chugging sideways into the next dock bay along with smoke spilling at water level from their straining motors. They were loaded with more mainland personnel, a few shivering prisoners, and some small artillery pieces with sacks on their muzzles and their split trail carriages closed.
The thousand whispers in his head welled up again like the dead channel of a vox. The voice was speaking, a droning hiss he could feel in his sinuses and jawbone.
I have some words for you too, he thought. I’ll say them in person.
Down below, another train of carts rattled across the rockcrete, the gangs steering them shouting and exchanging comments. Servitors dragged empty ones back to the barn from the hoist. One of the officers, a sirdar, spoke to a group of stevedores, then wandered towards the barn, marking items on a slate.
The sirdar entered the lamplit barn and instructed the servitors which load to move from the freight stacks next.
One of his men called to him. He finished what he was saying, and walked around the bale stack to find out what the man wanted.
There was no one there.
Mkoll dropped down behind him, and snapped his neck with a practised twist. The sirdar’s feet jittered, and then he went limp. Mkoll dragged him behind a heap of trench-wire spools, and stripped off his jacket, watching all the while to make sure no one was coming. A decent jacket, and better boots than the ones Mkoll was wearing, but the boots were a size too small. He took the jacket, the Sekkite helmet and the weapons belt, which had a single shoulder strap. The belt’s pouches were full of hard-round clips because the sirdar carried a long-nosed autogun. There were no las cells to fit the sidearm he already had. But there was a small vox handset, a short-range unit, and three small grenades. They were little silver cylinders. Two were marked with red dots, which he guessed meant smoke. The other, its casing slightly ridged, was marked with a black dot. Fragmentation. Anti-personnel.
Mkoll tucked the laspistol into the back of his waistban
d, then put on the sirdar’s undershirt and jacket, and buckled the weapons belt over the top.
He stepped back behind the wire spools. Two packsons from the labour crews walked past the freight aisle. Once they had gone, he put on the sirdar’s gloves and full-face helmet, gagging slightly at the touch of the tanned leather and the acid smell of the sirdar’s spittle. Then he picked up the slate and stylus.
The sirdar walked back out onto the dock. A work gang was waiting beside a laden row of carts. A hoist car was returning to dock level, jangling with empty carts.
‘Ktah heth dvore voi?’ a stevedore asked him as he walked past.
‘Nen, nen,’ the sirdar replied, busy looking at his slate. ‘Khen vah.’
A bare-chested packson lifted the hoist’s cage door, and the servitors clattered the empty carts out.
‘Kyeth! Da tsa herz! Kyeth! Kyeth!’ the sirdar said, sweeping with his hand to urge the gang to load.
The men started to wrangle the heavy carts into the hoist. One of the packsons looked at the sirdar.
‘Khin bachat Sird Eloth?’ he asked. Where is Sirdar Eloth?
‘Tsa vorhun ter gan,’ the sirdar replied. Gone to his rest.
‘Tyah k’her het!’ the packson scoffed. This early?
‘Khen tor Sird Eloth fagrah,’ the sirdar replied. Sirdar Eloth is a lazy bastard.
The workers laughed. They pushed the cumbersome carts up the fold-down ramp, cursing each other as they handled them into the cage. Another lighter warbled overhead, heading towards the cruiser. Its shadow chased across the dock.
Three servitors and two packsons got into the cage with the new load. One went to pull down the cage door.
‘Nen, coraht!’ the sirdar barked, raising his hand.
He stepped forward and jerked his thumb, ordering one of the packsons out.
‘Shet, magir?’ the man asked.
‘Hsa gor tre shet,’ the sirdar replied, stepping into the hoist in his place. ‘Voi shet tsa khen verkahn.’ I’ve got to go up. Go ready the next load.
The sirdar pulled the cage shut. The hoist began to rise, slow and ponderous, the steel hawsers squealing through poorly greased drums.
The packson with him in the cage said nothing. The three servitors cycled their systems in neutral, and flexed their manipulator arms ready to resume effort.
The hoist reached the loading bridge level, and stopped with a jolt and a thump of block-brakes. The packson slunked open the cage door at the far end.
The sirdar waited while the servitors rolled out the first of the carts. More servitor crews and a few sweating labourers took hold of them, steered them clear, and began to roll them across the bridge.
The sirdar stepped out of the cage. He checked off items on his slate. Two Sekkite officers stood nearby with an excubitor, discussing loading options. None of them acknowledged him.
The sirdar fell in step behind the rumbling train of carts and followed them across the bridge span.
No one challenged him.
The hold gates of the Archenemy cruiser stood wide open to receive him.
‘How do we open a door that isn’t there?’ Curth asked.
‘Maybe we don’t,’ said Laksheema.
‘Say that again,’ said Curth.
Laksheema raised her voice to compete with the steady whoop of the red condition klaxons.
‘I said maybe we shouldn’t, doctor,’ she said.
Curth shot her a foul expression.
Gaunt ran his hand along the old stonework.
‘Maybe we need a drill,’ someone suggested.
Gaunt looked around. Trooper Perday flushed.
‘I mean, like in the Reach, sir,’ she added, nervously. ‘You know, a proper breaching drill. Just thinking out loud…’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Is there a breaching unit in the palace compound?’ asked Gaunt. ‘A Hades?’
‘Must be,’ said Beltayn.
‘Think, think,’ Hark interrupted. ‘How do we get a fething Hades down here? Some of the halls between here and the transit grounds are too narrow, and there’s stairs–’
‘Go in from outside?’ Curth suggested.
‘Not viable,’ said Auerben. ‘Even if we could round one up.’
‘Agreed,’ said Sancto. ‘The thickness of the root wall. It would take days.’
‘And where do we drill?’ Auerben asked.
‘Someone find a fething plan of the undercroft level,’ Gaunt said to no one in particular.
‘Det charges,’ said Sariadzi bluntly.
‘Now, that’s better thinking,’ said Hark, nodding.
‘Stop,’ said Laksheema.
Everyone looked at her.
‘With respect, your debate assumes we want to open the undercroft,’ she said.
‘Feth you,’ said Curth.
‘Feth me all you like,’ Laksheema replied. ‘This is a security matter. A warp incursion. There’s something in there. I believe we would be derelict in our duty to the Throne to open that wall and let it into a palace containing the bulk of crusade high command and the person of the warmaster.’
Daur looked away. Hark squeezed his shoulder.
The Scions snapped around, weapons raised. Grae was returning, bringing the inquisitor’s savant Onabel and two robed interrogators.
‘Let them through,’ said Laksheema. She put her hand on the plump little woman’s elbow and cradled it. ‘Did Grae brief you?’ Laksheema asked.
‘He did, mam,’ Onabel replied. She combed her fingers through her curly silver hair. ‘All our meters are spiking. This is an incursion of serious grade.’
‘Serious enough to evacuate the palace?’ asked Gaunt.
Onabel hunched her shoulders. ‘Not my place to say, high lord,’ she replied. ‘But I wouldn’t stay here. I’m only here because I’m called to work. I’d venture that, at least, the removal to safe distance of senior echelon might be wise. That would include yourself, sir.’
‘I’m staying,’ said Gaunt. ‘Beltayn, go to the war room and…’ he hesitated. ‘No, it’s got to come from someone with authority. Van Voytz won’t act on the word of a vox-man. Inquisitor?’
Laksheema beckoned the two interrogators. She handed them her ordo rosette. ‘Convey to Lord General Van Voyz whatever the Lord Executor instructs you.’
They nodded.
‘Tell him immediate evacuation, including senior level,’ Gaunt said. ‘Tell him to carry Macaroth out of the palace on his shoulders if he has to. Tell him… Ibram told you this. It’s an unconditional order from the Lord Executor.’
‘Yes, lord,’ they replied, and hurried back the way they’d come, the tails of their robes lifting behind them.
Onabel had set her hands on the wall.
‘Here?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Laksheema.
The little savant closed her eyes. She took one hand off the wall and pressed it against her bosom. The other she left in place, her index finger tapping on the stone.
They could smell the ugly aura of psionics immediately. Perday covered her mouth. The Scions took a step back, uneasy.
Clear liquid began to seep out of the stonework, welling up and running down the wall around her hand like heavy beads of condensation. It felt as though someone had opened the door of a walk-in freezer.
‘Water?’ said Daur. ‘Is the flood up this high?’ He reached towards the droplets.
‘Don’t,’ said Laksheema.
‘It’s tears,’ said Onabel. She kept tapping her finger, her eyes squeezed shut.
‘Tears?’ asked Curth.
‘There is a great deal of pain on the other side of this wall,’ said Onabel. ‘Woe.’ Her voice was soft, but a tiny break betrayed her increasing discomfort. ‘I have voices,’ she said. ‘People are… there are dead people. Other
s crying out.’
‘May we hear?’ asked Laksheema. ‘If you can bear it?’
Onabel nodded. When her mouth opened next, it wasn’t her voice that came out of it.
‘–can’t find the door! There’s no door!’
There was no mistaking the voice. It was Mach Bonin. They’d never heard him so agitated, but it was undeniably him. The savant wasn’t impersonating. Bonin’s voice, the product of an entirely different set of vocal chords, was issuing from her mouth.
‘Mach?’ Gaunt said, stepping forward. ‘It’s Gaunt. Tell him it’s Gaunt.’
‘Is he the other side of the wall?’ asked Sancto.
Laksheema shook her head.
‘There’s no fething door, Yerolemew!’ Bonin said through Onabel’s mouth. ‘How’s that fething possible?’
‘I don’t know, Mach. Mach? Mach? There’s something on the stairs.’ Onabel’s speech had switched seamlessly to the gruff, rich cadences of the Belladon bandmaster. They’d never heard him panicking either. ‘Mach, it’s on the stairs. It’s all shadows. The women are screaming.’
‘Sergeant major!’ Gaunt shouted at the wall and the savant. ‘Sergeant Major Yerolemew! This is Gaunt! Can you hear me?’
‘Sir? Sir?’ Onabel’s lips kept moving, but Yerolemew’s voice had faded, as though he had moved away. The volume rose and fell like a ’caster looped on and off a signal. ‘Mach, did you hear that? Bonin! I heard someone. I heard Gaunt!’
The noises from the savant became inaudible. Muffled sounds. Echoes of words.
‘Bonin!’ Daur called out, moving in beside Gaunt. ‘Bonin? It’s Ban! Let me know you can hear us.’
The voice coming out of Onabel suddenly giggled. A different voice in another register. A child.
‘Feth,’ murmured Hark.
Curth nodded. ‘Yoncy.’
The giggle stopped. Onabel’s mouth continued to move silently. Then suddenly, sharply–
‘Ban?’
Daur shuddered. He fought to control the contortions of his face. His eyes filled with tears.
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