Blackstone Fortress

by Darius Hinks

  Further down, beneath Isola’s scrambling limbs, was the main route through the Skeins – a jury-rigged transitway, welded together from the superstructures of flayed ships. The road was crowded with debris, mechanical and human, all robed in darkness. The glow-globes and lumen-strips had been smashed long ago, so the only light came from the distant glare of the Dromeplatz, a ceaseless sunset, rippling on the horizon and turning the Skeins into a carmine hell. The air beneath the void screen was tormented by engine fumes and recycling turbines. It stung the eyes, burned the throat and drowned everything in a thick, toxic fug. Precipice was a forest of salvaged spires, smouldering and ephemeral, like a half-remembered fire.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Isola, climbing up beside him on the gantry. Once she had caught her breath she shook her head and said, ‘Captain, we’ve been here for seven hours. Is this the best use of your remaining time? We’re scheduled to leave within the week – unless there is some concrete progress.’ She studied the sweltering scene below. Isola had a broad, boyish face, wide-set eyes and neat, slicked-back black hair. She wore a meticulously pressed uniform and a habitual frown of disapproval.

  Draik removed one of his gauntlets and massaged his long, lean snarl of a face. He looked out through the void screen, staring at the phantasm responsible for all this avarice. Beyond Precipice’s jumble of crooked walkways and brume-shrouded ships, the revolutions of the heavens had ceased, consumed by a wall of nothing. There were few who could hold its gaze. The Unfathomable. The Abyss. The Deep. The Blackstone Fortress.

  Draik stared into the monolithic dark, trying to discern something solid – something real. His eyes slipped across angles and shadows, unable to find purchase, glimpsing hints and suggestions but nothing he could recall for more than an instant. The Blackstone glared back, malign and unknowable. Mocking him. The star fort was the size of a small planet, with Precipice as its ramshackle moon, but even those brave souls clinging to Precipice would never claim to understand the Blackstone. Countless rumours had crossed the Western Reaches – enticing tales of the treasures to be found in its depths. But those reckless few who survived its mantle of debris clouds soon found that the mystery only deepened. The Blackstone guarded its secrets well.

  Draik put his gauntlet back on and slapped the girder, sending up clouds of rust. ‘Gaulon said to look here, in the Skeins.’

  ‘Gaulon was a drunk and a liar.’

  ‘But not a fool. He knew I’d come looking for him if he lied.’

  Isola shook her head. There was a small cogitator slung under her arm – a copper box covered in rows of teeth-like keys. She rattled her fingers over them and the device hummed into life. Needles trembled over luminous dials, valves hummed and mechanisms chittered. She stared at the displays. ‘We’ve covered the whole district, captain. Twice.’

  Draik waved his lho-holder at the Skeins, gilding the dark with embers. ‘People don’t come here to be found.’

  ‘Captain, we’ve been on Precipice for three months. We have far exceeded our remit.’ Isola’s expression softened a little. ‘I admit, it seemed as though you were getting close to something, but what do you really have to show? We’ve pushed too much into this venture. His lordship’s instructions were clear – return to the Curensis Cluster and finish our negotiations with the Tann-Karr. There’s a fortune waiting for us in that system. It’s time to go. We can forget about Precipice. The Blackstone Fortress is not the only prize in the galaxy.’

  Draik said nothing, staring out through the operculum again, his human eye reflecting the void screen’s warps and eddies while his augmetic eye flashed red, catching the glow of the Dromeplatz.

  Isola looked exasperated. ‘Even if you could solve this mystery, there’s no guarantee it would change your situation.’

  Draik looked at Isola as he took another drag from his lho-stick. Officially, she was his attaché, but they both understood her role: she was there to keep him on track, and to report to the family if he strayed. Her loyalty was to House Draik first, its errant son second. She was rigid, punctilious and unswervingly honest. Draik liked her.

  ‘I’m on to something, Isola.’

  ‘You found a name. That’s not the same as finding an answer.’

  ‘The Ascuris Vault. All we need is a way in.’

  Isola sighed and turned off the cogitator. ‘We have our orders, captain. I sent missives to his lordship explaining that we’re already preparing to head back to the Draikstar.’

  Draik gripped a girder until his knuckles were white.

  ‘We lost five men in that last attempt,’ said Isola. ‘And left empty-handed. There was no sign we were getting close to the vault.’

  He stared at her. ‘This time I have something, Isola, I know it.’

  She closed her eyes in despair. ‘How many times have you said that?’

  Draik was about to reply when he heard an unexpected sound. He held up a hand for silence.

  Raucous laughter echoed up from the shadows.

  ‘Not everyone is hiding,’ said Draik.

  He gripped a handrail and slid down it onto a lower gantry, dropping into a crouch and staring through the pipework, drawing the rapier that hung at his belt.

  There were men swaggering down the transitway, kicking rubbish and bellowing with laughter. Even through the rolling smog, Draik could see how dishevelled and filthy they were. They were shouting and belching as they approached, waving machetes and pistols.

  He grabbed a dangling cable and slid down to street level for a better view. A long, rangy shape was scrabbling ahead of them, limping and low to the ground. Some kind of injured animal. They were hurling junk at it, jeering and snorting as it tried to drag itself away.

  ‘Captain,’ warned Isola from up on the gantry, but she was too late. Draik had already walked out to face them.

  The gang halted. Their laughter faded and they backed away, weapons raised, as Draik strode towards them through the crimson gloom.

  ‘What’s this?’ growled a man with a mohawk, frowning and swinging his head from side to side, like a dog on a scent.

  Despite the gruffness of the man’s voice, it was clear Draik had unnerved him. Draik marched through the rubble, imperious and grim, examining the men down the length of his long, regal nose. He grimaced at their filthy rags, as though studying a grub that had crawled from his breakfast. The lights of the Dromeplatz flashed along his rapier and glinted in his augmetic eye. Draik was clearly not from the Skeins. He was dressed in a luxurious military dress coat trimmed with gold piping. His starched breeches were immaculate, and his cuffs were embroidered with fine silver thread. But Draik would have cut an aristocratic figure even in rags. He had the face of an Imperial statue: leonine, flinty and proud, with a hard, sword-slash mouth and a thick waxed moustache.

  ‘Captain Draik,’ he said with a stiff bow.

  The gang stared at him for a moment, surprised by his clipped, formal manner of speech. Then they burst into laughter.

  ‘It’s Guilliman ’is bloody self,’ snorted the man with the mohawk, marching across the road and squaring up to Draik. He was massive; a round-shouldered ape, a foot taller than Draik and clutching a ratchet as long as his arm that he had sharpened into a mace.

  ‘Don’t let that clicker go,’ the brute snapped, waving his weapon at the animal that was still trying to crawl down the transitway. His men leapt to obey, kicking it into a burnt-out cargo crate.

  ‘Captain Draik, you say?’ He stepped closer, pressing his oil-splattered chest against the Imperial eagle on Draik’s cuirass, staining the gleaming plate.

  Draik stepped back and wiped the cuirass clean. ‘I didn’t catch your name.’

  ‘The Emperor,’ grinned the man, eliciting a round of sniggers from the rest of the gang.

  ‘Delighted. I’m after a pilot. Someone who knows how to reach the Dragon’s Teeth.’

  �
�Dragon’s Teeth? There ain’t no Dragon’s Teeth.’

  The man looked at his lackeys and they stopped tormenting the animal to grin back at him. ‘Which idiot told you they was real? No one’s ever seen ’em. They ain’t a thing.’

  The animal in the cargo hold snarled and lunged forwards, trying to break free, clicking and snorting until the gang attacked it with renewed violence, driving it back with a flurry of kicks.

  ‘What have you got there?’ asked Draik, peering through the gloom. The thermocoupling in his ocular implant clicked, focusing on the crate. The animal was thrashing from side to side and its heat signature was hard to discern. It was larger than a man, though; he could see that much. And it looked to be bipedal, but with backwards jointed legs and claws in place of feet.

  ‘A man-eater,’ said the brute with the mohawk. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll kill it. Just having some fun. It’s a hunt.’

  The other men sniggered and Draik’s distaste grew. They looked like a manifestation of every disreputable sight he had witnessed over the last seven hours. His hand slipped involuntarily to the handle of his power sword.

  ‘Captain,’ said Isola behind him, sensing the approach of trouble.

  Draik was not in the habit of displaying emotion in front of the lower orders, but he was tired and frustrated. He could not entirely keep his disdain from his voice. ‘Do your hunts often involve outnumbered, wounded, unarmed prey?’

  The man’s expression hardened as he saw Draik’s hand resting on the sword. ‘We hunt whatever we like.’ He gripped his mace in both hands and drew back his shoulders. His face was a mess: scarred, misshapen and clogged with filth, but his eyes glittered as he studied the gilded pistol at Draik’s belt.

  Draik raised an eyebrow and lifted his sword, adopting a loose-limbed en garde position. He knew he should leave these low-lives to their vile amusement, but Isola’s words were still echoing round his head. It’s time to go. Anger and frustration quickened his pulse. A wolfish snarl spread across his face.

  ‘Grax,’ said the man. ‘Put a hole in ’im.’

  A man with a laspistol backed away from the thrashing animal and pointed his gun at Draik.

  Draik shook his head, turned lightly on his heel and ran down the transitway towards him.

  Grax fired, lighting up the junkyard with a las-blast.

  Draik dodged the shot and it burned through the air, hitting nothing.

  Grax whirled around, cursing, training his gun on the shadows.

  Draik swung back into view, clutching the same cable that he had used to reach the transitway. His rapier flashed cobalt as it slid through Grax’s shoulder, causing the man to drop the pistol and stagger backwards, howling in pain and clutching his wound.

  More shots blazed through the shadows, surrounding Draik in a cloud of shrapnel as he looped through the air. He loosed the cable and somersaulted over their heads, slicing his rapier back and forth and landing in the centre of the mob, filling the air with blue contrails.

  The men staggered, clutching wounds, spouting blood and crying out in confusion.

  The man with the mohawk charged, bellowing and drawing back his mace.

  Draik waited calmly, sword arm raised, his rapier hanging loosely from his grip. At the last minute, he threw a feint. The man fell for the ruse, lunging in one direction as Draik sidestepped the other way and jabbed his sword in and out of his throat.

  The man whirled around, preparing to attack again, unaware of his wound. He marched towards Draik and tried to speak, but his words emerged as a bloody cough. He staggered, confused, trying to catch the blood rushing down his chest.

  Draik lowered his sword and stepped back, giving another stiff bow as the man dropped heavily to his knees, gasping for breath.

  Draik sensed movement to his left and leapt back, dodging another shot. He twisted and pounced, rounding on his attacker with a graceful twirl, thrusting his rapier into the man’s chest with a flash of blue sparks.

  There was another howl of gunfire, but this time it was Isola. She had followed Draik out into the centre of the transitway and silenced another man with a shot to the head.

  Draik strode back towards their leader. He was supine, sprawled on his back with an ashen face, surrounded by blood. Draik put an end to his hunting days. He looked around for any other attackers. Everyone was either dead or dragging themselves away, stifling groans as they slipped back into the darkness. Draik cleaned his blade and slid it back into its scabbard, surveying his handiwork.

  His blood cooled as he met Isola’s eye. She did not have to say anything. Her expression was enough: this was beneath him.

  ‘Take me back to the Vanguard,’ he said, frustrated with himself. ‘I need some clean air and good brandy.’

  ‘Wait!’

  The voice came from behind them and they whirled around, pistols raised.

  The animal had emerged from the crate and stepped out into the light.

  The alien was humanoid, but taller and leaner than a man. His head was long, tapered and avian, with a tall crest of spines and a wide, beak-like jaw. His skin was barbed and as thick as flak armour, but it had been slashed by dozens of blows.

  ‘A kroot?’ asked Isola, squinting through the gloom.

  Draik nodded. He kept his pistol raised but did not fire, allowing the alien to approach.

  ‘You saved me,’ the alien said. He spoke good Gothic, enunciating the words more clearly than the men Draik had just killed. His throat could not entirely abandon his racial heritage though, accompanying the words with a musical jumble of clicks and whistles.

  ‘Still to be decided,’ said Draik, keeping his gun pointed at the creature’s head.

  The kroot staggered to one side then leant across the crate to steady himself.

  Draik stepped closer, keeping his gun raised.

  The alien clacked his beak a few times, as though crunching food. ‘You seek the Dragon’s Teeth. I heard you. Over near the crossvault. You came to Precipice to raid the Blackstone, like everyone else. But you need a pilot. You want to reach the Ascuris Vault.’

  Draik lowered his gun in surprise. ‘How do you know I’m looking for the Ascuris Vault? I didn’t mention that to anyone out here.’

  ‘Why else choose that route? The Dragon’s Teeth are impassable. Only a fool would try. Or someone who needs the Ascuris Vault. You do not look like a fool.’

  ‘You seem very knowledgeable on the subject.’

  ‘I have been through the Dragon’s Teeth.’

  Draik frowned. Perhaps he was not the only one who had guessed the importance of the Ascuris Vault. ‘Why?’

  ‘I was employed. By a priest called Taddeus. The vault is holy.’

  The kroot crouched down and opened the mouth of one the corpses. As Draik watched in disgust, the alien plucked something from his jacket and placed it in the corpse’s mouth, whispering as he did so.

  ‘You sought the vault for religious reasons,’ prompted Draik.

  The kroot shook his head, looking around for another corpse. ‘Not me. I did not know of it.’

  The creature was frustratingly distracted, but Draik persevered. ‘The priests, then, they sought the vault for religious reasons?’

  ‘Taddeus has visions.’ The kroot hurried over to another dead body and placed something in its mouth, whispering again.

  ‘You saw the vault?’

  The kroot shook his head, still fiddling with the thing he had placed in the corpse’s mouth, prodding it then licking his claws, like a chef testing seasoning. ‘The priests became odd. Then died. They found no vault. Taddeus got back. But he was insane to begin with.’

  The kroot finished his ritual and walked back over to Draik. He stared at the dead bodies and let out another burst of clicking sounds. ‘They do not eat kroot meat and yet they would kill me. It makes no sense.’ He looked direc
tly at Draik. ‘I will help. I can help you reach the vault. And keep you alive.’

  ‘You’re the pilot who passed through the Teeth?’

  ‘No, but I can lead you to her.’

  ‘And what will you want in return?’ Survival on Precipice meant dealing with species Draik would usually kill on sight. Precipice’s brutal, frontiersman law had created a strange, fragile egality that Draik had not witnessed anywhere else. But, whatever the rules of Precipice, Draik could barely hide his distaste at talking to the alien. The creature was barbaric. His hide was covered in ritual scars and tattoos, and rattled with bone fetishes. As he looked closer, Draik saw dozens of tiny cages dangling from the kroot’s arms. They were filled with mutilated insects – beetles and flies that had legs and wings removed but were still alive, whirring angrily in their cages as he moved. These were the things he had been putting in the corpses.

  ‘I must repay the debt.’ The kroot glanced at the shadow hanging over them. ‘The Blackstone brought us together. Do not question its plans.’

  Draik looked out into the blackness. ‘There are many things in there, kroot, but a plan is not one of them.’

  ‘My name is Grekh.’

  ‘Grekh,’ said Draik, lowering his pistol. ‘I’m Captain Janus Draik. This is my attaché, Isola.’

  Grekh did not reply. He leant against an outlet pipe, trying to catch his breath, seeming to be in pain.

  ‘Isola,’ said Draik. ‘Pain suppressors.’

  Grekh shook his head and waved Isola away. He rattled through the cages strapped to his arms and removed one of the struggling insects. Then he popped it in his beak and closed his eyes for a moment.

  After few deep breaths, Grekh stood upright. He looked down at Draik and Isola, teetering on long, gangly bird legs. His eyes were blank and unreadable.

  ‘No one has reached the Ascuris Vault,’ said Grekh. ‘It is madness to try. But the priest believes in it. He has waking dreams. And if madness is what you seek, I can get you there. I can take you to the pilot.’

  ‘My trade contact, Tor Gaulon, told us the pilot was somewhere here, in the Skeins.’