by Darius Hinks
She tapped the viewscreen, pointing out a cluster of runes. ‘Here,’ she said, sounding slightly dazed. ‘The Dragon’s Teeth.’
‘You sound surprised.’
Audus shrugged. ‘This place is insane. You know that. I hoped I would find it, but I was never sure. And we’ve reached it much faster than I expected.’
Isola eyed her suspiciously. ‘And navigating through the Teeth? Is it merely a hope that you can manage that?’
Audus scowled at her. ‘This is good news. We could have circled the fortress for weeks before hitting the right track. How long have we been out here? An hour or two?’
‘Four hours and thirty-five minutes,’ replied Isola.
Audus was no longer listening. ‘Move,’ she said to the pilot. ‘I’ll take her from here. You don’t want to be responsible for what happens when we reach the Teeth.’
The pilot looked at Draik, who nodded.
Audus shuffled in her seat, familiarising herself with the displays and controls and nudging the ship into a new approach trajectory, teasing another roar from the Vanguard’s engines.
Draik, Corval and Isola all walked past her and looked up at the bridge’s oculus, dwarfed by the huge dome of armourglass. The hull was surrounded by a corona of flame as debris collided with the ship’s void shield but, after a few minutes, they saw something definite amongst all the obscurity. A colonnade. Two parallel rows of spires, hanging in the void, leading towards the Blackstone.
‘Fascinating,’ said Corval.
‘These are the Dragon’s Teeth?’ asked Draik, without looking back at Audus.
She nodded, still fiddling with the Vanguard’s controls. ‘Strap in. There’s a lot of crap to fly through before I can really scare you.’
Draik and the others had barely had the chance to find seats and fasten their safety harnesses when Audus banked hard, hurling the Vanguard past the elegant bones of an aeldari void ship, its hull picked clean by salvage crews, leaving just a framework of ribs and spars.
Almost immediately, Audus rolled the Vanguard in the opposite direction as another leviathan surged towards them – a rusting hulk, so blasted and warped it was impossible to recognise.
The bridge of the Vanguard was lined with tall alcoves, each of which housed a hard-wired servitor – semi-human wretches, mindless beyond the very specific navigational tasks allotted to them. Most were little more than a head and an exposed spinal column, welded into a nest of bionics, surrounded by a jumble of iron limbs that clattered across control panels as the servitors made adjustments and calculations. As Audus wrenched the Vanguard from port to starboard, steering it with increasing violence, the servitors chanted hymns, soothing the ship’s machine-spirit with droning plainsong, verse and answer echoing up into the barrel-vaulted ceiling.
Draik was not interested in the wrecks or Audus’ impressive manoeuvres, but he leant forwards in his seat, fascinated by the approaching landmark. He could tell from the drifting remnants of ships surrounding it that the colonnade was vast. The columns looked like narrow, inverted pyramids – canines bereft of a mouth or the pilings of a pier. They began hundreds of miles from the Blackstone and terminated at its surface, framing an area of shadow that Draik knew was a docking point.
‘It does not seem a particularly challenging approach,’ said Corval.
Before Draik could reply, Audus looked back over her shoulder. ‘Wait and see.’
As they neared the first of the spires, Draik saw how tightly packed they were. There would be no way to fly through the sides of the colonnade – they would have to go straight down its centre, like an honour guard at a funerary procession. Even so, he had to agree with Corval. It would not be hard to glide down the centre of the colonnade – even for a shuttle as large as the Vanguard. In fact, it was one of the easier approaches he had seen. He glanced at Grekh, wondering if the creature had tricked him. Was it really essential to bring Audus along, or did Grekh invent a reason for Draik to rescue his friend? The kroot was still wearing his fluttering, bloodbird mask. It seemed unlikely he would have friends.
Audus laughed. ‘Looks like we’re not the only ones with a death wish.’
Draik looked back out through the oculus and his augmetic eye zoomed in on a flash of silver, flickering at the entrance to the colonnade.
‘Xenos,’ he said. The craft was dwarfed by the monolithic stone towers, but Draik recognised its looping, organic curves. ‘Aeldari.’
Audus adjusted her trajectory, giving them time to watch as the alien ship glided towards the Dragon’s Teeth.
‘Now you’ll see what you’re paying me for,’ she said, settling back in her chair.
The bridge fell silent as they watched the scene unfold. The distant ship passed the first of the vast talons without incident, but then, a few minutes later, the two lines of rocks began to sway and drift out of position, like parading soldiers dazed by the sun and falling out of step. It created a ripple of movement that rolled away from the aeldari ship, as though the craft had disturbed the surface of an invisible pool. At first, the rocks seemed to be moving at random, but Draik slowly began to discern a pattern – complex and baffling, but a pattern all the same. The spurs of rock rolled and drifted, but never collided, moving past each other like partners in a dance. It was an incredible sight. The rocks were the height of mountains, but they glided between each other with easy, seamless grace.
The aeldari ship held its course for a while, racing down the avenue of claws, but soon the pendulum swings of the rocks caused it to veer and bank. The closer the ship came to the Blackstone, the more violently the rocks swayed, rushing towards each other and turning on end.
The aeldari pilot was clearly skilled. The speck of silver weaved between the tumbling rocks with an acrobatic series of loops and dives and Audus leant forwards in her seat to watch. ‘Damn. They know their stuff. I think they might…’
Her words trailed off as the rocks whirled amongst each other in a bewildering flurry. The ship hit one and detonated. There was a brief petal of flame, then the embers scattered to the void.
One by one, the rocks slowed and fell back into position. After a few minutes, the wreckage of the ship had vanished and the drifting colonnade looked like it had not moved for millennia.
Isola turned to Draik. ‘This is madness, captain. Even by the standards of the Blackstone.’
Draik looked at Audus. ‘Is it madness?’
‘Of course,’ she laughed.
‘She got us through before,’ said Grekh, his words muffled by his fleshy mask.
Taddeus stared at Isola, outraged. ‘Everything is as I have foretold.’
Draik was still holding Audus’ gaze.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t think this was doable.’
Draik was a skilled duellist and marksman and more widely read than anyone he knew, but it was his aptitude as a judge of character that kept him alive. Audus was hiding something. She was full of flippant comments and nonchalant sarcasm, but it was a smokescreen. When Draik looked in her eyes he saw hunger – the same hunger that had driven him to risk everything going back to the Blackstone. She needed this as much as he did.
Her cocksure gaze faltered as she sensed Draik peering into her thoughts. That moment of doubt was enough for him. She was no fool. And she was not insane.
He nodded. ‘Take us to the Blackstone.’
She looked at him a moment longer, as though wanting to refute something he had not even said. Then she muttered and turned back to the controls. ‘Two degrees starboard.’
The cathedral-sized ship turned slowly to face the stone colonnade. The rocks drew the eye inescapably towards the confounding surface of the fortress, a tenebrous jumble of plains and peaks.
‘Primary thrusters two and three.’ Her gaze locked on the avenue rising up ahead of them. As they drifted closer,
the rocks took on a surreal aspect, their vast size distorting perspective as they leant over the Vanguard.
‘Engage,’ she said, and the ship hurtled forwards between the first two rocks. This close, it was impossible to imagine such goliaths mobile, but as the Vanguard sped on, Draik quickly saw movement. The towers leant away from the ship as though repelled, then rolled back, pendulum-like, gathering momentum.
Audus whistled tunelessly as she gripped the controls and steered the vessel manually, trying a few gentle rolls. The mind-wiped servitors fidgeted, rattling in their alcoves, muttering binaric code and adjusting brass-plated cogitators.
Audus looped and rolled the Vanguard as though it were no bigger than a fighter. Her whistling became less tuneful and more forced, but there was no other sign she was under stress. As her manoeuvres became more daring she became more relaxed, settling her broad shoulders back into the command chair and controlling the ship with a single hand.
The stones turned faster. Soon, it looked like the Vanguard was hurtling through an avalanche, tossed on the tides of an earthquake, riding the crest of a basalt thunderhead, but still Audus looked calm. The whistle faded, but her lips remained in the same position, needlessly pursed, her expression forgotten as she focused every thought on the dance.
As he watched her, a strange thought occurred to Draik. The titans whirling around them were moving in a familiar pattern. He had seen this dance before.
He leant forwards against his restraint, staring at the maelstrom.
No, not a dance, he realised, a different kind of art. The art. The stones were duelling. Positions and thrusts, thrusts and parries, parries and returns. A dazzling display of the skills Draik learned as a youth. His hand moved in time, almost involuntarily, and he mouthed terms his father drove into him on the point of a blade. Prime. Seconde. Carte. Tierce. Quinte. Turn to the side. Legs straight. Head up. Thrust. Disengage. Thrust. Parry.
‘What is this?’ he whispered, with a rising sense of alarm. Was he losing his mind? Was this the madness Audus had spoken of? He looked around the bridge and saw that the others were unchanged. Grekh was hidden behind the bloody creature on his face. Taddeus was reading his journal, not even looking at the lunacy of Audus’ manoeuvres. Isola was scowling, but it was her usual scowl. Pious Vorne looked deranged, her eyes rolling feverishly in sunken sockets, but that was how she had appeared when she first admitted him to Taddeus’ barge. The house guard who had remained on the bridge were watching Audus with awed expressions, but none of them showed any sign of confusion.
He looked back out of the oculus. ‘Prime. Seconde. Carte,’ he muttered. ‘Parry. Disengage.’ There was no doubt. The stones’ movement followed the principles he had learned at the academies on Terra. ‘Impossible,’ he muttered, but he could almost picture his father’s stern, impassive face, breaking into an unexpected smile, pleased as Draik surprised him with his skill, learning the positions and techniques that only an older swordsman would usually attempt. Just like on the Ecclesiarchy barge, when he had spoken of the Imperial Palace, Draik found himself unexpectedly jolted into the past, caught unawares by a memory that had been hidden for decades.
The rocks moved so fast their shapes grew blurred and abstract, impossible to discern. As quickly as it came, the memory vanished, but it left Draik with an odd feeling of disquiet, as though the stones knew something about his past that he did not. As though they knew him.
‘How can she see?’ whispered Isola, staring at Audus, not speaking to anyone in particular.
The scene beyond the oculus was a dazzling blur of textures and after-images. Audus’ hands moved across the control panel with almost inhuman speed, her expression blank.
Then she exhaled a long-held breath and collapsed back in her seat. The tumult outside vanished, revealing a sheer wall of darkness, scored with hundreds of faint, luminous intersections.
‘Emperor be praised,’ intoned Taddeus, tracing runes in the air.
Grekh ripped the bloodbird from his face and stashed it back in his bag, staring at the mountainous shape looming over them. For a moment, something flickered in his eyes. A hint of emotion. Draik wondered if he had misjudged the creature. Perhaps there was something more going on in that head than he had imagined.
Draik looked back at the Blackstone, recalling with a grimace the odd sensation that always hit him when he came this close to it. The fortress was made of a black, alien substrate, like a great slab of obsidian. Cold and inert. But every time Draik approached its surface, he had the unpleasant feeling that it was watching him. Looking him directly in the eye. Peering into his soul.
Audus steered the Vanguard towards a diamond-shaped fissure in the rock. It would have just been a patch of darkness in the darkness, but the edges were limned with a faint, cold glow, shining from somewhere deep within the fortress.
Audus waved Draik’s pilot over and walked away from the controls, looking a little punch-drunk as she flopped into a different seat. ‘You can take it from here,’ she said. ‘You’ll see a plateau just inside the vent when you get closer. It works perfectly as a landing platform.’
Draik nodded at her. ‘You have earned your share. You can wait on the Vanguard if you like, until we need you for the return journey.’
She stared, dazed, looking through him rather than at him. Then she shook her head and focused on his face. ‘Wait here? Screw that. You aren’t leaving me alone in this place. I’m with you for the duration.’
He nodded. It was probably for the best. They were a small group, and however coarse Audus was, she was an able fighter. Then he remembered the strange thought he’d had while she was navigating the rocks. ‘Do you fence?’ he asked.
She laughed. ‘What?’
He shook his head. ‘No matter. Is the atmosphere stable down there?’
She frowned at him, intrigued, then shrugged. ‘Yes, same as the rest of this place. There must be an airlock of some kind as we reach the vent, but I’ve never seen it. I’ve no idea how they work. You certainly don’t see anything closing behind you.’
He nodded. It had been the same each time he docked. The Blackstone was clearly not made by human hands, but the air was breathable, although it did not always behave as one might expect.
As the Vanguard plunged into the Blackstone, its thrusters splashed crimson over the fissure’s walls, and the resultant jumble of shadows only made the place seem more bewildering. Draik saw enough to know they were alone, though. The plateau Audus had mentioned was about a mile wide, diamond in shape and criss-crossed with the same network of pale lines they had seen on the surface. It was a simple enough job to make the final approach and land the shuttle, and ten minutes later they clattered down the landing ramp into the darkness.
The cold hit first, sugaring their boots with a glitter of frost. Then came the sounds – distant and subterranean, an eerie mixture of rumbles and clangs, muffled and distant, as though heard underwater. They echoed and reverberated, half-heard, speaking of bottomless pits and vast, immeasurable distances. Finally there was the presence, the indefinable sense Draik had recalled during their final approach – the unshakable feeling that the Blackstone was peering into one’s soul, a mountainous sentience studying microbe-like invaders.
For a long minute they all stood there, staring into the blackness, paralysed by the strangeness of the place, looking for movement in the shadows, recalling horrors they had seen before. Then Draik strode ahead of the group, the lumen on his pistol stifled by the sombre gloom. He waved the feeble light from left to right, but it only revealed the ground a few feet in either direction. The clatter of his boots echoed up through the blackness, describing a cavernous space. His guards fanned out around him, trying to pierce the darkness with the lumens on their lasguns, but they were as unsuccessful as Draik. Their brass-trimmed uniforms glittered like jewels languishing at the bottom of a well.
Taddeus and Vorn
e came to stand beside him, followed by Isola, Audus and finally Grekh. They all stared into the nothingness, wonder in their eyes.
‘Which way?’ Draik asked, turning to Taddeus.
The priest hesitated, hunched forwards, clutching the medallion-like rosarius hung around his neck and muttering something under his breath.
‘Your eminence,’ said Draik. ‘Which way?’
Taddeus nodded and straightened his back, causing his robes to rustle around his prodigious gut. ‘A moment, captain,’ he said, placing his hand over the relic and closing his eyes. The device responded to his touch. Diodes flickered into life around its edges and there was a series of ratcheting clicks as its mechanism whirred into life. Then he took out his journal and flicked through the pages, jabbing one of his fat fingers at his notes.
‘Straight on,’ he said, slamming the book and pointing dramatically ahead with his mace. ‘For half a mile. Until we reach the far side. This hall leads us to an antechamber. Beyond that lies the maglev.’ He glanced at his disciple, Vorne. ‘The maglev that will take us to the Ascuris Vault.’
She stared back at him, the light of the relic flashing in her widened eyes. ‘Emperor be praised,’ she whispered.
‘Emperor be praised,’ replied Taddeus.
Draik nodded and was about to move on, when he recalled the apocalyptic scenes that filled Taddeus’ barge – eyeless, wailing masses, consumed by the flames that radiated from a saintly priest. He glanced at the book hanging from Taddeus’ belt and remembered a question he had intended to ask before they left Precipice. ‘Your eminence, what do your visions show once you have the eye of…’
‘The Eye of Hermius,’ whispered Vorne, making the sign of the aquila.
Draik nodded. ‘What will happen when you retrieve the Eye of Hermius? What will you do with it?’
Taddeus gripped Draik’s shoulder in his large, meaty hand. He leant close, his eyes as wide as Vorne’s, his breath coming in quick gasps. ‘I will see.’
Audus was standing next to the two priests, fiddling with the pistol Draik had given her. At Taddeus’ words she smirked.