Honourbound - Rachel Harrison

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘No good,’ he says, to himself. ‘That’s no good.’

  If something is wrong then Zane could kill the lot of them the way she killed that traitor witch. Turned it into meat and blood and nothing more. It’s no fate at all, to die that way. He can’t let it happen. Not to his kin. So he turns on his heel and chases the noise. Pulls his knife, and one of those injectors he took from Kolat.

  It’s just in case, he thinks to himself as he punches the needle clean through his fatigues into the meat of his arm.

  Just in case I have to kill her.

  Fel moves down the side of the storage hangar, keeping to the shadows cast by the buildings and the equipment stacked between them. Through the space between this hangar and the next, he can see clear out into the landing field, where the materiel is being moved. Fel can only see Kavrone troops moving to and from the lander. No Munitorum in their coveralls. No logisticians, or adepts, just soldiers. It’s another strange thing in a series of strange things. The crusade runs on routines. Repetition. There’s an order to all things, top to bottom, from Crys’ fight club to the reassignment of regiments. All things have their rules and their reasons, but this is in breach of most of the ones he knows.

  And then there is the matter of Kaspar Sylar.

  The Kavrone general is standing by the bulk lander, cast in half-shadow by the hard light from inside. He is watching his soldiers load up the crates and containers. His continued presence means he sanctioned what they are doing. That they are sending guns, and whatever else is in those containers, to a dead regiment on his orders. If all of that is true and Sylar knows it, then that makes him complicit in the misuse of assets, and of providing misinformation to High Command. The idea of that sits very poorly with Andren Fel.

  He has to get back to Raine, to tell her what he has seen, but he won’t do that without one last thing. He needs to look at the crates themselves to know for sure whether they are really being sent to the Strixian 99th. As much as he’d like to trust Lori Ghael’s eyes, he trusts his own more.

  The storage hangars are all built to template with sliding steel doors at the front, like an aircraft hangar, but there are also smaller, single access doors on the sides. The one Fel comes to is locked, but it doesn’t take much to break the mechanism. It’s just a case of knowing where to apply pressure.

  Inside, the hangar is lit by unstable strip lumens that make the shadows dance. He can hear the Kavrone moving around at the top of the hangar, but they won’t see him behind the stacks of containers. Whatever they are moving is big. Each container is at least five metres deep and twice as long, like caskets for giants. They are also disruptor-fielded. Fel can feel the hum of it in the air. It makes his teeth ache in his head.

  He drops to a crouch to get a better look at one of the containers. They are plasteel, and unmarked in all ways save for one. There’s no insignia. No wear and tear. The only markings on the containers are the serial codes stamped on them and the silver inlays glimmering in the metal. The patterns of it remind Fel of Devri’s tattoos. That unease he feels grows worse. Dizzying. For the first time in a long time, Fel feels the urge to turn and run. He has to shake his head to clear it and choose to slow his breathing. He has to put his hand down to stop himself from falling against the containers.

  And then he hears footsteps at his back and the whine of a lasgun power pack on the charge.

  Hells, Fel thinks.

  ‘Stand up slow, or I drop you.’

  The voice is male. The accent Kavrone. There’s a waver in the voice that suggests that the speaker is wary. Nervous, even. Fel gets to his feet and raises his hands so that the Kavrone can see he isn’t armed.

  Not with a gun, anyway.

  ‘This area is off limits,’ the Kavrone says. ‘But then you broke a lock to get in here, so I think you know that.’

  Fel says nothing. He won’t give the Kavrone his voice. Instead he looks at how the stablight mounted on the Kavrone’s gun is casting against the containers and works out how far away he is. Arm’s reach, surely. From the level of it, Fel would guess he’s got height on the Kavrone too.

  And he would also guess that he’s quicker, at a push.

  ‘Now, turn around,’ the Kavrone says. ‘Go for that knife you carry and I’ll shoot out your throat.’

  Fel does as he’s told. He turns around, and he doesn’t go for his knife. Instead he lunges for the Kavrone and grabs the rifle before it can go off, twisting it clear of the Kavrone’s hands. He hears one of the soldier’s wrists go with the force of it. He drives the butt of the rifle into the Kavrone’s face and sends him reeling. Before he can recover, Fel gets him in a choke-hold until he goes still. Unconscious and bloody, but not dead.

  Just like with the door, it’s a case of knowing where to apply pressure.

  Fel drags the Kavrone into the shadows between two of the containers, leaving him sat upright so he won’t suffocate before he comes to. As well as the rifle, the Kavrone has a knife. Fel throws both of them among the containers at the back of the hangar so that he’ll have to look for them. Last of all, he takes the order script the Kavrone is carrying. It’s a neat roll of parchment with a list of serial codes stamped on it. One of them matches the container he checked earlier.

  Right at the bottom, there’s the despatch order and an icon that Fel doesn’t recognise. A hunting bird in white, wings spread against a circle of flame.

  For immediate and secure redeployment to the Strixian 99th regiment, the order says.

  Underneath it, there are words printed that make him go cold.

  Handle with care, it says. Cargo is live.

  Lydia Zane sees the rain-soaked ground through half-lidded, bleary eyes as one of the unmarked soldiers pulls her to her feet, holding her arms so that she cannot fight him. They took her darkwood staff when she tried to crack their heads open with it, and they have disabled and removed her locator collar. The soldier lifts her with such ease, as if her bones are hollow, just like those of her birds. She cannot see them, because Toller has taken them from her along with her gifts. For the first time, Zane longs to see those birds and their watchful black eyes.

  She longs to break Toller and his toy soldiers like she did Calvar Larat.

  ‘You will see,’ Toller says. ‘You are wasted amongst your so-called kin. We will put your gifts to use for the crusade. For the Emperor.’

  With considerable effort, Zane lifts her head and spits at him. Toller raises his fist and strikes her, and the world turns again. Dazzling.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Toller says.

  ‘And where are you going, exactly?’

  The voice startles Zane. She manages to lift her head again to see Daven Wyck standing there. He must have been far from the encampment to hear the trouble and come running, given the witch-circle of open space between Zane’s own tent and the others. Wyck is rain-soaked and smiling, holding his combat knife in a loose grip. Of all her kinfolk, he is the last she would have asked for. The one who has thought often about whether he would be able to kill her, given the chance. She would not put it past him to try it, either, if he thought he could do it.

  She knows that he has done worse, over less.

  Toller looks at Wyck’s fatigues and his mark of rank.

  ‘Above your clearance, I’m afraid, sergeant.’

  The two soldiers either side of the one holding Zane in place raise their rifles and point them at Wyck. It doesn’t seem to bother him. He nods, still smiling. It should be handsome on a face like his, but it just looks jagged, like the edge of something broken.

  ‘Oh, you have me wrong,’ Wyck says. ‘You’ll have no trouble from me.’

  His eyes are dark as the night around them, the black of his pupils flooding over the grey. Zane can see how he breathes rapid and shallow and realises that even now, after the day’s fighting is done, he is still poisoning himself with those sti
mms he takes. One of his ugly secrets.

  ‘You can kill her, for all I care,’ Wyck says, with that smile still in place.

  ‘Bastard,’ Zane hisses.

  ‘See, now,’ he says. ‘And you wonder why I’ll be glad to see the back of you.’

  He looks at her, and there is something more than just cruelty in those flooded eyes of his. Wyck takes another step forward, closing the distance between them.

  ‘Even if you are my kin,’ Wyck says.

  Zane flinches.

  Kin.

  He said kin.

  ‘Whether or not trouble was your intent, you have already caused it,’ Toller says. ‘For yourself, at any rate.’

  He raises his hand and around Zane the toy soldiers move.

  ‘Kill him,’ Toller says.

  With Kolat’s stimms boiling Wyck’s blood, the armoured soldiers seem to move slowly, as if through water. Big, obvious movements. Glints from their guns as rain hits the metal. The rain is slow too. Much slower than his heart as he lunges forwards to close the distance before either of those unmarked soldiers can shoot him. The one in the dress uniform hasn’t even drawn his pistol yet.

  Stupid.

  Slow.

  Wyck jumps into the first soldier and puts him on his back. His knife goes into the soft joint at the soldier’s neck. Straight through. He feels something go inside and the soldier thrashes and shakes and spasms. Wyck puts the knife in him twice more before he dies. Through the soft joints. Then he blinks the blood from his eyes and moves for the other one. The soldier doesn’t flinch or step backward. Brave, or just stupid too. The soldier fires his rifle and Wyck drops into a slide so that the shot grazes his shoulder instead of dropping him. His knife hand goes numb from it, but he doesn’t let go. The soldier twists to follow him and fire again and Wyck cuts through the backs of both of his knees where there’s no armour. The soldier cries out and goes down heavy, losing his gun. A kick to the second soldier’s head while they are both on the ground makes him go as still as the first. Wyck gets to his feet.

  ‘Enough!’

  The uniformed man’s voice is slow just like the rain and the way everyone moves. He is pointing a pistol at Zane. The psyker is dribbling blood because she fought them. For a second, it’s almost enough to make Wyck want to like her.

  ‘I will kill her,’ he says, in his slow voice.

  Wyck laughs so hard it hurts his throat. ‘Do it, then,’ he says.

  He doesn’t do it. Of course he doesn’t. You don’t kill what you came for. Instead he hesitates, frowns and then falls over backwards with Wyck’s thrown knife buried in the middle of his chest. A good throw. Heart level. In to the hilt. The minute the uniformed man hits the earth, something in the air changes. The temperature drops like a stone and Wyck finds he can’t move because of the pressure that’s coming from Lydia Zane.

  The pressure that breaks every one of the last soldier’s bones before he can even scream. He folds like parchment paper and finally lets go of Zane. It’s the only thing that seems to happen faster than Wyck’s heart can beat. Then Zane falls forwards and the pressure lets up and the night falls silent, save for the rain and the way his heart thunders like a storm of its own. Wyck looks down at his hands. At the body of the soldier at his feet.

  Black armour, trimmed with silver.

  Twin-headed eagles.

  Rain and blood all falling and running and dripping.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  He starts to laugh again without meaning to. It bubbles up like blood out of a deep cut. The dream the witch gave him was true. Just not the way he thought. It’s not his own he killed.

  Not this time.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ Zane asks him, snapping him out of his thoughts. ‘Come here to help me?’

  Her voice is a rasp that’s hard to pick up over the storm. Wyck crosses over to her, stopping out of her arm’s reach. He won’t get closer than that to a witch. Zane looks like a drowned thing. All pale and bruised with those false, flat eyes.

  ‘I didn’t,’ he says. ‘I came here because I figured you had lost it. That I would have to kill you.’

  Zane looks up at him, her face blue-pale and streaked with rain.

  ‘You could try,’ she says.

  Then she starts laughing. It’s like a cough, or something wounded trying to die. It unsettles Wyck so badly that he takes a step backwards without intending to. She gets to her feet and puts out her arm, pulling her splintered staff through the air towards her. It lands in her palm with a snap.

  Wyck walks over to where the uniformed man is lying with his open eyes fixed on the night sky. ‘What was he?’ he asks. ‘What did they do to you to catch you like that?’

  ‘His name was Andol Toller,’ Zane says. ‘And he was soulblind. A blank.’

  Wyck doesn’t know whether that distresses him more or less than the idea of a witch. Cursed is one thing, but to be without a soul is something else entirely.

  ‘They must have wanted you badly,’ he says. ‘To kill for it.’

  ‘They wanted my gifts, whether I would give them or not.’ Zane frowns. ‘That last one to die. His mind was full of empty spaces, as if he had been made to forget.’

  Wyck can feel his headache coming back before time.

  ‘Did you find anything else in his head?’ he asks her.

  ‘Shapes,’ Zane says. ‘Sounds and sights and smells. Cold, like mid-winter. The song of machines. Needles being pushed into skin.’ Her frown grows deeper. ‘The smell of fire, and the touch of silent wings.’

  Her cable crown is humming loud as she remembers. Wyck can hear it over the rain.

  ‘So, nothing useful,’ he says, with a shake of his head.

  ‘Toller said that he was sent on behalf of High Command,’ Zane says. ‘And now they are dead.’

  Wyck puts his foot on Toller’s chest to get purchase enough to pull his knife out, then wipes the blade clean on his fatigues. There’s not a patch on them that isn’t dark with mud or blood. Camouflage for camouflage.

  ‘They shot first,’ he says. ‘Or they tried to, anyway.’

  ‘That might be true, but we cannot report it,’ Zane says. ‘The commissar would have us for dead.’

  Wyck nods. His heart is still hammering but the want to laugh is wearing off. He can feel the cold of the rain and the wind. The burn of the las-wound in his shoulder. The old, familiar dread that comes with the idea of being found out.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Zane asks.

  Wyck looks around at the four dead men, who are rain-slick and still. He looks at the collapsed habs and manufactoria and the deep darknesses exposed by shelling.

  ‘We hide them,’ he says. ‘And we make a secret of it.’

  Raine meets with Andren Fel with two hours to go until dawn. The storm has turned soft, the rain to mist, like fret blown from an angry ocean.

  They meet in what was once the palace of the forgefathers. It would have been grand, once. Great iron and brass cogwheels line the atrium on either side of Raine, supporting the domed ceiling far above. The ceiling had been leaded crystal, before, stained with angular depictions of the god-killers built in Laxus Secundus’ forges. Now Raine crunches a world’s legends under her boots as she walks to where Fel waits for her, at the foot of the stairs to the palace proper.

  ‘You have been gone a long time,’ she says. ‘I take it you turned up more than just idle talk.’

  Fel nods. He sits down on the stairs, and Raine sits beside him. The stairs are marble, inlaid with hexagrammic patterns that have been splintered and shattered. It is not the first time that they have met here, on these steps, under a night sky. They did the same on the night before the primary forge too. Just to talk, like they always do. To share stories. Those meetings are a habit that Raine knows that she should not have, just as much as she knows she cann
ot give them up.

  ‘It is as you said,’ Fel says. ‘Things are changing.’

  Fel is turning a parchment screed in his gloved hands. His restlessness makes Raine uneasy, because he is not the type to act like that. Not unless something is really troubling him.

  ‘And I don’t think it is just the Sighted,’ Fel says.

  He holds out the parchment and she takes it. It is speckled by rain, but otherwise undamaged. She unrolls the parchment and looks at it as he explains to her what he learned and what he saw. First from the Antari and the logisticians, then from the landing fields.

  ‘The Strixian Ninety-Ninth,’ Raine says, when he stops talking. ‘They are dead.’

  Fel nods. ‘On Hyxx, I know.’

  Raine frowns and shakes her head. The name means something to her, because she doesn’t forget the dead.

  ‘No, not Hyxx. It was the Coris Belt, I’m sure of it. A whole flotilla, shot to scrap.’

  Fel goes still when she says those words.

  ‘Regiments have been rebuilt in the past,’ he says. ‘Forged together from broken parts to die again.’

  ‘That is true,’ she says. ‘But I don’t think that is the case here, do you?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I don’t.’

  Raine looks at the parchment in her hand. At the words, printed in red.

  ‘Cargo is live,’ she says.

  ‘Live or not, whatever the Kavrone were moving cannot be good,’ Fel says. ‘It felt like submersion, just standing beside those containers. Like being held under with no light to see the surface.’

  He is flexing his fingers as if they hurt him. As if what he is trying to say hurts him too.

  ‘One of them got the drop on me,’ he says. ‘I didn’t hear a thing until he was close. I should have, but there was something about that place, and those containers.’

  ‘Did he see anything to know you by?’ Raine asks.

  Fel shakes his head. ‘He won’t forget it in a hurry, though. I had to hurt him pretty badly.’

  ‘That sits poorly with you,’ Raine says.