by Dan Abnett
'The what?'
'No offence. Your reputation precedes you/
'Does it now? In a good way?'
Roban grinned and shook his head, like a man who might have heard something, but who had decided to make up his own mind.
'It's an old type-ten conical void/ Arbites Commander Lucius reported presently. Tangent eight-seven-eight harmonic wave. We don't have an override code. Lady Lange wouldn't permit it/
'I bet she wishes she had now/ said Interrogator Inshabel, caustic and to the point once again. I was beginning to like him.
Thank you, Luckless/ I said.
'It's... Lucius, sir/
'I know/
I tried to remember everything Aemos had counselled me about shields over the years. I wished I had his recall. Better still, I wished I had him here.
'We can collapse it/ I said, with fair confidence.
'Collapse a void shield?' Roban asked.
'It's conical... super-surface only. And it's old. Voids shrug off just about anything, but they don't retain their field if you take out one or more of the projectors.
That buttress there, the one the garden wall is built around, that's got to be one of the projector units, seated down into the ground/
Roban nodded, apparently impressed. 'I see the logic, but not the practice/
I walked over to Brother-Sergeant Kurvel, interrupting his conversation with Heldane without apology, and explained what I wanted to do.
Heldane scoffed at once. 'Lyko's already trying that!'
'How?'
'He's located the outer controls at the front gate and is trying to break their coding...'
'Coding and controls that will be dead and locked out thanks to Esarhaddon. Lyko's wasting his time. We can't switch this off. We can't break Esarhaddon's control over its system. But we can undermine the system itself/
Heldane was about to speak again, but Voke shut him up.
'I think Gregor may be on to something/
Why?'
Voke pointed. Close to five hundred citizens were now advancing towards us from streets on all sides.
'Because as you pointed out, Heldane, the monster can hear us, and he clearly doesn't like the sound of this plan/
It took Kurvel about ten minutes to gouge out the pavement and a section of garden wall with his lightning claw, and all the while we were under attack from the growing mob of puppets.
'Sewer!' Kurvel announced.
I turned to the others as shots and missiles rained down. 'Commodus... you have to hold them off a while longer/
'Count on it/ he said.
'Roban, get a small squad and follow me/
Heldane wasn't happy. But by then, Heldane wasn't calling the shots any more. I believe he took his rage out on the enslaved citizens.
I dropped into the sewer hole with Kurvel, Roban, Inshabel and three troopers of the Interior Guard. The defence on the street above could barely spare any of them.
The filthy sewer tube went in under the wall itself before dropping sharply away. Old, patched stone swelled around the base of the buttress. The stone was warm, and foamy clumps of fungus were growing on it.
Inshabel trained a spotbeam in so I could see.
Kurvel could see in the dark. He took out his last two krak grenades and fixed them to the stonework with smears of adhesive paste from a tube he carried in his pack.
'I wish we had more. We could blow the wall right through/
'We could, brother-sergeant, but this might be better/
"Why?'
'Because if we can simply make this projector fail, the energies of the shield will short out before they collapse. Rather than blowing outwards, that'll cause an electromagnetic pulse within the field itself. And I think an EM pulse is the last thing Esarhaddon wants right now/
As if to prove my suspicions right, a stabbing sheet of psychic power lashed at us. Esarhaddon had realised his vulnerability, and was turning
his immense power on us now. The puppets had been sport, but now it was time to control or blast out the minds of his hunters before they stopped being playthings and became a danger.
The psyker attack was devastating. Two of the Interior guardsmen simply died. Another started firing, hitting Kurvel twice and wounding Inshabel. Regretfully, Roban blasted the trooper down with his laspistol.
Our minds were harder to attack, especially given the shield formed by the rock above us and our proximity to the energy flux of the shield.
But Roban, Inshabel, Kurvel and I would be dead or homicidal in seconds.
How I wished for Alizebeth, or any of the Distaff right then.
'Trigger it! Trigger it!' I gasped, the blood vessels in my nose and throat opening yet again that day.
'We're right on top of the-'
'Just do it, brother-sergeant! In the name of the God-Emperor!'
The blast took out the projector. It filled the sewer tunnel with flickering destruction. It would have killed us but for the fact that Brother-Sergeant Kurvel shielded us with his massive armoured body.
It cost him his life.
I have made a point to have his name and memory celebrated by the Pri-march of the White Consuls.
With the generating projector killed, the void shield collapsed in on itself, blacking out the palace systems with the thunderclap of electromagnetic rage.
Blacking out Esarhaddon's seething mind too.
My research into untouchables, through Alizebeth and then through the Distaff she created and ran, had indicated to me that perhaps psychic power, no matter how potent, relied in the final analysis on the electrical workings of the human mind, the firing of impulse charges between synapses. Untouchables somehow blanked this, and triggered a disturbing and disarming vacancy in the natural and fundamental processes of the human brain. That, I had initially concluded, was why psykers don't work around untouchables... and why forgetfulness and unease is prevalent in their company. And, ultimately, why they disturb and upset humans so, and psykers doubly so.
I'd turned the old void shield into a brief, bright untouchable event.
And now, Emperor damn him, the heretic psyker Esarhaddon, temporarily rendered deaf, blind and mute, was mine.
EIGHT
Esarhaddon's lair.
Lyko the victor.
A vestige.
We went into the grounds of the Lange palace over the wall. There was a harsh stink of ozone from the ruptured shield, and the trimmed fruit trees and laraebur hedges of the gardens were singed and smouldering.
With Roban and Inshabel, I ran down a flint-chip path between the servants' wing and the east portico. Flashlights and under-muzzle torches bobbed in the gardens behind us as Heldane led the main force of our troop round to the garden terrace.
The house was dead and dark, all power killed by the pulse. The main doors on the east portico lay splintered on the mosaic floor where the accompanying wave of overpressure from the void collapse had blown them in. All of the windows were smashed holes too.
Photo-receptors and climate controls in the portico's polished blue-wood panels were fused and charred. Smoke and the glow of flames issued from deeper in the palace.
We pushed further in, finding dead house staff and inert servitors. A whole suite of state rooms on the first floor was burning where ornate promethium lamps had been knocked over.
We checked the rooms on each side as we progressed. Roban led the way, sweeping his braced laspistol from side to side.
'How long?' Inshabel asked me.
'Until?'
'Until he recovers from the pulse?'
I didn't know. There was no telling how badly we'd hurt Esarhaddon, or how resilient his mind was. We hadn't got long.
On the second floor, a flight of aethercite steps brought us up into a grand banqueting hall. The roof, a turtleback of toughened glass, had fallen in and the psi-storms crackled and surged in the sky far above. Every step crunched glass or disturbed debris.
There were bodies here too, the bodies of
nobility and servants intermingled.
I heard movement and sobbing from an adjoining antechamber.
The wretched occupants of the room gasped in terror as our flashlights found them. A handful of survivors from the household, cowering in fear in the dark. Many displayed signs of psychic burns or telekinetic welts.
'Imperial Inquisition/ I said firmly but quietly. 'Stay calm. Where is Esarhaddon?'
Some flinched or moaned at the sound of the name. A regal dowager in a torn pearlescent gown curled up in the corner and began weeping.
'Quickly... there's little time! Where is he?' I thought to use my will to spur them into an answer, but their minds had been tortured enough already that night. Even a mild mental probe might kill some of them.
'W-when the lights went out, he ran... ran towards the west exit,' said a blood-soaked man dressed in what I presumed was the uniform of the House Lange bodyguard.
'Can you show us?'
'My leg's broken...'
'Someone else then! Please!'
'Frewa... you go. Frewa!' The bodyguard gestured to a terrified page boy crouching behind a column.
'Come on, lad, show us the way/ Roban said encouragingly.
The boy got to his feet, his eyes white with fear. I wasn't sure if he was more afraid of Esarhaddon or the inquisitors looming over him.
A communicating hallway ran from the rear of the banquet hall west towards the house's private landing platform. Specks of blood and glass twinkled along its tiled floor.
I felt what seemed to me a breath of wind on my skin. An exit to the outside, perhaps?
Heavy blast shutters were prised open in the entrance to the gloomy loading dock. Past the shadowy shapes of several slumped, dormant cargo servitors, stood a main hatchway through which cold exterior light flickered.
My weapon raised, I waved Roban and Inshabel round to the right. The page boy cowered back in the doorway. The air quality was changing, as if the atmosphere itself was stiffening and drawing tight. Like some great force gathering its breath.
Esarhaddon was recovering, I was certain.
Livid green light suddenly bathed the loading dock, a psychometric flare accompanying a burst of savage psionic power. Roban and I staggered, our lungs squeezed and fingers of telekinesis thrusting at our minds. Inshabel cried out as he was bowled over from behind by the page boy, Frewa. Dull-eyed and frothing at the mouth, the boy had been reduced, in an instant, to a mindless puppet. Inshabel fought, but the boy was feral, and despite the interrogator's superior bulk he was pinned.
The pain in my head was intense, but I knew Esarhaddon must still be way below full strength. I raised the strongest mind shield my abilities were able to conjure and moved forward.
There was a sudden grind of servo-gears. A large steel paw swung at my head and I dived back.
A cargo servitor, its metal carapace caked with verdigris, rose up to its full height of three metres and clanked across the deck towards me on squat hydraulic legs. Plumes of steam squirted from its broad shoulder joints as it pistoned its arms at me again. Hot yellow dots of light burned in die eye sockets of its dented visor.
Despite its mechanical appearance, the cargo drone, like all servitors, was built around human organic components: brain, brain-stem, neural network, glands so Esarhaddon could control it just like a standard human.
It swung at me again, and missed. The slicing limb had cut the air with a distinct whistle.
It was built like a great simian: squat legs, barrel chest, wide shoulders and long, thick arms. Ideal for hefting heavy cargo items into the belly-hold of a liftship.
Ideal for smashing a human body into gory paste.
Roban cried out a warning. A second, larger cargo servitor with a long quadruped body, was also moving. Its body casing was pitted, brown metal and it had a fork-lifter assembly where its head should have been, giving it the appearance of a bull. The greased black forks of the lifter lurched at Roban, who fired six or seven shots that dented or bounced off die machine's chassis.
I ducked two more slow, heavy blows from the ape-servitor. We were losing precious time. With every tick of the clock, Esarhaddon was recovering and becoming more powerful.
I put a bolt round into the thickest part of the servitor's body and rocked it back, the gears and pistons of its legs whining as they compensated for the recoil.
My power sword was out now, the blade burning. Blessed for me by the Provost of Inx, it was my weapon of choice. My swordsmanship had always been good, but Arianrhod had instructed me in the Carthaen Ewl Wyla Scryi before her death. Ewl Wyla Scryi, literally, 'the genius of sharpness', the Carthaen way of the sword.
I made a figure of eight turn, the ghan fasl, and then a back-hand crosscut, the uin or reverse form of the tahn wyla.
The stroke was good. The energised blade sliced clean through the servitor's left forearm, sending the massive manipulator paw clattering to the deck.
It lurched bodily at me, as if enraged, clawing with its remaining hand and lashing with the fused, smoking end of its recently truncated limb.
I made a head-height horizontal parry called the uwe sax, and then left and right block strokes, the ulsar and the uin ulsar. Sheets of sparks cascaded from each hit against its metal body. I ducked right under the next huge blow, spun round out of the crouch and came up to face it again in time to follow through with the ura wyla bei, the devastating diagonal downslash, left to right. My blade edge and tip sawed the servitor's torso plating wide open in an electrical flash.
The exchange had given me long enough to mentally identify the seat of the servitor's brain-stem component, lit up and glowing in my mind's eye with the psionic power that drove it. It lay deep under the carapace between the collar bones.
One more uwe sar and men the ewl caer, the deathstroke. Tip first, plunging clean through the bodywork, impaling the organic brain. I rested the crackling blade there for a moment while the yellow dot eyes went out and then ripped it clear again, sidestepping as the servitor slammed down onto the flooring.
'Roban!' I called out, leaping over my despatched foe.
But Roban was dead. The servitor's forks had his limp body impaled through the belly and it was shaking it as if trying to dislodge him.
Inshabel was on his feet, tears streaming down his face as he blasted at the servitor with his autogun.
Cursing, I ran forward, raised the power sword with both hands and swung it down over the servitor's back. I doubt the Carthaens, in all their wisdom, have a name in the most hallowed Ewl Wyla Scryi for an enraged downstroke that severs the backbone and torso of a servitor.
Inshabel ran to his dead master as the servitor collapsed, trying to pull the corpse clear.
'Later! Later for that!' I said, spiking the command with my will. Inshabel was close to losing his wits to anger and grief, and I needed him.
He snatched up his weapon and ran after me.
'The page boy?' I asked.
'I had to hit him. I hope he's just unconscious.'
We came out into the storm-wracked night on the palace landing pad. Psychic lightning splintered the sky above us and the wind lashed us. There was no one on the pad itself, but a fight was raging on the lawns beyond. I could see eight figures, some robed, some dressed in the body armour of the Interior Guard, closing to surrounding a lone humanoid who crackled and glowed with spectral light. Thorny jags of flame lit out from the cornered figure and dropped one of the guardsmen as we watched. Esarhaddon. They had Esarhaddon cornered.
Inshabel and I leapt down from the pad - a three metre drop onto the wet grass - and ran to join the fray.
I could see Esarhaddon clearly now despite the rain. A tall, almost naked man with wild black hair and a lean, stringy body, corposant gleaming and sliding around his capering limbs.
We were just ten metres from the edge of the fight when one of the robed figures raised a bulky weapon and blasted at the rogue psyker.
A plasma gun.
The violet be
am, almost too bright to look at, struck Esarhaddon. In his weakened state, he had no defence against it.
He ignited like an incendiary round and burned from head to foot in the middle of the lawn.
Lowering our weapons, Inshabel and I walked to join the ring of figures standing around the white hot pyre. As his robed and hooded acolytes murmured prayers of grace and deliverance, Inquisitor Lyko set down his plasma gun.
The Emperor will thank you, Lyko,' I said.
He glanced round, seeing me for the first time. 'Eisenhorn.' He nodded. His narrow face was lined and taut and his blue eyes hooded. He was only about fifty years old sidereal, a mere youth by inquisitional standards. Young enough for his promising career to survive the way this day's atrocity would tarnish his achievement on Dolsene.
'I do not serve the Emperor for his gratitude. I do it for the glory of the Imperium/
'Quite so,' I said. I looked back at the molten heat that had been our quarry. It mattered little to me that I'd made this opportunity for Lyko. He could take the glory. I didn't care. The escape of the psykers had stolen much of the glory he had received of late. Hunting them down was the only way he could make amends.
Planetwide, there was some sense of rejoicing when it was announced mat Lord Commander Helican had survived the carnage unscathed, and mat Warmaster Honorius would live. That announcement came on the sixth day of unrest, by which time the Imperial authorities had begun to reim-pose order on the stricken citizens of Thracian Primaris. But it helped. Common folk who assumed memselves to be lost were calmed into believing law was back in the hands of the great and good. Panics died away. Arbites units unleashed their last few suppression raids against the die-hard recidivist looters in the lowhabs.
My own spirits were not much lifted. For a start I was privy to the confidential fact that Lord Commander Helican had actually died screaming and shitting himself under a crash-diving Imperial Navy Lightning on the Avenue of the Victor Bellum. A double had been arranged by the Eccle-siarchy and the Helican Senatorum, and that double continued to act in his place until, several years later, he 'died naturally of old age' and a successor was established in less-turbulent circumstances.
I can speak of that public deceit now in this private record, but at the time, communicating that secret was a death-crime for even the highest lord of the Imperium. I was not about to break that confidence. I am an inquisitor and I understand how fundamental it is to maintain public order.