by Dan Abnett
Voke had brought a staff of nearly fifty with him, all clad in black robes, many with augmetic implants. They stripped the noble house of every shred of evidence they could find. Crates of papers, books, slates, artefacts and pict-tiles were carried out to waiting transports.
I was in no mood to argue. Pain and fatigue made my senses swim. Let Voke use his vast retinue and resources to do the painstaking work of recovery.
'Much has been deleted, dumped or burned,' a dour-faced savant called Klysis reported to Voke, as I walked with my fellow inquisitor into the shattered house. 'Much else is encrypted.'
We progressed into the basement system, and I led Voke to the force-shielded chamber where Glaw had trapped me. Kowitz's blood still marked the floor. The artefact from the altar plinth was gone.
'He referred to it as the Pontius/1 told Voke. The room no longer showed signs of being psychically shielded, so logic said the psyker-effects had been generated by the Pontius itself. As had the mental attack that had felled me, I was sure.
I leaned against the chamber wall and patiently told Voke the key points I had learned. 'Eyclone's mission to Hubris, involving the Pontius, was clearly important to them, but Oberon Glaw told me explicitly that said endeavour had been aborted… cancelled because something more vital had come into play. They referred to it as the true matter.'
'It would explain why your foe Eydone was abandoned,' he mused. 'After all his preparations, the Glaws failed to deliver the Pontius as they had promised.'
That fits. Dazzo and the shipmaster Locke were clearly deeply involved in this true matter. We need to establish more facts about them. I'm certain the work that concerned them touched on some archeoxenon material. They mentioned the "saruthi".'
A xenos breed, outlying the sub-sector/ said Voke's savant. 'Little is known of them and contact is forbidden. The Inquisition holds several investigations pending, but their space is uncharted, and while they keep themselves to themselves, more urgent matters have caused investigations to be postponed.'
'But a rogue like Locke may well have established lines of contact with them.'
Klysis and Voke both nodded. 'It will bear further research,' Voke said. 'Ordo Xenos must begin a survey of the saruthi. But for now, the matter is closed.'
'How do you reason that?' I asked with a contemptuous laugh.
Voke fixed me with his beady eyes. 'House Glaw is destroyed, its principal members and co-conspirators are slain. With them are lost the items precious to their cause. Whatever they were planning is finished.'
I didn't even begin to argue with the old man. Voke was sure of his facts. His main failing, in my opinion.
He was wrong, of course. The first hint came ten days later. I had returned to Dorsay with my colleagues, and had spent some time in the care of the Imperial Hospice on the Grand Canal where my many wounds and injuries were treated. Most of the cuts and gashes were superficial, and would heal in time. Locke's work on me had left deeper scars. Multiple neural injuries afflicted my system, many of which would never repair. Augmeticists from the battlefleet's Officio Medicalis conducted microsurgery on shredded nerve transmitters in my spine, thorax, brainstem and throat. They implanted more than sixty sections of artificial nerve fibre and ganglions. I had lost a good deal of sensitivity in my palette and oesophagus, and the reflexes on the left side of my body were dulled. My face they could do nothing with. Neural systems there had been utterly scourged. Locke's promise had been lasting. I would never smile again, nor make much of any expression. My face, impassive, was now just a mask of flesh.
Aemos visited me every day, and brought more and more data-slates and old books to my private room in the Hospice. He had established a working relationship with Voke's savants (Klysis was but one of seventeen employed by Commodus Voke), and was sifting data as it was passed to him. We tried to source information concerning the Glaws' confederates, but there was damnably little, even with Voke's platoon of savants hard at work. Locke was a shadowy, almost mythical figure, his name and reputation well known throughout the Helican sub-sector, but nothing could be found about his origin, career, associates or even the name of his vessel. Dazzo also drew a blank.
The Ecdesiarchy had no record of a churchman of that name. But I remembered what Kowitz had told me during the banquet, that Dazzo had links to a missionary order sponsored by the Glaws on the edgeworld Damask. Damask was a real place, right enough, a harsh frontier planet at the very limit of the Helican sub-sector territory, one of a hundred worthless, seldom-visited places. Astrogeographically it lay just a few months passage spinward of the uncharted regions of the mysterious saruthi.
Lowink accompanied Aemos on one of his visits as soon as I was strong enough, and extracted from my mind a likeness of the pipe-smoking man, which he realised psychometrically on an unexposed pict-plate. The image, a little blurred, was good enough, and it was copied and circulated through all branches of the investigating authorities. But no one could identify him.
Lowink recovered an image of the Pontius too, by the same means. This baffled all who viewed it, except Aemos who immediately confirmed that the strange artefact was precisely the correct size and dimensions to fit into the cavity in Eyclone's casket, the one recovered from Processional
Two-Twelve. As we had conjectured, this was what Eyclone had been awaiting, what the mass-murder in the Hubris ice tomb had been for.
'Urisel Glaw referred to Pontius as if he was still alive/ I said to Aemos. 'Certainly something with great psychic force felled me in the chamber where the Pontius was secured. Could he be alive, in some sense, some part of him, perhaps some psychic essence, captured in that device?'
Aemos nodded. 'It is not beyond the highest Imperial technologies to maintain a sentience after great physical injury or even death. But for such technologies to be within the grasp of even a mighty family like the Claws…'
'You told me it resembled something of the mysteries of the Adeptes Mechanicus.'
'I did/ he pondered. 'It is most perturbatory. Could the foul crime of Hubris have been some effort to siphon vulnerable life energies into this artefact? To give the Pontius a massive jolt of power?'
On the third morning, Fischig visited. His own injuries were healed, and he seemed annoyed to have missed the episode at Glaw House. He brought with him a priceless antique slate, a collection of inspirational verse composed by Juris Sathascine, curate-confessor of one of Macharius's generals. It was a gift from Maxilla, from his private collection.
Delayed by the excitement of the Glaw incident, the founding resumed. The new Imperial guardsmen were shipped to troop transports in the orbiting fleet and the final ceremonies were carried out. The Lord Militant Commander was now anxious to begin his expedition into the troubled Ophidian sub-sector, and felt enough time and manpower had been spent on this little local matter.
On the tenth day, it didn't look so much like a local matter any more. Via astropathic link, news came of incidents throughout the sub-sector: a rash of bombings on Thracian Primaris; the seizure and destruction of a passenger vessel bound for Hesperus; a hive decimated by a viral toxin on Messina.
That evening, a brief, bright star suddenly ignited in the sky over Dor-say. The Ultima Victrix, a four hundred thousand tonne ironclad, had exploded at anchor. The blast had crippled four ships nearby.
An hour later, it became clear the incident had grown signally worse. Exactly how was not clear, even to battlefleet intelligence, but the explosion had been identified in error as a sign of an enemy attack by several components of the fleet. A frigate wing commanded by a captain called Estrum had moved to engage, and several destroyers from the advance phalanx had mistaken them for fleet intruders and opened fire. For twenty-seven hideous minutes, Battlefleet Scaras waged war against itself through the anchor lines of navy vessels and troop ships. Six ships were lost. Eventually, apparently heedless of countermands, Estrum broke off and, with a mobile group of fifteen vessels, went to warp to outrun 'the enemy'. Admiral Spatian gave chase with a
flotilla of eight heavy cruisers.
The remaining fleet elements straggled to regain control and handle the wanton destruction.
The Lord High Militant, I learned, had a fit of rage so extreme he had to be sedated by his private physician.
That doesn't just happen,' Betancore said. We sat in my private room, by the tall windows, looking out across the city. Ghost-flares of energy and explosion, one trailing down in the sky like a falling star, marked the night.
'Imperial battlefleets are among the most ordered and disciplined organisations in space. Confusion like that doesn't just happen/
'Like deserters don't just get a hold of a ship and uniforms and know the name of the man whose ship they chance to board, you mean? Our unseen foe is making his influence felt. Voke talked about a parent cult, overseeing many small cells and cabals. He reckoned the Glaws were the masters of this conspiracy. I'm not so sure. There could be a yet higher authority at work/
Urisel Glaw was held in the Imperial Basilica. He had undergone hours of intense interrogation and torture since his capture. And he had given up nothing.
I went to him that night. Voke and his interrogators were still at work, now with a sense of urgency.
They held him in what could only be described as a dungeon, ninety metres below the massive grey stone fortress. All the other prisoners taken during the raid on House Glaw were sequestered here too. In order to contain and interrogate them all, Voke had co-opted local Arbites, soldiers of the Gudran standing army, and officials of the Ministorium. They worked in concert with his own extensive staff.
Arriving by air launch, I was met by a tall, grey-haired man in a long maroon coat attended by two armed servitors. I knew him at once. Inquisitor Titus Endor and I were of similar ages and had both studied under Hapshant.
You are recovered, Gregor?' he asked, shaking my hand.
Well enough to continue my work. I didn't expect to see you here, Titus/
Yoke's reports on the Glaw case have concerned our order's sub-sector officio. Lord Inquisitor Rorken has declared the need for a full disclosure. Voke's inability to get anything out of Urisel Glaw has annoyed him. I've been diverted to assist. And not just me. Schongard is here too, and Moli-tor is on his way/
I sighed. Endor, a fellow Amalathian, I could work with, though there is a proverb about too many inquisitors. Schongard was a rabid monodom-inant, and a liability in my view, and Konrad Molitor was the sort of radical I felt had no place in the order at all.
This is unusual/1 said.
'It's all down to connections/ Endor remarked. 'What has come to light through your work here, and Voke's, is a massive puzzle that itself
connects dozens of separate cases and investigations. I burned a heretic on Mariam two weeks ago, and in his effects found documents linking him to the Glaws. Schongard is pursuing blasphemous texts that he is certain first came into the sub-sector in the cargoes of Guild Sinesias traders. Molitor… well, who knows what he's doing, but it no doubt connects.'
'Sometimes/ I told him, 'I think we work against each other. This comes out and, look! We all hold pieces to the same mystery. How might we have taken this enemy and his structure apart a month ago, two months, if we had exchanged information?'
Endor laughed. 'Are you questioning the working practices of the most lauded Inquisition, Gregor? Working practices laid down centuries ago? Are you questioning the motives of fellow members of our convocation?'
I knew he was joking, but my manner remained serious. 'I'm decrying a system where we don't even trust each other.'
We descended, under escort, into the depths of the prison block.
"What of Glaw?'
'Gives up nothing,' said Endor. 'What he's endured so far would have broken and cracked most men, or at least had them begging for death or trying to kill themselves. He persists, almost in good humour, almost arrogant, as if he expects to live.'
'He's right. We'll never sign his death notice while he has secrets.'
Voke's men were at work on Glaw in a foul-smelling, red-painted cell. Glaw was a ruin, kept alive by expertise that matched the skill used to torture him.
To unlock an answer from the mind of the heretic is the greatest duty of an inquisitor, and I will not shrink from any means, but this way was futile. Left to me, the physical torture would have stopped days before. One look showed that Urisel Glaw was resolved not to talk.
I would have left him alone, for weeks perhaps. Despite his agonies, our constant attention betrayed our desperation, and that gave him all the strength he needed to endure. Silence and isolation would have broken him.
Inquisitor Schongard stepped back from the table where Glaw was strapped and pulled off soiled surgical gloves. He was a broad man with thin brown hair and a chilling mask of black metal surgically fixed to his face. No one knew if this mask covered some grievous injury or was simply an affectation. Dark, unhealthy, bloodshot eyes regarded Endor and myself through the oblong slits in the metal.
'Brothers/ he whispered. His phlegmy voice never wavered from that low, hushed level. 'His resistance is quite the doughtiest I have seen. Voke and I agree that some monumental work has been done to his mind, allowing him to block out the manipulations. Psychic probes have been tried, but found wanting/
'Perhaps we should have the Astropathicus provide us with one of their primary class adepts/ said Voke from behind me.
'I don't think there's a mind block there at all/ I said. 'You would see traces of the conditioning. He'd most likely be screaming for us to stop now because he knows he cannot tell us the answer/
'Nonsense/ whispered Schongard. 'No raw mind could withstand this/
'I sometimes doubt whether my fellows know anything about human nature at all/ I said, mildly. This man is a fiend. This man is nobility. He has seen into the darkness we so fear, and he knows what power feels like. The promise of what lies at stake for him and his collaborators is enough to steel him/
I crossed to the table and looked down into Glaw's lidless eyes. Blood bubbled at his flayed lips as he smiled at me.
'He promised the overthrow of worlds, the annihilation of billions. He boasted of it. What the Glaws are after is so great, that none of this matters. Isn't that right, Urisel?'
He gurgled.
This is just a hardship/ I said, turning away from the heretic in disdain. 'He keeps going because he knows that what awaits him will make this all worthwhile/
Voke snorted. What could be so?'
'Eisenhorn sounds convincing to me/ said Endor. 'Glaw will protect his secrets no matter what we do, for those secrets will repay him a thousand fold/
Schongard's masked face shook dubiously. 'I am with brother Voke. What reward could be worth the prolonged ministrations of the Inquisition's finest fleshsmiths?'
I didn't answer. I didn't know the answer, in truth, but I had some notion of the scale.
And the thought of it froze my soul.
If I had harboured any doubts that the Glaws' authority had survived, they were dispelled in the course of the next week. Campaigns of explosive, toxic and psychic sabotage plagued the worlds of the sub-sector, as if all the secret, dark cells of evil hidden away within Imperial society were revealing themselves, risking discovery as they turned on their local populations, as if orchestrated by some ruling power. The likes of Lord Glaw and his accomplices had either escaped destruction or they were but part of an invisible ruling elite that now mobilised all the hidden offspring cabals on a double-dozen worlds into revolt.
There is another explanation/ Titus Endor said to me as we attended mass in the Imperial Cathedral of Dorsay. 'For all their power and influence, the Glaws were not the summit of their conspiratorial pyramid. There were yet others above them/
It was possible, but I had seen the Glaws' arrogance first hand. They were not ones to bow to another master. Not a human master, anyway.
The unrest had broken out on Gudrun too by then. A bombing campaign had stricken one town in the south,
and an agricultural settlement
in the west had been exterminated by a neural toxin released into its water supply. Battlefleet Scarus was still struggling to recover from the self-inflicted blow against it, and Admiral Spatian had returned from his mission to reassemble the panicked fleet units empty handed. Captain Estrum's mobile group had simply vanished. I had exchanged messages with Madorthene, who told me that no one in battlefleet command now doubted mat the destruction of the Ultima Victrix and the subsequent mayhem had been anyming other than sabotage. Our enemy's reach extended into the battlefleet itself.
Then two massive hives of Thracian Primaris rose in open revolt. Thousands of workers, tainted by the corrupt touch of Chaos, took to the streets, burning, looting and executing. They displayed the obscene badges of Chaos openly.
The Lord Militant's plans for a crusade into the Ophidian sub-sector were now indefinitely postponed. Battlefleet Scarus left anchor and made best speed to suppress the Thracian uprising.
But that was only the first. Open revolt exploded through the suburbs of Sameter's capital city and, a day later, a civil war erupted on Hesperus. In both cases, the stain of Chaos was there.
This miserable, shocking period is referred to in Imperial histories as the Helican Schism. It lasted eight months, and millions died in open warfare across those three worlds, not to mention hundreds of lesser incidents on other planets, including Gudrun. The Lord Militant got his holy crusade, though I am sure he hardly expected to be waging it against the population of his own sub-sector.
The authorities, and even my worthy fellow inquisitors, seemed stunned to the point of inactivity by this unprecedented outbreak. The archenemy of mankind often acted openly and brutally, but this seemed to defy logic. Why, after what may have been centuries of careful, secret establishment, had the hidden cults risen as one, exposing themselves to the wrath of the Imperial military?
I believed the answer was the 'true matter'. Urisel Glaw's almost gleeful resistance to our methods convinced me. The archenemy was embarked upon something so momentous that it was prepared to sacrifice all of its secret forces throughout the sub-sector to keep the Imperium occupied.