by Dan Abnett
I realised I had almost become hypnotised. Staring at the monstrous, raging figure, drawn to him by his power and sheer horror, my eyes had lingered too long on the obscene runic carvings that edged the joints of his armour, the insane sigils that decorated his chest plate. I was entranced, captivated by the golden chains that dressed his luridly painted armour, the gems and exquisite filigree covering his armour plate, the translucent silk of his cloak, and the words, the alien, abominable words, inscribed upon his form, twitching and seeming with secrets older then time… secrets, promises, lies…
I forced myself not to look. Soul-destroying madness lay in the marks and brands of Chaos if one looked too long.
Mandragore shrieked in fury and raised a massive gloved fist, spiked with rusty blades, to smash Lord Glaw.
The blow didn't fall. I started, as if slapped, as a burst of psychic power rippled across the concourse.
Mandragore stepped back a pace. Dazzo moved towards him. Smaller man Glaw or Locke, Dazzo seemed even more insignificant next to the monster, but with each step he took, the Chaos Marine moved backwards.
He didn't speak, but I could hear his voice in my head. The presence and die words were so foul I barely managed not to vomit.
'Mandragore Carrion, son of Fulgrim, worthy of Slaanesh, champion of the Emperor's Children, killer of the living, defiler of the dead, keeper of secrets – your presence here honours us, and we celebrate our pact with your fellowship… but you will not seek to harm us. Never raise your hand to us again. Never.'
Dazzo was simply the most potent psyker I had ever encountered. With his mind alone, he had forced down one of the vilest of the traitors, a Space Marine sworn to the corrupt service of Chaos.
Mandragore turned away, and strode off across the compound. I saw now how Lord Glaw wilted from the confrontation, his bravado spent. Many of the workers present were weeping with the trauma of the exchange, and two of the guards were throwing up.
Shaking, I looked round at my companions. Fischig was ashen-faced and trembling, his eyes closed. Rhizor had curled up in a ball in the ashy mud, his back against the wall.
Bequin had vanished.
FIFTEEN
Exposed in the midst of the foe
An ill-matched war.
Flight.
Ihad a second to realise that wherever bequin had gone, it had left us exposed, outside the veil of her untouchable aura. I heard a cry, a strangled warning from the old ecclesiarch that was immediately accompanied by the hoot of sirens.
In the landing yard, guards were racing towards us. Dazzo was pointing directly at the section of ruin that concealed us. Locke pulled a laspistol from his robe. Angry voices, the raucous bark of cygnids.
'Fischig!' I cried. 'Fischig! Move or we're dead!'
He blinked, still pale, as if he didn't recognise his own name.
I slapped him hard around the side of his head.
'Move, chastener!' I yelled.
The first of the guards had reached the ruins, and one was kicking his way in through a boarded-up door. I saw his staring face looking out of a dirty black visor. He raised his lasgun.
I swung the powerful carbine up and laced him and the doorway with a spray of laser shots. Stone and wood debris spat and flew from the multiple impacts.
Las-shots whined in through gaps in the stone work and exploded against the outside wall.
Fischig's heavy stubber chattered into life. He played the sweep of blazing tracer shots down the dark cavities of the ruin to our left, tearing apart two more guards who were forcing their way in.
More guards, to my right, fired their weapons. My las-carbine crackled on full auto, a blur of high-pitched whines, as I raked the narrow entrance and dropped another three.
Still firing, Fischig backed into the depths of the ruin.
'Come on!' he snarled. I backed with him, our weapons laying down a storm of explosive metal and piercing energy that rippled across the rain walls, scattering debris, spraying ash dust and bursting bodies.
Rhizor, his mind utterly gone with terror, lay on the ground. I grabbed him by the scruff of his rags and dragged him after us. He fought at me, despairing.
A large figure came leaping in though the window space in the wall through which we had observed the dealings in the yard. It was Locke. He rolled as he landed, his laspistol retching shots.
One shot clipped my left shoulder. Another three slammed into Rhizor's back and he toppled into me, knocking me flat.
Fischig saw Locke, and swung round, his finger not lifting from the stub-ber's blunt trigger. The rapidly cycling mechanism of the heavy weapon made a high, grinding metallic noise overlaid with the frenetic blasts of the shots.
The scant cover around Locke disintegrated, and he cried out as he threw himself behind a section of wall. He fired as he moved, and Fischig granted in pain as a las-shot punched into his side.
'Eisenhorn! You bastard!' Locke bellowed. I pulled myself out from under Rhizor's corpse, sad that that ragged slave had paid such a price for assisting an inquisitor. Another crime on the shoulders of Gorgone Locke.
Damning the ship master's name, I pulled a frag grenade from my pack, and tossed it in Locke's direction. Then Fischig and I moved as fast as we could out through the rear of the smoke-filled ruin.
The grenade blew out the back of the structure. I hoped to the Emperor it had torn Locke limb from limb.
Coughing and spitting, Fischig and I came out into a ditch that ran behind the rained dwellings of North Qualm and the newer modular buildings. Angled over us were the large flak-board baffles of the ash-screens.
Las-shots chipped and whacked into the screens and wailed down the dim ditch. Guards tumbled into the ditch twenty metres away, rabidly howling cygnids pouring in with them.
Fischig made the ditch his killing field, and emptied his second dram of ammunition down the length, pulverising guard and canine alike. We hurried in the opposite direction as he straggled to clamp in a fresh dram.
Guards were shooting at us through the ruins, blowing chunks from the mouldering stonework. We ran on, chased by the furious salvos.
The ditch ran out into a small yard where an eight-wheeler truck was parked. We exchanged shots with three guards who rounded the corner into the yard and dropped them, but a fourth appeared, loosing a trio of cygnids from their leashes. Baying, they pounded across the yard. I killed
one with my carbine, but the track blocked any shots at the others. The big vehicle rocked as one leapt up into its frame. A moment later, it was leaping over onto us. I put a las-round through its skull as it came down, its muscled bulk just missing me. The other came out from under the truck, filthy with axle grease, and leapt at Fischig. It knocked him over, its huge jaws locked around his armoured forearm.
I drew my powersword and thrust the crackling blade through its body.
More shots, thumping into the truck.
'Get up!' I told Fischig as we rolled the canine's dead weight off him.
The entire compound closing around us, we sprinted to the rear of a modular shed and broke the door in.
It was an equipment store, stacked with spare blades for rock drills, spools of cable, lamp-cells, and all manner of other mining equipment. We moved low between the piles of equipment, hearing shouts and running footsteps outside.
I paused, changing cells in my carbine, and keyed my vox-link.
Thorn wishes aegis, rapturous beasts below/
'Aegis, arising, the colours of space/ came the response immediately.
'Razor delphus pathway/1 instructed, 'Pattern ivory!'
'Pattern confirm. In six. Aegis, arising/
Guards burst into the back of the shed, and Fischig blew them back out through the prefab wall with a wild burst of shots.
I looked around, and saw a stack of black metal boxes raised on a pallet in the corner of the shed. The paper labels were old and faded, but I prised off the lid of one box and confirmed their contents.
'Get re
ady to move/ I said, arming my second grenade.
'Oh shit!' said Fischig, seeing what I was doing. He was already half out the door as I placed the grenade on the top of the boxes.
We came out firing, met by a dozen or more guards who were sectioning the street looking for us. Most were pit guards in their black, ugly armour, but three were naval security troops in black cloth fatigues, no doubt part of the traitor captain's contingent.
We fired as we ran. The grenade was on a ten-second fuse. The fact that we ran through the midst of them caught them unawares. None of them was able to get a clean shot off.
Fischig and I dived headlong over a crumbling section of wall that had once surrounded North Qualm's market yard.
The grenade went off. And so did the stack of mining explosives it had been sitting on.
The Shockwave concussion flattened every wall for thirty metres. The upwards force of the blast, driving before it a blistering fireball, lifted the whole modular shed twenty metres into the air and sent the shredded remains of the structure crashing down onto neighbouring buildings.
Scraps of metal, cinders and shreds of burning flak-board rained down on Fischig and myself. There was a dazed silence broken only by the warble of alarms, cries of the injured and desperate shouting. The air was
fogged by ash dust. Pulling on our rebreathers, we stumbled through the murk.
I felt a jab of pain in my head. Deep, insidious, burning. Dazzo was reaching out with his terrifyingly potent mind, looking for us.
We stumbled through the smoke down an aisle between modular sheds whose windows had been blown out in the detonation.
The pain grew more intense.
'Eisenhorn. You cannot hide. Show yourself.'
I gasped as the pain took deeper hold.
Suddenly, it eased.
'Fischig! In here!'
I pushed him into an old stone outbuilding. I guessed it had once been a wash-house in North Qualm's more rural heyday.
Bequin was cowering in a corner, filthy, tearful. The sight of the Child of the Emperor Mandragore had sent her fleeing in blind panic. Like me, she had made the mistake of looking at the runes and marks on his foul, dazzling armour. Unlike me, she hadn't had the sense to look away.
She couldn't speak. She barely registered us. But we were back inside her muzzling aura and out of Dazzo's clutches for the moment.
"What now?' asked Fischig. They'll regroup quickly enough.'
'Midas is coming. We have to get back to the landing yard. It's the only area big enough for him to set down in.'
Fischig looked at me as if I was mad. 'He's going to fly into this? He'll be killed! And even if he does pick us up, they'll launch interceptors from the fleet. They'll launch them the moment he powers up for take off!'
'It'll be tight/1 admitted.
We dragged Bequin with us and moved out of the derelict wash-house. Outside, the settlement was still swathed in ash lifted by the blast. Fierce fires glowed in the smoke. Voices screamed orders and cygnids bayed. There was a deeper, furious bellowing too. I had a nasty feeling it was the Chaos Marine.
'Thorn attending aegis, main yard area/ I voxed.
'Aegis, main yard in three, the heavens falling/ So, they were on to him. The fleet had launched ships after the cutter.
We ran now. The smoke was slowly clearing.
A guard gang moved past us and we were forced to double back around. More guards blocked the next street.
'Through the buildings!' said Fischig.
We were behind a modular building, one of the newest and largest that Dazzo's unholy mission had set up. There was no door, but we scrambled up onto the low roof, pulling Bequin with us, and entered through a skylight.
The room we dropped into was carpeted and well furnished, an office or private study for one of the senior supervisors. There were racks of data-slates, and piles of charts and storage tiles. Several large travel trunks had been piled in one corner, with a cloak and two overcoats draped over
them. One of the new arrivals from the launch had left these things here and not yet unpacked them.
'Come on!' hissed Fischig, checking the door that led out of the office into the rest of the building.
'Wait!' I said. I cut the locks off the trunks with my powersword and threw the lids back. In the first, clothes, slates, a boxed lasgun, ornate and inlaid with the name Oberon. Other miscellaneous effects.
'Come on!' Fischig repeated, frantic.
Aegis, main yard in two/ crackled the vox.
'Eisenhorn? What are you playing at?' Fischig demanded.
These are Claw's things!' I said, searching
'So what? What are you looking for?'
'I don't know/ I turned to the second trunk. More clothes, some crude and unpleasant religious icons.
Fischig grabbed me by the shoulder. 'With respect, inquisitor, that would suggest this isn't the time to be doing it!'
We have to get out of here, we have to get the hell out of here/ Bequin murmured, her eyes darting back and forth at every sound from outside.
There'll be something… an edge, a clue… something we can use when we get out of here…'
We'll be lucky to escape with our lives!'
Yes!' I stared up at him. Yes, we will – and if we do, we'll want to continue our struggle against Glaw, won't we?'
He threw his hands up in despair.
'Please… please…' Bequin murmured.
Aegis, main yard in one/ crackled the vox.
The third trunk. A wrapped set of stainless steel surgical tools whose purpose I didn't even want to imagine. A small dice and counter game in a hardwood box. Clothes, more damn clothes!
With something solid wrapped in them.
I took it out.
'Satisfied?' asked Fischig.
I would have smiled if Locke had left me able.
'Go!' I said.
Beyond the stateroom was an outer annexe. More luggage trunks stood on the grilled floor, as well as wooden boxes draped in plastic.
'Don't even think about it!' Fischig snapped, seeing me look at the trunks.
Aegis, on site!' The vox-burst was partly drowned out by the vibrating roar of a powerful aircraft passing low and fast overhead. There was a chatter of small arms, the whip of las-rifles.
I led the way out of the annexe, through a hatchway that opened onto the landing yard. Figures milled around, mainly slave-guards and naval troopers, looking skywards and firing at the looming gun-cutter that banked overhead. On the far side of the yard, by the lowered ramp of the navy launch, Malahite saw us and shouted out. The men swung around, firing. Shots crackled around us.
Then I saw Mandragore, over to the right of the yard, charging towards us with a baleful howl.
'Back inside! Inside!' I yelled and the three of us tumbled back in through the door.
The outer wall of the building didn't stop the Chaos-beast. Neither did the hatch. Ceramite and steel shod fists tore the lightweight metal apart, twisted adamite support beams, punctured plastic panels like paper. Man-dragore's baying wail preceded him, shaking us to the core.
Bequin screamed.
The vilely misnamed Child of the Emperor exploded through the end wall of the annexe, white lips drawn back around pearl teeth as he hurled out noise from his augmented torso. The boltgun in his fist was enormous.
'Not a step closer!' I yelled. With one hand, I held the primed grenade up so he could see it.
He laughed, a deep, booming chuckle of contempt.
'I mean it,' I added and kicked the crate at my feet. It was laden with plastic wrapped tablets from the mine.
'One second fuse. Another step and all this will be gone.'
He faltered. Lord Glaw and several guards appeared through the shredded wall behind him.
'For pity's sake, do as he says!' Glaw barked.
With a growl, Mandragore lowered his boltgun.
'Back off, Glaw! Back right off and take them with you!'
'You can'
t hope to escape, inquisitor,' said Glaw.
'Back off!'
Glaw waved his men back and retreated. Mandragore backed out slowly, a growling hiss rising from his throat.
'Grab the crate!' I told Fischig. He slung his stubber over his shoulder and did as he was told.
We edged out into the smoky daylight. Fischig and I were side by side, and I held the grenade over the crate he was carrying. Bequin cowered behind us.
In the yard, Glaw was ordering his men back. There were forty or more troops; guards, naval troopers, supervisors. I saw Dazzo, Malahite and the rogue captain Estram among them. Mandragore did not back off as far as the others. He stayed to the right of us, his shimmering cloak drifting in the breeze, his armour gleaming. The growl continued to purr in his throat.
'Midas/ I said into my link, 'set down, hatch open.'
'Understood,' he replied. 'Be advised there are three navy interceptors inbound. Arrival in three.'
The gun-cutter swung in over the yard, casting a wide shadow, its thrusters lifting clouds of ash. As it came in to rest on its bulky hydraulic landing skids, the cargo ramp under the cockpit whined and lowered.
Slowly, we moved around until the cutter and the ramp were behind us. The assembled enemy watched us intently, weapons raised.
'A stand-off, inquisitor/ said Glaw.
'Get your men to lower their weapons. Even the ones I can't see. Don't even consider dropping me. Midas… train the wing cannons on myself and the chastener. If anything happens to us, open fire.'
'Confirm/
The powerful cannons in the wing mounts traversed to target us.
'Shoot us and the crate is vaporised/
'Weapons down!' Glaw yelled, and the troops obeyed.
'Now call off those interceptors. Order them right back to their carrier/
'I-'
'Now!'
Glaw looked round at Estrum, who started to speak into a vox link.
The interceptors have aborted their run/ Midas told me. 'They're turning back/
Very good/1 told Glaw.
What now?' he asked.
What now indeed? We had the upper hand for a moment: they didn't dare shoot or rush us, and Bequin was blocking Dazzo and any other psyker they had.
'An answer or two/1 suggested.