by Dan Abnett
inland metropolis. The jubilee was in full swing. Once I had parked the sprightly little flier at Catharsis downport, I found myself weaving through a dense river of jumping, whooping people that clogged the winding streets. All of them showed the grey pallor of recent cold-sleep. All of them were drunk.
Bottles were pressed into my hands and young women and men alike planted kisses on my face. I was jostled and shoved and scattered with petals and confetti. The smell of the cryogenic chemicals sweating out of them permeated the entire town.
It took all afternoon to find him. He was alone in an upstairs suite in a crumbling but characterful hotel overlooking the Processional Tombs.
'Get out/ he said as I opened the door.
'Godwyn…'
'Get the hell out!' he yelled, smashing a shot glass against the far wall. He'd been drinking hard, which was unlike him, although everyone else on Hubris except me must have been in the same state.
Fireworks coughed and whizzed in the square under his windows.
Fischig glowered at me for a long time, and then disappeared into the suite's bathroom. He emerged with two more shot glasses and a dish of ice.
I stood in the doorway and watched as he slowly and carefully prepared two drinks. Anise, poured over smashed ice..
He placed one in front of himself and slid the other one towards the chair opposite.
To me, that was an act of diplomacy.
I sat down facing him and lifted the glass.
To all we've been together/ I said. We knocked back the shots.
1 slid the glass back across the table top towards him and he made two more.
He passed the second one back to me and caught my eyes for the first time. I stared into his face, saw the eye-fogging scar that had already marked him by the time we met, saw the faint mauve scar tissues where the side of his face had been rebuilt after our clash with the saruthi on the warped world orbiting KCX-1288.
'I never meant to run out on you/ he said.
'I didn't ever suppose so. When did Godwyn Fischig last run out on a fight?'
He laughed bitterly. We sank the second drink and he fixed a third.
'Whatever Medea told you. Whatever Aemos told you… it's true. But it's not what you think.'
'Yeah?'
'I'm no heretic, Godwyn/
'No?'
'I think I might have become what you'd call a radical. But I'm no heretic/
'Isn't that what a heretic would say?'
'Yes. I guess so. If you'd let me into your mind, you'd see../
'No thanks!' he shuddered, shoving his chair back with a squeak.
'Okay/ I sipped my glass. 'It won't be the same without you/
'I know. You and me. Bastards! The Eye of Terror itself was shy of us!'
Yes it was/
'We could do it again/ he said.
'We could?'
'We could work side by side like old times and hunt out the darkness/
Yes, we could. I'd like that/
'That's why I'm sorry I ran out like that. I should have stayed/
I nodded. Yes/
'I owe you that much. I should have tried harder. You're not gone. Not all the way. You're just slipping/
'Slipping?'
'Into the pit. The radical pit. The pit no one comes back from. But I can pull you out/
'Pull me out?'
Yes. It's not too late/
'Too late for what, Godwyn?'
'Salvation/ he said.
The crowds outside were screaming and clapping. Barrages of fireworks were being launched into the early evening air, scattering new stars in their wake like fireflies.
'What does "salvation" mean?' I asked.
'It's why I'm here, why the Emperor put me at your side. To keep you centred. It's destiny/
'Is it? And what does destiny entail?'
'Renounce it all. All of it. Give over the Malus Codicium to me… the dae-monhost, your runestaff. Let me take you back to the ordos headquarters on Thracian. You can do penance there. I'll plead for you, plead for leniency. They wouldn't be too hard on you. You'd be active again before too long/
You actually believe that you could take me back to the ordos, tell them what I've done, and they'd let me practise again?'
'They'd understand!'
'Fischig, you don't understand!'
He looked at me, disappointed. You won't then?'
'I think this is where I say goodbye. I admire your efforts, but I can't be saved, Godwyn/
You can!'
'No/ I shook my head. You know why? I don't need saving/
Then this is where I say goodbye too/ he said, pouring another drink.
'Remember what we did/ I said.
Yes/
I shut the door behind me and left.
* * *
It took me three hours to get back to the landing field through the solid mob of revellers. I powered the quick-heeled red speeder back up to the Essene.
They were all waiting for me in the hangar as I docked. Maxilla. Crezia. Eleena. Aemos. Medea.
I tugged the rumpled copy of the astropathic communique I had received earlier out of my pocket and tossed it at Maxilla. 'We're breaking orbit. New destination: Promody.'
'What about Fischig?' asked Eleena.
'He isn't coming.'
There is a move in Carthean blade work called the teht uin sah. The phrase literally describes a position of the feet, but the philosophy is deeper. It means the moment in a duel when you gain the advantage and begin to win home. It is the turning point, the little fulcrum on which a life or death fight turns. The moment your fortunes change and you realise victory can be yours if you rally hard enough.
I felt that the astropathic communique from Promody was the equivalent of the teht uin sah. It had been sent to me, uncoded, by a trusted friend I hadn't seen in a long time.
It read simply 'Khanjar must be stopped'.
It took the Essene ten weeks to reach Promody, a jungle world on the trailing hem of the Scarus sector, specifically the Antimar sub-sector.
I went planetside alone, using the little red speeder, in case it turned out to be a trap.
They were waiting for me on a tropical hillside, below a break of pink-lobed punz trees. The evening was warm and fragrant. Insects fidgeted in the gathering dark. The air was humid.
I got out of the steaming speeder.
My old pupil, Gideon Ravenor, sustained by his force chair, rolled forward across the mossy ground to greet me. To his left, he was flanked by Kara Swole. To his right, Harlon Nayl.
SIXTEEN
Surviving Messina.
Gideon's omen.
Nothing lasts forever.
Harlon gave me a great bearhug and Kara timidly kissed my cheek on tiptoe. I gazed at them both, hardly believing it.
'You have a habit of coming back from the dead/ I said to Harlon. 'I'm just glad it's real this time.'
He frowned. "What do you mean?'
'I'll explain later. I refuse to explain anything more until you tell me how this is possible.'
Why don't we go inside?' Ravenor suggested. He led us back up the path through the punz trees and across glades where the light was stained gold by the fleshy orange leaves that formed the canopy. Brilliantly feathered lizards flitted from branch to branch and diaphanous insects the size of man's open palm fluttered like seedcases in the humid breeze.
Ravenor's force chair hissed over the ground a few centimetres in the air, surrounded and suspended by a spherical field generated by the slowly revolving and tilting antigravity hoop that encircled it.
Beyond the wooded slope, the ground was flooded. A vast lake of yellow liquid stretched out under the jungle canopy that sprouted up from the water in lurid clumps. Fronds, rushes and fibrously rooted trees formed hammock islets in the lake, along with batteries of puffy mauve or orange zutaes with giant leaves and tangles of saprophitic vines.
Antigrav walkboards bridged out across the resinous water, lin
king the dryland to Ravenor's camp by way of several of the hammocks.
The camp had been raised on a duralloy raft twenty metres square, held above the water by locked, cycling repulsor lift-pods. Angular, geometric, the structure the raft supported looked like a large tent, but I realised from its gentle shimmer that it was formed from intersecting fields of opaque force energy.
We went in through the one-way field membrane that formed the door and entered a cool, climate-controlled chamber lit by glow-globes. Equipment was stacked up in metal containers and there were several items of collapsible furniture. Further screens denoted adjoining rooms, veiled off. A grey-haired man in a linen robe was working at a small camp table, reviewing data on a portable codifier.
Kara unfolded three more of the stacked camp chairs while Harlon fetched bottles of chilled fruit-water and some shrink-wrapped ration packs. A young woman came in from one of the other rooms and conferred quietly with the man at the codifier.
'You're busy here, I see?' I said.
'Yes/ said Ravenor. 'The view should be good.'
I didn't quite understand what he meant but 1 let it pass. There were other things on my mind.
Harlon thumb-popped the cap of a bottle and passed it to me before taking his seat.
'Here's to us all, still alive despite the odds.' He clinked his bottle against mine and Kara toasted with hers.
'Well?' I said.
A bunch of hard-arse mere bastards smoked the Distaff. Took the whole spire out. Killed the lot of them,' Harlon said, matter of factly, but there was still an edge of rage in his voice.
'And you?'
'Madam Bequin saved us,' said Kara.
'What?'
'We got her back to Messina okay, stable,' said Kara. 'The medicae facility at the Distaff hall made her comfortable. They got me back on my feet in about a week. Then Madam Bequin suddenly took a turn for the worse.'
'She stroked out/ growled Harlon. A really bad whassit called-'
'Cerebrovascular ischemia/ Ravenor said quietly.
'It was beyond the abilities or resources of the hall's medicae, so we rushed her to Sandus Sedar Municipal General for surgery/ said Kara. 'We knew you wouldn't want us to leave her there alone, so we stayed with her in shifts. I took one watch, and alternated with Nayl. On the night the hall was raided, I had just started my shift/
'And I was on my way back to spire eleven in an air cab/ finished Harlon.
'So neither of you were there?'
'No/
'You two… and Alizebeth… all survived?'
'Lucky us, eh?' said Harlon.
'Where is she?' I asked. And how is she?'
'Never regained consciousness. She's on vital support in my ship's infirmary/ Ravenor replied. 'My personal physician is tending her/ I knew Doctor Antribus, Gideon's medicae. Bequin couldn't be in more experienced hands.
I looked back at Harlon and Kara. I could tell the Loki-bom ex-bounty hunter was enjoying stringing this tale out. He'd probably been rehearsing it for weeks.
'So… go on/
'We went to ground. Me and Kara. We couldn't move Madam B, so we signed her in under a fake identity so she couldn't be linked to your operation. Then me and Kara went hunting. We caught up with the hit squad at a shanty town lift-port down in the suburbs. Thirty of them. Vessorine janissaries, no less. Never tangled with those brothers before, though I'd heard of them, of course. Now, could they fight like bastards/
'I've seen them up close/
'Then you'll appreciate that two against thirty, even with the drop to us, was hard ball. I smoked three of them-'
Two/ corrected Kara. 'It was two/
'Okay, two definites and a probable. Kara, may the Emperor bless her, took out six of the pigs. Blam blam blam!'
'We can split a bottle of amasec while you give me a play by play later, Nayl. Stick to the meat/
'My family motto, chief/ Harlon grinned. 'Well, as it turned out, me and Kara had probably bitten off a sight more than we could chew, and we ended up cornered in a freight yard next to the lift-port. Backs to the wall time. Last stand. A change of underwear moment. And then, just like that/ he clicked his fingers, 'salvation arrived/ He looked over at Inquisitor Ravenor.
'lust glad I was able to help/ Ravenor demurred.
'Help? Him and his kill team kicked arse! Far as I could tell, only eight of the meres got out alive. Jumped their ship and ran off-world/
I set my empty bottle down on the duralloy floor and sat forward with my elbows on my knees. 'So, Gideon/ I said, 'how in the name of Terra did you come to be there on Messina at the right time?'
'1 wasn't/ he said. 'I was there at the wrong time. If I'd reached Messina a day earlier, I'd have been there at the right time. But my ship was delayed by a warp storm that also shut down my communications/
That's the second time since I arrived you've been enigmatic/ I said. 'Is that any way to treat your old master?'
Gideon Ravenor had been my interrogator and pupil back in the late 330s, the most promising Inquisitorial candidate I have ever met. A level delta latent psyker with a RQ. of 171, he had also possessed a genius intellect rounded out with a fine education, and an athlete's physique. During the Holy Novena on Thracian Primaris, he had been caught up in the infamous Atrocity and his body had been woefully crippled. Since that time,
he had lived within the cocoon of his force chair, a brilliant mind sustained within a paralysed, useless frame.
But that had not stopped him from becoming one of the Inquisition's finest agents. I myself had sponsored his promotion to full inquisitor status in 346. Since then he had successfully prosecuted hundreds of cases, the most notable being the Gomek Violation and, of course, the Cervan-Holman Affair on Sarum. He had also penned several works of considerable insight: the celebrated essays Towards an Imperial Utopia, Reflections on the Hive State and Terra Redux: A History of the early Inquisition, a study of warp craft that was fast becoming a standard primer, and a work called The Mirror of Smoke that dealt with man's interaction with the warp-state with such conspicuous perception and poetry that I believed it would survive as much as art as it was instruction.
Ravenor was all but invisible within the dim globe of his chair's field, just a shapeless shadow suspended in the fizzling gloom. His body was utterly redundant and everything he did was performed by psi-force alone. His mind had grown stronger in his infirmity, compensating for the things denied him. I was sure he was now much more than a level delta psionic.
'My work in the last few years has required me to develop an understanding of divination and prophesy/ Gideon said slowly. Things have been… revealed to me. Things of great significance.'
I could tell he was being very careful about what he said. It was as if he wished to tell me more but didn't dare. I decided I should respect his caution, and allow him to tell me only what he felt he could.
'One of those revelations – a vision, if you like – forecast mat a violent fate would befall the Distaff on Messina. The event was predicted to the precise hour. But I couldn't get there in time to prevent it.'
'The destruction of the Distaff was predicted?' I said.
"With distressing accuracy/ he replied.
I suddenly realised I was hearing his voice, by which I mean the voice Ravenor had used before his terrible injuries, a voice produced by a man whose mouth and larynx had not been melted by burning promethium. I had become so used to the monotone synthetic speech of his chair's psi-activated voxsponder.
'My work has also allowed me perfect stronger psionic abilities/ he said, and one of them was clearly reading my surface thoughts. 'I ditched the voxsponder about a year ago. I have developed enough psionic control to broadcast my speech naturally/
'I'm hearing you in my head?'
Yes, Gregor. Hearing the voice you're used to. It doesn't work with untouchables or psychically shielded individuals of course – THATS WHY I KEEP THE OLD VOXSPONDER ON STANDBY/
He uttered the last part of his
sentence mechanically via the toneless voice box built into his chair and the grating, emotion-free electronic words made us all laugh with surprise.
Though I was too late to save the Distaff, I got Kara, Harlon and Alize-beth to safety off-world/
'For that, you have my gratitude. But why summon me so far off the beaten track to meet with you?'
'Promody has secrets that we need/ he said.
'What manner of secrets?'
'I have been allowed to see the future, Gregor/ Ravenor said. 'And it isn't pretty/
'Imperial culture has never set much store by divination/ Gideon told me. 'I have come to suspect that is a great weakness/
It was much later. Night had fallen over the swampy bayou and the air was dancing with bioluminescent flies. Ravenor and I had taken a stroll along the grav walks behind his camp.
A weakness? Surely it is a greater weakness to take it seriously? If we believed the rantings of every dribbling marketplace seer, of every demented Ecclesiarchy prophet who claimed to have been granted divine revelations-'
We would be mad, true. Most of it is rubbish, lies, mischief, the delusions of broken minds. Sometimes prophetic insights are genuine, but they are usually made by psykers who have either done it by accident or who are insane. In either case, the visions are untrustworthy or too confused to be interpreted in any practical, useful way. But just because mankind isn't very good at it doesn't mean it can't be done/
'It is my understanding that other races are reputed to excel at it/ I said.
That has certainly been my experience/ he replied. 'Serving the Ordo Xenos has been enlightening. The more I have studied alien races in order to discern their weaknesses, the more I have learned their strengths/
We are talking about the eldar, aren't we?' I risked the question. He didn't reply immediately. His last words had been close to heresy. The force sphere around him flickered slightly with anxiety.
'They are a strange breed. They are able to read the invisible geography of space-time and unravel probability with great precision. But they are mercurial. Sometimes they use their insight as a lever to change the outcome of events. Sometimes they stand idle and watch as prophesies play out. I believe there is no human alive who could explain why they make the choices they do. We just don't see things the way they do/