Prospero Burns

by Dan Abnett

  The super-robust seemed to hesitate, as if it wasn’t sure how it should proceed.

  ‘Oh, fall down!’ Fultag growled, and kicked it over the way he’d kick a door in.

  Several members of his team were by then engaging enemy units in the mouth of the hatchway at the top of the ramp. The hatch was effectively blocked by the savage melee. Fultag vaulted the ramp’s guardrail and edged along a parapet that ran around the dome’s outer surface. When he got to the first window, he stove it in with his axe and jumped inside.

  The graciles manning the consoles had begun to disconnect and flee the moment the window exploded in at them and showered the control area with glass shards. Fultag managed to kick one over and chop it in half. A super-robust came at him, and he used his axe-haft to deflect its hammer. Like a staff fighter, he brought the knob of the axe-haft up across his body, two-handed, and smacked the Quietude warrior in the sternum. Then the smile of his axe went into the super-robust’s right shoulder.

  It stuck fast, wedged. The thing wasn’t dead. It lashed at him. Fultag pulled out his long knife, the knife he had cut so many threads with, the knife that had earned him his name, and propelled himself forwards into it. He crashed it backwards against a console. The combined weight of them partially dislodged the console from its floor socket and snapped underfloor cables. The super-robust got its hand to his throat, but Fultag stabbed his knife into the middle of its face.

  It died under him and went limp, arms, head and legs slack over the console like a sacrificial victim on an altar slab.

  Before he could slide back off his kill and regain his feet, Fultag was hit across the back by another super-robust. The blow was delivered with an accelerator hammer. It cracked Fultag’s armour and broke his left hip.

  He uttered a growl as he came around at his tormentor, his black-pinned golden eyes wide with rage. His transhuman Astartes biology had already shut the pain off, diverted ruptured blood vessels, and shunted adrenaline to keep Fultag moving on a half-shattered pelvis.

  The super-robust was one of the quad-armed, two-headed monsters. Its upper torso and shoulder mount were wider than the driving cage of a Typhoon-pattern land speeder. It carried the concussion hammer with its upper limbs like a ceremonial sceptre-bearer. Fultag managed to evade its next blow, which folded and crushed the damaged console and the dead super-robust draped over it. The follow-up caught him across the right shoulder guard and hurled him sideways into another bank of consoles. Fultag growled, his teeth bared, and droplets of blood spraying from his lips, a wounded wolf now, hurt and deadly.

  He went in at the super-robust and grappled to clamp its upper limbs and stop the hammer blows. The Quietude warrior actually found itself pushed back a few steps. It couldn’t wrench its arms free. It dug in with its secondary upper limbs, ripping low at Fultag to break his grip. It clenched hard on the broken armour and mashed hip, and managed to get a yowl of pain out of him. He butted its left side head, making its holomask short out. The real face behind was a flayed human skull wired into a plastic cup of circuits. The lidless eyeballs stared back. The impact of the headbutt had caused one to fill almost instantly with pseudo-blood.

  Fultag guttered out an ultrasonic purr and butted again. As the super-robust recoiled, he yanked the hammer from its upper set of limbs, but its haft was slick with purple sap and it flew out of his hands.

  He tore the super-robust’s left head implant out instead. He ripped it clean out of its shoulder socket – skull, neck mount and spinal cord. It came out in a spray like afterbirth. Fultag spat. He gripped the wrenched-out piece of anatomy in his right fist by the base of the spine and began to spin it like a slingshot. Then he swung it repeatedly at the super-robust in the manner of a ball and chain, and didn’t stop until its other head was caved in.

  The men of Tra approved of this.

  More of the enemy came at Fultag after that, and the only weapon in reach was the accelerator hammer. This was his downfall. Stung by the use of its own weapons against it, the Quietude had adjusted its operational settings. When Fultag attempted to defend himself with the hammer, it fired a massive charge of power through the grip that cooked and killed him where he stood.

  Around the circle, men nodded gravely. A trick, a trap, an enemy deception, these were all the hazards of war. They would all have made the same choice as Fultag. He’d gone with honour, and he’d held the super-robusts long enough for Tra to take the centre.

  The wolf priests attended the dead. Hawser saw some of the dark figures he’d glimpsed in the kitchen-come-hospital-come-morgue on the day he woke up. The priest who served Tra was called Najot Threader.

  The death of Fultag troubled Tra most of all. His organics had broiled and burned. There was, Hawser learned, nothing for Najot Threader to recover.

  Hawser didn’t know what that meant.

  A warship closed in as soon as Tra signalled that the graving dock was taken. They felt the megastructure shudder as it took disabling hits from the warship’s massive batteries. The shots were annihilating secondary docks and support vessels, and crippling the graving dock’s principal launch faculty.

  The deck vibrated. There was a dull, dead sound like a giant gong striking arrhythmically in a distant palace of echoing marble. The air began to smell quite different: drier, as if there was ash or soot flowing into its intermix. Hawser felt afraid, more afraid than when he’d been in the thick of the close fighting with Tra. In his imagination, the warship’s complement of monastically-hooded calculus bombardi, ranked in steeply-tiered golden stalls around the warship’s gunnery station, were intoning their vast and complex targeting algorithms into the hard-wired sentiences of the gun batteries too rapidly. Mistakes were being made, or just one tiny mistake perhaps, a digit out of place, enough to place the delivery of a mega-watt laser or an accelerator beam a metre or two to the left or right over a range of sixty thousand kilometres. The graving dock would rupture and burst like a paper lantern lit and swollen from within by combusting gas.

  Hawser realised it was because he trusted the men of Tra to keep him safe, safe from even the deadliest super-robust. He was only afraid of the things they couldn’t control.

  The next phase of the war unfolded. Word came that the Expedition Fleet’s principal assaults on the Quietude’s home world had begun. The men of Tra took themselves to the graving dock’s polar bays to observe.

  The polar bays had been opened to allow access for the shoals of Mechanicum and Army vessels ferrying personnel onto the dock structure. Hawser joined the Wolves looking down through networks of docking gibbets and anchored voidboats. Below, vast cantilevered hatches and payload doors were spread open like the wings of mythical rocs.

  Beneath that, the planet filled the view like a giant orange. The sharp airless clarity of the view made the reflected sunlight almost neon in intensity.

  The men of Tra took themselves out along the latticework of girders and struts to get the best view of the operations far below. They were oblivious to the precipitous drop. Hawser tried to seem as matter of fact, but he fought the urge to hold on to any and every guardrail or handgrip.

  He edged onto a docking girder after Aeska Brokenlip, Godsmote and Oje. Other Wolves crowded onto the gantries around them.

  A formation of bulk capacity deployment vessels was moving into line of sight about three kilometres below them, and the men were keen to watch. Some pointed, indicating certain technical aspects. What struck Hawser most was the way the three men of Tra with him comported themselves. They dropped down onto the gantry like eager animals watching prey from a clifftop, Oje crouching and the other two sprawled. Like dogs in the sun, Hawser thought, panting after exertion, alert, ready to bound up again at a moment’s notice. The vast armour that cased them didn’t appear to offer the slightest encumbrance.

  A flurry of small but searing flashes across the neon-orange view below announced the start of the surface bombardment. Dark patterns immediately began to disfigure the atmosphere of t
he Quietude’s world, as vast quantities of smoke and particulate product began to spill into it. The skin of the orange bruised. The slow-moving deployment vessels began to sow their drop vehicles: clouds of seed cases or chaff tumbling out behind the monolithic carriers.

  The Wolves made remarks. Oje dripped a little scorn on the commander of the 40th Expedition Fleet and his council of tacticians for not synchronising the surface assault with the advancing nightside terminator, as he would have done, and thus maximise the psychological and tactical advantages of nightfall. Aeska agreed, but added he’d have run the whole attack on the nightside, except that the Army didn’t like to fight at night.

  ‘Poor eyes,’ he said, as though talking of invalids or unremarkable animals. ‘Sorry,’ he added. He cast the last comment over his shoulder to Hawser, who was perched behind them, holding on to a spar with white knuckles.

  ‘For what?’ asked Hawser.

  ‘He’s apologising to your human eye,’ said Godsmote.

  ‘Maybe someone should do you a favour and poke that out too,’ said Oje.

  The three Wolves laughed. Hawser laughed to show he understood it was meant to be a joke.

  The Wolves turned their attention back to the invasion below.

  ‘Of course, if I’d been in charge,’ said Aeska, ‘I’d have just dropped Ogvai into their main habitation, and then come back a week later to collect him and hose him down.’

  The three Wolves laughed again, teeth bared. They laughed so hard the gantry vibrated slightly under Hawser.

  A cry went up. They all turned to investigate.

  Bear, and another of Tra named Orcir, had finally dislodged the crew of robusts who had earlier vaporised Hjad on the underspace slope. They dragged them out into the open, where a gang of Tra members gathered and slaughtered them in a manner that seemed both ritualistic and unnecessarily gruesome. Despite the inhumanity of the Quietude creatures, Hawser found himself glancing away uncomfortably, unwilling to let his eyes record the scene. The two warriors saved the worst of their ministrations for the gracile commander of the weapon crew. The men of Tra watching yelled out encouragement. There was glee in the dismemberment.

  ‘They are chasing out the maleficarum,’ said Ogvai. Hawser looked up. He had not heard the massive, battle-black jarl come up to him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They are casting it out,’ said Ogvai. ‘They are hurting it so badly it will know not to come back. They are punishing it, and explaining pain to it, so it will not be eager to return and bother us.’

  ‘I see,’ said Hawser.

  ‘Make sure you do,’ said Ogvai.

  The gracile was dead. The Wolves left all the bodies where they had fallen.

  Bear walked across to the top of the underspace slope and, as Hawser watched, used his axe to excise the mark of aversion he had made earlier.

  Six

  Scintilla City

  ‘I’ve seen seventy-five years come and go,’ said Kasper Hawser, ‘and I’ve worked fifty years on this project—’

  ‘And the Prix Daumarl attests to the sterling—’

  ‘Could I finish? Could I?’

  Henrik Slussen nodded, and made a conciliatory gesture with his gloved hand.

  Hawser swallowed. His mouth was dry.

  ‘I have worked for fifty years,’ he resumed, ‘shepherding the concept of the Conservatory from nothing into this, this form. I was raised by a man who understood the value of information, of the preservation of learning.’

  ‘That’s something we all believe in, Doctor Hawser,’ said one of the thirty-six rubricators sitting in a semi-circle in the writing desks behind Slussen. Hawser had asked Vasiliy to arrange the meeting in the college’s Innominandum Theatre, the lecture theatre panelled in brown wood, rather than the provost’s office as Slussen had requested. A psychological ploy; he could get Slussen and his entourage to take the fold-down seats built for students, and diminish them in contrast to his authority.

  ‘I believe the doctor was still a little way from finishing,’ Vasiliy told the rubricator. His tone was smooth, but there was unmistakable chastisement in his voice. Vasiliy was standing at Hawser’s left shoulder. Hawser could tell that his mediary had one hand inside his coat pocket, secretly holding on to the small vial of medication in case the tension of the situation became too much for Hawser.

  The man worried too much. It was charming.

  ‘The work the Conservatory has done,’ said Hawser, ‘the work I have done… It has all been about expanding mankind’s understanding of the cosmos. It has not been about salvaging data and placing it in an inaccessible archive.’

  ‘Explain to me how you think that is happening, doctor?’ asked Slussen.

  ‘Explain to me the process by which any average citizen can access information from the Administratum datastacks, undersecretary?’ Hawser replied.

  ‘There is a protocol. A request is made—’

  ‘It requires approvals. Authorities. A positive request may take years to fill. A refusal may not be explained or appealed. Information assets, precious information assets, are being placed into the same vast pot as general global administrative data. Vasiliy?’

  ‘Current assessments made by the Office of Efficiency predict that the centralised data-wealth of the Imperium is doubling every eight months. Simply navigating a catalogue of that data-wealth will soon be arduous. In a year or two…’

  Slussen did not look at Hawser’s mediary.

  ‘So it’s a problem of access, and of the architecture of our archives. These are issues that I am happy to explore—’

  ‘I don’t believe they are issues, undersecretary,’ said Hawser. ‘I believe they are symptoms and excuses. They are soft ways of censoring and forbidding. They are subtle ways of controlling data and deciding who gets to know what.’

  ‘That’s quite a claim,’ said Slussen, entirely without tone.

  ‘It’s not the worst thing I’m going to claim today by any means, undersecretary,’ said Hawser, ‘so hold on tight. High level control of global information, that’s bad enough. A conspiracy, if you will, that restricts and seeks to govern the free sharing of composited knowledge throughout mankind, that’s bad enough. But what’s worse is the implication of ignorance.’

  ‘What?’ asked Slussen.

  Hawser looked up at the ceiling of the lecture hall, where egg tempera angels flew and cavorted through gesso clouds. He was feeling a little light-headed, truth be told.

  ‘Ignorance,’ he repeated. ‘The Imperium is so anxious to retain proprietorial control of all data, it is simply stockpiling everything without evaluation or examination. We are owning data without learning it. We don’t know what we know.’

  ‘There are issues of security,’ said one of the rubricators.

  ‘I understand that!’ Hawser snapped. ‘I’m simply asking for some transparency. Perhaps an analytical forum to review data as it comes in. To assess it. It’s six months since Emantine put you in charge, undersecretary. Six months since you began to steer the Conservatory into the dense fog of the Administratum. We are losing our rigour. We are no longer processing or questioning.’

  ‘I think you’re exaggerating,’ said Slussen.

  ‘Just this week alone,’ said Hawser, taking the data-slate Vasiliy held out to him, ‘one hundred and eighty-nine major archaeological or ethnological survey reports were filed directly to the Administratum through your office without going through the Conservatory. Ninety-six of those had been directly funded by us.’

  Slussen said nothing.

  ‘Many years ago,’ said Hawser, ‘so many years ago it alarms me to count them, I asked someone a question. In many respects, it was the question that led us to this place, the question that drives the whole ethos of the Conservatory. It comes in two parts, and I’d be very interested to know if you can answer either.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Slussen.

  Hawser fixed him with an intent stare.

  ‘Does anyone even kn
ow why the Age of Strife happened? How did we end up in the great darkness of Old Night to begin with?’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Vasiliy.

  ‘Finish packing,’ Hawser replied. ‘Perhaps you’d like to help?’

  ‘You can’t leave.’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘You can’t resign.’

  ‘I did. You were there. I expressed a desire to Undersecretary Slussen to withdraw from the project for the time being. A sabbatical, I think it’s called.’

  ‘Where are you going to go?’

  ‘Caliban, perhaps. An investigative mission has been sent to audit the Great and Fearsome Bestiaries in the bastion libraries. The idea appeals. Or Mars. I have a standing invitation to study at the Symposia Adeptus. Somewhere challenging, somewhere interesting.’

  ‘This is just an overreaction,’ said Vasiliy. The afternoon sunlight was piercing the mesh shutters of the high-hive dwelling, an academic’s quarters, fully furnished, generous. The items in the room that were actually Hawser’s belongings were few, and he was hurling them into his modular luggage. He packed some clothes, some favourite data-slates and paper books, his regicide board.

  ‘The undersecretary’s answer was just flippant,’ said Vasiliy. ‘Trite. He didn’t mean anything by it. It was a politician’s nonsense, and I’m sure he’ll take it back on reflection.’

  ‘He said it didn’t matter,’ said Hawser. He stopped what he was doing and looked at his mediary for a moment. He was holding a small toy horse made of wood, deciding whether to pack it or not. He’d owned it for a long time.

  ‘He said it didn’t matter, Vasiliy. The causes of the Age of Strife were of no consequence to this new golden age. I have never heard such folly!’